The Troubadours, it has been said more than once, were court poets, their songs a court literature, taking its theme from, and reciprocally appealing to, the upper classes of society. There was an advantage and a still greater drawback connected with this exclusiveness of culture and sympathies. In the early middle ages it was of the utmost importance to raise, and abide by, a standard of refinement in opposition to the prevailing coarseness of the age. But, on the other hand, the fresh and ever-bubbling source of spontaneous feeling was absent, which their _rapport_ with the people supplied to the French Trouvère, the German Minnesinger, and our own Elizabethan dramatists, court poets though all these were. Hence the monotony and laboured dryness of many of the troubadours’ songs, and the narrow range of thought covered by their works compared with the mediæval literature of other countries. There were, however, exceptions to the rule, and although not a particle of the presumably rich fund of Provençal folklore has been thought worth preserving,[9] still there is distinct evidence that its charms were appreciated by several of the knightly singers, in spite of prejudice and courtly superciliousness. The results of this appreciation are certain characteristic forms of song evidently derived from popular sources, although treated with artistic finish by the Troubadours. The tone of these poems differs so essentially from the ordinary bias of Provençal literature, that it seemed well to treat of them in separate chapters.