till discovered by M. de Sainte-Palaye,
and printed by him in modernised French in 1752, one hundred and fifty
years ago. There is no space here to follow its fortunes since. Even
after this revival it was not till more than one hundred years later that
it began to attain to any wide recognition. And in England this
recognition has been mainly due to Mr Pater's delightful essay in his
early work "Studies in the History of the Renaissance." Since the
publication of this book in 1873, the story of Aucassin and Nicolette has
had an ever-growing train of admirers both in England and America, and
various translations have appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. It has
also been translated into several other European languages, besides
versions in modern French.

The story, so far as the simple old-world plot is concerned, is very
probably not the original invention of whoever gave it this particular
form, any more than were the plots of Shakespeare's plays of his own
devising. It seems likely that in origin it is Arabian or Moorish, and
its birthplace not Provence but Spain. Possibly it sprung, as so much of
the best poetry and story has sprung, from the touching of two races, and
the part friction part fusion of two religions, in this case of the Moor
and the Christian. There was in 1019 a Moorish king of Cordova named
Alcazin. Turn this name into French and we have Aucassin. And to
reverse the roles of Christian and heathen is a very usual device for a
story-teller transplanting a story from another country to his own.
Though the scene is nominally laid in Provence there are a good many
signs of a Spanish origin in the places mentioned. By Carthage is meant,
not the city of Dido, but Carthagena; and thus the husband devised for
Nicolette is "one of the greatest kings in all Spain." Valence again
might originally have been not the Valence on the Rhone, but Valence le
grand, or Valentia. And it is curious to observe that Beaucaire is
closely connected with Tarascon--a bridge across the Rhone unites
them--and that this latter name nearly resembles Tarragona, a place which
in other French romances is actually called Terrascoigne. The shipwreck
which in the story takes place, impossibly, at Beaucaire, may have
originally happened, quite naturally, at Tarragona. Even the nonsense-
name, Torelore, might easily have had its rise in Torello. Again, though
it has been shown that all modern reports of the _Couvade_ as