436 NATIONAL POETRY. 



epic poems which appeared in Great Britain, there had been written a few 

 poems concerning the wars of King Edward III. against Philip of Valois and 

 John II. of France. But the writers are not to be compared with John 

 Gower and Geoffrey Chaucer, who had taken as their models the ancient French 

 trouveurs, and who imitated them without citing their authority. Gowcr, in 

 particular, contributed to purify the language of poetry, and Chaucer, in 

 spite of his imitations, which amount to plagiarism, showed that he was the 

 superior in point of style, if not in invention, to Marie do France, Rutebcuf, 

 William de Lorris, and Jean de Meung. 



The literary reputation of Jean de Meung lasted for more than two 

 centuries after his death (1320), though French poetry had taken another 

 shape to suit the taste of the ladies, who, by becoming queens of the tourna- 

 ments and of other fetes of chivalry, brought about a sort of poetic revival, 

 not only in France, but in all countries where French was the language of the 

 aristocracy. The satires directed more especially against the fair sex had seen 

 their best day, and though Eustache Deschamps sought to revive them by 

 paraphrasing, in his " Miroir du Manage," Juvenal's satire upon women, 

 poetry once more acquired the gallant and amorous characteristics which it 

 had inherited from the troubadours. The chronicler, Jean Froissart, who was 

 at one time clerk to Queen Philippa of Hainault, wife of King Edward III. 

 of England, relates that he " narrated to her interesting stories or treatises on 

 love." The poems of Froissart, written in the Rouchi-French dialect of 

 Valenciennes, often have a smack of the troubadour school and of William dc 

 Lorris's " Romance of the Rose." These poems, which run smoothly enough, 

 but which are wordy and colourless, are specially interesting from an auto- 

 biographical point of view, as the author is continually alluding to himself 

 even in his pastorals and his nuptial songs. 



The professional poets who succeeded the trouveurs attempted to revive 

 the literature of chansons de geste and romances of chivalry, which they 

 revised and adapted to modern usage ; but, as they made no effort to abridge 

 them, these poems only became, under their treatment, heavier and more 

 prosy. They did better with the Chronicle in verse, which they continued to 

 call by the name of romance even when they were treating of contemporary 

 subjects, as, for instance, Cuvelier in the " Chronique de Bertrand du 

 Guesclin." Moreover, the poetical romances of the fourteenth century are 

 remarkable for their immense length and unbroken dulness. The court 



