This little thirteenth-century gem is called a “chante-fable,” a story partly in prose, partly in verse, to be sung according to musical notation accompanying the words in the single manuscript known, and published in facsimile by Mr. F. W. Bourdillon at Oxford in 1896.  Indeed, few poems, old or new, have in the last few years been more reprinted, translated, and discussed, than “Aucassins,” yet the discussion lacks interest to the idle tourist, and tells him little.  Nothing is known of the author or his date.  The second line alone offers a hint, but nothing more.  “Caitif” means in the first place a captive, and secondly any unfortunate or wretched man.  Critics have liked to think that the word means here a captive to the Saracens, and that the poet, like Cervantes three or four hundred years later, may have been a prisoner to the infidels.  What the critics can do, we can do.  If liberties can be taken with impunity by scholars, we can take the liberty of supposing that the poet was a prisoner in the crusade of Coeur-de-Lion and Philippe-Auguste; that he had recovered his liberty, with his master, in 1194; and that he passed the rest of his life singing to the old Queen Eleanor or to Richard, at Chinon, and to the lords of all the chateaux in Guienne, Poitiers, Anjou, and Normandy, not to mention England.  The living was a pleasant one, as the sunny atmosphere of the Southern poetry proves.

  Dox est li cans; biax est li dis,
   Et cortois et bien asis.

The poet-troubadour who composed and recited “Aucassins” could not have been unhappy, but this is the affair of his private life, and not of ours.  What rather interests us is his poetic motive, “courteous love,” which gives the tale a place in the direct line between Christian of Troyes, Thibaut-le-Grand, and William of Lorris.  Christian of Troyes died in 1175; at least he wrote nothing of a later date, so far as is certainly known.  Richard Coeur-de-Lion died in 1199, very soon after the death of his half-sister Mary of Champagne.  Thibaut-le-Grand was born in 1201.  William of Lorris, who concluded the line of great “courteous” poets, died in 1260 or thereabouts.  For our purposes, “Aucassins” comes between Christian of Troyes and William of Lorris; the trouvere or jogleor, who sang, was a “viel caitif” when the Chartres glass was set up, and the Charlemagne window designed, about 1210, or perhaps a little later.  When one is not a professor, one has not the right to make inept guesses, and, when one is not a critic, one should not risk confusing a difficult question by baseless assumptions; but even a summer tourist may without offence visit his churches in the order that suits him best; and, for our tour, “Aucassins” follows Christian and goes hand in hand with Blondel and the chatelain de Coucy, as the most exquisite expression of “courteous love.”  As one of “Aucassins’” German editors says in his introduction:  “Love is the medium through which alone the hero surveys