No better sign of the sterling value of Guiraut Riquier’s talent could be required than the fact that the first name we meet with in this new field is his. The same troubadour who boldly protested against the increasing coarseness amongst the nobles was able to perceive in the natural artlessness of the people’s song a new element of refined poetry. It was perhaps from the infusion of this new life-blood that he expected the revival of his art quite as much as from the artificial safeguards of the poets’ social position which the King of Castile could grant. Guiraut Riquier is the Provençal representative of the ‘Pastorela,’ or ‘Pastoreta,’ the shepherd’s song. The popular origin of this form of poetry cannot well be denied. There is about the life of the shepherd amongst hills and lonely places, the tending of his flocks, and the very knitting of his stockings, a touch of simple pensive poetry which has escaped few nations, and it may be asserted that in the primitive songs of every people on earth the pastoral idea is represented in one form or another. It is equally true that artistic and artificial poetry has taken up and remodelled the original subject in a somewhat arbitrary manner. From Theocritus and Virgil and Guarini and Tasso down to our modern operatic stage the shepherd with his pipe, the shepherdess with her crook and surrounded by snow-white lambkins, have been introduced in the most becoming poses. But the innate raciness of the theme could never be wholly obliterated. Adam de la Halle’s ‘Robin et Marion,’ written in the fourteenth century, and justly claiming to be the first comic opera in France, is full of the life and the rollicking fun of the people; and the original features of broad Scotch humour and common sense may be discovered under the thin layer of rococo tinsel in Allan Ramsay’s ‘Faithful Shepherd.’ Guiraut Riquier belongs to the more realistic class of pastoral poets. He occupies an intermediate position between Adam’s broad out-spokenness and Tasso’s euphuism. His shepherdess—for a shepherdess and only one is the heroine of his six pastorelas—is evidently a real being taken from real life; at the same time the coarsenesses of this reality are sufficiently toned down to suit the fastidious taste of a courtly audience. Another uncommon feature, especially in a Troubadour’s creation, is the strenuous virtue with which the rustic beauty resists the most tempting offers of her knightly lover. She is meek and courteous and affable, but she knows exactly where to draw the line between innocent flirtation and serious passion. Whether such a character in such a sphere of life partakes more of idealism or of realism the ingenuous reader must decide. But it is most improbable that a Troubadour should have doubted, or allowed others to doubt, his absolute irresistibility unless convinced of the contrary by the most undeniable proof. We may therefore assume that Guiraut Riquier’s