extreme refinement of the sentiment, which is quite à la Petrarque: he gives it the fantastic title of a demi chanson, for a very fantastical reason: it is thus translated in Millot, (vol. i. p. 390.)

Another love I'll never have,

Save only she who is afar,
For fairer one I never knew

In places near, nor yet afar."

"On veut savoir pourquoi je fais une demi chanson? c'est parceque je n'ai qu'un demi sujet de chanter. Il n'y a d'amour que de ma part; la dame que j'aime ne veut pas m'aimer! mais au défaut des oui qu'elle me refuse, je prendrai les non qu'elle me prodigue:-espérer auprès d'elle vaut mieux que jouir avec tout autre !"

This is exactly the sentiment of Petrarch:

Pur mi consola, che morir per lei

Meglio è che gioir d'altra

But it is one of those thoughts which spring in the heart, and might often be repeated without once being borrowed.

CHAPTER IV.

THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS.

CONTINUED.

IN striking contrast to the tender and gentle Rudel, we have the ferocious Bertrand de Born:

he, too, was one

dours of his time.

of the most celebrated TroubaAs a petty feudal sovereign, he was, partly by the events of the age, more by his own fierce and headlong passions, plunged in continual wars. Nature, however, had made him a poet of the first order. In these days he would have been another Lord Byron; but he lived in a terrible and convulsed state of society, and it was only in the intervals snatched from his usual pursuits, that is, from burning the castles, and ravaging the lands of his neighbours, and stirring up rebellion, discord, and bloodshed all around him,— that he composed a vast number of lays, serventes, and chansons; some breathing the most martial, and even merciless spirit; others devoted to the praise and honor of his love, or rather loves, as full of submissive tenderness and chivalrous gallantry.

He first celebrated Elinor Plantagenet, the sister of his friend and brother in arms and song, Richard Cœur de Lion; and we are expressly told that Richard was proud of the poetical homage rendered to the charms of his sister by this knightly Troubadour, and that the Princess was far from being insensible to his admiration. Only one of the many songs addressed to Elinor has been preserved; from which we gather, that it was composed by Bertrand in the field, at a time when his army was threatened with famine, and the poet himself was suffering from the pangs of hunger. Elinor married the Duke of Saxony, and Bertrand chose for his next love the beautiful Maenz de

Montagnac, daughter of the Viscount of Turenne and wife of Talleyrand de Perigord. The lady accepted his service, and acknowledged him as her Knight; but evil tongues having attempted to sow dissension between the lovers, Bertrand addressed to her a song, in which he defends himself from the imputation of inconstancy, in a style altogether characteristic and original. The warrior poet, borrowing from the objects of his daily cares, ambition and pleasure, phrases to illustrate and enhance the expression of his love, wishes "that he may lose his favorite hawk in her first flight; that a falcon may stoop and bear her off, as she sits upon his wrist, and tear her in his sight, if the sound of his lady's voice be not dearer to him than all the gifts of love from another."- "That he may stumble with his shield about his neck; that his helmet may gall his brow; that his bridle may be too long, his stirrups too short; that he may be forced to ride a hard-trotting horse, and find his groom drunk when he arrives at his gate, if there be a word of truth in the accusations of his enemies : -that he may not have a denier to stake at the gaming-table, and that the dice may never more be favorable to him, if ever he had swerved from his faith:- -that he may look on like a dastard, and see his lady wooed and won by another;-that the winds may fail him at sea;-that in the battle he may be the first to fly, if he who has slandered him does not lie in his throat," &c., and so on through seven or eight stanzas.

Bertrand de Born exercised in his time a fatal influence on the counsels and politics of England. A close and ardent friendship existed between him and young Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of our Henry the Second; and the family dissensions which distracted the English Court, and the unnatural rebellion of Henry and Richard against their father, were his work. It happened some time after the death of Prince Henry, that the King of England besieged Bertrand de Born in one of his castles the resistance was long and obstinate, but at length the warlike Troubadour was taken prisoner and brought before the King, so justly incensed against him, and from whom he had certainly no mercy to expect. The heart of Henry was still bleeding with the wounds inflicted by his ungrateful children, and he saw before him, and in his power, the primary cause of their misdeeds and his own bitter sufferings. Bertrand was on the point of being led out to death, when by a single word he reminded the King of his lost son, and the tender friendship which had existed between them.* The chord was struck which never ceased to vibrate in the parental heart of Henry; bursting into tears, he turned aside, and commanded Bertrand and his followers to be immediately set at liberty; he even restored to Bertrand his castle and his lands, “in the name of his dead son.” It is such traits as these, occurring at every page, which

* Le Roi lui demande, "S'il a perdu raison?" il lui répond, "Helas, oui! c'est depuis lamore du Prince Henri, votre fils!"

lend to the chronicles of this stormy period an interest overpowering the horror they would otherwise excite for then all the best, as well as the worst of human passions were called into play. In this tempestuous commingling of all the jarring elements of society, we have those strange approximations of the most opposite sentiments,-implacable revenge and sublime forgiveness;-gross licentiousness and delicate tenderness;-barbarism and refinement ;—treachery and fidelity-which remind one of that heterogeneous mass tossed up by a stormy ocean; heaps of pearls, unvalued gems, wedges of gold, mingled with dead men's bones, and all the slimy, loathsome, and monotonous production of the deep, which during a calm remain together concealed and unknown in its unfathomed abysses.

To return from this long similitude of Bertrand de Born: he concluded his stormy career in a manner very characteristic of the times; for he turned monk, and died in the odor of sanctity. But neither his late devotion, nor his warlike heroism, nor his poetic fame, could rescue him from the severe justice of Dante, who has visited his crimes and his violence with so terrible a judgment, that we forget, while we thrill with horror, that the crimes were real, the penance only imaginary. Dante, in one of the circles of the Inferno, meets Bertrand de Born carrying his severed head, lantern wise, in his hand;-the phantom lifts it up by the hair, and the ghastly lips unclose to confess the