On Oc and Oyl. 333 are most interesting to us. These remarks relate to the an- tiquity and the contents of each literature. 1) In his admi- rable work, the Vita Nuova^ he says (KeiPs edition, p. 52) of the lingua (Toco^ and lingua di si^ that it was not more than 150 years since poems had been composed in these vul- gar tongues (in contradistinction to the genuine Latin), and these only love-poems, designed for female readers, who would have found it too difficult to understand Latin verses. With his usual accuracy and precision, he twice declares, " I only say among us (tra noi)^ since the case may have been different with another people."'"' These 150 years would reach to the middle, or up to the beginning of the 12th century, and in fact among the Provencal poets, who are admitted to be earlier than the Spanish, the Italian, and the French, none is cer- tainly known to have preceded William, count of Poitiers, born 1077, dec. 1126. Here we are naturally led to think of the Germans, the first of whose Minnesaenger, Henry of Veldeck, sang not long after count William, scarcely a cen- tury after his birth. Titurel was written, according to Docen, about 1189: according to the more critical opinion of A. W. Schlegel, about 1221 ^. Though the latter date is about a century later than the death of the first Provencal poet, it is still just a hundred years earlier than the death of Dante : and though the subject and title of the poem shew that it was founded on the lays of southern poets, still it is manifest from the extreme beauty of the thoughts, the poetical expres- sions, and the metrical form, that the art must have been then practised for many generations by a series of very suc- cessful masters. Still greater is the antiquity of the poetical panegyric on S. Anno. Nothing can be produced in the hterature of the south to be compared, in point of antiquity, with Otfried, who wrote his great German poem in the 9th century, and yet mentions earlier lays^, which in fact he wished to banish out of popular use by his own, because they appeared to him trifling and indecent. It would lead us too far, if we were to dwell on this subject ; we therefore only refer to the two German poems of the 8th century published 2 Docen's Titurel, p. 12 and 56, note. SchlegeFs review in the Heidelberg Jahrb. Novemb. 1811. p. 1073. ^ In his Ivatin dedication to the Archbishop of Mayence.
