between composing and executing, had vaguely lingered. At any rate it is in Provence, in the eleventh century, that the distinction between _trobaire_ and _joglar_ makes its appearance. It never became a very complete one. The _trobaire_ was generally, not always, of gentle or burgess birth; sometimes actually a king or noble. In the latter case he contented himself with writing his songs, and let the _joglars_ spread them abroad. But the bulk of the _trobaires_ lived by their art. They wandered from castle to castle, alone with a _vielle_, or with _joglars_ in their train, and although they mingled with their hosts on fairly equal terms, they did not disdain to take their rewards of horse or mantle or jewel, just like any common performer. Moreover, they confined themselves to lyric poetry, leaving the writing of epic, so far as epic was abroad in Provence, to the _joglars_[257]. From Provence, the _trobaire_ spread to other countries, reappearing in the north of France and England as the _trouvère_. We seem to trace an early _trouvère_ in Lucas de Barre in the time of Henry I. But it is Eleanor of Poitiers, daughter of the _trobaire_ count William of Poitiers, and mother of the _trouvère_ Richard Cœur de Lion, who appears as the chief intermediary between north and south. The intrusion of the _trouvère_ was the first step in the degradation of minstrelsy. Amongst the Anglo-Saxons, even apart from the _cantilenae_ of the folk, the professional singer had no monopoly of song. Hrothgar and Alfred harped with their _scôpas_. But if there had been a similar tendency amongst the continental Teutons who merged in the French and Norman-French, it had been checked by the complete absorption of all literary energies, outside the minstrel class, in neo-Latin. It was not until the twelfth century, and as has been said, under Provençal influence, that secular-minded clerks, and exceptionally educated nobles, merchants, or officials, began to devote themselves to the vernacular, and by so doing to develop the _trouvère_ type. The _trouvère_ had the advantage of the minstrel in learning and independence, if not in leisure; and though the latter long held his own by the side of his rival, he was fated in the end to give way, and to content himself with the humbler task of spreading abroad what the _trouvère_ wrote[258]. By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, the conquest of literature by the _bourgeoisie_ was complete. The interest had shifted from the minstrel on the hall floor to the burgher or clerk in the _puy_; the prize of a successful poem was no longer a royal mantle, but a laureate crown or the golden violet of the _jeux floraux_; and its destiny less to be recited at the banquet, than read in the bower. In England the completion of the process perhaps came a little later, and was coincident with the triumph of English, the tongue of the _bourgeois_, over French, the tongue of the noble.