hear his rival singing as
he rehearsed his own composition. Arnaut was able to learn his rival's
poem by heart, and when the time of trial came he asked to be allowed to
sing first, and performed his opponent's song, to the wrath of the
latter, who protested vigorously. Arnaut acknowledged the trick, to the
great amusement of the king.

Preciosity and artificiality reach their height in Arnaut's poems, which
are, for that reason, excessively difficult. Enigmatic constructions,
word-plays, words used in forced senses, continual alliteration and
difficult rimes produced elaborate form and great obscurity of meaning.
The following stanza may serve as an example--

L'aur' amara fa.ls bruels brancutz
clarzir que.l dons espeys' ab fuelhs,
e.ls letz becxs dels auzels ramencx
te balbs e mutz pars e non pars.
per qu'ieu m'esfortz de far e dir plazers
A manhs? per ley qui m'a virat has d'aut,
don tern morir si.ls afans no.m asoma.

"The bitter breeze makes light the bosky boughs which the gentle breeze [57]
makes thick with leaves, and the joyous beaks of the birds in the
branches it keeps silent and dumb, paired and not paired. Wherefore do I
strive to say and do what is pleasing to many? For her, who has cast me
down from on high, for which I fear to die, if she does not end the
sorrow for me."

The answers to the seventeen rime-words which occur in this stanza do
not appear till the following stanza, the same rimes being kept
throughout the six stanzas of the poem. To rest the listener's ear,
while he waited for the answering rimes, Arnaut used light assonances
which almost amount to rime in some cases. The Monk of Montaudon in his
satirical _sirventes_ says of Arnaut: "He has sung nothing all his life,
except a few foolish verses which no one understands"; and we may
reasonably suppose that Arnaut's poetry was as obscure to many of his
contemporaries as it is to us.

Dante placed Bertran de Born in hell, as a sower of strife between
father and son, and there is no need to describe his picture of the
troubadour--

"Who held the severed member lanternwise
And said, Ah me!" (_Inf._ xxviii. 119-142.)

The genius of Dante, and the poetical fame of Bertran himself, have
given him a more important position in history than is, perhaps, [58]
entirely his due. Jaufre, the prior of Vigeois, an abbey of
Saint-Martial of Limoges, is the only chronicler during the reigns of
Henry II. and Richard Coe