Before entering upon any account of “French” literature, we must remove from our minds the conception of France and French as they are, and try to see them as they were in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. North of the Loire are various provinces and a distinctly marked Romance language, the _langue d’oïl_, or “French.” A Celtic attachment, which has immigrated from Great Britain, exists in Brittany, much Norman blood in the north, and a Frankish influence has modified the Gallo-Roman staple. South of the Loire are other states, and, for the most part, another Romance language, the _langue d’oc_, or “Provençal,” with leanings rather to an Italian kindred on one side, and a Catalonian-Spanish on the other. Strictly speaking, the _langue d’oc_ extended over the country south of a line drawn from about Charente to the Alps, while Provençal is properly the language of the south-eastern portion of that area. Corresponding to the two divisions of Gaul there arose two different forms and two different spirits of literature, one “French,” one “Provençal.” Later it was a joining of these two forms and spirits (though with a very distinct predominance of the northern) which produced modern French literature, or “French literature” in the ordinary sense; and it was both of them, though chiefly the northern, which largely controlled England during two centuries before Chaucer, and so contributed to the making of that poet and his age. There is a fact too often forgotten by students of English writing and even of English history. It is that until Chaucer’s time England was only a portion of the King of England’s dominions; the rest was on the continent, in France. Under Henry II, King of England in the later twelfth century, more than half of modern France, namely, Normandy and other provinces north of the Loire, Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony south of it, were part of an English or Franco-English empire. At the peace of Brétigny in 1360, Poitou, Guienne, and Gascony were still left a portion of the realms of Edward III. This fact of the oneness of England and much of France is of very great importance to early English literature. The court and official tongue, and, in a large degree, the literary language, of England were in any case French. The intercourse between England and the _langue d’oïl_, and (though less continued) between England and the _langue d’oc_, was, moreover, intimate and frequent. The writers and minstrels were, in a considerable measure, common to England and to both northern and southern France. No few of the writers belonging to old literature in French, _e.g._, Walter Map, and Benoît de Ste. More, had their homes in England; among them was Marie de France. The channels of communication were constantly open, and the current flowing and ebbing through. * * * * *