is found up to
the end of the eleventh century. But soon afterwards lyric work becomes
exceedingly abundant. This is what forms the contents of Herr Karl
Bartsch's delightful volume of _Romanzen und Pastourellen_[67]. These
are the two earliest forms of French lyric poetry. They are recognised
by the Troubadour Raimon Vidal as the special property of the Northern
tongue, and no reasonable pretence has been put forward to show that
they are other than indigenous. The tendency of both is towards iambic
rhythm, but it is not exclusively manifested as in later verse. It is
one of the most interesting things in French literary history to see how
early the estrangement of the language from the anapaestic and dactylic
measures natural to Teutonic speech began to declare itself[68]. These
early poems bubble over with natural gaiety, their refrains, musical
though semi-articulate as they are, are sweet and manifold in cadence,
but the main body of the versification is either iambic or trochaic (it
was long before the latter measure became infrequent), and the freedom
of the ballad-metres of England and Germany is seldom present. The
Romance differs in form and still more in subject from the Pastourelle,
and both differ very remarkably from the form and manner of Provencal
poetry. It has been observed by nearly all students, that the love-poems
of the latter language are almost always at once personal and abstract
in subject. The Romance and the Pastourelle, on the contrary, are almost
always dramatic. They tell a story, and often (though not always in the
case of the Pastourelle) they tell it of some one other than the singer.
The most common form of the Romance is that of a poem varying from
twenty lines long to ten times that length and divided into stanzas.
These stanzas consist of a certain number (not usually less than three
or more than eight) of lines of equal length capped with a refrain in a
different metre. By far the best, though by no means the earliest, of
them are those of Audefroy le Bastard, who, according to the late M.
Paulin Paris, may be fixed at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Audefroy's poems are very much alike in plan, telling for the most part
how the course of some impeded true love at last ran smooth. They rank
with the very best mediaeval poetry in colour, in lively painting of
manners and feelings, and in grace of versification. Unfortunately they
are one and all rather too long for quotation