reputation he might obtain in the eyes of the world about him. William
of Malmesbury gives an account of him which is the reverse of
respectable. His poems, of which twelve survive, are, to some extent, a
reflection of this character, and present a mixture of coarseness and
delicate sentiment which are in strangely discordant contrast. His
versification is of an early type; the principle of tripartition, which
became predominant in troubadour poetry at a later date, is hardly
perceptible in his poems. The chief point of interest in them is the
fact that their comparative perfection of form implies a long anterior
course of development for troubadour poetry, while we also find him
employing, though in undeveloped form, the chief ideas which afterwards
became commonplaces among the troubadours. The half mystical exaltation
inspired by love is already known to William IX. as _joi_, and he is [42]
acquainted with the service of love under feudal conditions. The
conventional attitudes of the lady and the lover are also taken for
granted, the lady disdainful and unbending, the lover timid and relying
upon his patience. The lady is praised for her outward qualities, her
"kindly welcome, her gracious and pleasing look" and love for her is
considered to be the inspiration of nobility in the lover. But these
ideas are not carried to the extravagant lengths to which later poets
pushed them; William's sensual leanings are enough to counterbalance any
tendency to such exaggeration. The conventional opening of a love poem
by a description of spring is also in evidence; in short, the
commonplaces, the technical language and formulae of later Provençal
lyrics were in existence during the age of this first troubadour.

Next in point of time is the troubadour Cercamon, of whom we know very
little; his poems, as we have them, seem to fall between the years 1137
and 1152; one of them is a lament upon the death of William X. of
Aquitaine, the son of the notorious Count of Poitiers, and another