NATIONAL POETRY. 423 



From this period vulgar poetry was founded, like Latin rhymed poetry, 

 upon the accent and the assonance. It may further he affirmed that this 

 vulgar poetry was sung, and that the jugglers, who repeated verses after a 

 musical mood while playing the violin, had at that time come into existence. 

 It is therefore certain that the first trouveurs and troubadours were contem- 

 porary with the formation of this Romanic language, which was expressed in 

 accented, syllabic, and consonant verse. The trouveur in the North and the 

 troubadour in the South were alike the poets who knew how to find (trobar) 

 that is to say, invent and who clothed their thoughts in literary shape. We 

 do not know of any troubadours before the eleventh century, and the first to 

 open the brilliant era of this new poetry was "William IX., Count of Poitiers, 

 born in 1070, who, at the death of his father, became Duke of Aquitaine and 

 Gascony. Several pieces of his which have been published show that the 

 Romanic language was already in a flourishing state. After this there was a 

 general development of poetry, and it is necessary to subdivide the trou- 

 badours into several schools. The first, and perhaps the most important, is the 

 Limousin school, of which Bertrand de Born, Gaucelm Faydit, and Bernard 

 de Ventadour were the chiefs. To the Gascony school belong Geoff roy Rudel, 

 Arnauld de Marvcilh, and twenty others. The school of Auvergne can claim 

 the sturdy satirist, Pierre Cardinal, and Pons de Capdeuil (Fig. 332). 

 Raymond Vidal is the hero of the Toulouse school, Guillaume Riquier of 

 that of Narbonnc, and Raymond Gaucelm of that of Beziers. Lastly comes 

 the Provencal school, to which belong Raimbaud of Vaqueiras and Folquet 

 of Marseilles, and a hundred other writers scarcely less famous. 



These troubadours were men of lively imagination and ready wit, possessed 

 of abundant humour, which was by turn gay, spiteful, and caustic. Their 

 poetry, which is a dim reflection of the works of the early Roman writers, is 

 essentially southern, being devoted in most cases to the multiform expression 

 of the most refined gallantry ; it abounds in tender reveries and in descrip- 

 tions of beautiful scenery. This poetry was highly appreciated by the society 

 of that age, and every one, from the princes and nobles to the tradesmen and 

 the artisans, held it a high honour to be a poet. We know of more than two 

 hundred troubadours who, during three centuries, wrote with success in every 

 branch of Romanic poetry, and Avho have left behind them an immense 

 collection of charming and polished works. These works, most of which are 

 still unpublished, had reached as far as Italy, inasmuch as we know that they 



