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.