("It is no wonder if I sing better than any other singer, for my heart draws nearer to love and I am better made for love's command.") The troubadour _amor_, especially in its Italian development, eventually attained the moral power of the _minne_; but in its early stages, it was a personal and selfish influence. The stanza form and rime distribution of the minnesinger poems continually betray Provençal influence: the principle of tripartition is constantly followed and the arrangement of rimes is often a repetition of that adopted in troubadour stanzas. Friedrich von Hausen, the Count Rudolf von Fenis, Heinrich von Morungen and others sometimes translate almost literally from troubadour poetry, though these imitations do not justify the lines of Uhland. In den Thälern der Provence ist der Minnesang entsprossen, Kind des Frühlings und der Minne, holder, inniger Genossen. Northern France, the home of epic poetry, also possessed an indigenous lyric poetry, including spring and dance songs, pastorals, romances, and "chansons de toile." Provençal influence here was inevitable. It is apparent in the form and content of poems, in the attempt to remodel [130] Provençal poems by altering the words to French forms, and by the fact that Provençal poems are found in MS. collections of French lyrics. Provençal poetry first became known in Northern France from the East, by means of the crusaders and not, as might be expected, by intercommunication in the centre of the country. The centre of Provençal influence in Northern France seems to have been the court of Eleanor of Poitiers the wife of Henry II. of England and the court of her daughter, Marie of Champagne. Here knights and ladies attempted to form a legal code governing love affairs, of which a Latin edition exists in the _De arte honeste amandi_ of André le Chapelain, written at the outset of the thirteenth century. Well-known troubadours such as Bertran de Born and Bernart de Ventadour visited Eleanor's court and the theory of courtly love found its way into epic poetry in the hands of Chrétien de Troyes.