proportions of an epic poem. Under the names of animals they were human
types in action and concerned in multifarious adventures: the lion was
the king; the bear, called Bruin, was the seigneurial lord of the soil;
the fox was the artful, circumspect citizen; the cock, called
Chanticleer, was the hero of warfare, and so on. Some of the _Romances
of Renard_ are insipid; others possess a satiric and parodying spirit
that is extremely diverting.

THE FABLES.--Contemporaneously the _Fables_ amused our ancestors.
They were anecdotes, tales in verse for the most part dealing with
adventures of citizens, analogous to the tales of La Fontaine. The
majority were jeering, bantering, and satirical; some few were affecting
and refined. They were certainly the most living and characteristic
portion of old French literature.

THE BIBLES.--The Middle Ages, after the manner of the ancients, delighted
in gathering into one volume all the knowledge current. These didactic
books were called bibles. Some were celebrated: the _Bible_ of Guyot
of Provence, the _Bible_ of Hugo of Berzi. As a rule, whilst learned
as far as the resources of the times permitted, they were also satiric,
precisely as almost the whole of the literature of the Middle Ages is
satiric.

_THE ROMANCE OF THE ROSE_.--The _Romance of the Rose_, which was by
two authors writing with almost half a century of interval between them,
was in the first portion, of which the author is William of Lorris, an
art of love in the form of a romance in verse; and the second part,
written by John de Meung, formed in some measure a continuation of the
first, but above all was a work of erudition and instruction, in which
the poet put all that he knew as well as his philosophical conceptions,