Lo ofes afranqueix la cara Ausades Deu me confona Beneath my grief I fainted not, And hope within me scem'd to live Be pardon ready!-oft one sees A wound inflicted ne'er intended, Than by design are men offended. I hoped in vain-when hope had brought Mosen Jayme Febrer is another Catalonian poet usually assigned to the 13th century; the Vatican preserves much of his unpublished poetry, and a curious poem by him, entitled "The Book of Linages," is analysed in the article before referred to. Both as to Jayme Febrer and Jordi de Sant Jordi, the doubt exists whether they have or have not been usually placed by the historians of Catalonian poetry at too early an age; the main argument turning upon the question of plagiarism above alluded to. Jayme Roig and Ausias March, two Catalan poets of the 15th century, close the brief list of these Troubadours. Of them more is known. Ausias March's works have been more than once printed. He is the favourite of the Spanish Troubadours; and his character is thus traced by one who is fully capable of estimating his worth:-"His verses are harmonious, natural and pleasing, pregnant with interesting truths and moral reflections; they are generally pervaded by that soft spirit of melancholy which is so often the favourite companion of the lyre: Qui no es trist de mos dictats no cur' is the opening line of the first poem; and this feeling runs through all. His poetry is the poetry of truth and wisdom: it has the condensation of proverbs, and the force of philosophy. His subjects are fewlove, death, and duty; and they are treated with a sort of didactic solemnity. One listens to him as to an inspired teacher: his sanctions are brought alike from old mythology, from the Jewish and Christian codes, and from the books of legends; and all are introduced in the tone of one having authority, though for himself he constantly claims the title of a 'Chrestio molt devot.' It may be permitted to us to anachronize so far as to borrow one short extract of this poet's writings (which has been also quoted by Sismondi), in order D to illustrate the state of the language at that pe riod: Si com la mar se plang greument e crida As when the sea groans heavily and cries When two contending winds sweep o'er its breast, Mr. Roscoe's Translat. of Sismondi, vol. i. p. 249. It would perhaps have been unnecessary to have touched upon Castilian poetry, which has very little bearing upon the period and class of composition that come under consideration in this little work, if it were not desirable to notice the hypothesis, supported principally by Father Andrez in his work 'Dell' Origine e de' Progressi d' ogni Letteratura,' and since adopted by MM. Ginguené and Sismondi, -that the Provençal poetry owes its origin to the Spanish Arabs. Nothing is more annoying, than the perpetual efforts of so many writers to hunt out fancied origins for all the products of the imagination of the middle ages, and to pass them from port to port and country to country, like a bale of merchandize or a price current. "Sans doute," M. Schlegel observes, in his 'Observations sur la Langue et la Litérature Provençales,' "dans l'histoire de la civilisation, il faut suivre avec soin les traces des communications qui ont eu lieu entre différens peuples; mais il faut bien se garder de confondre les analogies qui ont leur source dans la nature humaine, avec les ressemblances dérivées de l'imitation. Si vous refusez la puissance créative à l'homme presque dans tous les siècles et dans tous les pays, si vous faites pour ainsi dire la généalogie de toute activité intellectuelle, vous rendez la première invention d'autant plus inconcevable; et vous avez créé une difficulté au lieu d'en résoudre une. Tous les peuples bien doués ont eu le besoin et le goût de la poésie, elle s'est développée partout où les circonstances ont été propices." Nothing, however, will satisfy the majority of these distrusters of the powers of nature, but hunting out the genealogical pedigree of every thought and feeling and in pursuing the inquiry, it has been quite of course to overlook the philosophic maxim of resting content when we discover causes adequate to the production of the existing phenomenon ;— "Ye gods, annihilate both space and time" seems to be no extravagant wish for one who desires to make a theory hold water. Thus Warton embarks his cargo of fiction consigned to the ports of Toulon and Marseilles, conveys it on by land-carriage to Brittany, and leaves it, under the impetus he has given it, to find its way thence into the mountains of Wales, or the court of Strathclyde ;—and all this to escape the shorter process of allowing to native bards the exercise of their own fancies, which were, to all appearance, as competent to create, as those of the supposed exporters of surplus produce in Spain. So, too, the editor of Antar sees the heroes of the roundtable in the Bedouin rover, and tells us "that little more was wanted to compose the romances of the middle ages, than to engraft on the war, love, and courtesy of the Arabs, the splendid and soft luxuries of the other countries of the East, the witchcraft of Africa, the religious fervour of the South of Europe, and the gloomy superstitions of the North." A curious meeting this on the plains of Brittany. Massieu imports the Arabic poetry with Warton's fiction, by sea at Toulon and Marseilles: for he tells us that by the convenience of these ports it passed with the commerce between Spain and France. Father Andrez is less prudent, in so far as he is more |