CHAUCER. 241 



land-slide. In like manner we, inheriting the language, 

 the social usages, the literary and political traditions of 

 Englishmen, were suddenly cut adrift from our historical 

 anchorage. Very soon there arose a demand for a native 

 literature, nay, it was even proposed that, as a first step 

 toward it, we should adopt a lingo of our own to be called 

 the Columbian or Hesperian. This, to be sure, was never 

 accomplished, though our English cousins seem to hint 

 sometimes that we have made very fair advances toward 

 it ; but if it could have been, our position would have 

 been precisely that of the Provencals when they began to 

 have a literature of their own. They had formed a lan 

 guage which, while it completed their orphanage from 

 their imperial mother, continually recalled her, and kept 

 alive their pride of lineage. Such reminiscences as they 

 still retained of Latin culture were pedantic and rhetor 

 ical,* and it was only natural that out of these they 

 should have elaborated a code of poetical jurisprudence 

 with titles and subtitles applicable to every form of verse 

 and tyrannous over every mode of sentiment. The re 

 sult could not fail to be artificial and wearisome, except 

 where some man with a truly lyrical genius could breathe 

 life into the rigid formula and make it pliant to his more 

 passionate feeling. The great service of the Provencals 

 was that they kept in mind the fact that poetry was not 

 merely an amusement, but an art, and long after their 

 literary activity had ceased their influence reacted bene 

 ficially upon Europe through their Italian pupils. They 

 are interesting as showing the tendency of the Romanic 

 races to a scientific treatment of what, if it be not 

 spontaneous, becomes a fashion and erelong an imperti 

 nence. Fauriel has endeavored to prove that they were 

 the first to treat the mediaeval heroic legends epically, 

 but the evidence is strongly against him. The testimony 



* Fauriel, Eistoire de la Gaule Meridionale^ Vol. I. passim. 

 11 p 



