It would scarcely be fair to say that the exploit attributed to Rambaut of Vaqueras, a poet of the very palmiest time, at the juncture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries--that of composing a poem in lines written successively in three different forms of Provencal (_langue d'oc_ proper, Gascon, and Catalan), in _langue d'oil_, and in Italian, with a _coda_ line jumbled up of all five--is a final criticism at once of the merits and the defects of this literature. But it at least indicates the lines of such a criticism. By its marvellous suppleness, sweetness, and adaptation to the verbal and metrical needs of poetry, Provencal served--in a fashion probably impossible to the stiffer if more virile tongues--as an example in point of form to these tongues themselves: and it achieved, at the same time with a good deal of mere gymnastic, exercises in form of the most real and abiding beauty. But it had as a language too little character of its own, and was too fatally apt to shade into the other languages--French on the one hand, Spanish and Italian on the other--with which it was surrounded, and to which it was akin. And coming to perfection at a time when no modern thought was distinctly formed, when positive knowledge was at a low ebb, and when it had neither the stimulus of vigorous national life nor the healthy occupation of what may be called varied literary business, it tended to become, on the whole, too much of a plaything merely. Now, schools and playgrounds are both admirable things, and necessary to man; but what is done in both is only an exercise or a relaxation from exercise. Neither man nor literature can stay either in class-room or playing-field for ever, and Provencal had scarcely any other places of abode to offer. CHAPTER IX. THE LITERATURE OF THE PENINSULAS. LIMITATIONS OF THIS CHAPTER. LATE GREEK ROMANCE. ITS DIFFICULTIES AS A SUBJECT. ANNA COMNENA, ETC. 'HYSMINIAS AND HYSMINE.' ITS STYLE. ITS STORY. ITS HANDLING. ITS "DECADENCE." LATENESS OF ITALIAN. THE "SARACEN" THEORY. THE "FOLK-SONG" THEORY. CIULLO D'ALCAMO. HEAVY DEBT TO FRANCE. YET FORM AND SPIRIT BOTH ORIGINAL. LOVE-LYRIC IN DIFFERENT EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. POSITION OF SPANISH. CATALAN-PROVENCAL. GALICIAN-PORTUGUESE. CASTILIAN. BALLADS? THE 'POEMA DEL CID.' A SPANISH "CHANSON DE GESTE." IN SCHEME AND SPIRIT. DIFFICULTIES OF ITS PROSODY. BALLAD-METRE THEORY. IRREGULARITY OF LINE. OTHER POEMS. APOLLONIUS AND MARY OF EGYPT. BERCEO. ALFONSO EL SABIO. [Sidenote: _Limitations of this chapter._]