In spite, however, of this fact, disputed by nobody, it is true of French literature, as it is true of almost any national literature, that it took its rise in verse instead of in prose. Anciently, there were two languages subsisting together in France, which came to be distinguished from each other in name by the word of affirmation--_oc_ or _oïl_, yes--severally peculiar to them, and thus to be known respectively as _langue d'oc_, and _langue d'oïl_. The future belonged to the latter of the two forms of speech,--the one spoken in the northern part of the country. This, the _langue d'oïl_, became at length the French language. But the _langue d'oc_, a soft and musical tongue, survived long enough to become the vehicle of lyric strains, mostly on subjects of love and gallantry, still familiar in mention, and famous as the songs of the troubadours. The flourishing time of the troubadours was in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Provençal is an alternative name of the language. Side by side with the southern _troubadours_, or a little later than they, the _trouvères_ of the north sang, with more manly ambition, of national themes, and, like Virgil, of arms and of heroes. Some productions of the _trouvères_ may fairly be allowed an elevation of aim and of treatment entitling them to be called epic in character. _Chansons de geste_ (songs of exploit), or _romans_, is the native name by which those primitive French poems are known. They exist in three principal cycles, or groups, of productions,--one cycle composed of those pertaining to Charlemagne; one, of those pertaining to British Arthur; and a third, of those pertaining to ancient Greece and Rome, notably to Alexander the Great. The cycle revolving around the majestic legend of Charlemagne for its centre was Teutonic, rather than Celtic, in spirit as well as in theme. It tended to the religious in tone. The Arthurian cycle was properly Celtic. It dealt more with adventures of love. The Alexandrian cycle, so named from one principal theme celebrated,--namely, the deeds of Alexander the Great,--mixed fantastically the traditions of ancient Greece and Rome with the then prevailing ideas of chivalry, and with the figments of fairy lore. (The metrical form employed in these poems gave its name to the Alexandrine line later so predominant in French poetry.) The volume of this quasi-epical verse, existing in its three groups, or cycles, is immense. So is that of the satire and the allegory in metre that followed. From this latter store of stock and example, Chaucer drew to supply his muse with material. The _fabliaux_, so called,--fables, that is, or stories,--were still another form of early French literature in verse. It is only now, within the current decade of years, that a really ample collection of _fabliaux_--hitherto, with the exception of a few printed volumes of specimens, extant exclusively in manuscript--has been put into course of publication.