PROVERBS. 335 



began with a proverb, or even by several proverbs. The Trouvere, Chrestien 

 de Troyes, commences his description of the Quest of the Holy Grail, in the 

 romance entitled " Perceval," with the following proverbs : 



" Qui petit seme petit cuelt, 

 Kt qui onques recoillir voelt, 

 En tol lieu sa gemance espande 

 Uue fruit a cent dobles li rande : 

 Car en terre qui rien ne vault, 

 Bonne semance i seche et fault." 



The same author also commences his romance of " Erie et Enide " with the 

 proverb 



" Li villains dist, en son respit, 

 Qua tel chose a Ten en despit, 

 Qui mult vult miulx que Ton ne cuide." 



The example of the celebrated Chrestien de Troyes was naturally followed 

 by his contemporaries, and the author of the well-known romance, " Baudoin 

 de Sebourc, third King of Jerusalem," terminates each stanza of his long 

 poem with a proverb. He in his turn was imitated by several writers, and 

 there are many pieces of poetry, dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries, in which the proverb recurs at the end of each stanza ; amongst 

 others, in the " Complainte " of twenty-two couplets, which the Paris students 

 composed, in 1381, against Hugh Aubriot, Provost of Paris, out of spite 

 for his severity towards them, and also in the ballad against the English, 

 which was written in verse by Alain Chartier (1449), after the capture of 

 Fougeres. 



Another proof of the large place given to proverbs in the very best books 

 is to be found in the old " Chronique de Rains," the author of which is not 

 known to us, though of all the historic writings of the thirteenth century his 

 are at once the most remarkable for their veracity and dramatic style. The 

 author could not have witnessed the events in the reign of Philip Augustus 

 and of St. Louis which he describes, yet he reproduces the true character- 

 istics of the period when he typifies the principal occurrences by means 

 of plain proverbs. After pointing out the imprudence of the King of 

 Spain, who attacked the doughty Richard Coour-de-Lion, King of England, 

 he comes to the conclusion that "taut grate chievre, que mal gist;" and in 



