§11. "La Belle Dame sans Merci". VIII. The English Chaucerians. Vol. 2. The End of the Middle Ages. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages.

VIII. The English Chaucerians.

§ 11. La Belle Dame sans Merci.

The other pieces, though of various literary merit, all obey, in measure and degree, the rules of regular metre. The least good of them is La Belle Dame sans Merci, translated from Alain Chartier (who, beyond all doubt, wrote the original after Chaucer’s death), and now attributed, on MS. authority, to Sir Richard Ros, who may have written it about the middle of the fifteenth century or a little later. It is partly in rime royal, partly in octaves, and is a heavy thing, showing the characteristic, if not the worst, faults of that rhétoriqueur school, of which Chartier was the precursor, if not the actual leader.