the object of its affections; a kind of mystic telepathy is common to all poets. And yet when the lover is in the actual presence of his lady he is so filled with fear and timidity that he trembles, grows pale, and can scarcely speak. He is so humble and timid that he dares not ask for great favors, but is contented with a kind look or friendly word. Thus Peire Rogier:

For me, to gaze upon her face
Is joy enough; although no grace
Or favor more she deigns to give.

The poet prefers his love to all that is greatest and richest in the world; he would not exchange his lot for that of kings and emperors; nay, even heaven itself is a desert compared to the bliss of mutual love. So sings Arnaut de Marueil: If by God's grace I win her love,

Sure, even the bliss of heaven above

To joys like this were but a desert drear.

The only thing that can destroy the power of such love is death; and when this terrible event occurs the poet writes his elegy, in which he laments the irreparable loss he Las suffered; accusing Heaven of being envious of his joy and of taking his lady from earth to enrich the heavenly courts with her.

According to Karl Bartsch there are songs extant written by four hundred and sixty Troubadours, besides a number of anonymous poems. Of course, most of these are of no great importance; for the number of famous Troubadours is comparatively small. The lives of these are told briefly in the biographies of the Troubadours, written in Provençal by contemporaries, and prefixed to the manuscript containing their songs. Among the names that interest us most from a literary standpoint are those of Arnaut Daniel, whom Dante. meets and converses with in Purgatory; Sordello, whom the great Florentine mentions in a passage that has suggested to Browning his poem of the same name. From the standpoint of history we are interested in those men of princely birth, William of Poitiers, the oldest of the Troubadours; Richard the Lion-hearted, and Alphonse, king of Aragon. One of the

most picturesque figures of the period is that of Bertrand de Born, the wild, war-loving poet, the bitter opponent of Henry II of England, and the instigator of the war carried on between the latter and the young King Henry, his son. A genuine affection existed between this prince and the Troubadour, who addressed many poems to him, as well as to his brother, Richard the Lion-hearted. According to the custom of the times, Bertrand adopted a pseudonym for the latter, always referring to him in his songs as "En Oc et No," "Lord Yes and No," a term which has recently become widely known through Maurice Hewlett's novel of Richard Yea and Nay. In the biographical sketch prefixed to the manuscript of the songs of Bertrand de Born, the unknown biographer relates the following incident, in which the touch of nature is seen that makes the whole world kin. After the death of the young prince Henry, Bertrand de Born was besieged by the king in his castle of Hautefort, and was forced to capitulate. When brought into the presence of the king the latter said, "Ah, Bertrand, you once said you did not need the half of the wits God had given you, but now methinks you will need them all." "Sire," answered the poet, "what I said is true; but the day that saw the death of the valiant king your son, and my lord, that day I lost not only my wits, but my heart and spirit." "Lord Bertrand," answered the king, "if you have indeed suffered this loss for the sake of my son, it is right, for he loved you better than any man in the world, and I for love of him will set you free and restore to you your castle, together with my love and favor." In this, however, the king showed himself more forgiving than Dante, who for the crime of Bertrand de Born, in turning son against father, places him in the eighth circle of hell, where schismatics are punished by being cloven asunder.

It would be extremely interesting if we had time to give in detail the romantic episodes in the lives of many of these Troubadours, such as Bernart de Ventadour, who, born of the humblest parentage, was the favorite in the courts of the Dukes of Normandy and the Counts of Toulouse; or such as

Peire Vidal, the Sancho Panza of the Provençal poets, half genius, half fool, "who wrote like an angel, but talked like poor Poll." Everyone knows at least the name of Jaufre Rudel, who, having heard of the beauty and goodness of the Countess of Tripoli, fell in love with her, without ever having seen her; and wandered over land and sea, in order to find her, succeeding only when about to die. This story has recently received a beautiful setting in the "Princesse Lointaine," written by the author of "Cyrano de Bergerac." One of the poems by Jaufre Rudel himself is still extant. Part of it I will quote. You will notice that every other line ends in the word far, a device which renders the rhyme monotonous, and which gives some idea of the artificiality so characteristic of Troubadour poetry.

Angry and sad shall be my way,
If I behold not her afar,

And yet I know not when that day
Shall rise, for still she dwells afar.

