Next follow the usual compliments to his protector, and, this duty discharged, Guiraut begins to speak from the fulness of his heart. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘that all men live in classes differing and distinguished from each other. Therefore it seems to me that such a distinction of name ought also to be made amongst the Joglars; for it is unjust that the best of them should not be distinguished by name as well as they are by deed. It is unfair that an ignorant man of small learning, who knows a little how to play some instrument and strums it in public places for whatever people will give him, or one who sings low ditties to low people about the streets and taverns, and takes alms without shame from the first comer—that all these should indiscriminately go by the name of Joglars.... For joglaria was invented by wise men, to give joy to good people by their skill in playing on instruments.... After that came the Troubadours to record valiant deeds, and to praise the good and encourage them in their noble endeavour.... But in our days and for some time past a set of people without sense and wisdom have undertaken to sing and compose stanzas, and play on instruments ... and their jealousy is roused when they see honour done to the good and noble.’ Every one, he reasons, ought to be named according to the work he does, and it would be quite just, he characteristically adds, to apply the name of Joglars to all poets and singers indiscriminately if they were all more or less of the same kind and worth, like common citizens. This, however, is not the case, and the good suffer by being mixed up with the low and vulgar. To check this confusion by a tangible sign, to distinguish by an acknowledged name and title the trickster and player of instruments, who flatters the senses by momentary enjoyment, from the learned and serious poet whose works are graven on the memory and long survive their author, to do this and save poetry from impending ruin, Guiraut says, is a worthy task for the wise and noble King Alfonso. The king’s answer to this request is extant. It is written in verse, but otherwise composed with all the gravity of a state paper, and at the same time with a lucidity of argument rarely found in mediæval writings. ‘Although,’ the king justly remarks, ‘it is unwise and of dangerous consequence to speak about the affairs of strangers, yet he who holds honour dear, and possesses sense and wisdom and power withal, ought to consider the interests of others together with his own.’ After this cautious beginning, the king fully admits the reason of Guiraut’s complaint, and points out the injustice of comprising all the members of the poetic, musical, and histrionic professions under the common title of Joglar, a word which the king learnedly adds is derived from the Latin _joculator_, and therefore is wholly unfit to designate the higher branches of the art of poetry.