the husband of one of the daughters of the great Provençal house of Berengar), the count de la Marche, Gaces Brulez (the friend of Thibaud), Hughes de Bercy, Raoul de Soissons, and many others; none of whom, as Le Grand d'Aussy observes with some astonishment, ever attempted fabliaux, which he assumes must naturally have pleased them much better. He admits, however, that the language of these chansonniers, "sans être plus pure ni plus élégante que celle des autres auteurs leurs contemporains, est au moins plus coulante et plus douce." The poet of this class who is most known, though perhaps he least deserves it, is Thibaud count of Champagne and king of Navarre, the "buon re Tebaldo" of Dante (INF. xxii.), whose chansons the learned Ravallière has edited with so much sound erudition. Thibaud was born of a family that truly belongs to the literary history of the age. He was the grandson of Marie de France, that countess of Champagne who was so zealous a patron of the Provençal poets, and whose decisions were ever held to be law in the courts of love; and Marie herself was the daughter of Eleanor, whom we have seen to be the object of the worship of Bernard de Ventadour. Bossuet has very summarily dismissed this riming monarch by describing him as one who made verses which he was fool enough to publish. The Chroniclers of St. Denis, on the contrary, say that he "fit les plus belles chansons et les plus delitables et melodieuses qui furent oncques oyées." The reader must decide this for himself; but certainly the "buon re" is not gifted with the happiest turn of Troubadour feeling. He has none of the buoyant gallant spirit of his predecessors and of many of his cotemporaries; he aims at a more imposing march,—at a more philosophical turn of thought, without much poetic genius to elevate, or either feeling or fancy to enliven, what we must often pronounce a very dull subject. He may be accurately classed with the early Italian son netteers. In his own estimation of his mental powers (chanson 17), he dismisses as trifling the poets whose songs testified their joy in the smiles of their mistresses, by dressing up nature in her gayest robes, and revelling in her sweets; such ornaments are beneath his notice, for he tells us, Feuille ne flors ne vaut riens en chantant, Geoffroi Rudel would have taught him that such topics were not always sought as resources to cover poverty of invention, but that the poet might see in the book of nature types of that beauty which he celebrated, and exhortations to the gaiety of heart which was most likely to attract its smiles; Pro, ai del chan essenhadors Voutas d'auzelhs,-e lays e critz, In those of Thibaud's chansons which relate to the Crusades, there is a solemnity of feeling, which interests, because it appears to come from the heart; but in general his style is very quaint, dull and meagre. Perhaps one of his prettiest thoughts opens his 15th chanson, in which he alludes to the tradition that the nightingale sometimes so strains his throat in singing, as to fall dead at the foot of the tree on which he sits: Li rossignols chante tant Ke mors chiet de l'arbre jus; Among the compositions of the earliest of the Norman French poets, there are a great many pastorals, with which the genius of the language very well accorded. They are not very easy to translate;perhaps they are scarcely worth the trouble;-and one of them may therefore be quoted more properly here, as published by Roquefort from the MS. col lection of French poets before 1300, in the king's library. A la fontenelle Qui sort seur l'araine Trouvai pastorelle Qui n'iert pas vilaine, Où ele se dementoit d'amors; Dame de grant biauté, Je n'ose por mon pere; Merci, merci, douce Marote, E li chevalier Qui l'a escoutée, Mist pié fors destrier; Merci, merci, douce Marote, Dites moy Marote Ne faudrois vos mie; Merci, merci, douce Marote, Our selections from the Norman French poets, some of which have never before been in print, will be found to be very scanty; and it is difficult to have it otherwise, considering the little pains which have hitherto been taken, even in France, with this branch of its early literature. A great deal might be done in this department, from the stores of the King's Library at Paris: but even in what will be found hereafter, and in the volumes which have just appeared, entitled "Les Poètes François depuis le XII Siècle jusqu'à Malherbe; Paris, 1824," (miserably deficient as those volumes are, in the exhibition of hitherto unpublished matter,) it will be plain that Boileau gave rather a precipitate judgement when he said— Villon* fut le premier, dans ces siècles grossiers Enfin Malherbe vint; et le premier en France A comparison of the Northern and Southern languages of France leads to the conclusion, that even in its best days the former was greatly the inferior in melody and power, though not perhaps in a peculiar naïveté and sweetness. Of these qualities, its *Of the 15th century. G |
