Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/149

 which is, after all, the mainspring of effort, improvement, and approach towards perfection. Man longs for the impossible, and what is so impossible as the past? That which hath vanished becomes therefore valuable, that which is hidden attractive, that which is distant desirable. There is a strange lay still existing by an old Provençal troubadour, no small favourite with iron-handed, lion-hearted King Richard, of which the refrain, so far away expresses very touchingly the longing for the absent, perhaps only because absent, that is so painful, so human, and so unwise. The whole story is wild and absurd to a degree, yet not without a saddened interest, owing to the mournful refrain quoted above. It is thus told in the notes to Warton's 'History of English Poetry:'—

" 'Jeffrey Rudell, a famous troubadour of Provence, who is also celebrated by Petrarch,