THE words Provence and Provençal are used in a variety of senses by authors writing at different dates, and for different purposes.

The ancient Provincia of the Romans (Provincia Narbonnensis) comprised the country lying between the Alps and the Cevennes, and extended from the shores of the Mediterranean northwards nearly to the Lake of Geneva. After the dismemberment of the Roman empire there was a Burgundian king. dom of Arles and Provence, of which the city of Arles was the capital. Thereafter Provence became a fief of the empire under Charlemagne and his successors, and was held by a series of Counts of Provence, who seem to have been independent princes in reality, though feudatories in name. Provence is the name of one of the modern" districts" of France.

The word Provençal is used indifferently as a geographical term, applicable to Provence in any of the above senses. But it has a special meaning when we speak of Provençal literature.

If a line were to be drawn across the map of France from La Rochelle on the west, to Geneva on the east, it would divide that country into two portions, one northern the other southern. In the earliest period of French literature each of these divisions had its own language. The langue d'oc was that of the southern division, the langue d'oui

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that of the northern. The two languages have long since been. fused together by the formation and diffusion over the whole country of the modern form of French; but the original difference between them was very marked.

The langue d'oc, spoken in Southern France, is known as the Provençal tongue; and it is convenient to use the words Provence and Provençal in their broadest sense, as descriptive of the whole country where this language was used. We shall employ them in that sense in the following pages.

The remnants of Provençal literature which have come down to our time are few; but they are sufficiently varied to enable us to form a tolerably correct estimate of the character and merits of the literature as a whole. The age of the troubadours, who were the professors of the poetic art in Provence, does not extend over more than about two centuries; and M. Raynouard, in his collection entitled "Poesies des Troubadours," has printed several hundred complete poems ranging over the whole of that period in point of date. There is no difficulty in finding, among these, examples of nearly every form of composition which was used by the troubadours.

To M. Raynouard, also, we are indebted for a very complete collection of Provençal biographies of the more celebrated troubadours.

As contemporary, or nearly contemporary, records, these are of the highest value. They shed a flood of light on the social condition of Provence in the times we are dealing with.

A mere catalogue of the books which have been written on Provençal literature, both before and since those of M. Raynouard, would extend to the size of a moderately large article. In France, as was to be expected, much research has been devoted to the subject. Scarcely less attention has been bestowed upon it in Germany. In England, no writer of any note has taken it in hand; though many valuable papers on this and cognate subjects are to be found scattered through the periodical literature of the last fifty years.

The inquiry into the origin of Provençal literature resolves itself into several subordinate inquiries. The earliest Provençal poet of whose verses we have specimens, lived in the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries. He was Guillaume IX., Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers. But it is apparent from the elaborate structure of his versification, as well as from the polished turn of his phraseology, that he is composing in accordance with the rules of a poetic art already in familiar use, and in a language whose grammatical form is no longer in its infancy. We are, therefore, forced to conclude that he had predecessors in that art, though their works have perished. Those historians of Provençal poetry who seem best able to judge, are agreed in thinking that it must have existed as far back at least as the beginning of the tenth century.

If we assume this to be the date of its rise, we find ourselves in this position. We can trace the history of literature in Provence from the earliest times, at least from B.C. 600, down to the decay and death of

the classical languages as spoken tongues. We can arrive at some estimate of the condition of literature there at the latter of these periods. After this, the dark ages intervene, and our information ceases; till suddenly, in the ninth or tenth century, we find Provence in possession of a new form of literature. Not only so, but this new form of literature differs from the old in its whole spirit. It gives expression to feelings and aspirations unknown to, and unheard of by, any inhabitant of Provence in the times that preceded these dark ages. In short, at the commencement of the dark ages we find Provence the seat par excellence of classical culture and of classical literature, shorn of its ancient glory, no doubt, but still shedding its feeble ray there if anywhere in the world. At the be ginning of the middle ages we find this same Provence the seat of an already flourishing romantic literature, of which kind of literature she is the first country in Europe to become the possessor.

By what influences, and under what laws, has this apparently extraordinary result been effected? What is there in common between the old literature and the new? What are the distinctive characteristics of the new? And whence have they been derived?

Let us turn back the page of Provençal history, and seek an answer there to such questions as these.

