In regard to the second, and contrasted, division of the subject of the present chapter, it has been already noted that, just as Icelandic at this period presents to the purview of the comparative literary historian one main subject, if not one only--the saga--so Provencal presents one main subject, and almost one only--the formal lyric. The other products of the Muse in _langue d'oc_, whether verse or prose, are so scanty, and in comparison[177] so unimportant, that even special historians of the subject have found but little to say about them. The earliest monument of all, perhaps the earliest finished monument of literature in any Romance language, the short poem on Boethius, in assonanced decasyllabic _laisses_,--even in its present form probably older than our starting-point, and, it may be, two centuries older in its first form,--is indeed not lyrical; nor is the famous and vigorous verse-history of the Albigensian War in _chanson_ style; nor the scanty remnants of other _chansons_, _Girart de Rossilho_, _Daurel et Beton_, _Aigar et Maurin_, which exist; nor the later _romans d'aventure_ of _Jaufre_, _Flamenca_, _Blandin of Cornwall_. But in this short list almost everything of interest in our period--the flourishing period of the literature--has been mentioned which is not lyrical.[178] And if these things, and others like them in much larger number, had existed alone, it is certain that Provencal literature would not hold the place which it now holds in the comparative literary history of Europe. [Footnote 177: Of course this is only in comparison. For instance, in Dr Suchier's _Denkmaeler_ (Halle, 1883), which contains nearly 500 large pages of Provencal _anecdota_, about four-fifths is devotional matter of various kinds and in various forms, prose and verse. But such matter, which is common to all mediaeval languages, is hardly literature at all, being usually translated, with scarcely any expense of literary originality, from the Latin, or each other.] [Footnote 178: Alberic's _Alexander_ (_v._ chap. iv.) is of course Provencal in a way, and there was probably a Provencal intermediary between the _Chanson d'Antioche_ and the Spanish _Gran Conquesta de Ultramar_. But we have only a few lines of the first and nothing of the second.] That place is due to its lyric, construing that term in a wide sense such as that (but indeed a little wider) in which it has been already used with reference to the kindred and nearly contemporary lyric of France proper. It is best to say "nearly contemporary," because it would appear that Provencal actually had the start of French in this respect, though no great start: and it is best to say "kindred" and not "daughter," because though some forms and more names are common to the two, their developments are much more parallel than on the same lines, and they are much more sisters than mother and daughter. [Sidenote: _Origin of this lyric._]