Page:Romance of the Rose (Ellis), volume 1.pdf/9



the books which throw light on the lives, minds, and ways of men in the wonderful thirteenth century—the century of Roger Bacon, of St. Francis, of S. Louis, of S. Thomas Aquinas, of Duns Scotus, and of the youth of Dante—there are three which, while they had for three hundred years as great vogue as the most widely read of nineteenth-century romances enjoy for a few months, have, nevertheless, been neglected by succeeding ages to a degree that must be regretted. A knowledge and study of them will afford a far clearer insight into the daily life, and the spirit working within the people for whom they were written, than the annals of the wars that raged during the same period between kings and nobles. The three books referred to are “The Romance of the Rose,” “Reynard the Fox,” and the “Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend.” The first presents us with pictures of mediæval every­day life that we shall look for in vain elsewhere, till in the next century the lanterns of Froissart, Chaucer, and William Langland illumine the Rh