taste, and cold conceit, which we should expect from the decline of an effete age, in which poetry had become a mere fashion of the day. This remarkable confusion of style and taste, (for qualities so opposite could scarcely form an absolute union,) resulted from the species and degree of civilization which had been attained in the southern provinces of France. They had reached a high pitch of wealth, and power, and magnificence, and luxury, and polish; but their culture and civilization was all external and material, not internal and intellectual. To the Provençals, as to the other nations of Europe, the treasures of classical antiquity were as yet but as a sealed book; and they themselves had made no progress, no efforts, in the direction of natural science, or the philosophy of reason. If any glimmerings of knowledge had reached them, they were only some scattered rays, which had penetrated through the darkness of the schools, or were reflected from the learning and science of the Arabs by the intervention of the kindred people of Catalonia and Aragon. We may judge of the extent of their knowledge by a singular piece which still remains to us, entitled the Treasure of Pierre de Corbiac*; and it must be borne in mind that the author was probably one of the later Troubadours. Maître Pierre de Corbiac, or Corbian, is as happy in his Treasure, as the ideal sage of the stoics in the possession of all his wisdom. "I am rich in mind; and although I have neither lands, nor castles, nor towns, nor other domains; although I have neither gold, nor silver, nor silk, yet I am not poor; I am even richer than a man with a thousand marks in gold. * If you ask me who I am, and whence, and of what people, my name is Maître Pierre, and my birth was from Corbia, where I have my brothers and my relations. My income is moderate, but my courtesy and my sense make me Hive in honour among honourable persons. I walk upright, as if I were rich; and so indeed I am, since I have amassed a rich treasure, splendid and noble, and more precious, more dear, and more valuable, than precious stones, or fine gold and silver; a treasure which cannot perish, nor be taken from me, nor carried off by theft; a treasure which, far from being diminished, increases from day to day. This treasure is the knowledge of many points of learning." He acknowledges God to be the fountain of all wisdom: "from God then came mine, and from God I begin.

He then gives an account of the ten orders of angels, the rebellion of Lucifer, the creation, the four elements, the sun, moon, and stars, the appointment of the seven days of the week and of the sabbath, the fall of man, and the whole scriptural and apocryphal

*Millot, T. iii. p. 227. Raynouard, T. v. p. 310. It is worth remarking that this piece of 840 lines is written all upon one rhyme.

history, down to the martyrdom of the Apostles; from which he passes to the day of judgment. This is the first and principal part of the treasure of his knowledge. The second part he esteems less. "I am sufficiently learned in all the seven arts; by grammar I know how to speak Latin, to decline, and construe, and make derivations, and to beware of barbarism in my pronunciation. By logic I know very rationally how to answer and refute arguments, and make sophisms, and draw conclusions, and ingeniously to lead my adversary to confess himself in the wrong." He speaks of his knowledge of rhetoric, and enlarges at considerable length upon his musical science. In arithmetic he knows how to add, multiply, and divide. He understands geography, astronomy, the indiction, the epact, and all the ecclesiastical calendar; a little medicine, pharmacy, and surgery; necromancy, geomancy, magic, and divination; mythology" better than Ovid and Thales ;" the histories of Thebes, of Troy, of Rome, of Romulus, of Cæsar, of Pompey, of Augustus, of Nero, of the twelve Caesars down to Constantine; the history of Greece, of Alexander, who on his death-bed divided his kingdom among his twelve peers; the history of France, from the time of Clovis; the victories of Charlemagne and Roland over the Pagans; the history of Brutus, how he arrived from Troy in Brittany, and passed over into England, where he conquered the giant Cornieu, and divided the country among his followers; the prophecies of Merlin, the mysterious death of Arthur, the adventures of Gawain, the loves of Tristan and Ysalt; and in fine the history of other nations. He understands chaunting also, and can compose verses, songs, pastorals, amatory and amusing poems, rondeaux, and dances; and can make himself beloved by clerks, knights, burgesses, jongleurs, squires, and serving-men. Maître Pierre, from the display which he makes of his knowledge, evidently considered himself, and probably with justice, as one of the most learned persons of his age and country. If this then, at a late period of Provençal history, were the amount of the knowledge attained by a person of professed learning, apparently of that order to which education was almost restricted, at least in the full enjoyment of literary leisure, we may judge what degree of knowledge was possessed by the knights and nobles of an earlier age, whose lives were divided between revelry and war. Among the multitude of the pieces of the Troubadours which have come down to us, there are exceedingly few allusions to the mythology or history of Greece or Rome; and these are of such nature, that they appear to have been only borrowed from monkish chronicles and compilations; and that the knowledge of the Latin language was rare, at least among the poets, may be conjectured from the ostentatious manner in which a few who possessed it make quotations, not from classical authors, but from the Vulgate, or the

