474 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF FRENCH LITERATURE. 
luptuous strains of the Troubadours, there is a vehemence and an 
ardour peculiarly their own, which may well defy all attempts at 
imitation or translation. They are the natural and glowing expres- 
sions of the early genius of an imaginative people: too nervous, too 
simple, and too striking, ever to be duly appreciated by after ages, 
and too exclusively adapted to music to be criticised from the cold 
and spiritless relics which, having survived the lapse of ages, are 
now to be found only in the collections of the curious. 
When peace or a truce brought with it a brief repose, the public 
lists, the crowded tournament, and the applauding fair, all conspired 
to keep the mind in the same undeviating direction to its favourite 
object, chivalry. Beneath the azure sky of Provence it was, as we 
have before seen, that this institution first presented that brilliant 
pageantry and those varied forms, which, glimmering through the 
mists of ages, still charm the imagination of the poet and command 
the attention of the historian. The same congenial soil gave birth, 
also, to one of the most singular of chivalric institutions, the Courts 
of Love. The Troubadours, in the discussion of the numerous ab- 
struse questions in which they so much delighted, might naturally 
be supposed to desire to lay their contentions before some tribunal, to 
whose final decree both parties might unhesitatingly yield. To 
supply this want were founded the Courts of Love, in which the 
fair sex presided, and gravely debated the merits of the arguments 
which had been pleaded by the contending poets. The fair rulers 
of these courts did not, however, restrict themselves to the discus- 
sion of such abstruse and problematical questions, but, under the 
pretence of a regard for social improvement, took cognizance of 
every thing relating to love. Before these tribunals husbands com- 
plained of the infidelity of their wives, lovers appealed against the 
harshness of their mistresses, and ladies depicted the neglect of their 
lovers, requesting that they might formally be permitted to renounce 
their devotion ; everything, in short, relating to the tender passion, 
was discussed with a scholastic and punctilious subtilty that could 
hardly have been surpassed by the sophistry which distinguished the 
scholars of the age. These tribunals, which were generally con- 
voked and presided over by some lady distinguished by rank or 
beauty, consisted of an unlimited number of married ladies, the 
number varying from ten to forty: the Countess of Champagne, 
however, presided over one of sixty ladies. In addition, however, 
to these lady judges, it appears that knights also were admitted, each 
of whom had his peculiar duty ; and from the great number and 
quality of these officers it would appear that they were founded 
