poetry, as it may be called, by assigning special forms to certain kinds of subject or—if not quite this-to constitute classes of poems themselves according to their arrangement in line, stanza, and rhyme. A complete prosody of the language of canso and sirvente, of vers and cobla, of planh, tenso, tornejamens, balada, retroensa, and the rest, would take more room than can be spared here, and would hardly be in place if it were otherwise. All such prosodies tend rather to the childish, as when, for instance, the pastorela, or shepherdess poem in general, was divided into porquiera, cabreira, auqueira, and other things, according as the damsel's special wards were pigs or goats or geese. Perhaps the most famous, peculiar, and representative of Provençal forms are the alba, or poem of morning parting, and the sirvente, or poem not of love. The sestina, a very elaborate canzonet, was invented in Provence and borrowed by the Italians. But it is curious to find that the sonnet, the crown and flower of all artificial poetry, though certainly invented long before the decadence of Provençal, was only used in Provençal by Italian experimenters. The poets proper of the langue d'oc were probably too proud to admit any form that they had not invented themselves.

Many men,

Next in noteworthiness to the variety of form of the Provençal poets is their number. Even the multitude of trouvères and Minnesingers dwinone mind. dles beside the list of four hundred and sixty named poets, for the twelfth and thirteenth centuries only, which Bartsch's list contains; some, it is true, credited with only a single piece, but others

with ten, twenty, fifty, or even close to a hundred, not to mention an anonymous appendix of over two hundred and fifty poems more. Great, however, as is the bulk of this division of literature, hardly any has more distinct and uniform- its enemies may say more monotonous-characteristics. It is not entirely composed of love-poetry; but the part devoted to this is so very much the largest, and so very much the most characteristic, that popular and almost traditional opinion is scarcely wrong in considering love-poetry and Provençal poetry to be almost, and with the due limitation in the first case, convertible terms.

The spirit of this poetry is nowhere better shown than in the refrain of an anonymous alba, which begins

"En un verger sotz folha d'albespi,"

and which has for burden

"Oi deus! oi deus, de l'alba, tant tost ve!"

of which an adaptation by Mr Swinburne is well known. "In the Orchard," however, is not only a much longer poem than the alba from which it borrows its burden, but is couched in a form much more elaborate, and has a spirit rather early Italian than Provençal. It is, indeed, not very easy to define the Provençal spirit itself, which has sometimes been mistaken, and oftener exaggerated. Although the average troubadour poem-whether of love, or of satire, or, more rarely, of war-is much less simple in tone than the Northern lyric already commented on, it cannot be said to be very complex; and, on the

whole, the ease, accomplishment, and, within certain strict limits, variety of the form are more remarkable than any intensity or volume of passion or of thought. The musical character (less inarticulate and more regular), which has also been noted in the poems of the trouvères, is here eminent: though the woodnote wild of the Minnesinger is quite absent or very rarely present. The facility of double rhymes, with a full vowel sound in each syllable, has a singular and very pleasing effect, as in the piece by Marcabrun beginning

"L'autrier jost una sebissa,"

"the other day by a hedge," the curiously complicated construction of which is worth dwelling on as a specimen. It consists of six double stanzas, of fourteen lines or two septets each, finished by a sestet, aabaab. The septets are rhymed aaabaab; and though the a rhymes vary in each set of fourteen, the b rhymes are the same throughout; and the first of them in Example of each septet is the same word, vilana rhyme-schemes. (peasant girl), throughout. Thus we have as the rhymes of the first twenty-eight lines sebissa, mestissa, massissa, vilana, pelissa, treslissa, lana; planissa, faitissa, fissa, vilana, noirissa, m'erissa, sana; pia, via, companhia, vilana, paria, bestia, soldana; sia, folia, parelharia, vilana, s'estia, bailia, l'ufana.

Such a carillon of rhymes as this is sometimes held to be likely to concentrate the attention of both writer and reader too much on the accompaniment, and to leave the former little time to convey, and the latter little chance of receiving,

Provençal poetry

not great.

any very particularly choice sense. This most certainly cannot be laid down as a universal law; there are too many examples to the contrary, even in our own language, not to go further. But it may be admitted that when the styles of literature are both fashionable and limited, and when a very large number of persons endeavour to achieve distinction in them, there is some danger of something of the sort coming about. No nation has ever been able, in the course of less than two centuries, to provide four hundred and sixty named poets and an indefinitely strong reinforcement of anonyms, all of whom have native power enough to produce verse at once elaborate in form and sovereign in spirit; and the peoples of the langue d'oc, who hardly together formed a nation, were no exception to the rule. That rule is a rule of "minor poetry," accomplished, scholarly, agreeable, but rarely rising out of minority.

Yet their educating influence was undoubtedly strong, and their actual production not to be scorned. But extraordin. In the capacity of teachers they were not arily pedagogic. without strong influence on their Northern countrymen; they certainly and positively acted as direct masters to the literary lyric both of Italy and Spain; they at least shared with the trouvères the position of models to the Minnesingers. It is at first sight rather surprising that, considering the intimate relations between England and Aquitaine during the period-considering that at least one famous troubadour, Bertran de Born, is known to have been concerned in the disputes between Henry II. and his

sons - Provençal should not have exercised more direct influence over English literature. It was a partly excusable mistake which made some English critics, who knew that Richard Coeur de Lion, for instance, was himself not unversed in the manner of trobar," assert or assume, until within the present century, that it did exercise such influence. But, as a matter of fact, it did not; and the reason is sufficiently simple, or at least (for it is double rather than simple) sufficiently clear.

Though not

In the first place, English was not, until quite the end of the flourishing period of Provençal poetry, and specially at the period above referred to, directly on in a condition to profit by Provençal English. models; while in the fourteenth century, when English connection with the south of France was closer still, Provençal was in its decadence. And, in the second place, the structure and spirit of the two tongues almost forbade imitation of the one in the other. It was Northern, not Southern, French that helped to make English proper out of AngloSaxon; and the gap between Northern French and Southern French themselves was far wider than between Provençal and the Peninsular tongues. To which things, if any one pleases, he may add the difference of the spirit of the two races; but this is always vague and uncertain ground, and is best avoided when we can tread on the firm land of history and literature proper. Such a rhyme - arrangement as that above set forth is probably impossible in English; even now it will be observed that Mr Swinburne,