ART. L.-1. Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy. By John Stuart Mill. London: 1844. 2. Principles of Political Economy, with some of their Applications to Social Philosophy. By John Stuart II.-Letters addressed to the Countess of Ossory, from the year 1769 to 1797. By Horace Walpole, Lord Or- ford. Now first printed from original MSS. Edited, with Notes, by the Right Hon. R. Vernon Smith, M.P. In two volumes. London: 1848, III.-1. An Appeal to the Middle Classes on the urgent Necessity of numerous Radical Reforms, Financial and Organic. By Francis W. Newman, Professor of Latin in University College, London, and for- merly Fellow of Baliol College, Oxford. London: 2. English Life, Social and Domestic, in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century, considered in reference to our Position as a Community of Professing Christians. By the Author of 'Reverses.' London: V.-I. Researches into the Physical History of Mankind. By James Cowles Prichard, M. D., F.R. S., M.R.I.A., Corresponding Member of the National Institute of France, &c. &c. 3rd edition. London: 1836-47. Five volumes, 8vo. pp. 2547. 2. The Natural History of Man; comprising Inquiries into the Modifying Influence of Physical and Moral Agencies on the different Tribes of the Human Family. By James Cowles Prichard, M. D., F.R.S., &c. &c. London: 1843. 8vo. pp. 556. 3. Report of the Seventeenth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, held ART. VI.-Memoirs of the Reign of George the Second, from his Accession to the Death of Queen Caroline. By John, Lord Hervey. Edited, from the original Manuscript at Ickworth, by the Right Hon. John 2. Le Congrès de Vienne dans ses Rapports avec la Circonscription actuelle de l'Europe. Par M. Cape- 3. European Remodellings, a Plan with a Variation. 4. Sketches of the Progress of Civilization and Public Liberty, with a View of the Political Condition of ERRATUM IN VOL. LXXXVII. Page 192., lines 18 and 19., "Why do the diurnal rotations of Mercury, the Earth, For "a minute" read "an hour." THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, JULY, 1848. No. CLXXVII. ART. I.—1. Histoire de la Poésie Provençale. Cours fait à la Faculté des Lettres de Paris. Par M. FAURIEL. 1846. 3 vols. Paris: 2. Essais Historiques sur les Bardes, les Jougleurs et les Trouvères Normands et Anglo-Normands. Par M. l'Abbé DE LA RUE. Caen: 1834. 3 vols. 3. Les Trouvères Cambresiens. Paris: 1837. 1 vol. Par M. ARTHUR DINAUX. 4. Observations sur la Littérature Provençale: Essais Littéraires et Historiques. Par A. W. VON SCHLEGEL. Bonn: 1842. 1 vol. 5. Leben und Werke der Troubadours. Ein Beytrag zur näherer Kenntnisse des Mittelalters. Von FREDERICK DIEZ. Zwickau: 1829. 1 vol. THE priority in the literary history of Europe of the compositions of the Celtic and Teutonic bards, scalds, minstrels, minne-sängers, and meister-sängers, or of those of the Provençal and French troubadours, and trouvères, is a subject of controversy of old standing, which has been lately renewed on the Continent. And the question is of no mean importance. It embraces the revival of letters after the subversion of the Roman empire in the fifth century; together with the origin of a poetical character, taste, and spirit, which are plainly distinct from those of the purely classical models of Greece and Rome, and which, under the name of the Romantic school, are now VOL. LXXXVIII. NO. CLXXVII. B exercising almost sovereign rule and masterdom over the imaginative literature of our times. We shall endeavour to explain, without presuming to decide the points at issue. They have engaged the attention of some of the most distinguished scholars and critics of the age; and the works cited above are rather the representations of different classes of opinions among eminent men, than the exposition of judgments in criticism in which the literary world unanimously acquiesces. In the eleventh century, the river Loire was the boundary between two distinct dialects, the langue d'oc and the langue d'oil; both derived from a common parent, the Latin, but each filled with words and idioms from different sources, and different from those of the sister tongue. South of the Loire the langue d'oc prevailed, the language in which the troubadours composed their lays; and north of that river the langue d'oil was used, the language of the trouvères, which has expanded into the modern French. These dialects received their names of langue d'oc and langue d'oi or d'oil, from oc and oui, the affirmatives peculiar to each; and although the latter has now entirely displaced the former as the language of literature and refinement, in the eleventh century the langue d'oc, or Provençal, was more used as the language of poetry and sentiment, than the langue d'oil. The posthumous work of M. Fauriel is the labour of a life devoted to the study of the poetry of the langue d'oc, or Provençal, and of the lives and lays of its troubadours. It is given to the public from notes of a course of lectures delivered by M. Fauriel, on his appointment to a chair of Provençal poetry in the University of Paris. The learned author died before he could repeat his course or revise his opinions : But he claims for his troubadours the priority and pre-eminence, not only over the trouvères, the poets of the cognate tongue, but over the minstrels, meister-sängers, and minne-sängers of the Teutonic people, over the bards of Armorica and Wales, and over the scalds of the Scandinavians. According to M. Fauriel, it was in the country south of the Loire, that the spark, buried in the ashes of a preceding Greek and Roman civilisation, was rekindled, and from its light and heat have been derived the whole poetic fire and imaginative fertility of all European nations north of the Loire, the Celtic, Teutonic, Icelandic, Norman, Saxon, Belgic, and French of the langue d'oil. The bards, scalds, minstrels, meister-sängers, minne-sängers, and trouvères, were, in short, but translators, copyists, or imitators of the Provençal troubadours. M. de la Rue takes a more reasonable view of the subject. |