It abounds in the work of the fabulists, the chroniclers, the romancists.

We see it make its way from the South to the North.

It disports itself in the dreams of the Teutonic nations, and at the same time vivifies with its breath the admirable Spanish _romanceros_, a veritable Iliad of the age of chivalry.

For example, it is the grotesque which describes thus, in the _Roman de la Rose_, an august ceremonial, the election of a king:-- "A long-shanked knave they chose, I wis, Of all their men the boniest." More especially it imposes its characteristic qualities upon that wonderful architecture which, in the Middle Ages, takes the place of all the arts.

It affixes its mark on the facades of cathedrals, frames its hells and purgatories in the ogive arches of great doorways, portrays them in brilliant hues on window-glass, exhibits its monsters, its bull-dogs, its imps about capitals, along friezes, on the edges of roofs.