lmost complete the list. In dealing with the first and the most
fruitful, they fell into the deadly error of stereotyping their manner
of expression. Objection has sometimes been taken to the 'eternal
hawthorn and nightingale' of Provencal poetry. The objection would
hardly be fatal, if this eternity did not extend to a great many things
besides hawthorn and nightingales. In the later Troubadours especially,
the fault which has been urged against French dramatic literature just
before the Romantic movement was conspicuously anticipated. Every mood,
every situation of passion, was catalogued and analysed, and the proper
method of treatment, with similes and metaphors complete, was assigned.
There was no freshness and no variety, and in the absence of variety and
freshness, that of vigour was necessarily implied. It may even be
doubted whether the influence of this hot-house verse on the more
natural literature of the North was not injurious rather than
beneficial. Certain it is that the artificial poetry of the Trouveres
went (in the persons of the Rondeau and Ballade-writing Rhetoriqueurs of
the fifteenth century) the same way and came to the same end, that its
elder sister had already trodden and reached with the competitors for
the Violet, the Eglantine, and the Marigold of Toulouse.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] _Oc_ and _oil_ (_hoc_ and _hoc illud_), the respective terms
indicating affirmation. In this chapter the information given is based
on a smaller acquaintance at first hand with the subject than is the
case in the chapters on French proper. Herr Karl Bartsch has been the
guide chiefly followed.

[45] Essay on Ranke's History of the Popes.

[46] See chap. i.

[47] See chap. x.

[48] The poem on Boethius. See chap. i.

[49] By the school of the so-called _Felibres_, of whom Mistral and
Aubanel are the chief.

[50] Moland and Hericault's Introduction to _Aucassin et Nicolette_.
Paris, 1856.

CHAPTER IV.

ROMANCES OF ARTHUR AND OF ANTIQUITY.

[Sidenote: The Tale of Arthur. Its Origins.]

The passion for narrative poetry, which at first contented itself with
stories drawn from the history or tradition of France, took before very
long a wider range. The origin of the Legend of King Arthur, of the
Round Table, of the Holy Graal, and of all the adventures and traditions
connected with these centres, is one of the most intricate questions in
the history of mediaeval literature. It would be beyond the scope