ry literary form from history to drama, and from epic to song,
while others were stammering their exercises, mostly learnt from her.
The exact and just proportions of the share due to Southern and
Northern France respectively none can now determine, and scholarship
oscillates between extremes as usual. What is certain (perhaps it is
the only thing that is certain) is that to Provencal belongs the
credit of establishing for the first time a modern prosody of such a
kind as to turn out verse of perfect form. Whether, if Pallas in her
warlike capacity had been kinder to the Provencals, she could or would
have inspired them with more varied kinds of literature than the
exquisite lyric which as a fact is almost their sole title to fame, we
cannot say. As a matter of fact, the kinds other than lyric, and some
of the lyrical kinds themselves--the short tale, the epic, the
romance, the play, the history, the sermon--all find their early home,
if not their actual birthplace, north, not south, of the Limousin
line. It was from Normandy and Poitou, from Anjou and the Orleannais,
from the Isle of France and Champagne, that in language at least the
patterns which were used by all Europe, the specifications, so to
speak, which all Europe adapted and filled up, went forth, sometimes
not to return.

Yet it is not in the actual literature of France itself, except in
those contributions to the Arthurian story which, as it has been
pointed out, were importations, not indigenous growths, and in some
touches of the _Rose_, that the spirit of Romance is most evident--the
spirit which, to those who have come thoroughly to appreciate it,
makes classical grace and finish seem thin and tame, Oriental
exuberance tasteless and vulgar, modern scientific precision
inexpressibly charmless and jejune.

Different sides of this spirit display themselves, of course, in
different productions of the time. There is the spirit of combat, in
which the _Chansons de geste_ show the way, anticipating in time, if
not quite equalling in intensity, the Sagas and the _Nibelungenlied_.
There is sometimes faintly mingled with this (as in the _gabz_ of the
_Voyage a Constantinoble_, and the exploits of Rainoart with the
_tinel_) the spirit, half rough, half sly, of jesting, which by-and-by
takes shape in the _fabliaux_. There is the immense and restless
spirit of curiosity, which explores and refashions, to its own guise
and fancy, the relics of the old world, the tr