like the Confession, against the vices of the clergy-the Cistercians especially—and having for their hero the same personage—a worthless clerical sensualist and pot-companion—are also attributed to Map. His versions of the Arthurian Romances (see p. 20, s. 11) have already been referred to. He also wrote a Latin book with a similar title to that of John of Salisbury-De Nugis Curialium,-a shrewd and chatty record of Court ana and recollections. Map was apparently a person of considerable wit and ability, and if he wrote all the poems printed in Mr. Wright's collection,* may lay fair claim to the title of 'Anacreon of his Century' bestowed upon him by Lord Lyttelton. As an example of Leonine verse, we print two of the less-cited quatrains of the 'drinking-song' above referred to:'Unicuique proprium dat natura donum:

Ego versus faciens bibo vinum bonum,
et quod habent melius dolia cauponum;
tale vinum generat copia sermonum.

'Tales versus facio quale vinum bibo:

nihil possum scribere nisi sumpto cibo;
nihil valet penitus quod jejunus scribo,
Nasonem post calices carmine præibo.'

In some stricter forms of this measure there is a rhyme in the middle of the verse, as in the well-known epitaph of Bede:

Hac sunt in fossa, Bedæ Venerabilis ossa.'

The remaining writers of this class are very numerous; but they are chiefly historians or chroniclers. Among them may be mentioned Eadmer (d. 1124), a Benedictine of Canterbury, who wrote, among other works, a Life of Anselm; Ordericus Vitalis (1075– 1142), author of an Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy; William of Malmesbury (1095-1143), author of an English History-De Gestis Regum Anglorum; Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1154), already mentioned; † Henry of Huntingdon (d. after 1154); Joseph Iscanus or Joseph of Exeter (d. 1195), author of The Antiocheïs, a poem on the Third Crusade, and an epic in six books on the Trojan War; Geoffrey de Vinsauf (d. xii. Cent.), author of a treatise--De Nova Poetria; Gervase of Tilbury (d. xii. Cent.), whose Otia Imperialia were written to amuse the Emperor Otho IV.; Roger of Wendover (d. 1237); Roger de Hoveden (xii. and xiii. Cent.); the topographer and poet, Giraldus

* Camden Society's publications: Poems attributed to Walter Mapes, edited by Thomas Wright, F.S.A.

† See p. 20, s. 11, The Arthurian Romances.

Cambrensis or Gerald de Barri (1147-1222); Joscelin de Brakelonda (xii. and xiii. Cent.), whose Boswellean Note-book' of the doings at St. Edmondsbury Convent plays a considerable part in Carlyle's Past and Present; * and Matthew Paris (d. 1259). As a rule these authors were little more than painstaking compilers of records making no pretensions to force, originality, or elegance of style. Some of them, however-for example, William of Malmesbury-far excel the rest in composition. Others— as Joseph of Exeter and Geoffrey of Monmouth-chose metre for the medium of their productions, and attained to respectable fluency and proficiency as versifiers.

13. Writers in French.-If we except the trouvère, Taillefer, whom Wace represents as riding to his death at Hastings :—

'Sur un roussin qui tot alout

Devant li dus alont cantant
De Kalermaine e de Rolant

E d'Oliver et des vassals

Ki moururent à Roncevals,'t

the earliest French writer of any importance is a protégé of Queen Adelais of Louvaine, Philippe de Thaun (A. xii. Cent.), who wrote an allegorical and chronological poem, De Creaturis, and a Bestiarius, or Natural History, which he dedicated to the 'mult bele femme,' his protectress. Another is Sanson de Nanteuil, who lived in the reign of Stephen, and translated the Proverbs of Solomon into octosyllabic Norman-French, under the title of Romanz, thus illustrating the earlier meaning of the word, which at first signified nothing more than 'liber Romanus,' a work in the Romance language.

Of the Norman rhyming Chroniclers the chief are Geffrai Gaimar (A. 1150), author of a rhymed chronicle entitled Estorie des Engles (Angles), coming down to the death of Rufus ; the so-called 'Mestre' Wace (d. 1184), a canon of Bayeux, author of the Brut d'Angleterre, a history of England from the Brutus of fable to the death of Cadwallader (689), based mainly upon Geoffrey of Monmouth; and the Roman du Rou (or Rollo), a chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, from the earliest period to the reign of Henry II.; Benoît de St. Maur (f. 1180), who, like Wace, wrote a Roman de Normandie, which extended to 30,000 verses, and also a Roman de Troye; and, lastly, Peter de Langtoft (1230-1315), Canon of the Priory of St. Augustine at Bridlington, in Yorkshire, who compiled a metrical

* v. book ii. The Ancient Monk.

+ Wace, Roman du Rou, cited in Taine, Hist. of English Literature, Van Laun's translation, 1872, i. 64.

History of England, translating and continuing Geoffrey of Monmouth to the reign of Edward I. He also translated the life of Becket into French verse from the Latin original of Herbert de Bosham, Becket's secretary.

The already mentioned Arthurian Romancers-Walter Map, Robert de Borron, and Luces du Gast;-Robert Grosstête, Bishop of Lincoln (1175-1253), an Englishman who wrote a religious poem 'upon the favourite subject of the fall and restoration of man,' sometimes called the Chastel or Chateau d'Amour (viz. the Virgin Mary); and Hugh of Rutland, a native of Cornwall, who, deserting the Arthurian legends, laid the scene of his lengthy metrical romances, Ypomedon and Protesilaus, in the south of Italy, conclude our list of writers in Norman-French. There are, however, numerous French metrical romances, of which the authorship is unknown or uncertain. Such are the Lai de Aveloc, assigned to the first half of the twelfth century, the Roman du Roi Horn, and others.

