Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/31

Rh their rustic names, and putting forward as their spokesman one among them who is more eloquent and ready than the rest—'li un qui plus fu enparlés des autres'; for the little book has its burlesque too, so that one hears the faint far-off laughter still. Rough as it is, the piece has certainly this high quality of poetry that it aims at a purely artistic effect. Its subject is a great sorrow, yet it claims to be a thing of joy and refreshment, to be entertained not for its matter only, but chiefly for its manner; it is 'cortois,' it tells us, 'et bien assis.'

For the student of manners and of the old French language and literature it has much interest of a purely antiquarian order. To say of an ancient literary composition that it has an antiquarian interest, often means that it has no distinct æsthetic interest for the reader of to-day. Antiquarianism, by a purely historical effort, by putting its object in perspective and setting the reader in a certain point of view from which what gave pleasure to the past is pleasurable for him also, may often add greatly to the charm we receive from ancient literature. But the first condition of such aid must be a real, direct, æsthetic charm in the thing itself; unless it has that charm, unless some purely artistic quality went to its original making, no merely antiquarian effort can ever give it an æsthetic value or make it a proper