Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/25

Rh the usual forms—romances, Carlovingian, Arthurian, and Oriental (Alexander and Troy), versified saints' legends, shorter tales or sproken, lyrics, and a considerable body of didactic literature. Of the drama something will be said in the following chapter. The Dutch romances of the thirteenth century are mainly, if not entirely, translated from the French. Moriaen is probably an exception, and Professor Kalff defends the originality of Karel ende Elegast and the fine Roman van Walewein. Most interesting of all is the popular Reinaert, based on a French work, but much superior to the original, and admittedly the finest version of the Keynard stories.

It was, naturally, the nobility and their followers who were the principal readers of the romances, as it was the "religious" who composed and studied poems such as Vanden Leven ons Heeren, Beatrijs, and other saints' legends. The taste of the middle classes, which began to assert itself as the thirteenth century drew to a close, is represented by the didactic writers, at the head of whom stands the prolific Jacob van Maerlant, author of versions of the Alexander, Merlin, and Troy stories, and of various didactic works such as the Rijmbijbel and Spieghel Historiael (Mirror of History). He was followed by a number of verse chroniclers and didactic writers, as Melis Stoke and Jan van Boendale or de Clerk, author of a Lekenspieghel (Mirror for Laymen), whom it is impossible to enumerate here. The Roman