ic nature reasserted itself in France, although with
some modification; and to-day the Frenchman is a Celt, as fond of talk,
of fanciful poetry, of fine dress, and show, and dash, as his
forefather was fifteen hundred years ago.

It was not until about the year 850 that the language of the people of
France assumed a form distinctively French, according to the modern
standard; and even then it was so rude and unformed that to a modern
uneducated Frenchman it would be quite as strange and incomprehensible
as Latin itself. From the very first the great distinction between the
language of the north and that of the south seems to have existed. The
_langue d'oc_ and the _langue d'oil_ contended for the mastery, which
was finally won by the latter. This is remarkable, as the former was
the softer and more cultivated tongue. The finest and the most of the
very early poetry of France was written in the _langue d'oc_. To this
literature and to the condition of the society in which it was produced
Mr. Van Laun gives much attention, as might have been expected. This
part of his book is interesting to students of literary history; but we
must confess that the songs of the troubadours have to us very rarely
any of the charms of poetry, and that we think that much of the
admiration of them which has been expressed by literary antiquarians is
fictitious. There is occasionally in these poems a touch of natural
feeling; but generally they are cold and full of conceits. Form seems
to have been more important in the poet's eyes than spirit; and instead
of genuine fervor we have deliberate extravagance. The great epic poem
of the French language--its greatest if not its only great poem--the
"Chanson de Roland"--is written in the _langue d'oil_. Mr. Van Laun
notices this poem of course, and gives a brief summary of its plot, or
we might better say of its incidents; but we are surprised that he does
not give it more attention. It is far more worthy of critical
examination than the fantastic love poems of the troubadours.

In his account of feudal society and of the effect which its conditions
had upon such literature as there was in that day, Mr. Van Laun could
hardly pass over those tribunals so characteristic and so foreign to
our modes of thought and feeling nowadays--the courts of love, of which
the troubadours were, in a sort, the advocates. These courts were
governed by a Code of Love, which had thirty-one statutes or ruling
maxims. Of