WILLIAM THE CLERK. 149 



been given new life through the commentaries of the 

 Greeks and the Arabs, and were being eagerly restudied 

 by those who had hitherto denounced them as the ravings 

 of pagans and infidels. The gathering of physical facts 

 was gradually becoming regarded as an objective proceed- 

 ing, and philosophy began its movement away from the 

 subjective methods of theology. 



While the philosophers and the theologians were pursu- 

 ing endless disputations resulting from these changing 

 conditions, the imaginative spirit of Christendom burst 

 forth almost unchecked. The new language of the Nor- 

 mans yielded the new romance, and chivalry and love re- 

 placed piracy and murder or the dull category of saintly 

 virtues, as the burden of the poems which the jongleurs 

 recited, or the songs which the trouveres sang. 



Among these new singers was one little known to fame, 

 but still the most prolific of all. He wrote one of the 

 Romances of the Round Table, but, like some few others, 

 his muse favored subjects of a religious and moral char- 

 acter rather than those of a sprightly or amatory turn. 

 He called himself William the Clerk, 1 and he was a vassal 

 of Sire Rauf or Raul, who fought in the wars of Frederick 

 I. in Italy (1159 to 1177). Robert Wace, the most emi- 

 nent of the trouveres, vouches for the multiplicity of Wil- 

 liam the Clerk's writings; but if, as seems to be the case, 

 they were generally of the stripe of the rhymed natural 

 history interspersed with moral lessons (Li Bestiare Divins), 

 which he composed by order of Rauf, whom he eulogizes 

 in a fulsome manner through thirty verses, we need waste 

 no regrets over their loss. In fact, William has spared us 

 that trouble by himself deploring that he ever wrote them. 



1 Sur un MS. du Commencement du XlVme Siecle, etc. Bulletin du 

 Bibliophile. Paris, Sept., 1836. D'Avezac : Anciens Temoignages his- 

 toriques relatifs a la Boussole. Bull, de la Soc. Geog., 10 Feb., 1858. 

 Jal : Arche"ologie Navale. Paris, 1840, 208. De la Rue : Essais Hist, 

 stir les Bardes, les Jongleurs et les Trouveres. Caen, 1834. Wright : 

 Biog. Brit. London, 1842, vol. ii., 426. 



