slaves to the wealth that they imprison in their coffers…. In a manner altogether different, we may remark, among other passages which bear the impress of real poetry, a magnificent description of a storm, with the return of fair weather (Chap. XCVIII)…. The parables, piled one upon another by the author to justify his attacks on the servitude of marriage and the isolation of the cloister, which represent in admirably natural and graceful miniatures the bird in the cage, the fish snared in a bag-net, the kitten that sees a mouse for the first time, and the filly that first catches sight of a horse (Chap. LXXV.).
“The episodes also of Venus and Adonis (Chapters LXXXVII.-VIII.) and of Pygmalion (Chapter CVI.) are charming idylls, which may worthily hold comparison with the pages of Ovid, whence they are imitated. We may further remark that no other author of the thirteenth century writes with such ease as Jean de Meun, his style being invariably on a level with the ideas he desires to express, now powerful and rugged, now graceful and gentle, but always clear, elegant, and picturesque; his verse is flowing and easy, and many of his couplets have become proverbial.”
But one of the finest qualities of the author is his quiet humour, which peeps out as continually and as delightfully as it does in the verse
