The immense literary activity and refined life of the Persians and Arabs was bound, especially as their culture was carried to its greatest height by the Moors in Spain, to affect Europe, and in the eleventh and twelfth centuries literature began to reappear. From the south of France, where there was contact with the Moors, the gay songs of the troubadours spread. The _Song of Roland_ ran to four thousand lines. The _Poem of the Cid_ was another long epic or warrior-song that appeared in the Christian part of Spain. More notable still is the _Romance of the Rose_, chiefly by Jehan de Meung, a long allegory on love which appeared in France. In Germany some unknown poet of the twelfth century gathered together the old pagan legends in the _Lay of the Nibelungs_: the treasury of legends upon which Wagner has drawn for his famous dramas about Siegfried, the Valkyries, etc. A notable work of a very different kind is the _Love Letters of Abelard and Heloise_. Abelard was the most brilliant writer of the twelfth century, though his works are on philosophy or theology and do not concern us here. Heloise was a remarkably gifted young woman of Paris, who had a child by Abelard. Her uncle, however, had Abelard castrated, and he became a somber abbot and she, very reluctantly, an abbess. These Latin letters were written long after the outrage and are wrongly called love-letters. Sentiment was dead in Abelard and it only peeps out occasionally from the heart of Heloise. They are, however, known as “the immortal lovers,” and the letters are included in all collections of great works. None of these ought properly to be included in this account of the greatest writers, but they are now constantly referred to and they help us to understand the revival of letters. These poets and chroniclers were gradually beating the new European languages into shape and preparing the way for the masters. Dante is the first (1265-1321). His great poem _The Divine Comedy_ might be called an epic of religious thought. He imagines himself conducted successively through Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven, and though the theme repels many of his readers--Goethe, Goldsmith, Landor, and other distinguished critics speak very disparagingly of him--he is by common consent numbered amongst the six greatest poets of all time. There might be some difference of opinion about the sixth place, but the five greatest are (omitting the Greek tragedians who wrote in verse) Shakespeare, Homer, Goethe, Vergil, and Dante. I should call Milton the sixth.