Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenue
Et que li lius li abelisse
Tant que de France n'isse
L'onor qui s'i est arestee!"
"Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had the renown for
chivalry and letters: then chivalry and the primacy in letters passed to
Rome, and now it is come to France. God grant it may be kept there; and
that the place may please it so well, that the honor which has come to
make stay in France may never depart thence!"
Yet it is now all gone, this French romance-poetry, of which the weight
of substance and the power of style are not unfairly represented by this
extract from Christian of Troyes. Only by means of the historic estimate
can we persuade ourselves now to think that any of it is of poetical
importance.
But in the fourteenth century there comes an Englishman nourished on
this poetry; taught his trade by this poetry, getting words, rhyme,
meter from this poetry; for even of that stanza[91] which the Italians
used, and which Chaucer derived immediately from the Italians, the basis
and suggestion was probably given in France.
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