This verſe, ſo difficult that the Engliſh language is incapable of expreſſing it, is continued through the three thouſand lines of the poem. In his preface the monk avows the belief that nothing but the ſpecial inſpiration of the Spirit of God enabled him to employ it through ſo long a poem. After recounting its difficulties, and alluding to the faint attempts of the two great verſifiers of his day, Hildebert de Lavardin and Wichard of Lyons, he exclaims: "I may then aſſert, not in oſtentation, but with humble confidence, that if I had not received directly from on high the gift of inſpiration and intelligence, I had not dared to attempt an enterpriſe ſo little accorded to the powers of the human mind."
"This work," ſays the author of the Hiſtoire Littéraire de la France, "was drawn from the duſt in 1483, and its publication was achieved on the tenth of December of the ſame year, at Paris, in magni domo campi Gaillardi. The Proteſtants, eager to gather every thing which appears unfavorable to the Church of Rome, have ſince multiplied the editions. Some Catholics have alſo given to it ſome praiſes; and ſurely it merits them, at leaſt by the ſentiments of piety which it exhales, and by the zeal with which the author attacks the abuſes of his time."
