of his mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom; and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the Countess for immaculate virtue,* which Adhèmar would probably have defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had dared to defame her.

The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adhemar heard a false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his state, set out, accompanied by her mother, and a long train of knights and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity; but when she appeared at his bed-side and drew the curtain, it was already too late: Adhemar expired in her arms. The Countess took the veil in the convent of St. Honoré, and died the same year of grief, says the chronicle;-and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the Court of Love, held at Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and. in which Estifanie de Baux presided.

These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced into the intercourse between the sexes, had a

* Agnes de Navarre Comtesse de Foix, was beloved by Guillaume de Machaut, a French poet; he became jealous, and she sent her own confessor to him to complain of the injustice of his supicions, and to swear that she was still faithful to him. She required, also, of her lover, to write and to publish in verse the history of their love; and she preserved, at the same time, in the eyes of her husbann and of the world, the character of a virtuous Princess.-See Foscolo-Essays on Petrarch.

tendency to soften the manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and gallant Courts of Love, the Provençal Troubadours, their lays, which for two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had spread music, love, and poetry through the land; -their language, which had been the chosen dialect of gallantry, in every court in Europe,—were at once swept from the earth.

The glory of the Provençal literature began when Provence was raised to an independent Fief, under Count Berenger I. about the year 1100; it lasted two entire centuries, and ended when that fine and fertile country became the scene of the horrible crusade against the Albigenses; when the Inquisition sent forth its exterminating fiends to scatter horror and devastation through the land, and the wars and rapacity of Charles of Anjou, its new possessor, almost depopulated the country. The language which had once celebrated deeds of love and heroism, now sang only of desolation and despair. The Troubadours, in a strain worthy of their gentle and noble calling, generally advocated the part of the Albigenses, and the oppressed of whatever faith; and in many provinces, in Lombardy especially, their language was interdicted, lest it might introduce heretical or rebellious principles; gradually it fell into disuse, and at length into total oblivion. The Troubadours, no longer welcomed in castle or in hall, where

once

They poured to lords and ladies gay,
The unpremeditated lay,

were degraded to wandering minstrels and itinerant jugglers. An attempt was made, about a century later, (1324) by the institution of the Floral Games at Thoulouse, to keep alive this high strain of poetical gallantry. They were formerly celebrated with great splendour, and a shadow of this institution is, I believe, still kept up, but it has degenerated into a mere school of affectation. The original race of the Troubadours was extinct long before Clemence d'Isaure and her golden violet were thought of. I cannot quit the subject of the Troubadours without

one or two concluding observations. To these rude bards we owe some new notions of poetical justice, which never seem to have occurred to Horace or Longinus, and are certainly more magnanimous, as well as more true to moral feeling, than those which prevailed among the polished Greeks and Romans. For instance, the generous Hector and the constant Troilus are invariably exalted above the subtle Ulysses and the savage Achilles. Theseus, Jason, and Æneas, instead of being represented as classical heroes and pious favourites of the gods, are denounced as recreant knights and false traitors to love and beauty. In the estimation of these chivalrous bards, a woman's tears outweighed the exploits of demi-gods; all the glory of Theseus is forgotten in sympathy for Ariadne; and Eneas, in the old ballads and romances, is not, after all his perfidy, dismissed to happiness and victory, but is plagued by the fiends, haunted by poor Dido's "grimly ghost," and, finally, doomed to perish miserably.* Nor does Jason fare better at their hands; in all the old poets he is consigned to just execration. In Dante, we have a magnificent and a terrible picture of him, doomed to one of the lowest circles of hell, amid a herd of vile seducers, who betrayed the trusting faith, or bartered the charms of women. Demons scourge him up and down, without mercy or respite, in vengeance for the wrongs of Hypsipyle and Medea.

And Chaucer in relating the same story, begins with a burst of generous indignation:

Thou root of false lovers, Duke Jason,
Thou slayer, devourer, and confusion
Of gentil women, gentil creatures!

The story of this double perfidy is told and commented on in the same chivalrous feeling; and the old poet concludes with characteristic tenderness and simplicity

This was the mede of loving, and guerdon
That Medea received of Duke Jason,
Right for her truth and for her kindnesse,
That loved him better than herself I guesse!
And lefte her father and her heritage;
And of Jason this is the vassalage

That in his dayes were never none y found,
So false a lover going on the ground,

It is in the same beautiful spirit of reverence to the best virtues of our sex, that Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who sacrificed her life to prolong that of her husband, is honoured above all other heroines of classical story. She has even been elevated into a kind of presiding divinity,-a second Venus, with nobler attributes, and in her new existence is feigned to be the consort and companion of Love himself.

Another peculiarity of the poetry of the middle ages, was the worship paid to the daisy, (la Marguerite) as symbolical of all that is lovely in women. Why so lowly a flower should take precedence of the queenly lily and the sumptuous rose, is not very clear; but it seems to have originated with one of the old Provençal poets, whose mistress bore the name of Marguerite; and afterwards it became a fashion and a kind of poetical mythology.†

Thus in the Flower and the Leafe" of Chaucer, the ladies and knights of the flower approach singing a chorus in honour of the Daisy, of which the burden is "si douce est la Marguerite."

Root, i. e. example or beginner.

+ See the notes to Chaucer, the works of Froissart, and Mémoirs sur les Troubadours.

CHAPTER V.

GUIDO CAVALCANTI AND MANDETTA,

CINO DA PISTOJA AND SELVAGGIA.

AMATORY poetry was transmitted from the Provençals to the Italians and Sicilians, among whom the language of the Troubadours had long been cultivated, and their songs imitated, but in style yet more affected and recherché. Few of the Italian poets who preceded Dante, are interesting even in a mere literary point of view of these, only one or two have shed a reflected splendour round the object of their adoration. Guido Cavalcanti, the Florentine, was the early and favourite friend of Dante: being engaged in the factions of his native city, he was forced on some emergency to quit it; and to escape the vengeance of the prevailing party, he undertook a pilgrimage to Sant Jago. Passing through Tolosa, he fell in love with a beautiful Spanish girl, whom he has celebrated under the name of Mandetta:

In un boschetto trovai pastorella

Più che la stella bella al mio parere,
Capegli avea biondetti e ricciutelli.

Some of his songs and ballads have considerable grace and nature, but they were considered by himself as mere trifles. His grand work on which his fame long rested is, a "Canzone sopra l'Amore," in which the subject is so profoundly and so philosophically treated, that seven voluminous commentaries in Latin and Italian have not yet enabled the world to understand it.

The following Sonnet is deservedly celebrated for the consummate beauty of the picture it presents, and will give a fair idea of the platonic extravagance of the time.