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285 
AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF FRENCH 
LITERATURE. 
11L—ON THE JONGLEURS, AND ON THE COMPOSITIONS 
OF THE TROUBADOURS. 
“ Quand les tables otées furent 
Cil jugleour in pres esturent 
S’ont viols et harpes prises 
Chansons, sons, vers et reprises 
Et de gestes chanté nos ont.” 
Roman du Tournayement de P Antichrist. 
Iw comparing a number of poems by various Troubadours, we can- 
not avoid being struck with their great similarity ; and we immedi- 
ately observe that one and the same poetical character pervades the 
whole series: we might imagine them to be the productions of the 
same poet, executed at different periods and in various moods. There 
are, it is true, some few striking exceptions : thus, for instance, the 
glowing and unaffected ardour of Bertrand de Born is easily distin- 
guishable from the frigid and formal affectation of Arnaud Daniel, 
and this, again, cannot be confounded with the far-fetched witticisms 
ofa Marcabrun. Yet the same spirit pervades their whole litera- 
ture; we recognize in all their works the same similes, the same meta- 
phors, and the same gallantry. History has recorded no one Trou- 
badour who far outstripped his fellows, no poet who effected any de- 
cided improvement in the language ; on the contrary, the expressions 
used by William IX, Duke of Poictiers, the first of the Troubadours, 
are again observable in the productions of Giraud Riquier, who was 
the last. All the Provencals are, in fact, equally entitled to fame ; 
there were not wanting among them minds which bore the germ of a 
more elevated originality, which might, under other circumstances, 
have been fully developed ; at that period, however, the Trouba- 
dours had established a certain mode of thinking and certain forms 
of poetry, to depart from either of which was an unpardonable offence 
—an offence the perpetration of which was reserved for a Brunetti 
Lattini, and in a still greater degree for his pupils, a Dante, a Boe- 
cace, and a Petrarch, who, throwing aside, as does the liberated cap- 
