je a faire?" with the words with which he
follows it up to the Viscount. But these show passages only
concentrate the charm which is spread all over the novelette, at least
until its real conclusion, the union and escape of the lovers. Here,
as in the earlier part of the _Rose_--to which it is closely akin--is
the full dreamy beauty, a little faint, a little shadowy, but all the
more attractive, of mediaeval art; and here it has managed to convey
itself in prose no less happily and with more concentrated happiness
than there in verse.

CHAPTER VIII.

ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL.

RESEMBLANCES. CONTRASTS. ICELANDIC LITERATURE OF THIS TIME
MAINLY PROSE. DIFFICULTIES WITH IT. THE SAGA. ITS INSULARITY
OF MANNER. OF SCENERY AND CHARACTER. FACT AND FICTION IN THE
SAGAS. CLASSES AND AUTHORSHIP OF THEM. THE FIVE GREATER
SAGAS. 'NJALA.' 'LAXDAELA.' 'EYRBYGGJA.' 'EGLA.' 'GRETTLA.'
ITS CRITICS. MERITS OF IT. THE PARTING OF ASDIS AND HER
SONS. GREAT PASSAGES OF THE SAGAS. STYLE. PROVENCAL MAINLY
LYRIC. ORIGIN OF THIS LYRIC. FORMS. MANY MEN, ONE MIND.
EXAMPLE OF RHYME-SCHEMES. PROVENCAL POETRY NOT GREAT. BUT
EXTRAORDINARILY PEDAGOGIC. THOUGH NOT DIRECTLY ON ENGLISH.
SOME TROUBADOURS. CRITICISM OF PROVENCAL.

[Sidenote: _Resemblances._]

These may seem at first to be no sufficient reason for treating
together two such literatures as those named in the title of this
chapter. But the connection, both of likeness and unlikeness, between
them is too tempting to the student of comparative literature, and too
useful in such a comparative survey of literature as that which we are
here undertaking, to be mistaken or refused. Both attaining, thanks to
very different causes, an extraordinarily early maturity, completely
worked themselves out in an extraordinarily short time. Neither had,
so far as we know, the least assistance from antecedent vernacular
models. Each achieved an extraordinary perfection and intensity,
Icelandic in spirit, Provencal in form.

[Sidenote: _Contrasts._]

And their differences are no less fascinating, since they start from
this very diversity of similar perfection. Icelandic, after a brief
period of copying French and other languages, practically died out as
a language producing literature; and, perhaps for that very reason,
maintained itself in all the more continuity as a spoken language.
Even its daughter--or at least successor--Norse tongues pr