“ In a dream the Lover visits a park to which he is admitted by Idleness. In the park he finds Pleasure, Delight, Cupid and other personages, and at length the Rose. Welcome grants him permission to kiss the Rose, but he is driven away by Danger, Shame, Scandal, and especially by Jealousy, who entrenches the Rose and imprisons Welcome, leaving the Lover disconsolate. The story, thus left incomplete by its inventor, was finished in 19,000 lines by Jean de Meun, who allows the Lover to win the Rose, but only after a long siege and much discourse from Reason, the Friend, Nature and Genius. ”

“ In the second part, however, the story is entirely subsidiary to the display of the author’s encyclopaedic knowledge, to picturesque and poetic digressions, and to violent satire in the manner of the fabliaux against the abuse of power, against women, against popular superstition, and against the celibacy of the clergy. The length of the work and its heterogeneous character proved no bar to its enormous popularity in the middle ages, attested by the 200 MSS. of it which have survived. ”

“ The Romaunt of the Rose was translated into English by Chaucer (see the prologue to the Legende of Good Women) , but the English version of that, extending to about one-third of the whole work, which has come down to us (see an edition by Dr Max Kaluza, Chaucer Society, 1891) , is generally admitted to be by another hand. ”