[Footnote 159: Frequently edited: not least satisfactorily in the _Nouvelles Francaises du XIIIme. Siecle_, referred to above. In 1887 two English translations, by Mr Lang and Mr Bourdillon, the latter with the text and much apparatus, appeared: and Mr Bourdillon has recently edited a facsimile of the unique MS. (Oxford, 1896).] But even the enthusiasm and the art of three of the best writers of English and lovers of literature in this half-century have not exhausted the wonderful charm of this little piece. The famous description of Nicolette, as she escapes from her prison and walks through the daisies that look black against her white feet, is certainly the most beautiful thing of the kind in mediaeval prose-work, and the equal of anything of the kind anywhere. And for original audacity few things surpass Aucassin's equally famous inquiry, "En Paradis qu'ai-je a faire?" with the words with which he follows it up to the Viscount. But these show passages only concentrate the charm which is spread all over the novelette, at least until its real conclusion, the union and escape of the lovers. Here, as in the earlier part of the _Rose_--to which it is closely akin--is the full dreamy beauty, a little faint, a little shadowy, but all the more attractive, of mediaeval art; and here it has managed to convey itself in prose no less happily and with more concentrated happiness than there in verse. CHAPTER VIII. ICELANDIC AND PROVENCAL. RESEMBLANCES. CONTRASTS. ICELANDIC LITERATURE OF THIS TIME MAINLY PROSE. DIFFICULTIES WITH IT. THE SAGA. ITS INSULARITY OF MANNER. OF SCENERY AND CHARACTER. FACT AND FICTION IN THE SAGAS. CLASSES AND AUTHORSHIP OF THEM. THE FIVE GREATER SAGAS. 'NJALA.' 'LAXDAELA.' 'EYRBYGGJA.' 'EGLA.' 'GRETTLA.' ITS CRITICS. MERITS OF IT. THE PARTING OF ASDIS AND HER SONS. GREAT PASSAGES OF THE SAGAS. STYLE. PROVENCAL MAINLY LYRIC. ORIGIN OF THIS LYRIC. FORMS. MANY MEN, ONE MIND. EXAMPLE OF RHYME-SCHEMES. PROVENCAL POETRY NOT GREAT. BUT EXTRAORDINARILY PEDAGOGIC. THOUGH NOT DIRECTLY ON ENGLISH. SOME TROUBADOURS. CRITICISM OF PROVENCAL. [Sidenote: _Resemblances._] These may seem at first to be no sufficient reason for treating together two such literatures as those named in the title of this chapter. But the connection, both of likeness and unlikeness, between them is too tempting to the student of comparative literature, and too useful in such a comparative survey of literature as that which we are here undertaking, to be mistaken or refused. Both attaining, thanks to very different causes, an extraordinarily early maturity, completely worked themselves out in an extraordinarily short time. Neither had, so far as we know, the least assistance from antecedent vernacular models. Each achieved an extraordinary perfection and intensity, Icelandic in spirit, Provencal in form. [Sidenote: _Contrasts._]