s older in its first form,--is indeed not lyrical; nor is the
famous and vigorous verse-history of the Albigensian War in _chanson_
style; nor the scanty remnants of other _chansons_, _Girart de
Rossilho_, _Daurel et Beton_, _Aigar et Maurin_, which exist; nor the
later _romans d'aventure_ of _Jaufre_, _Flamenca_, _Blandin of
Cornwall_. But in this short list almost everything of interest in our
period--the flourishing period of the literature--has been mentioned
which is not lyrical.[178] And if these things, and others like them
in much larger number, had existed alone, it is certain that Provencal
literature would not hold the place which it now holds in the
comparative literary history of Europe.

[Footnote 177: Of course this is only in comparison. For instance, in
Dr Suchier's _Denkmaeler_ (Halle, 1883), which contains nearly 500
large pages of Provencal _anecdota_, about four-fifths is devotional
matter of various kinds and in various forms, prose and verse. But
such matter, which is common to all mediaeval languages, is hardly
literature at all, being usually translated, with scarcely any expense
of literary originality, from the Latin, or each other.]

[Footnote 178: Alberic's _Alexander_ (_v._ chap. iv.) is of course
Provencal in a way, and there was probably a Provencal intermediary
between the _Chanson d'Antioche_ and the Spanish _Gran Conquesta de
Ultramar_. But we have only a few lines of the first and nothing of
the second.]

That place is due to its lyric, construing that term in a wide sense
such as that (but indeed a little wider) in which it has been already
used with reference to the kindred and nearly contemporary lyric of
France proper. It is best to say "nearly contemporary," because it
would appear that Provencal actually had the start of French in this
respect, though no great start: and it is best to say "kindred" and
not "daughter," because though some forms and more names are common to
the two, their developments are much more parallel than on the same
lines, and they are much more sisters than mother and daughter.

[Sidenote: _Origin of this lyric._]

It would appear, though such things can never be quite certain, that,
as we should indeed expect, the first developments of Provencal lyric
were of the hymn kind, and perhaps originally mixtures of Romance and
Latin. This mixture of the vernacular and the learned tongues, both
spoken in all probability with almost equal facility by the wri