as. Some others of the Felibres,
even Aubanel, in our opinion, have produced verse that is very ordinary
in quality. Verse may be made too easily in this dialect, and fluent
rhymed language that merely expresses commonplace sentiment may readily
be mistaken for poetry.

The wealth of rhyme in the Provencal language appears to be greater than
in any other form of Romance speech. As compared with Italian and
Spanish, it may be noted that the Provencal has no proparoxytone words,
and hence a whole class of words is brought into the two categories
possible in Provencal. Though the number of different vowels and
diphthongs is greater than in these two languages, only three consonants
are found as finals, _n_, _r_, _s_ (_l_ very rarely). The consequent
great abundance of rhymes is limited by an insistence upon the rich
rhyme to an extent scarcely attainable in French; in fact, the merely
sufficient rhyme is very rare. It is unfortunate that so many of the
feminine rhymes terminate in _o_. In the _Poem of the Rhone_, composed
entirely in feminine verses, passages occur where nine successive lines
end in this letter, and the verses in _o_ vastly out-number all others.
In this unrhymed poem, assonance is very carefully avoided.

The play, _Queen Joanna_, is remarkable among the productions of Mistral
as being the only work of any length he has produced that makes
extensive use of the Alexandrine. In fact, the versification is
precisely that of any modern French play written in verse; and we may
note here the liberties as to caesura and enjambements which are now
usual in French verse. We remark elsewhere the lack of independence in
the dialect of Avignon, that its vocabulary alone gives it life. Not
only has it no syntax of its own, but it really has been a difficulty of
the poet in translating his own Alexandrines into French prose, not to
produce verses; nor has he always avoided them. Here, for instance, is a
distich which not only becomes French when translated word for word, but
also reproduces exactly metre and rhyme:--

"En un mot tout me dis que lou ceu predestino
Un revieure de glori a terro latino.

"En un mot tout me dit que le ciel prestine
Un renouveau de gloire a terre latine."

The effectiveness, the charm, and the beauty of this verse, for those
who understand and feel the language, cannot be denied; and if this
poetic literature did not meet a want, it could not exist and grow as it
does. T