become overstocked with these musical wares; as the religious houses had with homilies and saintly legends. The consideration bestowed on the early minstrels "enticed into their ranks idle vagabonds," according to the act of Edward I, who went about the country under color of minstrelsy; men who cared more about the supper than the song; who for base lucre divorced the arts of writing and reciting and stole other men's thunder. Their social degeneracy may be traced in the dictionary. The chanter of the "gests" of kings, _gesta ducum regumque_, dwindled into a gesticulator, a jester: the honored jogelar of Provence, into a mountebank; the jockie, a doggrel ballad-monger. Beggars they are by one consent, And rogues by act of Parliament. What a fall was there from their former high estate and reverence. The earliest minstrels of the Norman courts, doubtless, came from France, where their rank was almost regal. Froissart, describing a Christmas festival given by Comte de Foix in the fourteenth century, says: "There were many Mynstrels as well of hys own as of strangers, and eache of them dyd their devoyres in their facalties. The same day the Earl of Foix gave to Hauralds and Minstrelles the sum of 500 franks, and gave to the Duke of Tonrayns Mynstreles gouns of cloth of gold furred with ermyne valued at 200 franks." The courts of kings swarmed with these merry singers in the Dark Ages, and such sums were expended upon them, that they often drained the royal treasuries. In William's army there was a brave warrior named Taillefer, who was as renowned for minstrelsy as for arms. Like Tyrtaeus and Alemon, in Sparta, he inspired his comrades with courage by his martial strains, and actually led the van in the fight against the English, chanting the praises of Charlemagne, and Roland. Richard Coeur de Lion was a distinguished patron of minstrels as well as "the mirror of chivalry." He was sought out in his prison in Austria by a faithful harper who made himself known by singing a French song under the window of the castle in which the king was confined. Blondel was the harper's name. The French song translated reads thus: "Your beauty, lady fair, None views without delight; But still so cold an air No passion can excite. Yet still I patient see While all are shun'd like me. No nymph my heart can wound If favor she divide, And smiles on all around Unwilling to decide; I'd rather hatred bear, Than love with others share." Edward I had a harper in his train, in his crusade to the Holy Land, who stood by his side in battle. That same king in his conquest of Wales is said to have murdered all the bards that fell into his hands lest they should rouse the nation again to arms. Gray's poem, "The Bard," was written upon that theme. I will quote a few lines: