But other fair ladies
Have envied my joy;
And why? for I sought not
Their bliss to destroy.
"As to thee, lovely Summer!
Returns the birds' strain,
As on yonder green linden
The leaves spring again,
So constant doth grief
At my eyes overflow,
And wilt not thou, dearest,
Return to me now?

"Yes, come my own hero,
All others desert!
When first my eye saw thee,
How graceful thou wert;
How fair was thy presence,

How graceful, how bright;
Then think of me only,

My own chosen knight!""

Winceslaus, King of Bohemia; Otto, Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Count of Toggenburg, furnish each a little poem to the volume. We cannot pass unnoticed the following graceful stanzas attributed to Steinmar, of whose history nothing is known:

With the graceful corn upspringing,
With the birds around me singing,
With the leaf-crown'd forests waving,
Sweet May-dews the herbage laving,
With the flowers that round me bloom,
To my lady dear I'll come :
All things beautiful and bright,
Sweet in sound and fair to sight,
Nothing, nothing is too rare
For my beauteous lady fair;
Every thing I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.

She is one in whom I find

All things fair and bright combined;
When her beauteous form I see,
Kings themselves might envy me,
Joy with joy is gilded o'er,
Till the heart can hold no more.
She is bright as morning sun,
She my fairest, loveliest one;
For the honour of the fair
I will sing her beauty rare,

Every thing I'll do and be,
So my lady solace me.

Solace

The most curious piece in the whole collection is that which is ascribed to Henry, Duke of Breslau, who reigned from

1266 to 1269.

< POET.

To thee, O May, I must complain,
O Summer, I complain to thee,

And thee, thou flower-bespangled Plain,
And Meadow, dazzling bright to see!

To thee, O Greenwood, thee, O Sun,

And thee, too, Love! my song shall be

Of all the pain my lady's scorn

Relentlessly inflicts on me.

Yet, would ye all with one consent

Lend me your aid, she might repent:

Then for kind heaven's sake hear, and give me back content!

'MAY, &c.

"What is the wrong? stand forth and tell us what ;
Unless just cause be shown, we hear thee not."

< POET.

She lets my fancy feed on bliss;

But when, believing in her love,

I seek her passion's strength to prove,

She lets me perish, merciless :

Ah! woe is me, that e'er I knew

Her from whose love such misery doth ensue !

"I, May, will strait my flowers command;
My roses bright, and lilies white,

No more for her their charms expand."

< Summer.

"And I, bright Summer, will restrain

The birds' sweet throats; their tuneful notes
No more shall charm her ear again."

PLAIN.

"When on the Plain she doth appear,
My flow'rets gay shall fade away;

Thus crost, perchance to thee she'll turn again her ear."

Bb 2

MEAD.

. MEAD.

"And I, the Mead, will help thee too;
Gazing on me, her fate shall be,

That my bright charms shall blind her view."
WOOD.

"And I, the Greenwood, break my bowers
When the fair maid flies to my shade,
Till she to thee her smile restores."

• SUN.

"I Sun, will pierce her frozen heart,
Till from the blaze of my bright rays
Vainly she flies-then learns a gentler part."

"Seek'st thou revenge?" saith Love," then at my nod
The paths of joy shall close, so lately trod."

• POET:

Nay then! Oh leave her not thus shorn of bliss;
Leave me to die forlorn, so hers be happiness.'

Then follow the Watch Songs,' a species of ballad, describing stolen interviews between lovers, while a sentinel is appointed to keep watch, and, on the approach of morning, to give the signal of parting. These songs of the Minnesingers are ornamented by some curious engravings of illuminations, which are prefixed to them in the Manesse MS., and they are followed by specimens of the works of the Provençal Troubadours by way of illustration. The first of these examples is written by the Countess de Die: she lived in the twelfth century, and was the belle amie of Rambaud d'Aurenga, another Troubadour of great celebrity. Here also is Pons de Capdueil, the most unhappy of Troubadours, and unfortunate of lovers; who, all his life attached to the wife of another, had the misery to survive her loss, and finished his days before the Holy Sepulchre. Here is Bernard de Ventadour, the lover of our Queen Elinor, wife of Henry II. Bertrand de Born, the haughty, restless, daring, "satirical knave," who now rousing men to blood and plunder, by the force of his numbers, and anon pouring forth words that wept, at the feet of his mistress, filled all

Europe

1

Europe with his fame. Here, too, is the royal Alphonso of Arragon, Arnaud de Marveil, Pierre Vidal, the tradesman of Toulouse, of whom nobles were jealous, and who, following Richard of the Lion Heart to Palestine, was by turns his minstrel and the butt of his court. Many others there are, all remarkable, either for the singularity of their characters and fortunes, or the beautiful effusions of their genius and feelings. Passing these, we come to a history of the Trouveres, or writers of romances and tales. Among these stars of early literature, who has not heard of Thibaud, the monarch, crusader, poet, and friend of Raoul of Soissons, a Trouvere of almost equal celebrity? To the latter belongs the following little song:

• The gazing crowds proclaim'd me fair,
Ere, autumn-touch'd, my green leaves fell
And now they smile, and call me good;
Perhaps I like that name as well.
On beauty, bliss depends not; then
Why should I quarrel with old time
He marches on: how vain his power
With one whose heart is in its prime !
Bb 3

Though now perhaps a little old,
Yet still I love with youth to bide;
Nor grieve I if the gay coquettes
Seduce the gallants from my side.
And I can joy to see the nymphs
For fav'rite swains their chaplets twine,
In gardens trim, and bowers so green,
With flowerets sweet and eglantine.
I love to see a pair defy'

The noontide heat in yonder shade;
To hear the village-song of love

Sweet echoing through the woodland glade.

I joy too (though the idle crew

Mock somewhat at my lengthen'd tále)
To see how lays of ancient loves
The listening circle round regalę.
They fancy time for them stands still
And pity me my hairs of gray,
And smile to hear how once their sires
To me could kneeling homage pay.
And I, too, smile, to gaze upon
These butterflies in youth elate,

So heedless, sporting round the flame

Where thousand such have met their fate.'

Some particulars are given, at the end of the volume, of the establishment of the Song Schools,' which marked the decline of German poetry. A few of the popular German ballads are also translated with the same spirit and occasional elegance, which the reader cannot fail to have observed, in the specimens already presented to his notice.

ART. III. A Critical Enquiry regarding the real Author of the Letters of Junius, proving them to have been written by Lord Viscount Sackville. By George Coventry. 8vo.

Woodfall. 1825.

pp. 382.

TH HERE are no questions, that more strongly illustrate the intermixture of fallibility and of penetration in our reasoning faculty, than those which depend for their decision upon circumstantial evidence. Proof of that description is more apt than any other, to bear down those habits of distrust with which experience teaches us to receive such testimony, as is valuable only in proportion to the credibility of the witness. A few striking facts, when they seem to result from the same cause, or to lead to the same purpose, operate on the mind so instantaneously, that we feel conviction frequently without being able to justify, or explain, the reasons upon which it is founded.