This great stability of the metrical rules soon led to a desire of fixing them by a theoretical system; and we know of several attempts to perform this difficult task. The most important and voluminous work of this kind must be our guide in the maze of Provençal subtlety; though in many cases it is more difficult to follow the mediæval scholar through his confused definitions than to abstract the rules from the poems themselves. The author of ‘Las Leys d’Amors,’ as he calls his compilation, considered, in accordance with the notions of his time, that it was a sign of highest scholarship to accumulate the greatest possible amount of undigested knowledge, without taking the trouble of grouping his heterogeneous materials. He desires to show his familiarity with almost all the branches of human knowledge. Grammar and rhetoric, prosody and dialectics, the trivium and quadrivium, have been objects of his study; and his work is undoubtedly one of the most valuable exponents of mediæval scholarship. In fact, it may be called the aggregate expression of the literary ideas of his time and country, the more so as it can scarcely be said to have been written by one author only. In the middle of the fourteenth century (1356 is the exact date of the work), the time of the great troubadours had long passed away; and their pure language was yielding more and more to the influences of southern patois and the northern _langue d’oïl_. To oppose the further decline of the language and poetry, several institutions were founded by patriotic and cultivated men, who, however, being scholars rather than poets, could not revive the spirit of the troubadours. One of the most renowned of these societies, which resembled modern academies, named the ‘Seven Poets of Toulouse,’ commissioned their chancellor for the time being, Guillaume Molinier, to write, or rather to compile from the works of other scholars, and under their own supervision, a compendium of the rules of poetry. The result was ‘Las Leys d’Amors,’ which, founded entirely on the traditions of the troubadours, although written after their time, is of the greatest importance for the metrical analysis of their works. M. Gatien-Arnoult, keeper of the manuscripts of the Académie des Jeux Floraux at Toulouse, has published an accurate edition of the work from the manuscript belonging to that Academy. Another mediæval work, which it will often be necessary to refer to, is Dante’s treatise ‘De Vulgari Eloquentia.’ His remarks on the measurement of verse and the construction of stanzas were originally meant to apply to poems written in his own language. But the affinity between the poets of the _lingua di sì_ and those of the _langue d’oc_, and especially the great influence of the troubadours on Dante’s own metrical system,[37] make it permissible to apply the rules laid down by the great Italian to the works of the Provençal poets.