work, adding much more than he found, sacrificed the harmony of the composition to his fondness for psychological and social analysis. The conquest of the castle of the roses is drowned in a continual flood of digressions, speculations and examples. The sweet breeze of Guillaume de Lorris was followed by the east wind of chilling scepticism and cruel cynicism of his successor. The vigorous and trenchant spirit of the second tarnished the naïve and lightsome idealism of the first. Jean de Meun is an enlightened man, who believes neither in spectres nor in sorcerers, neither in faithful love nor in the chastity of woman, who has an inkling of the problems of mental pathology, and puts into the mouths of Venus, Nature and Genius the most daring apology for sensuality.
Venus, requested by her son to come to his aid, swears not to leave a single woman chaste and makes Amor and the whole army of assailants take the same vow as regards men. Nature, occupied in her smithy with her task of preserving the various species, her eternal struggle against Death, complains that of all creatures, man alone transgresses her commandments by abstaining from procreation. She charges Genius, her priest, to go and hurl at Love's army, Nature's anathema on those who despise her laws. In sacerdotal dress, a taper in his hand, Genius pronounces the sacrilegious excommunication, in which the boldest sensualism blends with refined mysticism. Virginity is condemned, hell is reserved for those who do not observe the commandments of nature and of love. For the others the flowered field, where the white sheep, led by Jesus, the lamb born of the Virgin, crop the incorruptible grass in endless daylight. At the close Genius throws the taper into the besieged fortress; its flame sets the universe on fire. Venus also throws her torch; then Shame and Fear flee, the castle is taken, and Bel-Accueil allows the lover to pluck the rose.
Here, then, in the Roman de la Rose, the sexual motif is again placed in the centre of erotic poetry, but enveloped by symbolism and mystery and presented in the guise of saintliness. It is impossible to imagine a more deliberate defiance of the Christian ideal. The dream of love had taken a form as artistic as it was passionate. The profusion of allegory satisfied all the requirements of medieval imagination. These
