view.

Once more I return to the early poetry of France, with which our own
poetry, in its origins, is indissolubly connected. In the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, that seed-time of all modern language and
literature, the poetry of France had a clear predominance in Europe.
Of the two divisions of that poetry, its productions in the _langue
d'oil_ and its productions in the _langue d'oc_, the poetry of the
_langue d'oc_, of southern France, of the troubadours, is of importance
because of its effect on Italian literature;--the first literature of
modern Europe to strike the true and grand note, and to bring forth, as
in Dante and Petrarch it brought forth, classics. But the predominance
of French poetry in Europe, during the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, is due to its poetry of the _langue d'oil_, the poetry of
northern France and of the tongue which is now the French language. In
the twelfth century the bloom of this romance-poetry was earlier and
stronger in England, at the court of our Anglo-Norman kings, than in
France itself. But it was a bloom of French poetry; and as our native
poetry formed itself, it formed itself out of this. The romance-poems
which took possession of the heart and imagination of Europe in the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries are French; 'they are,' as Southey
justly says, 'the pride of French literature, nor have we anything
which can be placed in competition with them.' Themes were supplied
from all quarters; but the romance-setting which was common to them
all, and which gained the ear of Europe, was French. This constituted
for the French poetry, literature, and language, at the height of the
Middle Age, an unchallenged predominance. The Italian Brunette Latini,
the master of Dante, wrote his _Treasure_ in French because, he says,
'la parleure en est plus delitable et plus commune a toutes gens.' In
the same century, the thirteenth, the French romance-writer, Christian
of Troyes, formulates the claims, in chivalry and letters, of France,
his native country, as follows:--

'Or vous ert par ce livre apris,
Que Gresse ot de chevalerie
Le premier los et de clergie;
Puis vint chevalerie a Rome,
Et de la clergie la some,
Qui ore est en France venue.
Diex doinst qu'ele i soit retenue,
Et que li lius li abelisse
Tant que de France n'isse
L'onor qui s'i est arestee!'

'Now by this book you will learn that first Greece had the renown for
chivalry and lett