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)

72 FRANCE.

guished of the Troubadour poets, Bernard de Venta-
dour, sighed at the feet of this princess when she left
the courts of the South to lead the intrigues of the
North. It affords a curious commentary on the cha-
racter in which our history exhibits this princess, to
hear her addressed in such lines as these, which the
poet seems to have penned to her when she had left
France for England ;

Quart la doss' aura venta
Deves vostre pais,
M'es veiaire qu'ieu sunt a
Odor de paradis,
Per amor de'la genta
Ves cui ieu sui aclis,
En cui ai mes m' ententa,
E mon coratge assis.

Attempts have been made to carry the date of
French lyric poetry much higher: and in the first
place it is observed, that Ives de Chartres complains
to Urban II. at the close of the eleventh century, of
the popular poetic squibs which his opponent at Or-
leans had written against him :—" Unam cantilenam
de multis metrice et musice de eo compositam, ex
persona concuborum suorum vobis misi, quam per
urbes nostras in compitis et plateis similes illi ado-
lescentes cantitant." Again, Abelard was also a
writer of love songs in praise of his Eloisa. Thus
she says,—" Pleraque amatorio metro vel rhythmo
composita reliquisti carmina; qua pro nimia suavi-