some of the details are so descriptive that they suggested to M.
Fauriel the notion that the words had been accompanied
throughout by dramatic action. That mixture of simplicity and
refinement which he was surprised to find in a composition of the
thirteenth century, is shown sometimes in the turn given to some
passing expression or remark; thus, "the Count de Garins was old
and frail, his time was over"--Li quens Garins de Beaucaire
estoit vix et frales; si avoit son tans trespasse. And then, all is so
realised! One sees the ancient forest, with its disused roads
grown deep with grass, and the place where seven roads meet--u
a forkeut set cemin qui s'en vont par le pais; we hear the light-
hearted country people calling each other by their rustic names,
and putting forward, as their spokesman, one among them who is
more eloquent and ready than the rest--li un qui plus fu enparles
des autres; for the little book has its burlesque element also, so
that one hears the faint, far-off laughter still. Rough as it is, the
piece certainly possesses this high quality of poetry, that it aims
at a purely artistic effect. Its subject is a great sorrow, yet it
claims to be a thing of joy and refreshment, to be entertained not
for its matter only, but chiefly for its manner, it is cortois, it tells
us, et bien assis.

[19] For the student of manners, and of the old French language
and literature, it has much interest of a purely antiquarian order.
To say of an ancient literary composition that it has an
antiquarian interest, often means that it has no distinct aesthetic
interest for the reader of to-day. Antiquarianism, by a purely
historical effort, by putting its object in perspective, and setting
the reader in a certain point of view, from which what gave
pleasure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may often add