CHAUCER. 245 



drawn sentiment and supersubtilized conceit, the former 

 took their subjects from the street and the market as 

 well as from the chateau. In the one case language had 

 become a mere material for clever elaboration ; in the 

 other, as always in live literature, it was a soil from 

 which the roots of thought and feeling unconsciously 

 drew the coloring of vivid expression. The writers of 

 French, by the greater pliancy of their dialect and the 

 simpler forms of their verse, had acquired an ease which 

 was impossible in the more stately and sharply angled 

 vocabulary of the South. Their octosyllabics have not 

 seldom a careless facility not unworthy of Swift in his 

 best mood. They had attained the highest skill and 

 grace in narrative, as the lays of Marie de France and 

 the Lai de UOisekt bear witness.* Above all, they had 

 learned how to brighten the hitherto monotonous web of 

 story with the gayer hues of fancy. 



It is no improbable surmise that the sudden and sur- 

 prising development of the more strictly epical poetry in 

 the North of France, and especially its growing partiality 

 for historical in preference to mythical subjects, were 

 due to the Normans. The poetry of the Danes was much 

 of it authentic history, or what was believed to be so ; 

 the heroes of their Sagas were real men, with wives and 

 children, with relations public and domestic, on the 

 common levels of life, and not mere creatures of imagina- 

 tion, who dwell apart like stars from the vulgar cares and 

 interests of men. If we compare Havelok with the least 

 idealized figures of Carlovingian or Arthurian romance, 

 ■we shall have a keen sense of this difference. Manhood 

 has taken the place of caste, and homeliness of exaggera- 

 tion. Havelok says, — 



" Godwot, I will with thee gang 

 For to learn some good to get; 



* If internal evidence may be trusted, the Lai de I'Eipine is not hers. 



