e power of sound than any stimulancy of
imagery and passion. Possessing a flexible and harmonious language, they
invented a variety of metrical arrangements, perfectly new to the
nations of Europe. The Latin hymns were striking, but monotonous, the
metre of the northern French unvaried; but in Provencal poetry, almost
every length of verse, from two syllables to twelve, and the most
intricate disposition of rhymes, were at the choice of the troubadour.
The canzoni, the sestine, all the lyric metres of Italy and Spain were
borrowed from his treasury. With such a command of poetical sounds, it
was natural that he should inspire delight into ears not yet rendered
familiar to the artifices of verse; and even now the fragments of these
ancient lays, quoted by M. Sismondi and M. Ginguene, seem to possess a
sort of charm that has evaporated in translation. Upon this harmony, and
upon the facility with which mankind are apt to be deluded into an
admiration of exaggerated sentiment in poetry, they depended for their
influence. And however vapid the songs of Provence may seem to our
apprehensions, they were undoubtedly the source from which poetry for
many centuries derived a great portion of its habitual language.[858]

[Sidenote: Northern French poetry and prose.]

It has been maintained by some antiquaries, that the northern Romance,
or what we properly call French, was not formed until the tenth century,
the common dialect of all France having previously resembled that of
Languedoc. This hypothesis may not be indisputable; but the question is
not likely to be settled, as scarcely any written specimens of Romance,
even of that age, have survived.[859] In the eleventh century, among
other more obscure productions, both in prose and metre, there appears
what, if unquestioned as to authenticity, would be a valuable monument
of this language; the laws of William the Conqueror. These are preserved
in a manuscript of Ingulfus's History of Croyland, a blank being left in
other copies where they should be inserted.[860] They are written in an
idiom so far removed from the Provencal, that one would be disposed to
think the separation between these two species of Romance of older
standing than is commonly allowed. But it has been thought probable that
these laws, which in fact were nearly a repetition of those of Edward
the Confessor, were originally published in Anglo-Saxon, the only
language intelligible to the people, and translated,