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loans. Here we have the different principles carefully analysed and illustrated by reference to the actual taxsystems of different countries. There is the same combination of theory and experience in the treatment of land-tenures and the growth of population. Dr Pierson, of course, had the great advantage of combining theoretical study with practical statesmanship; and there could be no greater contrast than between his treatment and the mathematical socialism of Prof. Pigou.

It will be unfortunate if the obscurity of Prof. Pigou's presentation of economic principles should throw dis credit on the uses of the mathematical method. The direct application of mathematical reasoning to the discovery of economic truths is rarely of much service except in the quest of statistical averages and probabilities and in measuring the degree of consilience between correlated statistical tables.' So writes Dr Marshall, the economist to whom Prof. Pigou has dedicated his book. Unquestionably the work of Cournot and his successors has done much to clear up the relations of fundamental economic conceptions quite apart from statistical applica tions, but there could be no more fatal mistake than to suppose that the only scientific mode of treating economics is the mathematical. In parts, as the greatest writers have shown by their own practice, political economy more closely allied to moral philosophy, to jurisprudence, and especially to history, than to mathematics. One of the most brilliant of mathematical economists of the present day, Vilfredo Pareto, in the preface to his excellent systematic Cours d'Économie Politique,' based on his lectures at Lausanne, states that it is only in certain parts of the subject that mathematical ideas are applicable, and that in others it may be desirable to appeal to history, philosophy, philology, biology, or evolution. And, as he says, the text of his work can be read by anyone possessed of 'general culture,' because scientific arguments, mathematical or other, that require special knowledge are rigorously thrown into the notes.

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The elaborate and altogether admirable Cours d'Économie Politique' by C. Colson (in six volumes), based on the author's lectures at the École nationale des Ponts et Chaussées, is a still more remarkable example of the adjustment of mathematical ideas and methods to

the requirements of the subject. M. Colson is engineer-inchief of his department, and his course of lectures is given to students of engineering who are familiar with the practical applications of mathematics. But the mathematics employed are never beyond the range of a person of ordinary education, and are used only for appropriate subjects. M. Colson, in his introduction, almost apologises for the attention given to questions of civil and commercial law. In France political economy is in general studied in the Faculty of Law; and some knowledge of law may be taken for granted. To English students, however, who as a rule are not trained in the law, M. Colson's introduction on legal conceptions in relation to economic principles should be of special value. In England and in English-speaking countries in recent years far too much stress has been laid on those aspects of economics which lend themselves to mathematical illustration. The consequence is that important parts of the subject have been neglected or, if not neglected, have been pruned and lopped until they can be put in the fashionable terminology and the usual curves. With this extrusion of certain parts, the development beyond all sense of proportion of other parts (especially of the theory of value) has led to a narrow treatment, expressed in unfamiliar technical language, or worse still in familiar words with unfamiliar meanings. The old rule of definition is still to be preferred, which declares that, so far as possible, the terms employed in economics should follow the best popular usage, and, if there is ambiguity, a qualifying adjective or phrase will give the necessary light. And good old rules also are those of Newton that hypotheses are not to be feigned nor causes to be multiplied beyond necessity. In the observance of these rules we may say of recent economic literature that they order this matter better in France.'

J. S, NICHOLSON.

PENGE PUBLIC LIBRARY

( 426 )

Art. 6. TROUBADOURS: THEIR SORTS AND CONDITIONS.

THE argument as to whether or no the troubadours are a subject worthy of study is an old and respectable one. It is far too old and respectable to be decided hastily or by one not infallible person. If Guillaume, Count of Peiteus, grandfather of King Richard Coeur de Lion, had not been a man of many energies, there might have been little food for this discussion. He was, as the old book says of him, ' of the greatest counts in the world, and he had his way with women.' Besides this he made songs for either them or himself or for his more ribald companions. They say also that his wife was Countess of Dia, 'fair lady and righteous,' who fell in love with Raimbaut d'Aurenga and made him many a song. However that may be, Count Guillaume made composition in verse the best of court fashions, and gave it a social prestige which it held till the accursed crusade of 1208 against the Albigenses. The mirth of Provençal song is at times anything but sunburnt, and the mood is often anything but idle. The forms of the poetry are highly artificial, and as artifice they have still for the serious craftsman an interest, less indeed than they had for Dante, but by no means inconsiderable. No student of the period can doubt that the involved forms, and especially the veiled meanings in the 'trobar clus,' grew out of living conditions, and that these songs played a very real part in love intrigue and in the intrigue preceding warfare. The time had no press and no theatre. If you wish to make love to women in public, and out loud, you must resort to subterfuge; and Guillaume St Leider even went so far as to get the husband of his lady to do the seductive singing.