phrases of the schools*. It does not appear that Maître Pierre de Corbiac had read any classical author, not even "Ovid and Thales." In science it might have been expected that the Provençals would have made a greater progress, from the facility of intercourse with the Moorish schools established in Spain; but in all their works scarcely a solitary illustration or allusion is to be traced to such a source. The knowledge of the Troubadours appears to have been in general confined to the science of music, and to the romances which formed the common literature of their age. In a few pieces which remain to us, in which advice is addressed to Jougleurst, the knowledge of romances, and a facility in narrating them, is considered as an indispensable qualification for their profession; and we may accordingly conclude that they formed one of the amusements of the baronial halls. But even romances seem to have been ill suited to the general literature and taste of the Provençals. They had sprung up, and sprung_up_luxuriantly, in the North of France, in the language called the Roman-Wallon, or Langue d'Oil; but in Provence they were not native, and they made no growth. The allusions to them are not frequent; the poetry of the Troubadours is in general as far removed as possible from the narrative style; and the researches of the learned have discovered little more than a solitary relic of romances in the Provençal language‡. The mind of the people was left, therefore, with but little to occupy it; and not only reason, but imagination also, languished for the want of a proper aliment to sustain them.

* Sismondi, T. i. p. 195.

The Troubadours were the poets, who composed songs and verses, frequently both the music and the words. The Jongleurs were persons of an inferior class, who made a trade of singing and reciting the verses of the Troubadours. The Envoi, or concluding stanza of a poem, telling to whom it is sent, or for what purpose it is written, is frequently addressed to the Jongleur, who is to publish it to the world. A Troubadour, if he were deserted by his patrons, or reduced to want, frequently embraced the mercenary profession of a Jongleur. A Jongleur of talent would often not only recite the verses of others, but compose for himself, and thus entitled himself to the honourable appellation of a Troubadour. This mixture of the two classes was one of the causes of the disrepute into which the Troubadours eventually fell; for they became confounded with the Jongleurs, who not only recited poems, narrated romances, and sang and played for pay, but also performed tricks of legerdemain, carried about bears and apes, in short, followed the profession of a modern juggler and mountebank. Giraud Riquier, one of the latest of the Troubadours, complains grievously of this confusion in his Supplication, a poem, addressed to Alphonso X., King of Castile; which produced a royal ordinance, dated in the year 1275, and designed to remedy the evil. The rank of poets cannot be determined by royal ordinances. The Jongleurs seem to have borne a considerable resemblance to the gaydoì of early Greece.

