NATIONAL POETRY. 



Church, to put an end to certain heretical or blasphemous songs which the 

 Barbarians or the Romans of the decadence were in the habit of repeating ; 

 and the hopes of the Church were eventually fulfilled. 



The Romanic language, which in various forms was current throughout 

 Europe from the sixth to the tenth century, produced no other poetical works 

 than the popular songs which were transmitted from generation to generation, 

 and which, not having been collected, as the Teutonic songs were by order of 

 Charlemagne, soon became effaced from the memory of the people. (See 

 previous chapter, Popular Songs.) The written poetry, which was cultivated 

 by a few men of letters and clerks, continued to be in Latin (Fig. 331), but 

 it was disfigured by words of new creation. It is not vintil the tenth century 



deatfirttttuitf 



Fig. 331. Horace's Poems.- Fragment from the "Ode to Maecenas." Manuscript of the Tenth 

 Century. In the National Library, Paris. 



that we find the first poetical samples of the Romanic language of the North 

 and of the Romanic language of the South of France. The oldest pieces of 

 French poetry are the Cantilena of St. Eulalie ; the two poems of the manu- 

 script of Clermont-Ferrand, devoted to St. Leger and to the Passion of Jesus 

 Christ ; and, in the eleventh century, the " Chanson de St. Alexis." In the 

 Provencal language we have the " Mystery of the Wise and of the Foolish 

 Virgins," previously to which came the " Poem of Boethius." The latter is a 

 piece in verse, of about two hundred and fifty lines, upon the captivity of 

 Boethius, and these lines, of ten syllables each, are divided into stanzas of 

 unequal length, each stanza terminating with the same masculine rhyme. This 

 kind of poem is unquestionably anterior to the tenth century. Such are the 

 origins of the language of French poetry. 



