[1] I need scarcely observe, that the following sketch of the lyrical poets of Rome is abridged from the analysis of their works, in Ginguené's Histoire Littéraire, vol. 3. [2] Clodia, the wife of Quintus Metellus Celer. [3] "J'ai oui dire dans mon enfance à Demetrius Chalcondyle, homme très instruit de tout ce qui regarde la Grèce, qui les Prétres avaient eu assez d'influence sur les Empereurs de Constantinople, pour les engager à brûler les ouvrages de plusieurs anciens poëtes Grecs, et en particulier de ceux qui parlaient des amours, &c. * * * Ces prètres, sans doute, montrèrent une malveillance honteuse envers les anciens poëtes; mais ils donnèrent une grande preuve d'intégrité, de probité, et de religion."--ALCYONIUS. This sentiment is put into the mouth of Leo X. at a time when the mania of classical learning was at its height.--See Roscoe, (Leo X.) and Ginguené. CHAPTER III. THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS. Gente, che d'amor givan ragionando.--PETRARCA. The irruptions of the northern nations, among whom our sex was far better appreciated than among the polished Greeks and Romans; the rise of Christianity, and the institution of chivalry, by changing the moral condition of women, gave also a totally different character to the homage addressed to them. It was in the ages called gothic and barbarous,--in that era of high feelings and fierce passions,--of love, war, and wild adventure, that the sex began to take their true station in society. From the midst of ignorance, superstition, and ferocity, sprung up that enthusiasm, that exaggeration of sentiment, that serious, passionate, and imaginative adoration of women, which has since, indeed, degenerated into mere gallantry, but was the very fountain of all that is most elevated and elegant in modern poetry, and most graceful and refined in modern manners. The amatory poetry of Provence had the same source with the national poetry of Spain; both were derived from the Arabians. To them we trace not only the use of rhyme, and the various forms of stanzas, employed by the early lyric poets, but by a strange revolution, it was from the East, where women are now held in seclusion, as mere soulless slaves of the passions and caprices of their masters, that the sentimental devotion paid to our sex in the chivalrous ages was derived.[4] The poetry of the Troubadours kept alive and enhanced the tone of feeling on which it was founded; it was cause and effect re-acting on each other; and though their songs exist only in the collections of the antiquarian, and the very language in which they wrote has passed away, and may be accounted _dead_,--so is not the spirit they left behind: as the founders of a new school of amatory poetry, we are under obligations to their memory, which throw a strong interest around their personal adventures, and the women they celebrated.