When we turn from Latin and consider the condition of the vernacular tongues in the year 1100, there is hardly more than one country in Europe where we find them producing anything that can be called literature. In England Anglo-Saxon, if not exactly dead, is dying, and has for more than a century ceased to produce anything of distinctly literary attraction; and English, even the earliest "middle" English, is scarcely yet born, is certainly far from being in a condition for literary use. The last echoes of the older and more original Icelandic poetry are dying away, and the great product of Icelandic prose, the Saga, still _volitat per ora virum_, without taking a concrete literary form. It is in the highest degree uncertain whether anything properly to be called Spanish or Italian exists at all--anything but dialects of the _lingua rustica_ showing traces of what Spanish and Italian are to be; though the originals of the great _Poema del Cid_ cannot be far off. German is in something the same trance between its "Old" and its "Middle" state as is English. Only in France, and in both the great divisions of French speech, is vernacular literature active. The northern tongue, the _langue d'oil_, shows us--in actually known existence, or by reasonable inference that it existed--the national epic or _chanson de geste_; the southern, or _langue d'oc_, gives us the Provencal lyric. The latter will receive treatment later, the former must be dealt with at once. It is rather curious that while the _chansons de geste_ are, after Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic poetry, the oldest elaborate example of verse in the modern vernaculars; while they exhibit a character, not indeed one of the widest in range or most engaging in quality, but individual, interesting, intense as few others; while they are entirely the property of one nation, and that a nation specially proud of its literary achievements,--they were almost the last division of European literature to become in any degree properly known. In so far as they were known at all, until within the present century, the knowledge was based almost entirely on later adaptations in verse, and still later in prose; while--the most curious point of all--they were not warmly welcomed by the French even after their discovery, and cannot yet be said to have been taken to the heart of the nation, even to the limited extent to which the Arthurian romances have been taken to the heart of England, much less to that in which the old, but much less old, ballads of England, Scotland, Germany, and Spain have for periods of varying length been welcomed in their respective countries. To discuss the reason of this at length would lead us out of our present subject; but it is a fact, and a very curious fact. [Sidenote: _Late discovery of the_ chansons.] [Sidenote: _Their age and history._]