Richard I. of England occupies the foremost place amongst these princely singers. The beautiful canzo composed in his Austrian prison, and preserved in both the _langue d’oc_ and _langue d’oïl_, is deservedly popular. It is perhaps less generally known that Richard occasionally made his poetry the vehicle of political invective. There is extant by him a song in which he violently attacks the Dauphin, Robert of Auvergne, accusing him of venality and breach of faith. The Dauphin, nothing loth, meets violence with violence, using in his retort the same complicated metre in which the Prince had attacked him. The same Dauphin appears again in another poetical encounter of a rather less elevated kind. This time his antagonist is a homely citizen of the name of Peire Pelissier, who, combining the useful with the agreeable, had metrically reminded the Dauphin of a certain sum of money owing to him. The indignation with which the noble poet rejects the low demand is beautiful to see. But the very fact of his entering into such a contest with such an antagonist shows the equalising, not to say levelling, influence which the universal desire for poetic fame exercised on the minds of men in those days. By far the most important poet of this class, and one of the most remarkable, as he was chronologically the first, of all troubadours, is William IX., sovereign Count of Poitiers, a noble prince, well known in history. The time of his reign, about the end of the eleventh century, marks the commencement of Provençal poetry, and this sudden appearance of an accomplished poet, mastering the most intricate rules of rhyme and metre ever invented, is unique in the history of literature. It is indeed in this case also explainable only from the disappearance of previous stages of poetic development. William of Poitiers is an interesting character in many respects. He is the prototype of the Troubadour, the wayfaring singer, wandering through the beautiful land of Provence in search of praise and amorous adventure, the latter not always as strictly moral nor yet as sentimental as might be desired. Even in those gallant days his dangerous gift of captivating women’s affections seems to have attracted more than ordinary notice. ‘The Count of Poitiers,’ says the Provençal biography, ‘was one of the most courteous men in the world and a great deceiver of ladies; and he was a brave knight and had much to do with love-affairs; and he knew well how to sing and make verses; and for a long time he roamed all through the land to deceive the ladies.’ The poems of the Count further illustrate these statements in a manner not always delicate, but always witty and amusing. It ought to be added that, before his end, William repented of his evil ways, in witness of which the last of his remaining songs gives utterance to regretful sorrow and anxiety.