Who keep their Lent the whole year round,
But feed on live men's flesh the while
With teeth of envy and of guile,
These were my mark; no other aim
Was mine except to blot their fame.'
Let us pass to what is perhaps the most curious part of the book, and the richest for the student of mediæval ideas, that in which he gives us his views on the growth and principles of society. Here are advanced theories of an audacity and apparent originality which make one curious to know how far they penetrated into the lower strata of France; whether they were the speculations of a dreamer, or the tenets of a school; whether there was any connection—it is more than possible—between this kind of teaching and the frantic revolt of the peasantry; whether, in fact, Jean de Meung was a prophet with a following, or a visionary without disciples. Read, for instance, his account, somewhat abridged, of the Golden Age:—
'Once on a time, in those old years,
When lived our grandsires and forbears,
(Writers, by whom the tale we know,