438 ROMANCE LITERATURE 



some of their Carlovingian brethren, they could hardly be recognized 

 in the new garb they had been compelled to don. The songs of the 

 Troubadours had ceased to be heard as soon as their authors had been 

 laid in the grave; and amidst the Italians who moved amongst these 

 tombs was seen only one Frenchman, attracted by the example of our 

 countrymen, 1 namely, Jean de Notredame; and he would better have 

 not been seen there, either. Let us rejoice that the southerner, Notre- 

 dame, roused, as I believe, the very different northerner, Fauchet. 2 

 But Fauchet, and his rival and co-worker Pasquier, had no follow- 

 ers; 3 and the seventeenth century, which was then beginning, turned 

 minds more than ever from the early literature, creating a new 

 one inspired by other ideals, which rose to heights that appeared 

 even loftier than they actually were. Thus ignorance was united to 

 contempt. 4 And ignorance and contempt would have continued till 

 the Lord knows when, if at that same time scholarship had not ac- 

 quired, even in France, a vigor not seen before, and if from beyond 

 seas and rivers a prejudice-destroying wind had not begun to blow. 

 To scholarship, as well as to the related natural sciences, every sub- 

 ject is worthy of study. And study becomes imperative whenever 

 scholarship aims at a complete and connected, that is historical, 

 knowledge and presentation. This happened even in regard to the 

 order of things which concerns us in the times we are going back to, 

 exactly the period in which the idea and the need of a literary history 

 took shape. Therefore popular medieval literature had to be placed 

 beside the Latin in the Histoire Littcraire, which, after a long pre- 

 paration by himself and others, Dom Rivet began to publish in 1733. 

 with the intention of carrying it from most remote to modern time?. 5 

 The place granted the medieval popular branch would not have been 

 so great if the execution of this grand work had remained in Bene- 

 dictine hands. In the twelve volumes due to Dom Rivet and his im- 

 mediate followers, popular literature has a smaller share than the date 

 of 1 107, which we reach, would demand. The Benedictines felt no 

 <rroat liking for this literature, though they were extremely suscepti- 



1 Tliis appears as well from general reasons as from the book itself: dedicated 

 to Calherin" de Medici, brought to light (the author says) by the request of four 

 L r 'iiil' in TI, t\vo of whom are Italian, and by one of these 1 two published in Italian 

 printing of the, French original was not yet cotnph ted. 

 In t gives ''les noins et sommaire des oeuvrcs, de rxxvn Poetes Francois 

 van) i'an Mrrr." Xotredame's troubadours were seventy-six. 

 vain jusqu'ici," Dom Rive-twill say regretfully, "deux de nos auteurs 



i! xvi >ieele out fraie la voie" (Histnire littcraire de la France, i, ii). 

 au's verses. '' Durant les premiers ans," etc., are too universally known 



de la fin 



4 P,r,i 



to be iron- t!;aii mentioned here. 



5 Vol. vi. p. 1."): ". . . Quant aux Italiens en particulier, tin de nos Seavants, 

 qui a beaucoup travaille sur 1'origine denotre langue, assure que le famrux Horace 

 a pris d'-s Romans Franeois la plupart de s"s nouve]Ie$, et Petrarque, et les autres 

 Poe'tes Ilaliens. out pille les plus beaux endroits des chansons de Thibaud Koi de 

 Xavarre, de (lace I'rulex, du Chatclain de Couci, et des vieux Romancicrs Fran- 

 cols." 



