columns. The large universities publish dailies
and weeklies which attend to all this work and ac
cordingly can afford to get out purely literary pub
lications, but we smaller institutions must forego
that pleasure.
THE MODERN PROVENCAL REVIVAL
The literature of Southern Europe has in its ori
gin everywhere a vigorous native growth. Of no
other branch is this truer than of the Provencal.
From the earlier times, the Province had been
noted for its independent development of the civ
ilization received in large part from Rome, in part
through Marseilles from Greece. Julius Cresar at
tributes the greater rudenesss of the Belgians to
the fact that "they are farthest distant from the
culture and refinement of the Province." Pliny
was so impressed by this evident culture that he
declares the region "rather another Italy than a
province." So when the Roman power was no
more, Latin a dead language, and a new and lo
cal dialect, Provencal, the common medium of
communication, a fresh manifestation of this na
tive grace and force began, far in advance of oth
er Latin countries. In that mild climate and up
on that fertile soil, a premature refinement of
thought and manners started up, which flourished
through a short and brilliant season and was then
as- suddenly checked and blighted by the influ
ences of the surrounding barbarism. It had
reached a development not known since the fall
of the Roman Empire, and had set the style of
poetic diction 'for even the earliest Italian writers.
Swept away at the beginning of the twelfth century
by the fierce and cruel persecution of the Albi
genses,—less a religious crusade than a movement
of the most implacable, political ambition,--,-the
Provencal literature was almost destroyed on its
native soil, finding a few representatives still at
the courts of petty princes with whom the exiled
poets found protection, and where their art was
still held in honor. From the end of the XIII
century, their songs were rarely heard; with the
THE FREE LANCE.
beginning of the XIV century, the purity of their
language disappeared; and, a little later, that re
fined idiom which had long anticipated and even
inspired some of the finest literary efforts of France
and Italy sinks to the position of a dialect ; which,
with varying fortune, it has remained until this
day. •
Not until 1323 did even the Provencal people
themselves realize what had been lost in the de
struction of their literature, and in that year a
desperate attempt was made to revive it. At Tou
louse the authorities of the city formed a guild of
the "Ever gay Company of the seven Trouba
dors." In a letter elaborately prepared in prose
and verse they summoned all poets to resort to
their city on the ist of May, 1324, and there
"with joy of heart contend for the prize of a gold
en violet," to be the reward for the best poem.
With this event begins the more artificial period
of Provencal verse with which we are all more or
less familiar; in 1355 the board of managers was
made a corporate body, under whose successors a
festival of some sort has been celebrated every
year at Toulouse on the Ist of May, under the
names of the Floral Games.
The traveller in the south of France in our days
is impressed at once with the fact that the polished
language of Paris, although serving his needs in
the cities and on all the main routes of travel,
does not permit him to converse with the bulk of
the population, whose dialect he can make noth
ing of. If he asks the average Frenchman of the
North what these people talk, the answer is gen
erally given with a shrug of the shoulders and a
single word "Languedoc,"—the name of the dia
lect since its representative centre was fixed at
Toulouse. Even the more learned tourist who
reads the Old Provencal and is perfectly convers
ant with the history of the land cannot under
stand the present idiom, so utterly has it changed
its vocabulary, its form, and its construction. On
ly a term here and there sounds familiar to him.
The cultivated Ilative despises the dialect and wil-