F the Iberians and Celts who settled in France before European history begins, imagined that they would be undisturbed, they failed to realize that France was the highway to Spain and Britain, besides being next door neighbor

to tumultuous Germany, and exposed on the north to the all-devouring Scandinavians. Southern France, on the Mediterranean, afterwards to be Provence, was early occupied by Greek colonists; but it was Cæsar who first conquered "all Gaul," about fifty years before Christ. Latin then became the official language, and soon the prevailing speech; but, four hundred years later, in poured Goths, Franks and Burgundians, and the Merovingian monarchy under Clovis was set up in 486. Now the language was thrown into dire confusion; but the Southern Gauls (who claimed to be Romans) called their illiterate speech the Roman tongue. At the time of Charlemagne, German, spoken by his court, was added to the others; Latin was used by writers; the late Roman, now called Romance, was relegated to the common people. But it had a wide vogue, and has characterized the Italian, Spanish, and others, which became known collectively as the Romance languages. In the tenth century the Normans invaded what has since been called Normandy, adopted the speech of the people, and regulated it. This Norman French, the langue d'oil (from the manner in which the word for "yes" was pronounced), divided the country

with the Southern langue d'oc-that of the alternative pronunciation. In the twelfth century they appear as French and Provençal, respectively; and later, owing to the growing ascendancy of Paris and the king, the former grew to be the ruling form of speech. It was less soft and rhythmical than the other, but more vigorous; Francis I., and afterwards Richelieu (who founded the French Academy), perfected it, until finally it became the most accurate of modern tongues.

In the era of the Crusades the poetry of Provence won the ear of the world. Provençal song is a beautiful curiosity of literature. It rose to its height in the midst of almost childish ignorance. Not only did most of these poets not understand how to read or write, but they were destitute of knowledge of history, mythology and classical literature. Their sole resources were their delight in a new language, their high animal spirits, and their fantastic devotion to their mistresses; and the perfections of the latter and the singers' own love pangs formed the staple of their effusions. It was a movement led by and largely constituted of the aristocracy; it was strengthened by the enthusiasm of the Crusades, and by the concomitant chivalrous devotion to women. Morality, however, appears at its lowest ebb, in the songs of many troubadours, and in the conduct of their lives; it was an age of charming but exaggerated sentiment and sensuality; it produced no great poet or poem, and, after lasting two hundred years, the poetry ceased, and the language disappeared save as a dialect; largely owing to the fierce persecution of the Albigenses, who were finally stamped out in the thirteenth century.

Meanwhile, in the north, the trouvères arose, and achieved enduring fame. The name has the same significance as troubadour ("finder"), but that which the northern poets found was of a different stamp. The Normans, true to their Scandinavian origin were, first of all, warriors, and their love was ennobled by the masculine strain of battle. For more than a century after 1140, the subject of Arthurian romance was the leading theme, both of their poetry and their prose. In the year named, one Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman, and probably a monk of St. Benedict, obtained from Arch

deacon Walter of Oxford (according to his own account) the materials for a history of the Kingdom of Britain. The foundation of the work may have been Nennius's "Historia Britonum," written in the ninth century, and some now lost collection of Breton legends. It was, like the Nibelungenlied, a mingling of historic traditions with imaginative developments or variations. Be that as it may, the imagination of Europe had found food to its taste, and in fifty years the original book had been manipulated and adapted by Germany, Italy and France. The central figure of the story is King Arthur, and the action is concerned with the founding of the Round Table, and the adventures therefrom arising. A few years after its appearance in England it was translated into Anglo-Norman by Geoffrey Gaimar and Wace. By some chroniclers of the time, it was accepted as genuine history. The exploits of the various knights of the Round Table afforded inexhaustible material for poetic and romantic conception, and an Arthurian literature arose on all sides. The first French production was the Breton romance of Tristan, by a Norman knight, Lucas de Gast, in 1170. Before the end of the century appeared the tale of Lancelot, by Walter Map, another Welshman, who studied in Paris. This was in prose, as was also the first printed version, by Sir Thomas Malory, "Morte Arthure," published in 1485. At this period languages were not so strictly confined within geographical limits as they are now, and it is difficult to apportion to one or another people the credit for productions of origin so indeterminate and popularity so wide.

