The Royal Library at Munich contains a very important manuscript of this goliardic Latin poetry, written in the thirteenth century. It belonged originally to one of the great Benedictine abbeys in Bavaria, where it appears to have been very carefully preserved, but still with an apparent consciousness that it was not exactly a book for a religious brotherhood, which led the monks to omit it in the catalogue of their library, no doubt as a book the possession of which was not to be proclaimed publicly. When written, it was evidently intended to be a careful selection of the poetry of this class then current. One part of it consists of poetry of a more serious character, such as hymns, moral poems, and especially satirical pieces. In this class there are more than one piece which are also found in the manuscripts written in England. A very large portion of the collection consists of love songs, which, although evidently treasured by the Benedictine monks, are sometimes licentious in character. A third class consists of drinking and gambling songs (_potatoria et lusoria_). The general character of this poetry is more playful, more ingenious and intricate in its metrical structure, in fact, more lyric than that of the poetry we have been describing; yet it came, in all probability, from the same class of poets--the clerical jougleurs. The touches of sentiment, the descriptions of female beauty, the admiration of nature, are sometimes expressed with remarkable grace. Thus, the green wood sweetly enlivened by the joyous voices of its feathered inhabitants, the shade of its branches, the thorns covered with flowers, which, says the poet, are emblematical of love, which pricks like a thorn and then soothes like a flower, are tastefully described in the following lines:-- _Cantu nemus avium Lascivia canentium Suave delinitur, Fronde redimitur, Vernant spinæ floribus Micantibus, Venerem signantibus Quia spina pungit, flos blanditur._ And the following scrap of the description of a beautiful damsel shows no small command of language and versification-- _Allicit dulcibus Verbis et osculis, Labellulis Castigate tumentibus, Roseo nectareus Odor infusus ori; Pariter eburneus Sedat ordo dentium Par niveo candori._ The whole contents of this manuscript were printed in 1847, in an octavo volume, issued by the Literary Society at Stuttgard.[53] I had already printed some examples of such amatory Latin lyric poetry in 1838, in a volume of "Early Mysteries and Latin Poems;"[54] but this poetry does not belong properly to the subject of the present volume, and I pass on from it.