Note 17 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Jean Bodel, a trouvère of the thirteenth century, furnished literary history with a valuable stock-quotation in the opening of his Chanson des Saisnes for the three great divisions of Romance:—
"Ne sont que trois matières à nul home attendant, De France et de Bretaigne et de Rome la grant." —Chanson des Saxons, ed. Michel, Paris, 1839, vol. i. p. 1.
The lines following, less often quoted, are an interesting early locus for French literary patriotism.