Taylor, Edgar [Hrsg.]; Austin, Sarah [Hrsg.]: Lays of the minnesingers or German troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Illustr. by specimens of the contemporary lyric poetry of Provence and other parts of Europe ; With histor. and crit. notes, and engravings from the ms. of the minnesingers in the king's library at Paris, and from other sources (London, 1825)

SECTION III.

Italy.—Comparatively late application of its language to poetic

purposes.—Use of other tongues.—Early Italian poets___

Sicilian school.—Tuscan school.—Character of early Italian

poetry.__Petrarch. Northern Fkance.—Formation of the

Northern Romance.—Intercourse between North and South
France.—First attempts at poetry in the former.—Patronage
of the Anglo-Norman court.—Lais and Fabliaux.—Lyric

• poetry.—Pastorals___Comparative merits of the Northern and

Southern tongues.

Considering the perfection in which the earliest
known specimens exhibit the language of Italy,—the
delight which it is clear its inhabitants felt in the
poetry and romances of the North and South French,
—and the free intercourse with other nations which
existed during their connexion with the Norman
princes of Sicily and with the German Empire,

Sotto 1' impcrio del buon Barbarossa

and his successors,—it appears strange that Italian li-
terature should have been so far behind that of almost
every other country;—that its earliest poets should
have preferred foreign tongues, without making any
attempt to cultivate their own, though in many re-
spects superior;—and yet that, after so much torpor,
it should at length break forth all at once in such