Here the brief summary of the non-lyrical literature in the Provençal language comes to a close. In a work mainly devoted to the poetry of the Troubadours I have not thought it necessary to attempt anything like completeness of enumeration, my intention being mainly to give the reader some idea of the general aspect of a literary epoch almost entirely engrossed by one branch of art, the artistic song. A prevailing impulse of this kind is of course by no means unexampled in the history of poetry. The gregariousness of human beings in general is equally noticeable in the representatives of human thought and feeling. The age of Homer loved epic breadth, that of Elizabeth dramatic point and action; in our time the novel seems to rule the literary market. There were, of course, English romance-writers in the sixteenth century, just as there are English dramatists and lyrical poets of great power in the latter half of the nineteenth; but that does not in either case disprove the fact of a collective national instinct in the direction pointed out. In the same sense it may be said that narrative poetry in mediæval Provence occupied a decidedly subordinate position. This is, at least, what the facts we know and the documents we possess lead us to believe. But documents and facts are not always satisfactory materials to prop up a preconceived theory. Certain scholars have in the face of them supplied the _langue d’oc_ with an extensive and splendid epical literature, the treasures of which have unfortunately been lost to us, though why this loss should have fallen on the narrative in preference to the lyrical branch of poetry is not explained. The chief upholder of this opinion is the late M. Fauriel, the deservedly celebrated author of the ‘Histoire de la Littérature Provençale;’ but the foundation on which he rests his theory must be owned to be of the slenderest kind.