AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF FRENCH LITERATURE. 149 



pleasing productions, bear a strong resemblance to the watch-songs* 

 of the German Minnesingers. The chansons, sons, sonettes and row- 

 das"^, were a few of the principal forms in which the poet was 

 wont to clothe his passion or to record his sufferings. Perhaps, 

 however, the most pleasing of these poems are the planhs or songs 

 composed on the death of a mistress ; they are in general extremely 

 captivating alike from the style in which they are narrated — from 

 the tenderness and pathos which their occasion naturally calls forth 

 — from the venerable simplicity of their language — and from the 

 melancholy beauty of the prolonged metre, which, by embalming 

 them in melody, gives an air of richness and of beauty to composi- 

 tions in themselves insipid. 



* In the wachterleider as in the albas the poets evince their skill in narra- 

 tive composition. They commence generally with a parley between the 

 love-struck knight and the " ladie" of his love. The stolen interview is also 

 generally interrupted by the approach of the sentinel of the castle ; who 

 warns the lovers that morning is approaching, and commands them to sepa- 

 rate. Perhaps the best of these compositions is the celebrated one by Mar- 

 cabrun, commencing 



" En un vergier, sotz fuelha d'albespi, 

 Teuc la dompna son amic costa si 

 Tro la gaya crida que I'alba vi 

 Oy dicus ! Oy dieus ! de I'alba tan tost re." 



The original is given in Raynouard, tom. iii., p. 375, and a German transla- 

 tion will be found in Diez, p. 168. 



f The ronda (canson redonda) bears a stronger resemblance to the foppe- 

 ries and Nugce difficiles of the scholastics, than to the extemporaneous pro- 

 ductions of the Provenyals. Its requisites were, that the last line of the first 

 should rhyme with the first of the second strophe ; and the first line of the 

 first with the last of the second. The accompanying list of the rhymes of a 

 poem of this description, by Giraut Riquier, may suffice as a specimen. 



FIBST STKOrHE. SECOND STBOPHE. 



damans jauzens 



estraire eossire 



dans valens 



comjaire " sospire 



Chans _ mens 



sabens afans 



, contradire aire 



vans enans 



dezire gaire 



jauzens. mans. 



This poem has been transcribed by Diez, and published in his Geschichle der 

 Troubadours, from a manuscript in the Royal Library at Paris, entitled *'Cans 

 on redonda et encadenada de motz e dc son-^* 



