habit of alluding to the lady addressed under a _senhal_, or pseudonym,
in the course of the poem, is evidence for a need of privacy, though
this custom was also conventionalised, and we find men as well as women
alluded to under a _senhal_. It was not always the fact that the
_senhal_ was an open secret, although in many cases, where a high-born
dame desired to boast of the accomplished troubadour in her service, his
poems would naturally secure the widest publication which she could
procure. A further reason for complexity of composition is given by the
troubadour Peire d'Auvergne: "He is pleasing and agreeable to me who
proceeds to sing with words shut up and obscure, to which a man is
afraid to do violence." The "violence" apprehended is that of the
_joglar_, who might garble a song in the performance of it, if he had
not the memory or industry to learn it perfectly, and Peire d'Alvernhe
(1158-80) commends compositions so constructed that the disposition of
the rimes will prevent the interpolation of topical allusions or
careless altercation. The similar safeguard of Dante's _terza rima_ will
occur to every student.

The social conditions again under which troubadour poetry was produced,
apart from the limitations of its subject matter, tended to foster an
obscure and highly artificial diction. This obscurity was attained, as
we have said, by elevation and preciosity of style, and was not the
result of confusion of thought. Guiraut de Bornelh tells us his method [37]
in a passage worth quoting in the original--

Mas per melhs assire
mon chan,
vau cercan
bos motz en fre
que son tuit cargat e ple