that the number of song writers from the end of the
twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth is extremely large. M.
Paulin Paris, whose elaborate chapter in the _Histoire Litteraire_ is
still the great authority on the subject, has enumerated nearly two
hundred, to whose work have to be added hundreds of anonymous pieces. It
would seem indeed that during a considerable period the practice of song
writing was almost as incumbent on the French gentleman of the
thirteenth century as that of sonnetteering on the English gentleman of
the sixteenth. There are, however, not a few names which deserve
separate notice. The first of these in point of time, and not the last
in point of literary importance, is that of Quesnes de Bethune, the
ancestor of Sully, and himself a famous warrior, statesman, and poet.
His epitaph by a poet not usually remarkable for eloquence[70] is a very
striking one. It gives us approximately the date of his death, 1224; and
the word _vieux_ is supposed to show that Quesnes must have been born at
least as early as the middle of the twelfth century. He took part in two
crusades, that of Philip Augustus and that which Villehardouin has
chronicled. His poems[71] are of all classes, historical, satirical, and
amorous, some of last being addressed to Marie, Countess of Champagne;
and his Chansons are, in the technical sense, some of the earliest we
possess. Contemporary with Quesnes apparently was the personage who is
known under the title of Chatelain de Coucy, and whose love for the Lady
of Fayel resulted in an interchange of very tender and beautiful verse;
the poem known as the lady's own is one of the very best of its kind.
Long afterwards lover and lady became the hero and heroine of a romance,
which has led some persons to throw doubt upon their historical
existence, and the Lady of Fayel has even been deprived of her poem by a
well-known kind of criticism. Of more importance is Thibaut de
Champagne, King of Navarre, who is indeed the most important single
figure of early French lyrical poetry. He was born in 1201, and died in
1253. His high position as a feudal prince in both north and south, the
minority of St. Louis, and the intimate relations which existed between
the King's mother, Blanche of Castille, and Thibaut, made him the mark
for a good deal of satirical invective. There is a tradition that he was
Blanche's lover, the only objection to which is that the Queen was
thirty years his senior.