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LECTURE III.

THE TROUBADOURS--BOCCACCIO--PETRARCH--PULC--CHAUCER--SPENSER.

The last Lecture was allotted to an investigation into the origin and
character of a species of poetry, the least influenced of any by the
literature of Greece and Rome,--that in which the portion contributed by
the Gothic conquerors, the predilections and general tone or habit of
thought and feeling, brought by our remote ancestors with them from the
forests of Germany, or the deep dells and rocky mountains of Norway, are
the most prominent. In the present Lecture I must introduce you to a
species of poetry, which had its birth-place near the centre of Roman
glory, and in which, as might be anticipated, the influences of the
Greek and Roman muse are far more conspicuous,--as great, indeed, as the
efforts of intentional imitation on the part of the poets themselves
could render them. But happily for us and for their own fame, the
intention of the writers as men is often at complete variance with the
genius of the same men as poets. To the force of their intention we owe
their mythological ornaments, and the greater definiteness of their
imagery; and their passion for the beautiful, the voluptuous, and the
artificial, we must in part attribute to the same intention, but in part
likewise to their natural dispositions and tastes. For the same climate
and many of the same circumstances were acting on them, which had acted
on the great classics, whom they were endeavouring to imitate. But the