238 CHAUCER. 



is subtilized into das Eivig-Weiblicht, type of man's finer 

 conscience and nobler aspiration made sensible to him 

 only through her. 



On the whole, it would be hard to find anything more 

 tediously artificial than the Provencal literature, except 

 the reproduction of it by the Minnesingers. The Tedes- 

 chi lurchi certainly did contrive to make something heavy 

 as dough out of what was at least light, if not very satis 

 fying, in the canorous dialect of Southern Gaul. But its 

 doom was inevitably predicted in its nature and position, 

 nay, in its very name. It was, and it continues to be, a 

 strictly provincial literature, imprisoned within extreme 

 ly narrow intellectual and even geographical limits. It 

 is not race or language that can inflict this leprous isola 

 tion, but some defect of sympathy with the simpler and 

 more universal relations of human nature. You cannot 

 shut up Burns in a dialect bristling with archaisms, nor 

 prevent Beranger from setting all pulses a-dance in the 

 least rhythmic and imaginative of modern tongues. The 

 healthy temperament of Chaucer, with its breadth of inter 

 est in all ranks and phases of social life, could have found 

 little that Avas sympathetic in the evaporated sentiment 

 and rhetorical punctilios of a school of poets which, with 

 rare exceptions, began and ended in courtly dilettantism. 



The refined formality with which the literary product 

 of Provenge is for the most part stamped, as with a 

 trademark, was doubtless the legacy of Gallo-Roman cul 

 ture, itself at best derivative and superficial. I think, 

 indeed, that it may well be doubted whether Roman 

 literature, always a half-hardy exotic, could ripen the 

 seeds of living reproduction. The Roman genius was 

 eminently practical, and far more apt for the triumphs 

 of politics and jurisprudence than of art. Supreme ele 

 gance it could and did arrive at in Virgil, but, if I may 

 trust my own judgment, it produced but one original 



