CONTES ET FABLIAUX.

France, in a literary point of view, may be considered as divided into two parts during the 12th and 13th centuries.

Soon after Gaul had been subdued by the Romans, the vanquished nation almost universally adopted the language of the victors, as generally happens when conquerors are farther advanced in civilization than the people they have overcome. During many centuries Latin continued the sole or prevalent tongue, but on the inroads of the Franks and other tribes it became gradually corrupted. From these innovations two languages were formed, both of which were called Romaine, or Romance, from Latin still continuing the principal ingredient in their composition. About the ninth century these dialects began to supersede Latin as a colloquial tongue, in the different districts of France in which they were spoken. One species of Romance was used in those French provinces which lie to the south of the river Loire, and from the circumstance of the inhabitants of that country using the word oc as their affirmative, it was called Langue d'oc. The

sister dialect, which was spoken to the north of the river Loire, received the name of Lang' d'oil, from the term oil being the affirmation of the northern provinces. It is from this latter idiom that the modern French language has been chiefly formed. The southern romance was something between French and Italian, or rather French and Spanish.

It is not my intention, nor indeed is it connected with my subject, to enter into the dispute concerning the dialect to which the French nation has been indebted for the earliest specimens of metrical composition, and whether the northern Trouveurs, or Troubadours of the south, are best entitled to be regarded as the fathers of its poetry. This question, which is involved in much obscurity, has never been very profoundly agitated, and its full discussion would require, from the innumerable MSS. that must be perused, a time and attention which few have inclination to bestow.

Versifiers, however, seem to have made an early appearance both in the northern and southern regions of France. A large proportion of the latter district was possessed by Raimond IV. count of Provence. All his dominions, in consequence, received the name of Provence; the southern Romance, or Langue d'oc, was called the Provençal

language, and the versifiers who composed in it the Provençal poets. They also distinguished themselves by the name of Troubadours, or Inventors, an appellation, corresponding to the title of poet, which was assigned to all those who wrote in Provençal rhyme, whether of the southern provinces of France, of the north of Italy, or Catalonia.

The Provençal poets, or Troubadours, have been acknowledged as the masters of the early Italian poets, and have been raised to perhaps unmerited celebrity by the imposing panegyrics of Dante and Petrarch. The profession of the Troubadours existed with reputation from the middle of the 12th to the middle of the 14th century. Their compositions contain violent satires against the clergy, absurd didactic poems, moral songs versified from the works of Boethius, and insipid pastorals. But they were principally occupied with amorous compositions, and abstruse speculations on the nature of love. It was in the Tensons, or pleas before the celebrated tribunals in which amatory questions were agitated, that they chiefly attempted to signalize themselves. These tensons were dialogues in alternate couplets, in which they sustained their various speculative opinions.

In the works of the Troubadours, however, we can hardly trace any rudiments of those tales,

either of horror or gallantry, which became so prevalent among the Italians. Millot's literary history of the Troubadours presents us with only two stories which have any resemblance to the Italian novels of gallantry. In one of these, by Raimond Vidal, we are told that a lord of Arragon, who was a jealous husband, pretended to take his departure on a journey, but suddenly returned, and introduced himself to his wife in disguise of the knight whom he suspected as her lover. The lady recognises her husband, but pretends to be deceived, and, after shutting him up, goes to find her lover; and, moved with indignation at the prying disposition of her lord, grants the knight what she had hitherto refused him. Next morning she assembles her servants to take vengeance, as she gives out, on a vassal who had made an attempt on her virtue; the husband is thus beat in the place of his confinement by his own domestics, but is at length recognised, and obtains pardon on vowing thenceforward unbounded confidence in his wife. The second story is by Arnauld de Carcasses. A knight dispatches his parrot to a lady with a declaration of his passion: but though the fair one accepts the offer of his heart, the lover is much embarrassed to devise any mode of procuring an interview. The bird hits on an expedient, which is to set fire

to her castle, in hopes that the lady might escape to her lover in the confusion which would result from the conflagration. This project the parrot executes in person, by means of some wild-fire which he carries in his claws. As was expected, the lady elopes, proceeds straightway to the rendezvous, and ever after holds the winged incendiary in high estimation. Four other tales have been reckoned up by the historians of the Troubadours, but none of these can be properly regarded as tales, being merely intended as introductions to the discussion of some knotty love question, which generally forms the longest part of the composition.

It is then in the Langue d'oil, or northern romance alone, that we must look for those ample materials which have enriched the works of the Italian novelists. This dialect, we have seen, superseded the Latin as a colloquial language in the beginning of the ninth century. Its uniformity was early destroyed by the Norman invasion, which occasioned the division of the romance into a number of different idioms. To the conquerors, however, from whom it suffered corruption, it was also indebted for restoration. These invaders had no sooner fairly settled in their acquired territories, than they cultivated, with the utmost care,