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)

ITALY. 53

not withhold the homage of affection. At length,
however, the Troubadour spirit, when expiring in
France, revived in the colder but more classical
rimes of the Petrarchan school: and again, when the
glory of Romance was fading away in its native
climes, the Italian poets adopted, fostered, and ma-
tured it in the most beautiful specimens of their art.

The native Italian poetry seems to have made its
first appearance at the court of Sicily, where the
French and German poets had resorted in great num-
bers under the Norman princes, and afterwards under
the sovereigns of the houses of Swabia and Anjou.
But the number of attempts to adapt the Italian
tongue to the purposes of poetry appears for a long
time to have been very limited. Yet it cannot be
thought that the language was previously too crude
and unfashioned for poetic use. Whatever side we
may take in the disputes as to the very remote anti-
quity claimed for it by some critics, it cannot be
doubted that it had at any rate kept pace with
the other tongues which had arisen from the Latin,
and which were so much sooner consecrated to the
service of the Muses. The truth is, that in the 11th
and 12th centuries, the society and literature of Italy
were very differently characterized from those of
other European countries. While the pride of feudal
aristocracy and the pomp of chivalry were elsewhere
at their height, the commercial states of Italy were