y as 'the only one of the vernacular
languages of Europe which had yet been extensively employed for literary
purposes;' and the ignorance of their older literature which, until a
very recent period, distinguished Frenchmen has made it common for
writers in France to speak of the Troubadours as their own literary
ancestors. We have already seen that this supposition as applied to Epic
poetry is entirely false; we shall see hereafter that, except as regards
some lyrical developments, and those not the most characteristic, it is
equally ill-grounded as to other kinds of composition. But the
literature of the South is quite interesting enough in itself without
borrowing what does not belong to it, and it exhibits not a few
characteristics which were afterwards blended with those of the
literature of the kingdom at large.

[Sidenote: Range and characteristics.]

The domain of the Langue d'Oc is included between two lines, the
northernmost of which starts from the Atlantic coast at or about the
Charente, follows the northern boundaries of the old provinces of
Perigord, Limousin, Auvergne, and Dauphine, and overlaps Savoy and a
small portion of Switzerland. The southern limit is formed by the
Pyrenees, the Gulf of Lyons, and the Alps, while Catalonia is overlapped
to the south-west just as Savoy is taken in on the north-east. This wide
district gives room for not a few dialectic varieties with which we need
not here busy ourselves. The general language is distinguished from
northern French by the survival to a greater degree of the vowel
character of Latin. The vocabulary is less dissolved and corroded by
foreign influence, and the inflections remain more distinct. The result,
as in Spanish and Italian, is a language more harmonious, softer, and
more cunningly cadenced than northern French, but endowed with far less
vigour, variety, and freshness. The separate development of the two
tongues must have begun at a very early period. A few early monuments,
such as the Passion of Christ[46] and the Mystery of the Ten
Virgins[47], contain mixed dialects. But the earliest piece of
literature in pure Provencal is assigned in its original form to the
tenth century, and is entirely different from northern French[48]. It is
arranged in _laisses_ and assonanced. The uniformity, however, of the
terminations of Provencal makes the assonances more closely approach
rhyme than is the case in northern poetry. Of the eleventh century the
prin