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)

FRANCE. 71

oculus, spiritus ferox, promptas ad arma dextrse, cae-
terum ad spargendum prodigse, ad congregandum
ignavae. His, quantum anati gallina, Provinciales
moribus, animis, cultu, victu adversantur ; parce vi-
vendo, sollicite perscrutando, laboriferi: sed ne verum
taceam, minus bellicosi." To return the compliment,
William of Poitiers, the first Troubadour, boasts in
one of his songs that he had never let a Frenchman
or Norman appear at his court:—

Qu' anc non ac Norman ni Frances
Dins raon ostau.

It is very uncertain when the first efforts were
made to raise the Northern French to the dignity of
a poetic language ; but we have every reason to be-
lieve that it was, at any rate, confined to devotional
pieces, riming legends, and perhaps chronicles, till
the sera of Louis VII. of France and Henry II. of En-
gland, (or rather more decisively the reign of Philip
Augustus,) commencing with die latter half of the
12th century. And on this is built the commonly
received opinion, that the marriage of Eleanor of
Guienne, first with a French and afterwards with an
English monarch, brought into notice the Provencal
poets, of whom she was a zealous patron, and gave a
stimulus to the application of the language of the
North, then characterized by its simplicity and na-
ivete, to similar purposes. One of the most distin-