Note to Third Edition.—M. Gaston Paris has expressed some surprise at my remarks on metre (p. 63). This from so accomplished a scholar is a curious instance of the difficulty which Frenchmen seem to feel in appreciating quantity. To an English eye and ear which have been trained to classical prosody the trochaic rhythm of, for instance, the Pastourelle quoted on p. 65, is unmistakable, and there are anapaestic metres to be found here and there in early poems of the same kind. Indeed, all French poetry is easily scanned quantitatively, though the usual authorities protest against such scansion. Voltaire, it is said, took Turgot's hexameters for prose, and the significance of this is the same whether the mistake, as is probable, was mischievous or whether it was genuine.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Leipsic, 1870.
[68] See note at end of chapter.
[69] This miscellaneous lyric for the most part awaits collection and publication. M. G. Raynaud has given a valuable Bibliographie des Chansonniers Français des XIIIe et XIVe siècles. 2 vols., Paris, 1884. Also a collection of motets. Paris, 1881.
[70] Philippe Mouskès. This is it:
La terre fut pis en cest an
Quar li vieux Quesnes estoit mors.
[71] The best edition is in Schéler's Trouvères Belges. Brussels, 1876.
[72] Rheims, 1851.