It is full of political animus, sensual liveliness, English and popular instincts; it lives. It is a coarse life, still elementary, swarming with ignoble vermin, like that which appears in a great decomposing body. It is life, nevertheless, with its two great features which it is destined to display: the hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is the Reformation; the return to the senses and to natural life, which is the Renaissance.
[193]Born between 1328 and 1345, died in 1400.
[194]Renan, "De l'Art au Moyen Age."
[195]See Froissart, his life with the Count of Foix and with King Richard II.
[196]"Knight's Tale," II. p. 59, lines 1957-1964.
[197]"Knight's Tale," II. p. 59, lines 1977-1996.
[198]Ibid., p. 61, lines 2043-2050.
[199]"Knight's Tale," II. p. 63, lines 2120-2188.
[200]The House of Fame.