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 oiu- 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 sliould 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 fonued a lan- 

 guage which, while it completed their orphanage ft'om 

 their imperial mother, continually recalled her, and kept 

 alive their pride of lineage. Such reminiscences as they 

 still retained of Latin cidture were pedantic and rhetor- 

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

 shoidd 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 lyincal genius could breathe 

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

 passionate feeling. The great sei'vice 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 pi'ove that they were 

 tlie first to treat the mediaeval heroic legends epically, 

 but the evidence is strongly against him. The testimony 



* Fauriel, Ilistoire de la Gaule Meridionals, Vol. \. jjassim. 

 11 1- 