God, who has formed this fair array
Of worlds and placed my love afar,
Strengthen my heart with hope, I pray,
Of seeing her I love afar.

Perhaps the strangest of all "these strange, eventful histories" is that of the medieval Thyestes, Raimon of Roussillon, and his cruel vengeance on the Troubadour Guillem de Cabestaing, who had won the love of his wife, Margarida, said to have been the most beautiful woman of her times. Guillem was the son of a poor knight, and had entered the service of Count Raymond as a page, and little by little had won the love of his highborn mistress, the Countess Margarida. Her husband, discovering this love, and half insane from jealousy, had the poet's head cut off, and tearing out his heart, had it roasted, and then gave it to his wife to eat. When she had eaten it he showed her the head of her lover and told her what he had done. "So sweet has this food tasted," answered she, "that I shall eat and drink no more forever," then threw herself from the balcony whereon she

stood, and died. This story was very popular in the Middle Ages, and forms the subject of a similar tale told of the Chatelain de Couci, besides being very frequently referred to in the poetry of the times.

We have thus gone over briefly the general history of Troubadour poetry; we have seen its outer form and inner characteristics, its ideas and its theories of love, and we have briefly touched on some of the more famous of the poets. We have seen the rise of this interesting phenomenon of mediæval literature toward the end of the eleventh century and its utter extinction at the end of the thirteenth century. After the year 1300 we find no more Troubadours, properly so called. The end of the poetry was sudden as its beginning. The land of Provence passed into the hands of northern France, and the inhabitants disappear from history as well as from literature as an independent people. Hereafter writers born in the south of France are merged into the great body of French literature. It is true that during the last fifty years the striking movement known as the Society of the Félibriges has made strong efforts to revive the language and the literature of their ancestors, and works of no mean value have been written in modern Provençal by men like Mistral, Roumanille, Felix Gras, and others, showing what might have been done if Provence had remained an independent country. This movement, however, is purely factitious. No literature can exist without a national life. Provence is, and must ever remain, a province; hence, her literature can never recover its former strength and glory. But although the literature of the Troubadours has been dead these many centuries its influence still lives. Nearly every country of western Europe during the Middle Ages was deeply impregnated with the thoughts, ideas, and poetic form of the Provençal poets. This is especially true of Spain, where Alphonse of Aragon was himself a poet, and was extravagantly praised for his hospitality to the wandering singers who crossed the Pyrenees in order to visit his court. Early Spanish courtly poetry is almost entirely translation or close imitation of the poetry of

their neighbors and kinsmen beyond the mountains. In Germany the Minnesingers treat of the same subjects in the same conventional way as the Troubadours; while in northern France, from the year 1150 on, the poetry of the South, introduced by the enthusiasm of Eleonore (granddaughter of William of Poitiers) and later fostered by her daughters, Marie and Aelis, spread rapidly over the land and reappeared in slightly different forms in the songs of the Trouvères, such as Gace Brulé, Thiebaut de Champagne, Richard de Fournivall, and others. In Italy the influence of the Troubadours is still more striking, and is of consummate importance for the student of not only Italian, but of English literature. In the north of Italy we have the singular spectacle of Italians writing in the Provençal language-Sordello, of Mantua; Bartolomeo Zorgi, of Venice; and Bonifacio Calvo, of Montferrat. In Sicily, at the brilliant court of Frederick II the first known examples of poetry in the vernacular were written, and were imitations of the Troubadours. In middle Italy the Tuscan school began with imitating the Troubadours, then gradually through Guido Guinicelli, of Bologna, and Guido Cavalcante, of Florence, changed the chivalrous ideal of woman to a spiritual and philosophical symbolism. This symbolism was carried to its loftiest height by the genius of Dante in the "New Life" and "Divine Comedy." Through Petrarch the doctrines of the Italian school were carried over into England, and can be plainly seen in the works of Surrey, Wyatt, Sidney, and Spenser. While we have no definite school in England inspired by the Troubadours directly, as is the case with Italy, Spain, and France, yet it is surprising how often we find their conventional ideas in the poetry not only of the past but of the present time. To say nothing of Surrey, Wyatt, and Sidney, already spoken of, and who, in the words of Puttenham, were "novices newly crept out of the schools of Italy," we find many examples of these conventional ideas in the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. The most striking passage is the famous balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet." You can get no better