In no other language of Western Europe has the artistic development of poetical forms ever reached so high a degree of perfection as that to which it was raised by the troubadours. The craftsmanship of the poets and singers, the refinement of the audiences in appreciating beauties of rhyme and metre which the modern ear can scarcely realise, are the more astonishing, since the period of the poetry of the troubadours is comparatively a very early one, and since their civilisation in other respects shows the characteristics of the early middle ages. Through various favourable circumstances, the _langue d’oc_ succeeded, first of all Romance idioms, in forming itself into a distinct and regular language, with strictly defined grammatical rules. The great number of final syllables of the same sound, which existed in the comparatively well preserved forms of declensions and conjugations, offered an immense quantity of rhymes; and this ease of rhyming, combined with the liveliness and sanguine temperament of southern Frenchmen, naturally gave rise to an early poetry. The primitive stages of this poetry have, as we know, disappeared; and we have lost in these popular songs, which undoubtedly existed, the most valuable material for the history of Provençal metrical art. The first troubadour, Count Guillem IX. of Poitou (1071-1127), appears as a finished poet, in full possession of all the refinements of Provençal metre, without any predecessor or previous document of lyrical poetry to account for his great accomplishments and experience. In fact, after him there is no important progress of metrical art; and, although several troubadours formed new stanzas and used difficult rhymes of their own, it may be said that, in the main, the first troubadour knew as much of the harmonious beauties of stanza and rhyme as the last—Guiraut Riquier, who died about two hundred years after the birth of Guillem.