a particular account of these English romances, the reader may consult the excellent work of Ellis.' Besides the two heroic subjects, Charlemagne and Arthur, (the heroes of classical antiquity seem to have been less popular with the English versifiers,) the crusades, particularly the one in which King Richard was engaged, and many miscellaneous topics, are handled by these writers. Yet even Guy of Warwick, Bevis of Hamptoun, and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, though the names have such a local and national sound, were founded upon French originals, the authors of which, indeed, were probably Englishmen, but derived from France their literary culture. 6 The earliest, or one of the earliest, and perhaps the most remarkable, of these English romances is the AngloDanish legend of Havelok, the unique MS. of which, discovered not many years ago in the middle of a volume of Lives of Saints in the Bodleian Library, was of course unknown to Ellis. This MS. dates from about the end of the thirteenth century. But we possess a French version of the same story about a hundred and fifty years earlier in the Estorie des Engles by Geffrei de Gaimar, who evidently derived it from an English chronicle-the book of Wassinburc' (Washingborough, near Lincoln)-which he mentions among his authorities. It would be interesting to know whether this book was in verse or prose; but Gaimar does not say. The substance of the story, according to the English version, is briefly this. The sovereigns of England and Denmark, dying about the same time, leave to inherit their kingdoms, the one a daughter, Goldeboro', the other a son, Havelok. The guardians of the children, Godrich in England, and Godard in Denmark, are both false to their trust; Goldeboro' is placed in Dover castle, and Havelok is given by Godard to the fisherman Grim, to be drowned in the sea. But a miracu 1 See also p. 404. lous light issuing from the child causes Grim to spare him; and soon after, taking all his family with him, together with the young prince, he sails for England, and landing on the coast of Lincolnshire founds the town of Grimsby, which still bears his name. Twelve years 6 pass, and Havelok has become a youth of marvellous size, strength, and beauty; Goldeboro', too, has become the loveliest of English maidens. Going to Lincoln for work in a time of scarcity, Havelok by feats of strength attracts the notice of Godrich; the traitor resolves to force Goldeboro' to marry him, as a kind of fulfilment of his promise to her father, to marry her to the best, fairest, and strongest man' in England. The marriage takes place in spite of the resistance of both; but Goldeboro' is soon comforted by beholding one night the marvellous splendour issuing out of Havelok's mouth. At her suggestion he sails for Denmark; there, after a long train of adventures, which the reader must imagine, he is recognised as king, and defeats and slays Godard. Returning with a Danish army to England, he visits Godrich with the like retribution. Goldeboro' and he are crowned, reign over England for sixty years, and have fifteen children, of whom all the sons live to be kings, and all the daughters queens. Finally, the poet beseeches all who have heard his tale pat ilke of you, with gode wille, For him þat haveth be ryme maked, And perfore fele nihtes waked; Bi-fore his Fader at his endinge. To a somewhat later date (1320-30) is assigned the legend of Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight, published by the Early English Text Society. Scarcely any English versions of Fabliaux are known to exist of earlier date than 1350. The raillery and more refined touches which belong to this class of compositions F were not suited to the rude intelligences of the Englishspeaking population in the Norman period, and would have been utterly thrown away upon them. The only instance of a fabliau given by Ellis is the version of the Indian story before mentioned of the Seven Wise Masters, supposed to have been made from the French about the year 1330. Under the head of satire, there exists a curious poem, entitled the Land of Cockaygne, the date of which is not certainly known, though Warton is undoubtedly wrong in placing it as early as the twelfth century. It is a biting satire on the monastic orders, and bears the stamp of the flippant age of Boccaccio rather than that of the grave and earnest century of St. Bernard. Nothing is known about the author, nor is the French original, from which it was evidently taken, in existence. Of the metrical chroniclers, who, in imitation of Wace and his fellow-labourers, related the history of England in English verse for the entertainment of the laity, the earliest in date is Layamon, priest of Ernley-on-Severn, in Worcestershire, who about the close of the twelfth century produced an amplified imitation of Wace's Brut d'Angleterre. This curious work, the earliest existing poem of considerable magnitude in the English language, extends to about 16,000 long lines of four accents. To produce the effect of metre, Layamon employs both alliteration and rhyme, both of the rudest description; sometimes, too, he seems unable to achieve either the one or the other. The writer seems to have been balancing between the example of his French prototype, who uses rhyme, and the attractions of the old native Saxon poets, who employed nothing but alliteration. This may be seen even in the t short extract, borrowed from Ellis's a the king was i-sete id his monnen to his mete, And nom1 of his hafde2 On thas kinges hafde. And seoth-then he gon do 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 So the village of Ernley is now called. 5 Would not bear it. 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 fand, And on Inglysch has it schewed 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. |