LYRICSFRENCHLIBRARY'NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIARIVERSIDEFRENCH LYRICSFRENCH LYRICSAND ANNOTATEDSELECTEDBYGEORGE SAINTSBURYLONDONKEGAN & COPAUL, TRENCH,MDCCCI.XXXVIiiff't/INTRODUCTIONTHE first finished of inspecimen compositionthe French which welanguage possess put-aside the documentary Strasburgting purelyoaths is a the Chanson de Sainte Eulalie.lyric,written in aThis poem, though languagewhich had the fullscarcely yet undergone pro-cess of which was to turn Latin intodigestionconsiderable inshowsFrench, already facultythe of to which itspecial department poetryWhile most of the other models ofbelongs.the classical lan-to be found incompositionknown or re-were eitherguages imperfectlyaswith orthodox,suspicion doubtfullygardedthe Latin which, takingmagnificent hymnsof the Senecan forthe choruses Tragedy pat-viii INTRODUCTIONofhad made their into the hearttern, wayandWestern Christendom, supplied prosody" Saintefor the new effort. But after thestyle"Eulalie a of centuries and whenoccurs,gapinfluenceanotherlyrical poetry appears again,is at work. The Romances andobviouslyPastourelles of the twelfth and thirteenthcenturies exhibit Teutonic and notCeltic,Latin characteristics. The extreme irregularityof not ofrhythm, wholly independent quantity,but more connected with accent the;intimatelyof half-articulate refrains and bur-frequencywhich are to be counted hundredsdens, byeven in the extant of the time notpoems ;less than ...
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