forgiveness in a celebrated scene in which he is summoned before the king of England to give an account of himself. After a long life of war and agitation and varying fortunes he retired from the world and became a Cistercian monk. Among the multitude of Provencal poets whose works are known, he is one of the five or six who by native talent and individuality fixed his work upon the age in which he lived. His will was dominant ; his position was war ; war for its own sake, for the pure joy of fighting and for the very risks which other men shunned. As such he is the representative of the undisciplined and ad venturous warrior of the Middle Ages ; he is per haps the most prominent of all the troubadours. His life is a drama full of romantic interest ; be ginning with the old castle in Gascony "the dames, the cavaliers, the arms, the loves, the courtesy, the bold emprise" of which Ariosto sings ; and ending in a convent, among friars and fastings, penitence and prayers. And for all his late repentence Dante gives him a low place in the Inferno, to which he is condemned to all' eternity. Of his two songs, one is too broad and free spok en to be in close translation ; the manners of the time permitted a mode of expression which would not be tolerated now ►n decent society ; the other is the famous lament on the death of the Young English King. The structure of the verse is very peculiar,—so odd that the song cannot be ren dered into English in the same meter without sac rificing the sense. In the infinite variety of met rical forms used by the troubadours, each poet felt free to make his own selection, and nothing was more welcome to his hearers than a new me ter. In this verse the first four lines rhyme alter nately, the fifth stands by itself, the sixth and seventh rhyme together, the eighth stands by its elf and has an added syllable. The words at the end of the first, fifth and last lines must recur in the same place in every stanza. Such being the requirements of the meter, it is easier to give the ideas of the original in measured prose. THE FREE LANCE. I. It all the sorrows, tears and lamentation, the woos, the losses and the grave misfortunes, that man has over had in this. most mournful world, were put together, they would all seem light in contrast with the death of the Young English King ; for which both youth and val or are left grieving, and the world dark and sombre cold and gloomy, stript Of all joy, full of lament and woe. 2. Sorrowing and sad and full of deep affliction are lel the gallant warriors and the minstrels, the dett Jong. lers, the sprightly troubadours; too fella foe had they in death, who has bereft them of the Young English King; compared with whom the liberal wore greedy ; never more will there be,—nor think ye that indeed ther e ever was,—in this wide world of sorrow and of woe less like to this, cause for lament and woe. 8, Far reaching Death, dealing out dire affliction, now oanst thou boast of taking from the world a better knight than aught there ever was in any race ; for there is not a thing that man can measure that was not all in the Young English King ; it would have been far better, bad it pleased God to do what it seemed but right to us, that he bad lived rather than many an. other, useless and base, who only wrought the good soy• row and bitter woe 4. Now from this evil world, full of,divine affliction, if love were to depart, I'd hold its joy deceit, its pleasure torment; for there is not that turneth not to worm wood ; each day you see afresh that all is worth far less lo day than it was yesterday ; each man confronts his fate in what has now befallen the Young English King, who was of all this world the worthiest of the worthy. Now that his gentle loving self has left us, in his praise our part is sorrow and perplexity, bowed down with grief, full of lament and woe. 5. To Him to whom it pleased, for our salvation, to come into this world and take our burdens ; lie who accepted death for our salvation ; as to a lord lowly and just and righteous, let us cry mercy that ho fully pardon the Young English Sing; and, as He is himself the only pardon, cause him to move among the loved compan ions now with him in the region of the blessed, where there was never wrath nor ever will be woe. T. "The next century will be the Age of Special ism," said a prominent thinker a short time ago, and the words clung in my thoughts. It was not a profound saying; it required no unnatural fore sight to make it, for the age of specialism is even now well advanced, but yet the remark aroused a new series of thoughts. A nation whose individuals do not specialize is a barbarous nation. Where everyman does just the same work as his neighbor there is no civiliza- THE YOUNG ENGLISH KING. THE SPECIALIST.
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