If a man of our time be so crotchety as to wish emotional, as well as intellectual, acquaintance with an age so out of fashion as the 12th century, he may try in several ways to attain it. He may read the songs themselves from the the old books-from the illuminated vellum-and he will learn what the troubadours meant to the folk of the century just after their own, as well as a little about their costume from the illuminated capitals. Or he may try listening to the words with the music, for,

thanks to Jean Beck and others, it is now possible to hear the old tunes. They are perhaps a little. Oriental in feeling, and it is likely that the spirit of Sufism is not wholly absent from their content. Or, again, a man may walk the hill-roads and river-roads from Limoges and Charente to Dordogne and Narbonne and learn a little, or more than a little, of what the country meant to the wandering singers. He may learn, or think he learns, why so many canzos open with speech of the weather; or why such a man made war on such and such castles. Once more, he may learn the outlines of these events from the razzos,' or prose paragraphs of introduction, which are sometimes called 'lives of the troubadours.' And, if he have mind for these latter, he will find in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris the manuscript of Miquel de la Tour, written, perhaps, in the author's own handwriting; at least we read 'I Miquel de la Tour, scryven, do ye to wit.'

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Miquel gives us to know that such and such ladies were courted or loved or sung with greater or less good fortune by such and such minstrels of various degree, for one man was a poor vavassour, and another was King Amfos of Aragon; and another, Vidal, was son of a furrier, and sang better than any man in the world; and another was a poor knight that had but part of a castle; and another was a clerk, and he had an understanding with a borgesa who had no mind to love him or to keep him, and who became mistress to the Count of Rodez. • Voila l'estat divers d'entre eulx.'

There was indeed a difference of estate and fortune between them. The monk, Gaubertz de Poicebot, 'was a man of birth; he was of the bishopric of Limozin, son of the castellan of Poicebot. And he was made monk when he was a child in a monastery, which is called Sain Leonart. And he knew well letters, and well to sing, and well trobar. † And for desire of woman he went forth from the monastery. And he came thence to the man to whom came all who for courtesy wished honour and good deeds-to Sir Savaric de Malleon-and this man gave him the harness of a joglar and a horse and clothing; and then he went through the courts and composed and

* Raimon de Miraval and Uc Brunecs respectively.
+ Poetical composition, literally 'to find.'

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made good canzos. And he set his heart upon a donzella gentle and fair and made his songs of her, and she did not wish to love him unless he should get himself made a knight and take her to wife. And he told En Savaric how the girl had refused him, wherefore En Savaric made him a knight and gave him land and the income from it. And he married the girl and held her in great honour. And it happened that he went into Spain, leaving her behind him. And a knight out of England set his mind upon her and did so much and said so much that he led her with him, and he kept her long time his mistress and then let her go to the dogs (malamen anar). And En Gaubertz returned from Spain, and lodged himself one night in the city where she was. And he went out for desire of woman, and he entered the alberc of a poor woman; for they told him there was a fine woman within. And he found his wife. And when he saw her, and she him, great was the grief between them and great shame. And he stopped the night with her, and on the morrow he went forth with her and took her to a nunnery where he had her enter. And for this grief he ceased to sing and to compose.' If you are minded, as Browning was in his 'One Word More,' you may search out the very song En Gaubertz made, riding down the second time from Malleon, flushed with the unexpected knighthood.

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'Per amor del belh temps suau

E quar fin amor men somo.'

For love of the sweet time and soft'he besesches this 'lady in whom joy and worth have shut themselves and all good in its completeness' to give him grace and the kisses due to him a year since. And he ends in envoi to Savaric.

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