48 The Popular Literature of France. [| July, 



qiieror of Abderame is no better treated in the Qnatre Fils Ayrnon. 

 Tliis work, which has been called the Iliad of the middle ages, and 

 which, by the powerful interest of its composition, merits the title, is 

 the best known of the innumerable poems which formed the delight of 

 our ancestors ; whilst all the others insensibly fade away and are for- 

 gotten, this alone enjoys undiminished popularity, and every year the 

 magic adventures of Renaud de ]\Iontauban and the traitor Maugis 

 re-issue from the press. They have, however, a formidable rival in the 

 history of Valentin Urson, the hero of which, a savage nurtured in the 

 woods by a bear, and suddenly removed to a court, shews himself the 

 worthy nursling of his foster-mother. Always fighting, never con- 

 quered, he carries off wives, beats the husbands, lays waste the larder — 

 playing, in fact, nearly the same part as the clowns and harlequins of 

 modern pantomime. Robert le Diable, so famous in the Norman tra- 

 ditions, is but an heroic variety of this personage. 



Huoti de Bordeaux, the most voluminous of the romances of chivalry 

 which have retained their popularity, contains some curious information 

 on the fairy superstitions of the middle ages. The foundation of the 

 Oberon of Wieland is to be found there. The comic character is a 

 laitou de mer, the prototype of all those goblin servants which still exist 

 in the imagination of the peasantry. We also there observe the strange 

 and constant alliance of the fairies with Christianity. Thus Oberon, a 

 most orthodox fairy-king, never fails to exhort his knights to remain 

 faithful to Jesus Christ, and oppose the followers of Blahomet. Per- 

 haps this romance, and other works of the same kind, have contributed 

 not a little to originate and confirm those numerous superstitions, pai*- 

 taking equally of paganism and ascetism, Avhich even now are far from 

 being annihilated. In opposition to these chivalrous paladins who do 

 every thing lance in rest, we have Jean de Calais, a plebeian hero, the son 

 of a merchant, whose destiny, however, is equally brilliant, as he marries 

 the daughter of a king of Portugal. There is some reason to believe 

 that his biography is founded on the exploits of those intrepid navi- 

 gators of Calais and St. Valery, those Angots,. who, in the seventeenth 

 century, shewed such fatal hostiUty to the Lusitanian flag. Jean de 

 Calais has had the honour of being made the subject of scenic repre- 

 sentation, as well as three other heroes of popular literature, Jean de 

 Paris, the Aladdin of la Latnpe merveilleuse, and Fortu?iatus translated 

 originally from the Arabic, and afterwards from the Spanish, and in 

 which La Harpe found the materials of Tonga et Fclime. The drama 

 has also borrowed several situations from Tiel Ulespiegle, a personage, 

 the precursor of Guzman d' Alfarache, Lazarillo de Tormes, and the 

 whole tribe of Spanish Picaros. The Bibliotheque Bleue has also its 

 Gargantua, but this is nothing in common with the Gargantua of the 

 curate of Mendon. It is established that the literary existence of this 

 giant was much anterior to the publication of Rabelais' work, and yet, 

 judging from the following passage in the introduction, his history 

 cannot be of any great antiquity. " The giants which they shew us 

 every year at the fair of St. Germains, would have been but very Httle 

 dwarfs," &c. &c. 



A volume would not suffice to analyse the whole of these works, 

 more than 1,200 of which are enumerated in the catalogue of a single 

 bookseller at Rouen, who, in common with the members of his fraternity 

 at Troyes, deals specially in works of this description. We may safely 



