xisted--the
national epic or _chanson de geste_; the southern, or _langue d'oc_,
gives us the Provencal lyric. The latter will receive treatment later,
the former must be dealt with at once.

It is rather curious that while the _chansons de geste_ are, after
Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poetry, the oldest elaborate example of
verse in the modern vernaculars; while they exhibit a character, not
indeed one of the widest in range or most engaging in quality, but
individual, interesting, intense as few others; while they are
entirely the property of one nation, and that a nation specially proud
of its literary achievements,--they were almost the last division of
European literature to become in any degree properly known. In so far
as they were known at all, until within the present century, the
knowledge was based almost entirely on later adaptations in verse, and
still later in prose; while--the most curious point of all--they were
not warmly welcomed by the French even after their discovery, and
cannot yet be said to have been taken to the heart of the nation, even
to the limited extent to which the Arthurian romances have been taken
to the heart of England, much less to that in which the old, but much
less old, ballads of England, Scotland, Germany, and Spain have for
periods of varying length been welcomed in their respective countries.
To discuss the reason of this at length would lead us out of our
present subject; but it is a fact, and a very curious fact.

[Sidenote: _Late discovery of the_ chansons.]

[Sidenote: _Their age and history._]

The romances of Charlemagne, or, to employ their more technical
designation, the _chansons de geste_, form a large, a remarkably
homogeneous, and a well-separated body of compositions. These, as far
as can be decided, date in time from the eleventh to the thirteenth
century, with a few belated representatives in the fourteenth; but
scarcely, as far as probability shows, with any older members in the
tenth. Very little attention of any kind was paid to them, till some
seventy years ago, an English scholar, Conybeare, known for his
services to our own early literature, following the example of another
scholar, Tyrwhitt, still earlier and more distinguished, had drawn
attention to the merit and interest of, as it happens, the oldest and
most remarkable of all. This was the _Chanson de Roland_, which, in
this oldest form, exists only in one of the MSS. of the Bodleian
Library at Oxf