It is not, of course, true that Provencal only sings of love and Icelandic only of war. There is a fair amount of love in the Northern literature and a fair amount of fighting in the Southern. And it is not true that Icelandic literature is wholly prose, Provencal wholly poetry. But it is true that Provencal prose plays an extremely small part in Provencal literature, and that Icelandic poetry plays, in larger minority, yet still a minor part in Icelandic. It so happens, too, that in this volume we are almost wholly concerned with Icelandic prose, and that we shall not find it necessary to say much, if anything, about Provencal that is not in verse. It is distinctly curious how much later, _coeteris paribus_, the Romance tongues are than the Teutonic in attaining facilities of prose expression. But there is no reason for believing that even the Teutonic tongues falsified the general law that poetry comes before prose. And certainly this was the case with Icelandic--so much so that, uncertain as are the actual dates, it seems better to relinquish the Iceland of poetry to the first volume of this series, where it can be handled in connection with that Anglo-Saxon verse which it so much resembles. The more characteristic Eddaic poems--that is to say, the most characteristic parts of Icelandic poetry--must date from Heathen times, or from the first conflicts of Christianity with Heathenism in Iceland; and this leaves them far behind us.[160] On the other hand, the work which we have in Provencal before the extreme end of the eleventh century is not finished literature. It has linguistic interest, the interest of origins, but no more. [Footnote 160: Iceland began to be Christian in 1000.] [Sidenote: _Difficulties with it._]