Page:Romance of the Rose (Ellis), volume 1.pdf/19

Rh Dominican monk Jacobus de Voragine, in his “Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend.” Not only is celibacy exalted as being in itself a virtue, but the example is held up to special admiration of wedded couples who lived as celibates in despite of the laws of God and Nature.

M. Langlois, while pointing out certain defects that attach to the work, thus sums up the merits of its author: “Jean de Meun is not only a scholar and a man of letters, he is also a poet, the greatest perhaps of the thirteenth century. In this respect he has commonly been too little considered, inasmuch as other more strikingly brilliant qualities of his mind have absorbed the attention of the critics who have occupied themselves with him, and because, moreover, the numerous poems embedded in his ‘Romance’ are somewhat obscured by the setting. How fine a passage is that (Chapter XXXV.) in which he contrasts the careless happiness en­ joyed by the labourer with the perpetual anxi­eties of the banker or money-dealer, who never knows when he is rich enough; of the merchant whose desire for gain is likened to the thirst of a man who fain would drink up the volume of the Seine; of the lawyer or physician each desirous only of selling his services for filthy lucre; of the divine who preaches but for money, and of those heapers up of riches who are mere