considered, though
by no means strictly, as divided by the Loire. These were called the
Langue d'Oil and the Langue d'Oc; or in more modern terms, the French
and Provencal dialects. In the latter of these I know of nothing which
can even by name be traced beyond the year 1100. About that time Gregory
de Bechada, a gentleman of Limousin, recorded the memorable events of
the first crusade, then recent, in a metrical history of great
length.[854] This poem has altogether perished; which, considering the
popularity of its subject, as M. Sismondi justly remarks, would probably
not have been the case if it had possessed any merit. But very soon
afterwards a multitude of poets, like a swarm of summer insects,
appeared in the southern provinces of France. These were the celebrated
Troubadours, whose fame depends far less on their positive excellence
than on the darkness of preceding ages, on the temporary sensation they
excited, and their permanent influence on the state of European poetry.
From William count of Poitou, the earliest troubadour on record, who
died in 1126, to their extinction, about the end of the next century,
there were probably several hundred of these versifiers in the language
of Provence, though not always natives of France. Millot has published
the lives of one hundred and forty-two, besides the names of many more
whose history is unknown; and a still greater number, it cannot be
doubted, are unknown by name. Among those poets are reckoned a king of
England (Richard I.), two of Aragon, one of Sicily, a dauphin of
Auvergne, a count of Foix, a prince of Orange, many noblemen and several
ladies. One can hardly pretend to account for this sudden and transitory
love of verse; but it is manifestly one symptom of the rapid impulse
which the human mind received in the twelfth century, and
contemporaneous with the severer studies that began to flourish in the
universities. It was encouraged by the prosperity of Languedoc and
Provence, undisturbed, comparatively with other countries, by internal
warfare, and disposed by the temper of their inhabitants to feel with
voluptuous sensibility the charm of music and amorous poetry. But the
tremendous storm that fell upon Languedoc in the crusade against the
Albigeois shook off the flowers of Provencal verse; and the final
extinction of the fief of Toulouse, with the removal of the counts of
Provence to Naples, deprived the troubadours of their most eminent
patrons. An atte