Sufficient has been said in the preceding pages to show the superiority of lyrical over epic poetry in Provence. This inequality of the two branches implied a commensurate difference of praise and social esteem awarded to those who excelled in either of them, and it is perhaps from this point of view that the two great divisions of poets in the _langue d’oc_, respectively described as ‘joglars’ and ‘trobadors,’ or, in the French and generally adopted form of the word, ‘troubadours,’ may be most distinctly recognised. The two professions were frequently united in the same person, and the duties belonging to either are in many respects identical, or at least similar to such a degree as to make strict separation almost impossible; but it seems sufficiently established that the verb ‘trobar’ and its derivative noun first and foremost apply to lyrical poetry. To speak therefore of the Troubadour as the singer of songs, of cansos and sirventeses and albas and retroensas, is a correct and tolerably comprehensive definition, borne out moreover by the historic fact that, with the sole exception of Arnaut Daniel (who, as was mentioned before, is in his biography called a joglar), none of the celebrated troubadours is known to have written narrative poems. These latter, on the other hand, are either, like ‘Flamenca’ and ‘Jaufre,’ by anonymous authors, or else by such men as Arnaud de Carcasses or Matfre Ermengau, who have acquired little or no fame as lyrical poets, and moreover belong to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when the song-tide of the earlier epoch was ebbing fast.