Tant ai mon cor plen de joja tot me desnatura; flors blanca vermelh’e bloja m sembla la freidura. This is at the same time one of the few examples where the octosyllabic verse is used in lyrical Provençal poetry. Dante, in consequence of its rarity, does not even mention it. But it is nevertheless of great importance, being the favourite metre of the romance. The two most important Provençal romances, ‘Flamenca’ and the ‘Roman de Giaufre,’ are written in it, as is also a novelette by Raimon Vidal, the author of a Provençal grammar. The first lines exhibit him as a ‘laudator temporis acti,’ after the manner of the later troubadours: En aquel temps c’om era jais e per amor fis e verais cuendes e d’avinen escuelh. The octosyllabic verse with accen agut is more often found in lyrics than that with accen greu. In epic poetry both occur promiscuously. Of all the different verses the most important both in lyrical and in epical poetry, in Italian, French, and Provençal, is the endecasyllabus, or verse of ten syllables. The variety of different forms in which it occurs, and of purposes for which it is used, make a short account of its origin and development almost necessary. This variety is effected by the manifold ways in which the cæsura, one of the few relics of ancient metrical art, is used. The ‘Leys d’Amors’ says: ‘E devetz saber que en aitals bordos la pauza es la pauza en la quarta syllaba; e ges no deu hom transmudar lo compas del bordo, so es que la pausa sia de VI. syllabas el remanen de quatre, quar non ha bella cazensa.’ The pauza here spoken of is the cæsura, effected by a stronger accent being given to a certain syllable of the verse, and by a short rest which the voice naturally takes afterwards. This rest or pause may also be filled up by a short unaccentuated syllable which is not counted. In this case the pauza is feminine, or with accen greu: otherwise it has accen agut. As has been seen, the ‘Leys d’Amors’ lays down that the cæsura must be after the fourth syllable; and this indeed is the rule in lyrical poetry, from which that work takes all its examples. But the endecasyllabus occurs in much older documents in the _langue d’oc_ and _langue d’oïl_, namely, in the old popular epic; and to this it is necessary to refer in order to give a full account of its development. The oldest poetic monument in the Provençal language is a fragment of what seems a long didactic poem, and is commonly called ‘Boethius,’ because the parts of it which remain treat of an episode in the life of that author. Boethius, we may here recapitulate, a Coms de Roma, and one of the wisest and most religious men of his age, has been thrown into prison, on a false pretence, by his enemy the Pagan emperor Teirix. In his misery, Philosophy, the heroine of Boethius’s work ‘De Consolatione Philosophiæ,’ comes to comfort him. She appears to him under the form of a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a mighty king.