It was not until about the year 850 that the language of the people of France assumed a form distinctively French, according to the modern standard; and even then it was so rude and unformed that to a modern uneducated Frenchman it would be quite as strange and incomprehensible as Latin itself. From the very first the great distinction between the language of the north and that of the south seems to have existed. The _langue d'oc_ and the _langue d'oil_ contended for the mastery, which was finally won by the latter. This is remarkable, as the former was the softer and more cultivated tongue. The finest and the most of the very early poetry of France was written in the _langue d'oc_. To this literature and to the condition of the society in which it was produced Mr. Van Laun gives much attention, as might have been expected. This part of his book is interesting to students of literary history; but we must confess that the songs of the troubadours have to us very rarely any of the charms of poetry, and that we think that much of the admiration of them which has been expressed by literary antiquarians is fictitious. There is occasionally in these poems a touch of natural feeling; but generally they are cold and full of conceits. Form seems to have been more important in the poet's eyes than spirit; and instead of genuine fervor we have deliberate extravagance. The great epic poem of the French language--its greatest if not its only great poem--the "Chanson de Roland"--is written in the _langue d'oil_. Mr. Van Laun notices this poem of course, and gives a brief summary of its plot, or we might better say of its incidents; but we are surprised that he does not give it more attention. It is far more worthy of critical examination than the fantastic love poems of the troubadours.
In his account of feudal society and of the effect which its conditions had upon such literature as there was in that day, Mr. Van Laun could hardly pass over those tribunals so characteristic and so foreign to our modes of thought and feeling nowadays--the courts of love, of which the troubadours were, in a sort, the advocates. These courts were governed by a Code of Love, which had thirty-one statutes or ruling maxims. Of these maxims the most significant, and some of the most remarkable, are the following: