RISE AND PROGRESS 



to the union of Aragon and Castile,* without 

 greatly adding to the vigour and tenderness dis- 

 played in its earliest specimens. The rage, 

 perhaps, for joining the ranks of the troubadours, 

 was too universal to favour the real progress of 

 their art. Fashion rather than inspiration led 

 too many to enroll themselves. Men rhymed 

 because they heard the rhymes of others : they 

 rhymed as a knightly accomplishment : and the 

 best among them, when their natural vein was 

 exhausted, were still compelled by rivalry to 

 rhyme on. Moreover, the principal seat of this 

 art, the southern portion of France, was torn to 

 pieces, in the opening of the thirteenth century, 

 by the Albigensian persecution, f At last Pro- 

 venge itself fell into the possession of the French 

 crown. The northern dialect, technically dis- 

 tinguished as the language of oui,$ drove the 

 dialect of the south, or the language of oc, from 

 its position on the field of literature. 



The dialect of NORTHERN FRANCE had indeed, 

 though sprung from the same sources as the 

 Provencal, and distinguished from it only by a 

 greater predominance of the Teutonic element, 

 always resisted the sister language, and rejected, 

 with intolerant disdain, those ameliorations which 

 might have been derived from its more early and 

 rapid culture. Till the middle of the twelfth 

 century, the Walloons, or French of the north, 

 made use of Latin alone in all works of taste or 

 fancy. The Normans, however, as one result of 

 their successful invasion, communicated some- 

 what of their own nerve and liveliness to the 

 vernacular tongue of their new subjects : and in 

 Normandy, or by natives of that province, the 

 first well-known writings in the Walloon dialect 

 were produced. The most remarkable of these 

 was BRUT OF ENGLAND, a rhymed fable from 

 ancient legends, which appeared in 1155. Then, 

 under the reign of Philip Augustus, II a cluster of 

 poets, from the Norman town of Bernay, and 

 other places, charmed the Parisian court with the 

 adventures of Alexander, the great Macedonian, 

 metamorphosed into a cavalier. Royal and 

 noble patronage soon summoned into existence 

 a swarm of versifiers, who gradually ripened and 

 improved the French language ; though its pro- 

 gress was not swift until the full restoration of 

 classical learning in Europe. Lyric poetry 

 claimed a share of their attention ; so that in 



* A. D. 1479. t A. D. 1209. 



I From the form of the affirmative, equivalent to " yes," in 

 that dialect. On the same principle, the Provengal was called 

 the language of oc ; the Italian that of si ; the German that of 

 ya 



Hollo recognised as duke of Normandy, A. D. 911. 



6 A. D. 1180-1223. 



their art, as well as in their name, the trouveres 

 of the north were allied to the southern trouba- 

 dours. But the epic tendency was triumphant. 

 Mere songs and verses of gallantry, were never 

 so popular with those, whom the trouveres 

 sought to please, as stories of enterprise, or 

 merry tales, especially when grafted on some 

 chosen stock of romance, or redolent of the land 

 of the fairies. 



This appetite for fables of adventure was 

 further inflamed by the inoculation of the 

 oriental taste. The very legends of the cloister 

 were broken into rhyme ; though the monks were 

 never able to impart to them that degree of 

 naivete and interest which some of the lay writ- 

 ings attained. No wonder that France, so deeply 

 engaged in this kind of composition, gave an 

 original form to one species of it, and became 

 the cradle of the romances of chivalry I These 

 first appeared in a poetical dress ; and, in their 

 primary estate at least, were not devoid of the 

 poetical essence. Bechada sounded the prelude 

 to them, when in the year 1130 he sang the 

 exploits of Godfrey and the glories of the 

 earliest crusade. But king ARTHUR, the son 01 

 Pendragon, the rudiments of whose story are 

 found in the above-mentioned poem of Brut ; the 

 magician Merlin ; and the knights of the Round 

 Table ; supplied the subjects of the first class of 

 regular romances. The court of CHARLEMAGNE 

 and his paladins, whose real history was so bril- 

 liant, amid the darkness of the middle age, that 

 it readily afforded a nucleus for a host of fantastic 

 additions, gave birth to another class, after the 

 famous chronicle of Turpin, the parent of this 

 second family, had been translated out of the 

 Latin in which it was composed. The superior 

 popularity of the former of these classes, and 

 the chosen scenes of its adventures, indicate very 

 plainly that though romantic lays were common 

 enough in other provinces, and supernatural ma- 

 chinery might be borrowed from many sources, it 

 was the Normans, who so powerfully influenced the 

 early French literature, that were the immediate 

 creators of this new world of regular poetry : and 

 it matters little, for the fame of that noble race, 

 whether their first attempts were made in England 

 or in France. And, though much grossness and 

 absurdity disfigure the best of their productions ; 

 though there is no great variety, except of names, 

 in the long chain of romantic fictions ; though 

 not only do the fairies of the East mingle in the 

 wild dance of incidents, but the most ludicrous 

 distortions of Greek and Trojan story shock the 

 classical reader of them ; still in their pages 

 there breathes the true Norman spirit ; still dar- 

 ing knighthood and devoted gallantry are the 



