strange and lovely landscapes of Provence, the poem charmed all readers,
and will doubtless always rank as a work that belongs to general
literature. Of no other work written in this dialect can the same be
asserted. Mistral has not had an equal success since, and in spite of
the merit of his other productions, his literary fame will certainly
always be based upon this poem. Whatever be the destiny of this revival,
the author of _Mireio_ has probably already taken his place among the
immortals of literature.

He has incarnated in this poem all that is sweetest and best, all that
is most typical in the life of his region. The tale is told, in general,
with complete simplicity, sobriety, and conciseness. The poet's heart
and soul are in his work from beginning to end, and it seems more
genuinely inspired than any of the long poems he has written
subsequently.

In the first canto the author says,--

"Car cantan que per vautre, o pastre e gent di mas."

For we sing for you alone, O shepherds and people of the farms,

and when he wrote this verse, he was doubtless sincere. Later, however,
he must have become conscious that a work of great artistic beauty was
growing under his hand, and that it would find a truly appreciative
public more probably among the cultivated classes than among the
peasants of Provence. Hence the French prose translation; and hence,
furthermore, a paradox in the position Mistral assumed. Since those who
really appreciate and admire his poetry are the cultivated classes who
know French, and since the peasants who use the dialect cannot feel the
artistic worth of his literary production, or even understand the
elevated diction he is forced to employ, should he not, after all, have
written in French? The idea of Roumanille was simpler and less ambitious
than that of Mistral; he aimed to give the humble classes about him a
literature within their reach, that should give them moral lessons, and
appeal to the best within them. Mistral, developing into a poet of
genius while striving to attain the same object, could not fail to
change the object, and this contradiction becomes apparent in _Mireio_,
and constitutes a problem in any discussion of his literary work.

The story of _Mireio_ may be told in a few words. She is a beautiful
young girl of fifteen, living at the _mas_ of her father, Ramoun. She
falls in love with a handsome, stalwart youth, Vincen, son of a poor
basket-maker. But the di