124 F. B. Liiqiiiens, 



It only remains for us to point out the technical excellence of 

 the individual lines of the Oxford manuscript. To me their con- 

 sistent artistry seems undeniable. I feel that there is not the slight- 

 est exaggeration in the words of Gaston Paris i : " On peut lire trois 

 cents vers de la Chanson de Roland sans y trouver un mot a re- 

 trancher, pas une cheville, aucune concession a la rime : tout est 

 plein, nerveux et solide ; le tissu est serre, le metal de bon aloi." 

 Yet some think otherwise. An eminent German scholar- uses the 

 phrase " manch matter Vers " — hvA. does not give examples. Taver- 

 nier (1. c, p. 26) is more definite : he considers as padded lines all 

 those containing hendiadys. This is unjust, for hendiadys may be 

 used artistically, as well as inartisticall}'. Tennyson's 



And lost to life and use and name and fame . . . 



has never been branded as a padded line.^ And none but Dr. Ta- 

 vernier has ever before applied the epithet to such lines of the 

 Roland as : 



Serez ses horn par honur et par bien . . . 



or: 



N'i ad celui ki mot sunt ne mot tint. 



I trust most students of the Roland will accord with me in hoping 

 that none ever will again. 



There are, however, some bad lines in O. Following is a list of 

 those which are surely so: vv. 249, 644, 8o8, 8ij, 1357, 1386, 140S, 

 1417, 1439, 2067, 2ogo, 2og6, 2098, j688, j6(ji, jjoj, 3796. But 

 more than half of these lines — those which are italicised — are in 

 strophes which we have already attributed to copyists, a fact which 

 constitutes additional evidence of the spuriousness of those strophes. 

 There remain eioht which must be considered as o:enuine — eiefht 



pp. 26— 27 ; Stengel, L?feraf7irb/aff /. ^. ?/. r. PhiloL, i, column 105 ; Persch- 

 mann, Die Stellung von O in der Uberlicfci-iing dcs altfranzosischen Rolands- 

 liedes (Marburg, 1881), p. 19 ; Passbender, Die franzdsischcn RolandJmiid- 

 schriften in ihreni Verhdltnis zii einander imd zur Karlajnagnitssaga (Kolll, 

 1887), pp. 7-8. Only two Roland students — as far as I know— have ever 

 considered both strophes genuine : Dietrich, 1. c, p. 40, Note 1 ; Tavernier, 

 1. c, p. 58, Note 110. Neither gives sound arguments for this contention. 



1 Histoire Poc'tiqzie dc Charletnagne (Paris, 1905), p. 24. 



- Poerster, Zdtschrift f. roman. PhiloL, ii, 163. 



* If we should adopt Tavernier's criterion, we should have to deny 

 excellence to many well known lines of Tennyson. Cf. Dyboski, Tettny- 

 sons Spmdic nnd Stil (Wien, 1907), pp. 200-203. 



