And nom' of his hafde2 The king hine beren nalde)" A there' quene alswo. The language of Layamon is far less altered from the Saxon than that of the concluding portion of the Saxon Chronicle, although its date is some forty years later. The reason of this clearly is, that he lived in a remote country district, being priest of an obscure village in the north-western corner of Worcestershire, and held scarcely any intercourse with men of Norman lineage. Not more than fifty non-Saxon words have been detected in the entire work.9 An interval of nearly a hundred years separates Layamon from the next of the rhyming chroniclers, Robert of Gloucester. Robert, as he follows Geoffrey of Monmouth, travels partly over the same ground as Layamon, whose prototype, Wace, also followed Geoffrey. But in everything else but their subject, the difference between the two chroniclers is enormous. Divest Robert of his strange orthography, and he becomes a readable, intelligible English writer. A monk of a great monastery in an important frontier city, his style is that of a man who is fully up to the level of the civilisation, and familiar with the literature of his age, while Layamon's bespeaks the simple parish priest, moving among a rustic population, whose barbarous dialect he with a meritorious audacity adapts as best he can to literary purposes. Robert's chronicle, which is in long twelve-syllable lines, is continued to the year 1272. To I Took. 8 2 Head. A smaller crown. So the village of Ernley is now called. "For a good account of Layamon, condensed from the Introduction to Sir F. Madden's edition of the Brut, see Morley's English Writers, p. 614. Robert of Gloucester succeeds Robert Manning, a monk of the Gilbertine monastery of Brunne, or Bourn, in South Lincolnshire. Manning composed a rhyming chronicle in two parts: the first, a translation of the everlasting Brut by Wace, of which the reader has already heard so much; the second, a version of Peter Langtoft's French metrical chronicle, ending with the death of Edward I. in 1307. The opening of the second part explains so simply and clearly the motives which induced the rhyming chroniclers to employ themselves on a task which to our modern notions involves a strange misapplication of poetical power, that it seems advisable to insert it here: Lordynges that be now here, If ye wille listen and lere [learn] All the story of Inglande, Als Robert Mannyng wryten [written] it fund, Not for the lered but for the lewed [lay people]; For tho [those] that on this lond wonn [dwell] That the Latin ne Frankys conn [know neither Latin nor For to hauf solace and gamen In felauschip when tha sitt samen [together]; And it is wisdom for to wytten [know] The state of the land, and hef it wryten, What manere of folk first it wan, And of what kindye it first began; And gude it is for many thynges For to here the dedis of kynges, Whilk [which] were foles, and whilk were wyse, And whilk of tham couth [knew] most quantyse [quaintness, i.e. artfulness]; And whilk did wrong, and whilk ryght, And whilk mayntened pes [peace] and fight. Of thare dedes sall be mi sawe [story], In what tyme, and of what law, I sholl you tell, from gre to gre [degree, i.e., step by step], Manning's language, though his chronicle is said not to have been finished till the year 1338, is scarcely, if at all, more polished than that of Robert of Gloucester. Of the numerous religious poems in English which remain to us from this period, some are metrical versions of psalms: some (as Bishop Grossetête's Manuel des Péchés, translated by Robert Manning) didactic poems on some point of Christian doctrine or morality: some, Lives of Saints; some, lastly, short poems on devotional topics, such as the Crucifixion and the Blessed Virgin under the Rood. In each of these classes poems are extant, the style and language of which require us to place them as early as the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century. Many very interesting poems of this kind have been lately published by the Early English Text Society, e.g., the metrical lives of St. Marherete [Margaret] and St. Juliana, and the Story of Genesis and Exodus. The religious poems were probably written by ecclesiastics but the occasional and miscellaneous poems of the period are evidently for the most part the productions of laymen. Some of these will come under review in the critical section of this volume; but there is one which the certainty of its date, and the remarkable character of its contents render so important in an historical point of view, that it must be noticed here. This is a poem (given by Warton in extenso) composed after the battle of Lewes in 1264, by an adherent of Simon de Montfort. The number of French words which it contains, and the easy way in which they are employed, unite to prove that the new English language was well on in the process of formation, conditioned always by the necessity, which this writer frankly accepts, of incorporating a vast number of French words, expressive of the ideas which England owed to the Norman invasion. Again, the broad, hearty satire, the strong antiroyalist, or rather anti-foreigner, prejudices of the writer, the energy of resolution which the lines convey, point unmistakably to the rise, which indeed must any way be dated from this century, of a distinct English nationality, uniting and reconciling the Norman and Saxon elements. A portion of this poem is subjoined— Sitteth alle still, and herkneth to me; The kyng of Alemaigne, bi mi leautė, Richard, thah thou be ever trichard,' 'Sire Simond de Mountfort hath suore bi ys chyn, Should he never more come to is yn,7 Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gyn,8 CHAPTER I. EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD. 1350-1450. HITHERTO Such English writers as we have met with since the Conquest have generally appeared in the humble guise of translators or imitators. In the period before us we at last meet with original invention applied on a large scale : this, therefore, is the point at which English literature takes its true commencement. The Latin and French compositions, which engaged so much of our attention in the previous period, may in this be disposed of in a few words. That Englishmen still continued to write French poetry, we have the proof in many unprinted poems by Gower, and might also infer from a passage, often quoted, in the prologue to Chaucer's Testament of Love. But few such pieces are of sufficient merit to bear printing. In French prose scarcely anything can be mentioned besides the despatches, treaties, &c., contained in Rymer's Foedera and similar compilations, and the original draft of Sir John Maundevile's Travels in the Holy Land. Froissart's famous Chronicle may, indeed, almost be considered as belonging to us, since it treats principally of English feats of arms, and its author held a post in the court of Edward III. In Latin poetry there is nothing that deserves mention except the Liber Metricus of Thomas Elmham, concerning the career of Henry V., edited by Mr. Cole for the Rolls series in 1858. Elmham, who flourished about the year |