from any one, or at least from any single master or group of masters. The Provencal poets deify passion, and concentrate themselves wholly upon it; but it is seldom, indeed, that we find the "metaphysical" touch in the Provencals proper. And it is this--this blending of love and religion, of scholasticism and _minnedienst_ (to borrow a word wanted in other languages than that in which it exists)--that is attributed by the partisans of the East to Arabian influence, or at least to Arabian contact. Some stress has been laid on the testimony of Ibn Zobeir about the end of the twelfth century, and consequently not long before even the latest date assigned to Ciullo, that Alcamo itself was entirely Mussulman in belief. [Footnote 191: The text with comment, stanza by stanza, is to be found in the book cited above.] [Sidenote: _Love-lyric in different European countries._] On these points it is not possible to decide: the point on which to lay the finger for our present purpose is that the contribution of Italy at this time was, on the one hand, the further refinement of the Provencal attention to form, and the production of one capital instrument of European poetry--the sonnet; on the other, the conveyance, by means of this instrument and others, of a further, and in one way almost final, variation of the poetic expression of love. It is of the first importance to note the characteristics, in different nations at nearly the same time, of this rise of lyrical love-poetry. We find it in Northern and Southern France, probably at about the same time; in Germany and Italy somewhat later, and almost certainly in a state of pupilship to the French. All, in different ways, display a curious and delightful metrical variety, as if the poet were trying to express the eternal novelty, combined with the eternal oneness, of passion by variations of metrical form. In each language these variations reflect national peculiarities--in Northern French and German irregular bursts with a multiplicity of inarticulate refrain, in Provencal and Italian a statelier and more graceful but somewhat more monotonous arrangement and proportion. And the differences of spirit are equally noticeable, though one must, as always, be careful against generalising too rashly as to their identity with supposed national characteristics. The innumerable love-poems of the _trouveres_, pathetic sometimes, and sometimes impassioned, are yet, as a rule, cheerful, not very deep, verging not seldom on pure comedy. The so-called monotonous enthusiasm of the troubadour, his stock-images, his musical form, sublime to a certain extent the sensual side of love, but confine themselves to that side merely, as a rule, or leave it only to indulge in the purely fantastic.