lingly sees relegated to the peasantry all that now
remains of a once proud and refined tongue.
Such was the position of affairs until quite re
cently. As usual, one enthusiastic soul started
the movement, which is known as the Provencal
revival and the literary fashion in Paris. The son
of a gardener in Southern France, named Rou
manille, received the best education that the most
thorough French schools could give him, and de
veloped an ardent taste for poetry. He wrote at
the age of twenty some simple unpretending verses
which gained an unusual measure of success.
They were designed chiefly for the pleasure of his
old mother, and, sitting up late one night to read
them to her, he found to his dimay that the poor
old woman could not understand them. She had
long since forgotten what little French she had
learned at school and those verses of her own
son's were written in a foreign tongue, not in the
smooth and beautiful Provencal which alone she
could speak. "And so," said the young man to
himself, "my own mother is debarred the intellect
ual joys which delight me. Our Provencal tongue
has been for centuries dishonored by low singers,
in tavern catches, vulgar squibs, uncouth and li
centious rhymes. If then our mothers cannot un
derstand our French, let us sing in the language
of our mothers. Since we have no popular litera
ture save that of the ale-houte, let us create one for
the hearths of our sires." And to this high task
he set himself at once. As a modest country
school-master in his native land, he continued to
inspire a class of young and brilliant men with his
own enthusiasm, striving by voice and pen and
daily exhortation to further the good work begun.
There is not space for tracing here the grad
ual advance of the sides under the skillful guidance
of his pupils and there comrades. Roumaniller
Aubanel, Crousillat, Anselme, Tavau, Adolph
Dumas, Garcin are names dear to the Provencal
heart and not elsewhere unknown. But the
youngest and most brilliant member of the set was
Frederic Mistral, whose very name suggests his
land,—the mistral or northwest wind of Southern
THE FREE LANCE.
The poem which has made his fame and secured
the success of the whole movement first appeared
at Paris in 1859, with French and Provencal on
opposite pages. A single edition of the Provencal
text had previously been printed at Avignon.
The French translation, the only part which was
understood in Paris, captivated the critics, and
soon many desired to read the original of which
this was soon found to be a rude and inadequate
rendering. The first translation of "Mireio,"
was made into English prose by Mr. C. H. Grant,
—remarkable for fidelity, vigor and simplicity.
A metrical version was published by Mr. H. Crich
ton in 1868, but it is inadequate and misleading.
The best translation into metre is that of Miss H.
W. Preston, Boston, Roberts Bros., 1872, improv
ing in form with every edition, though the verse
needs no change from the state in which it came
from the translator. In this translation one gets
a full and appreciative treatment of a poem which
breathes the very spirit of Southern Fiance and
gives us a fair picture of its life and scenery. It
crowns the new literature.
Alphonse Daudet has been a keen and apprecia
tive friend of the movement and has cast as it were .
side lights upon Provencal life. In a very quaint
deed he acquires possession of a ruined mill half
hidden in climbing vines in the very heart of the
country, whence issue his "Letters from my Mill,"
—a series of graceful sketches, many of which re
call to us the scenes, the landscape, the very odors
of that country, on land, on river and on sea. •
shore. As a native of the ancient city of Nismes,
Daudet has a certain birth right in the land Which
even "Thirty Years of Paris" have not scat aside.
He has been a sympathetic friend and companion
of Mistral and others interested in the new litera
ture of his native soil. Yet all this has not kept
him from so overwhelming with his satire the lit,
tle town of Taracon, in three separate books, that
France being the old ventus magistralis, the mas
ter•wind that sweeps all before it; all the keener
since the woods were cut off the lower valley of
the Rhone and the island at its mouth.