According to the earliest authentic information we have of Provence, it was inhabited by a Celtiberian population; that is, a race formed by the union of the Celtic peoples indigenous to Northern France, with the Iberians, a semitic race who occupied Spain and the Pyrenean slopes, and of whom there are yet traces to be found among the inhabitants of the Basque provinces. Of all the

indigenous European tribes with whom we are acquainted, the Celts take the lead in point of intellectual capability and domestic civilization. On that account we may assume that they acquired the predominance in the course of time over the Iberian element of the mixed race. The language used by them we do not know, but we know it to have been of Aryan origin.

To this Celtiberian race there was added a Greek element in B.C. 600, by the arrival at the months of the Rhone, of a colony from the Ionian city of Phocæa in Asia Minor. We have both a Greek and a Latin account of the arrival of this colony, and of the friendly reception with which the colonists met. Their leader is said to have married the daughter of the chief of the local tribe of Celtiberians (Segobrigii). The city he founded was the Greek colony of Massilia, the modern Marseilles.

The colony grew apace. The colonists diffused around them the blessings of civilization. The natives learned from them, according to Justin, the culture of the olive and the vine. The barbarous tribes strove to imitate in their way the admirable social order of the Greeks. Part of them settled down in cities which they fortified with walls; others devoted themselves to agriculture. All had commercial relations with Massilia.

In this way passed some five hundred years. At the end of that time, the word barbarian, in its sense of uncivilized, ceased to apply to the population of Provence, at all events to that portion of it which dwelt in the vicinity of the Greeks. The people used the language of Greece. They worshipped the gods of Greece.

For Massilia was no longer a stranger struggling for existence in a strange land. As a Roman writer says, "It seemed more as

if Gaul had been transported into the midst of Hellas than as if there had been an importation of Greeks into Gaul." From the rock of Monaco, at the foot of the Alps, where stood the temple of the Greek Heracles, to the Pyrenees, on whose eastern slope was the shrine of the Pyrenean Artemis, the whole country was Greek. Massilia, the largest emporium of trade in the world, had somewhere about twenty colonies of her own settled along the Mediterranean coast. Her storehouses were filled with the produce of the whole known world. Her merchantvessels had penetrated as far along the African coast as to Senegal; and on the north they traded with Britain, and probably with Denmark and Norway. Her commerce with the East extended to countries far beyond her native Phocæa. The whole interior trade of Gaul was in her hands.

In Gaul, the Greek language was the language of commerce. On this point we have the express testimony of Strabo. Even in Spain, the same author tells us, the natives had erected Greek temples and offered worship after the Greek fashion. Cæsar states that in his time the Druids used Greek letters in their ordinary business. In his war with the Helvetii he found the census of their force in Greek numerals. All the coins of Provence, anterior to the Roman period, have a Greek legend inscribed on them

In such circumstances it is impossible to doubt that Greek literature must have been widely diffused among the population of ancient Provence. To the Greek, literature and religion were inseparably connected; and his religion was of spectacular order. The public festivals, the priestly sacrifices, the whole apparatus religiosus of the Greek kept their national literature

The fall of Massilia was sudden and complete. In the later years of her prosperity she had owed much to the generous return made to her by the Romans for assistance more than once given to them in time of peril. When the strife between Cæsar and Pompey made Rome a "city divided against herself," it was impossible that Massilia should refrain from joining one party or the other. She sided with Pompey's faction. On his defeat she fell into the hands of Cæsar, her fleet and her arsenals were destroyed, and her commercial resources greatly crippled. Narbonne was made the centre of the Mediterranean trade of Gaul, and afterwards received all the support of imperial Rome, as a trading rival of Massilia.

Upwards of half a century before this period, the Romans had reduced the northern parts of Provence to subjection, and established their Provincia Narbonnensis; so that the Latin tongue and the Latin religion had existed for some time, co-ordinately with the Greek in the immediate vicinity of the Massilian territory. Now, however, Latin superseded Greek over the whole of Provence as the language of the government, of law, and of religion. There is no part of their policy which the Romans more undeviatingly carried out than that of imposing their language on their dependencies along with their rule. As Augustine says: "Opera data est imperiosa civitas non solum jugum, verum etiam linguam suam, domitis gentibus per pacem societatis imponere."-De Civitate Dei, xix. 7.

