opi
Eustorgii, et consilio Gauberti Normanni, hoc opus aggressus est. I
transcribe this from Heeren's Essai sur les Croisades, p. 447; whose
reference is to Labbe, Bibliotheca nova MSS. t. ii. p. 296.

[855] De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. i. p. 155. Sismondi, Litt. du Midi,
t. i. p. 228.

[856] For the Courts of Love, see De Sade, Vie de Petrarque, t. ii. note
19. Le Grand. Fabliaux, t. i. p. 270. Roquefort, Etat de la Poesie
Francoise. p. 94. I have never had patience to look at the older writers
who have treated this tiresome subject.

[857] Histoire Litteraire des Troubadours Paris, 1774.

[858] Two very modern French writers, M. Ginguene (Histoire Litteraire
d'Italie, Paris, 1811) and M. Sismondi (Litterature du Midi de l'Europe,
Paris, 1813), have revived the poetical history of the troubadours. To
them, still more than to Millot and Tiraboschi, I would acknowledge my
obligations for the little I have learned in respect of this forgotten
school of poetry. Notwithstanding, however, the heaviness of Millot's
work, a fault not imputable to himself, though Ritson as I remember,
calls him, in his own polite style, "a blockhead," it will always be
useful to the inquirer into the manners and opinions of the middle ages,
from the numerous illustrations it contains of two general facts; the
extreme dissoluteness of morals among the higher ranks, and the
prevailing animosity of all classes against the clergy.

[859] Hist. Litt. de la France, t. vii. p. 58. Le Boeuf, according to
these Benedictines, has published some poetical fragments of the tenth
century; and they quote part of a charter as old as 940 in Romance. p.
59. But that antiquary, in a memoir printed in the seventeenth volume of
the Academy of Inscriptions, which throws more light on the infancy of
the French language than anything within my knowledge, says only that
the earliest specimens of verse in the royal library are of the eleventh
century _au plus tard_. p. 717. M. de la Rue is said to have found some
poems of the eleventh century in the British Museum. Roquefort, Etat de
la Poesie Francoise, p. 206. Le Boeuf's fragment may be found in this
work, p. 379; it seems nearer to the Provencal than the French dialect.

[860] Gale, XV Script. t. i. p. 88.

[861] Ritson's Dissertation on Romance, p. 66. [The laws of William the
Conqueror, published in Ingulfus, are translated from a Latin original;
the French is of the thirteenth century. It is now doubted wh