A mediæval romance equally famous in this century, and of older lineage, but which is now almost forgotten, was that of Alexander. Its beginning goes back to the time of Alexander himself, whose companion, Callisthenes, wrote the chronicle of his victories in a book now lost. But in the third century a fabulous story of the hero's career was produced in Alexandria, and Callisthenes' name attached to it. Latin, Syriac, Armenian and Hebrew translations followed. As many as twenty French poets were inspired by the tale, and one of them-Lambert li Cort-in collaboration with Alexander de Paris, evolved, in 1184, what was accepted as

the standard version. It is from this that the Alexandrine verse, still used in French serious poetry, takes its name. Still another prose romance-that of Amadis of Gaul-is, in spite of its name, proved to be of Portuguese creation. Finally, there was the Charlemagne cycle of romance, which belonged to Germany as well as France. In those days of few books, each nation must have the general favorites in the costume of its country.

Besides their romances of chivalry, the trouvères were the inventors of medieval allegories, of which the Romance of the Rose was the first and the most interminable. Tastes change. In our day allegories are so little appreciated that not even the genius of Spenser can render his "Faerie Queene" popular reading. But the Romance of the Rose, begun about 1260, by Guillaume de Lorris, and finished fifty years later by the satirical Jean de Meung, was devoured by entire populations. According to the English critic, Saintsbury, its vogue was due to the fact that it embodied the mental attitude of its period. It was a period in which free thought was beginning to oppose the dogmas of religion; in which dreams of social equality were gradually unsettling the foundations of caste; in which sensuality and asceticism were arraying themselves against each other, and the desire for wider horizons of knowledge was not yet directed by any recognized canons of criticism. All these matters are discussed or represented in the poem, which is a poem in name only, as being written in measured instead of unmeasured prose. We must also remember that it was the first book of its kind. The ostensible theme is the art of love; but many esoteric significances were read into it, and it was the subject of many learned mystical treatises. The fashion of naming characters according to their divers natures and dispositions was continued through the Elizabethan period, in the works of Spenser and Ben Jonson and others; appears in the Queen Anne dramatists, and is occasionally adopted even now. To the general reader the most familiar example of its use is Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress." It is a device which only genius can render tolerable, and which even genius finds a burden.

Of the Chansons de Geste, which began early in the

eleventh century, though the best of them bear a later date, more will be said in the next section. But the Fabliauxthe merry, comic and satirical tales and apologues, which, perhaps, had their first suggestion in Indian and Arabian tales, but which were soon acclimated in France and elsewhere in Europe-attract us more than anything else in the product of this time, for humor has no age, keeping, as perforce it must, so close to the commonplaces of human nature. In the contrasts and vicissitudes of life at that epoch suitable situations for the sharpening of wits were never lacking; and the best of the good stories were retold again and again, with local variations, by hundreds of wayside humorists. Many of them have been preserved in the collection of the Italian Boccaccio. Few are connected with the name of any particular writer; their author was the age. The most winning and sympathetic of them all is commonly conceded to be the love story of Aucassin and Nicolete, which belongs to the thirteenth century. It is nothing but a love-story, but it contains the elements which appeal to the heart now as strongly as six hundred years ago. It is brief, and is a medley of poetry and prose, as were many of the fabliaux; but it is a little masterpiece, and a permanent part of litera

ture.

Of the dramatic representations known as the "Mysteries," and the "Moralities," little need be said here. The Passion Play of Oberammergau still exists, and is a type of them all. But it is of interest to remember that in Paris, which has ever since held the leading place as a dramatic centre, was first incorporated that society of the "Clerks of the Revels" whose function it was to provide dramatic entertainments for the Parisians. They alternated their "Moralities" with little comedies or farces, some of which, in modified form, still hold the stage. Thus early did the bent of French genius declare itself.