"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 each septet is the same word, vilana (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.
Provençal poetry not great.
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, 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.
But extraordinarily pedagogic.
Yet their educating influence was undoubtedly strong, and their actual production not to be scorned. In the capacity of teachers they were not 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 Cœur 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 directly on English.
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, in a condition to profit by Provençal 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 Anglo-Saxon; 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, the greatest master of double and treble rhymes that we have ever had, rarely succeeds in giving even the former with a full spondaic effect of vowel such as is easy in Provençal. In "The Garden of Proserpine" itself, as in the double rhymes, where they occur, of "The Triumph of Time" (the greatest thing ever written in the Provençal manner, and greater than anything in Provençal), the second vowels of the rhymes are never full. And there too, as I think invariably in English, the poet shows his feeling of the intolerableness of continued double rhyme by making the odd verses rhyme plump and with single sound.
Of poetry so little remarkable in individual manner or matter it is impossible to give abstracts, such as those which have been easy, and it may be hoped profitable, in some of the foregoing chapters; and prolonged analyses of form are tedious, except to the expert and the enthusiast. With some brief account, therefore, of the persons who chiefly composed this remarkable mass of lyric we may close a notice of the subject which is superficially inadequate to its importance, but which, perhaps, will not seem so to those who are content not merely to count pages but to weigh moments. The moment which Provençal added to the general body of force in European literature was that of a limited, somewhat artificial, but at the same time exquisitely artful and finished lyrical form, so adapted to the most inviting of the perennial motives of literature that it was sure to lead to imitation and development. It gave means and held up models to those who were able to produce greater effects than are to be found in its own accomplishment: yet was not its accomplishment, despite what is called its monotony, despite its limits and its defects, other than admirable and precious.
Some troubadours.
The "first warbler," Count William IX. of Poitiers, has already been mentioned, and his date fixed at exactly the first year of our period. His chief immediate successors or contemporaries were Cercamon ("Cherchemonde," Cursor Mundi); the above quoted Marcabrun, who is said to have accompanied Cercamon in his wanderings, and who has left much more work; and Bertrand de Ventadorn or Ventadour, perhaps the best of the group, a farmer's son of the place from which he takes his noble-sounding name, and a professional lover of the lady thereof. Of Jaufre (Geoffrey) Rudel of Blaye, whose love for the lady of Tripoli, never yet seen by him, and his death at first sight of her, supply, with the tragedy of Cabestanh and the cannibal banquet, the two most famous pieces of Troubadour anecdotic history, we have half-a-dozen pieces. In succession to these, Count Rambaut of Orange and Countess Beatrice of Die keep up the reputation of the gai saber as an aristocratic employment, and the former's poem—