iently clear.

[Sidenote: _Though not directly on English._]

In the first place, English was not, until quite the end of the
flourishing period of Provencal poetry, and specially at the period
above referred to, in a condition to profit by Provencal models; while
in the fourteenth century, when English connection with the south of
France was closer still, Provencal was in its decadence. And, in the
second place, the structure and spirit of the two tongues almost
forbade imitation of the one in the other. It was Northern, not
Southern, French that helped to make English proper out of
Anglo-Saxon; and the gap between Northern French and Southern French
themselves was far wider than between Provencal and the Peninsular
tongues. To which things, if any one pleases, he may add the
difference of the spirit of the two races; but this is always vague
and uncertain ground, and is best avoided when we can tread on the
firm land of history and literature proper. Such a rhyme-arrangement
as that above set forth is probably impossible in English; even now it
will be observed that Mr Swinburne, the greatest master of double and
treble rhymes that we have ever had, rarely succeeds in giving even
the former with a full spondaic effect of vowel such as is easy in
Provencal. In "The Garden of Proserpine" itself, as in the double
rhymes, where they occur, of "The Triumph of Time" (the greatest thing
ever written in the Provencal manner, and greater than anything in
Provencal), the second vowels of the rhymes are never full. And there
too, as I think invariably in English, the poet shows his feeling of
the intolerableness of continued double rhyme by making the odd verses
rhyme plump and with single sound.

Of poetry so little remarkable in individual manner or matter it is
impossible to give abstracts, such as those which have been easy, and
it may be hoped profitable, in some of the foregoing chapters; and
prolonged analyses of form are tedious, except to the expert and the
enthusiast. With some brief account, therefore, of the persons who
chiefly composed this remarkable mass of lyric we may close a notice
of the subject which is superficially inadequate to its importance,
but which, perhaps, will not seem so to those who are content not
merely to count pages but to weigh moments. The moment which Provencal
added to the general body of force in European literature was that of
a limited, somewhat artificial, but at the same time exqu