Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/139

Rh vanity of honours, from oppressive luxury and cruel war.

Medieval literature inherited from the classic authors the theme of the praise of the simple life, which may be called the negative side of the bucolic sentiment. Court life and aristocratic pretension are disavowed in favour of solitude, work and study. In the fourteenth century this theme had found its typical expression in France in Le Dit de Franc Gontier of Philippe de Vitri, bishop of Meaux, musician and poet, and a friend of Petrarch.

After the meal they kiss "both the mouth and the nose, the soft and the shaggy," then Gontier goes off to fell a tree, while Helayne goes to do the washing.