As the language of the courts of law, Latin would naturally soon have become the language of com

contributed to its rapid spread in the country. Provence was close to Italy, and easy of access both by land and by sea, and consequently it immediately became the resort of multitudes of Roman money-lenders, bankers, farmers, sheep-feeders, and other traders. A large Roman element was thus infused into the population.

From this time forward the predominance of the Latin language in Provence asserted itself more and more. Under the early emperors, not only Provence, but almost the whole of Gaul became thoroughly Latinized; and, as a seat of literary culture, Provence was more than the rival of Rome herself. The Roman patricians went to Massilia rather than to Athens to study Greek philosophy; for the energy which Massilia had previously devoted to mercantile pursuits, now diverted itself towards the cultivation of letters. There were also schools of learning at Lyons, Autun, Besançon, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Narbonne, &c. The grammarians and rhetoricians of Rome were chiefly Gauls. Juvenal recommends the Roman student of eloquence to go to Gaul for lessons; and refers to the rhetorical school of Toulouse in terms implying no ordinary compliment.

Roman literature lingered in Provence till the time of Sidonius Apollinaris, who was appointed Bishop of Auvergne about A.D. 472, and who, with all his faults, may fairly be called a classic author. After him there is no writer of Latin worthy to be ranked above a chronicler. In the end even chroniclers failed; and often the annals of a year are summed up in a single recorded word such as bellum or pax.

In this condition, as regards letters, Provence enters upon the dark ages. Somewhere about the

beginning of the tenth century, as we have already stated, she appears to have a new literature of her own; and a century later we find that literature, perfected in form, and spread over the whole country, from the Alps to the Atlantic, and from the Loire to the Pyrenees.

The new literature has one point in common with its predecessor. Fundamentally, it is a modification of the Latin speech. More than half of the radical forms of the language are Latin. But the genius of the language is changed. The expedients used for expressing the relations which these roots bear to one another when combined into sentences are entirely different.

The points of difference between the new literature and the old are so numerous, that it is difficult to make a selection of the most important. Perhaps we shall best sum them up by describing the new Provençal literature as the poetry of chivalry, and its inspiring genius as the genius of chivalry, as contradistinguished from that of classicism.

If we compare any of the heroes of classic poetry-Hector, for exexample, who is, perhaps, faultless as a model classical hero-with one of the heroes of chivalrous romance, such as King Arthur, or any of his knights, we are at once struck with the contrast in character between the two. Hector's bravery is not the bravery of one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table. The one is, crude courage; the other refined sentiment. There are no more beautiful lines in the Iliad, than those which describe the parting of Hector from his wife and his child. But Hector's love for his wife has in it nothing of the high and holy emotion which the poets of chivalry describe when they sing of conjugal affection.

The introduction to the Iliad is eminently illustrative of the con

trast between classic and chivalrous feeling. Chryses, an aged priest of Apollo, comes with a rich ransom to the Greek camp, to beseech the Atridæ and the assembled Greeks that his daughter may be restored to him. In a division of spoil the daughter had become the prize of Agamemnon, who refuses to comply with the priest's requests, and insults him. Apollo consequently visits the army with a plague. Ultimately Agamemnon is forced to give the girl up, but he recoups himself by taking from Achilles another captive girl, who had been allotted to that chieftain at the same division of spoil. Hence the wrath of Achilles, and the numberless woes of the Greeks.

The opening of the Iliad is a magnificent piece of classical description. There is nothing in the conception of the scene inconsistent with classical taste; nothing incongruous or out of place. Let us, retaining the narrative, substitute the names of knights of chivalry for those of the Greek chieftains, and see how the passage reads when transferred to modern times.

John, the venerable Archbishop of Toulouse, finding that his niece had been seized by the Christian army, and handed over to Sir Galahad as his share of the plunder taken at the sack of the city of Antioch, came with a ransom to redeem her. Sir Galahad, in presence of the assembled Christian chiefs, told him that he had better be off, or it might be worse for him. A plague is sent from heaven upon the army. Sir Galahad has to give up the Archbishop's niece, but he seizes upon the mistress of Lancelot instead. Lancelot is angry, and numberless woes overtake the army.

Could one of the poets of chivalry convert this into a romance, with the serious hope of attaching