Of the life of Guiraut Riquier comparatively little is known, his biography being, strange to say, not included in any of the Provençal collections. On the other hand we are more than usually well instructed as to the chronology of his works. For to almost every one of his poems the date of its production is affixed in the MS., which moreover expressly claims to be an exact copy of the poet’s original. From the latter statement we may at the same time infer the penmanship of Guiraut, which in those days was never unaccompanied by other literary attainments. But, besides this, the scholarly cast of his mind is sufficiently proved by the troubadour’s work. The wonder is how with this tendency could coexist in him the sweetest and freshest fragrance of poetic _naïveté_—a _naïveté_ and spontaneity all the more admirable as they are altogether rare amongst the Troubadours. To him Provençal literature owes perhaps its nearest approach to the unalloyed impulse of popular song. To this side of his creativeness we shall have to return on a later occasion. Guiraut’s lines had not fallen in pleasant places. The old times of glory and well-being for the Troubadours were past and gone, and although Guiraut found a protector and friend in Alfonso X., King of Castile, to whom, as he says in 1278, his poetic services had been devoted for sixteen years, this protection seems not to have been of a kind to exempt the troubadour wholly from the cares of existence. With a bitterness recalling Dante’s complaint of the steepness of strange stairs and the salt flavour of strange bread, Guiraut speaks of the _vergonha e paor_, the shame and fear with which he enters the presence of a noble lord _per demandar lo sieu_, to ask him for his property. To the above-named King Alfonso was presented a curious memorial or supplication, in which Guiraut Riquier deplores the degradation of his noble calling and at the same time suggests various remedies for the growing evil. This was not the only or the last time that the troubadour stood up in the defence of his art. In a powerful sirventes dated 1278, he refutes the attacks of fanatic priests on poetry—that is, poetry in the true and elevated meaning of the word. ‘So little,’ he complains, ‘is the noble science of poetry valued nowadays, that people scarcely desire or suffer it, or will listen to it.... And our preachers declare it to be a sin, and reprove every one bitterly for its sake.’ He fully admits the justice of these reproaches in many cases in which poets invent ‘vain things whence sin may arise or war and disunion.’ ‘But,’ he concludes, ‘those who with mastership string together noble words, and with wisdom and knowledge teach the truth, can never find sufficient honour and reward.’