AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF FRENCH LITERATURE. 107 
It appears, to a casual observer, not a little singular that the me- 
rits and exertions of the Troubadours should not bear any proportion 
to their rewards and encouragements ; and that ¢hat literature, which 
has served as the model to other nations, has not, amongst its volu- 
minous collection of pleasing productions, left a single masterpiece 
destined for immortality. Rivals they had none, for such can hardly 
be called the men who, immured in their convents and shut out from 
the living world, were solely employed in the dull and tedious, though 
certainly useful, task of transcribing the ancient manuscripts which 
were mouldering in their libraries. Their profession, honoured by 
the patronage and encouragement of the Emperor Barbarossa, of the 
conqueror of Tancred and of Saladin, of our own Richard, as also of 
several other powerful monarchs and nobles, at whose castles they 
were uniformly treated with honour and respect, the path to fame lay 
widely open to them. With all these incitements and encouragements, 
however, they stood sluggishly still in their course, and, thinking 
little of literary fame and poetical immortality, clothed their first 
thoughts in their first phrases, and eagerly snatched a temporary re- 
ward and an ephemeral fame. As they had established in all parts 
of Europe a common poetical dialect, if any man of transcendent 
genius had arisen amongst them, it would, in all probability, have 
soon become the general language of Europe. The art, however, 
declined in their too sluggish hands ; and at the end of the thirteenth 
century the Troubadour and the Cantar Provengalez, the sweet 
songs of Provence, were no more ! 
Chivalry, the fairest and most brilliant flower that the “ Glorious 
North” has ever produced, had its rise with the Provengal poetry, 
and was, in a manner, the soul of the new literature; and to the 
Goths, barbarous as they were in every other respect, belongs the 
honourable claim of its production. The Greek and Roman women 
were uniformly excluded from the public eye, and bore little part in 
public estimation ; they were confined to the exercise of the domestic 
virtues, and found their reward in the applause of the family circle. 
Under the Goths, on the contrary, the female character assumed a 
higher and a prouder rank. As they were believed to be endowed 
with divine and prophetic qualities, the women attended the public 
councils, heard the debates of the statesmen, and were called upon to 
deliver their opinions ; sometimes, indeed, they were entrusted with 
the hazardous task of executing their demands, as it was barbarously, 
though shrewdly, remarked that predictions were best fulfilled by 
those who made them. They watched over the interest of the state, 