14. Writers in English.-Besides a few brief fragments attributed to the Durham Hermit, St. Godric (d. 1170), and five lines known as the Here Prophecy, 1189, the first English writings after the Conquest are those of Layamon, a worthy priest of Ernleyby-Severn (assumed to be Areley-Regis, near Stourport, in Worcestershire), who translated the Brut of Wace (see p. 24, s. 13); and, completing it from other sources, produced, about 1200, a Brut or Chronicle of Britain. 'The language of Layamon,' says his editor, Sir Frederic Madden, 'belongs to that transition period in which the groundwork of Anglo-Saxon phraseology and grammar still existed, though gradually yielding to the influence of the popular forms of speech.' The Chronicle extends to more than 14,000 long verses, and is composed upon the alliterative principle of the Old-English poems; but it also contains many rhymed couplets. A curious feature of the work is its 'nunnation,' or employment of the letter n as the termination of certain words. It has also been remarked as characteristic of the writer's unwillingness to employ the language of the conquerors that, although he is translating from a French original, and would naturally be tempted to employ French words, there are scarcely fifty such in the whole of his work. The specimen given in our Appendix of Extracts will afford some idea of the first-named peculiarity, and of the general character of the composition.*

The Ormulum, a series of metrical homilies, attributed to Orm or Ormin, an Augustine monk, is usually placed after the Chronicle of

* See Appendix A, Extract VI.

Layamon; but authorities are divided as to the actual date of its production. This is a metrical composition; but it is neither alliterative nor, except in rare instances, rhymed, and contains scarcely any French and few Latin words. A short extract from it is given in Appendix A.*

Two rhyming chroniclers, Robert of Gloucester (temp. Henry III., Edward I.), and Robert of Brunne or Robert Mannyng (1260-1340), are the principal writers of this class after Layamon and Orm. The former, who has been styled by his editor, Hearne, the English Ennius,' wrote, about 1280, a Chronicle of England from Brutus to Henry III. (1272), the earlier portions of which are derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is in rhymed lines of fourteen syllables; and for its topographical accuracy was consulted by Selden when annotating Drayton's Polyolbion. Several lives of saints, a Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket. and a Life of St. Brandan also came from his pen. 'As a relater of events,' says Mr. Campbell, ‘he is tolerably succinct and perspicuous, and wherever the fact is of any importance he shows a watchful attention to keep the reader's memory distinct with regard to chronology, by making the date of the year rhyme to something prominent in the relation of the fact.'t The following lines, bearing upon the introduction of the French language into England, are taken from this chronicler's account of the reign of William I. :

Thus com, lo! Engelond in-to Normandie's hond.

And the Normans ne couthe speke tho [then] bote hor owe speche,

And speke French as hii dude atom [at home], and hor children dude also teche. So that heiemen [high-men] of this lond that of hor blod come,

Holdeth alle thulke speche that hii of hom nome [took].

Vor bote a man conne Frenss me telth of him lute [light];

Ac lowe men holdeth to Engliss and to hor owe speche yute [yet]
Ich wene ther ne beth in al the world contreyes none,

That ne holdeth to hor owe speche, bote Engelond one [alone].'‡

The chronicle of the second writer named above, Robert of Brunne (Bourn in Lincolnshire), is said to have been finished in 1338. It is in two parts, the first of which, in octo-syllabic rhyme, is translated from Wace (see p. 24, s. 13); the second, in Alexandrine verse, from Peter de Langtoft (see p. 24, s. 13). Brunne is a smoother versifier than Robert of Gloucester. It is notable too, that his work

*Extract VII.

Essay on English Poetry, 1848, 18-9.

Specimens of Early English, by Rev. R. Morris, LL.D., and Rev. W. W. Skeat, M.A. (Clarendon Press Series), 1872.

has a popular purpose;—it is 'not for the lered (learned) but for the lewed (unlearned), and made

'- for the luf [lore] of symple menne

That strange Inglis canne not kenne [know].'

Under the title of Handlyng Synne, he also produced, in 1303, a free paraphrase of the Manuel des Péchiez of a certain William of Wadington, enlivening it with numerous anecdotes frequently illustrative of monkish morality. An extract from Brunne's Chronicle will be found in Appendix A.*

Other writers in English are Dan Michel of Northgate, author of a prose translation from the French, entitled the Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience), 1340; Richard Rolle, styled the Hermit of Hampole (d. 1349), author of a dull Pricke of Conscience, 1340, in the Northumbrian dialect, which drags its slow length to nearly ten thousand lines; and Laurence Minot (1308-1352), to whom belongs the credit of having quitted the beaten track of translation and adaptation to follow the bent of his invention. From Minot we have eleven military ballads celebrating the victories of Edward III., from Halidon Hill (1333) to the Battle of Guisnes (1352).†

To this division must also be added several miscellaneous works which deserve the notice of the student; but the authorship of which cannot now be traced with certainty. The Ancren Riwle, or rule of Female Anchorites, a prose treatise in Semi-Saxon or 'BrokenEnglish,' compiled for the conduct of a nunnery, and perhaps drawn up circa 1230 by Richard Poor (d. 1237), is one of these. There is also a very ancient metrical Dialogue between the Owl and the Nightingale, upon the merits of their respective voices, probably written between 1205 and 1215; a famous political Song against the King of Almaigne, which treats of the victory of Lewes (1264) and satirises the part, taken therein by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, King of the Romans; a ballad entitled the Land of Cockayne, and ascribed to Michael of Kildare, being ‘an allegorical satire on the luxury of the church, couched under the description of an imaginary paradise, in which the nuns are represented as houris and the black and grey monks as their paramours; ' and a Dialogue between the Body and the Soul.

Many English versions of the French Metrical Romances also

*See Extract VIII.

+ See Appendix A, Extract IX.

Campbell, Essay on English Poetry, 1848, 15.