Was the _langue d’oil_ formed in a similar way? Obviously not. However the Celtic, Latin, and Germanic elements were fused (for we cannot be certain on this point, in the absence of records going back to the earliest period of the language[136]), it is at any rate clear that it rose from a strongly marked antagonism between the three tongues, and that it would thus have a character and energy quite incompatible with such compromises and adaptations as those which gave birth to the _lingua romana_. In one moment of its life, the _langue d’oil_ was partly a Germanic tongue. In the written remains that have survived, we find one of the best qualities of the Aryan languages, the power of forming compounds. This power, it is true, is limited; and though still considerable, is less than in Sanscrit, Greek, and German. In the nouns, we find a system of inflexion by suffix, and, in consequence, an ease in inverting the order which modern French has lost, and which the language of the sixteenth century retained only to a slight extent, its inversions being gained at the expense of clearness. Again, the vocabulary of the _langue d’oil_ included many words brought in by the Franks.[137] Thus it began by being almost as much Germanic as Gallic; Celtic elements appeared in its second stage, and perhaps fixed the melodic principles of the language. The best possible tribute to its merits is to be found in the successful experiment of Littré,[138] who translated the first book of the “Iliad” literally, line for line, into French of the thirteenth century. Such a _tour de force_ would be impossible in modern French. Such a language belonged to a people that was evidently very different from the inhabitants of Southern Gaul. It was more deeply attached to Catholicism; its politics were permeated by a lively idea of freedom, dignity, and independence, its institutions had no aim but utility. Thus the mission set before the popular literature was not to express the fancies of the mind or heart, the freakishness of a universal scepticism, but to put together the annals of the nation, and to set down what was at that time regarded as the truth. It is to this temper of the people and their language that we owe the great rhymed chronicles, especially “Garin le Loherain,” which bear witness, though it has since been denied, to the predominance of the North. Unfortunately, since the compilers of these traditions, and even their original authors, mainly aimed at preserving historical facts or satisfying their desire for positive and solid results, poetry in the true sense, the love of form and the search for beauty, does not always bulk as large as it should in their long narratives. The literature of the _langue d’oil_ was, above all, utilitarian; and so the race, the language, and the literature were in perfect harmony.