Raynouard, T. ii. p. 282,

ages

But while the intellect of the nation was thus uncultivated, a happy combination of circumstances had raised the Provençals to a high degree of external prosperity. The diversities of climate and soil will work their effect immediately or mediately upon the mind of man; and a soil easily tilled and richly reproductive, a climate temperate and equable, and a pure and serene air, not only contributed to the wealth of the natives of the countries of the Langue d'Oc*, but gave them leisure for the more refined pleasures of prosperity, and the physical and moral sensibility necessary for the enjoyment of them. These provinces had also been fortunate in their comparative repose during the tumults of the darker ages. They had not, like Italy and the more eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, been overrun by a succession of barbarous inva ders, each dislodging and trampling upon the horde which had preceded them. They had not been exposed to the extreme barbarity of the Slavonian or Sarmatian tribes. In the later of the empire, the southern provinces of Gaul had been far more wealthy and more tranquil than even Italy itself, and had retained the advantages of civilization to a later period. The Burgundians and Visigoths had established themselves in them at nearly the same time. They suffered no subsequent invasion from the northern nations; and the fortune of Charles Martel upon the plains of Tours preserved France from the growing empire of the Arabs, which had overwhelmed the Visigoths of Spain. The new people had amalgamated themselves quietly and insensibly with the old inhabitants; and from their union sprang up new institutions and a new language, which began to acquire form and consistency, while, in almost every other country of Europe, strife and disorder filled the place of government; and the vulgar dialect was but a confused and irregular patois. These provinces suffered indeed from wars with the Franks, who had occupied the countries on the north of the Loire, and they were subjugated by Pepin and Charlemagne; but they escaped early from the troubles which arose under the imbecile princes of the Carlovingian race. In the year 879, an active and vigorous leader, the Duke Bozon, became the first monarch of the kingdom of Arles, and extended his authority over all the south of France. His descendants retained their sovereignty under the title of King or Count for more than two hundred years; and during this period, which bears that sure mark of prosperity that it has left almost a blank in history, we can collect that population

*It was usual to denominate languages from their affirmative particle. The Provençal was the Langue d'Oc; the language of the North of France was the Langue d'Oil, or Langue d'Oui. Bernard d'Auriac, in speaking of an invasion of Aragon by the French, says, "In Aragon will be heard qui and nenni, in the place of oc and no." Millot, T. iii., p. 177.

and wealth increased, that commerce made some progress, and that the laws, and manners, and language of Provence became fixed. The vulgar dialect insensibly took the place of the Latin, and began to be employed for the purposes of literature. The family of Bozon ended in 1092, in the person of Count Gillibert; and his states became the dowry of his daughters, of whom Douce, the eldest and the heiress of Provence, was married to Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona.

It must not, however, be supposed that the transmission of the sovereignty of Provence to the Counts of Barcelona implied the subjection of the country to a foreign master. The natives of Catalonia and Aragon were one people with the Provençals, of similar laws and manners, and of the same language. The langue d'Oc was the common dialect both on the northern and southern sides of the Pyrenees; and, it is probable, that at this time it was more formed and polished in the Spanish provinces. The institutions of feudality were there imbued with the strongest and purest spirit of chivalry. The continual proximity of enemies of a different faith, who had dislodged the Gothic inhabitants of Spain from the possessions of their fathers, kept alive a temper of religious and patriotic enthusiasm, which involved within itself the finest elements of romantic poetry. The increasing commerce of Barcelona, and of other maritime towns, not only fostered the taste for luxury and magnificence to which it owed its origin, but gave birth to a spirit of liberty, which diffused itself among the middle class of society, and checked the tendency to tyranny which was the vice of the petty feudal sovereignties. At the same time, and chiefly through the medium of the Moçarabes or Christians subject to the Moorish states, the literature and poetry of the Arabs had begun to spread itself throughout Spain, and produced a general elegance of taste, and a disposition to vary the rude and sensual magnificence of the baronial courts and castles with intellectual pleasures and amusements. The spirit which resulted from the combination of all these causes was introduced into Provence by the accession of Raymond-Berenger. This was no attempt to force an union between uncongenial elements. It was inserting into a strong and healthy stock a graft from a richer and more cultivated variety of the same species. The character and manners of the Provençals were exalted and refined; and a new life was infused into the poetry, which had already sprung up amongst them.

The marriage of Raymond-Berenger with Douce, the heiress of Provence, took place in the year 1112*; and in the year 1125 a treaty was concluded by the Counts of Barcelona and Toulouse,

* Sismondi, Hist. des Français, T. v. p. 116.