those who spoke it. It is truly neither Saxon nor English."* Mr. Ellis's opinion of its being simple Saxon has been already noticed. So little agreed are the most ingenious speculative men on the characteristics of style which they shall entitle Saxon or English. We may, however, on the whole, consider the style of Layamon to be as nearly the intermediate state of the old and new languages as can be found in any ancient specimen :—something like the new insect stirring its wings before it has shaken off the aurelia state. But of this work, or of any specimen supposed to be written in the early part of the thirteenth century, displaying a sudden transition from Saxon to English, I am disposed to repeat my doubts. Without being over credulous about the antiquity of the 'Lives of the Saints,' and the other fragments of the thirteenth century, which Mr. Ellis places in chronological succession next to Layamon, we may allow that before the date of Robert of Gloucester, not only the legendary and devout style, but the amatory and satirical, had begun to be rudely cultivated in the language. It was customary in that age to make the minstrels sing devotional strains to the harp on Sundays, for the edification of the people, instead of the verses on gayer subjects which were sung at public entertainments; a circumstance which, while it indicates the usual care of the Catholic church to make use of every hold over the popular mind, discovers also the fondness of the people for their poetry, and the attractions which it had already begun to assume. Of the satirical style I have already alluded to one example in the 'Land of Cokayne,' 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. This piece has humour, though not of the most delicate kind, and the language is easy and fluent, but it * [Mitford, p. 170. In the Specimen of Layamon, published by Mr. Ellis, not a Gallicism is to be found, nor even a Norman term: and so far from exhibiting any 66 appearance of a language thrown into confusion by the circumstances of those who spoke it," nearly every important form of Anglo-Saxon grammar is rigidly adhered to; and so little was the language altered at this advanced period of Norman influence, that a few slight variations might convert it into genuine Anglo-Saxon.-Price, Warton, vol. i. p. 109.] possesses nothing of style, sentiment, or imagery, approaching to poetry. Another specimen of the pleasantry of the times is more valuable, because it exhibits the state of party feeling on real events, as well as the state of language at a precise time.* It is a ballad, entitled 'Richard of Alemaigne,' composed by one of the adherents of Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, after the defeat of the royal party at the battle of Lewes in 1264. In the year after that battle the royal cause was restored, and the earl of Warren and Sir Hugh Bigod returned from exile, and assisted in the king's victory. In this satirical ballad those two personages are threatened with death if they should ever fall into the hands of their enemies. Such a song and such threats must have been composed by Leicester's party in the moment of their triumph, and not after their defeat and dispersion; so that the date of the piece is ascertained by its contents. This political satire leads me to mention another, which the industrious Ritson published,‡ and which, without violen anachronism, may be spoken of among the specimens of the thirteenth century, as it must have been composed within a few years after its close, and relates to events within its verge. It is a ballad on the execution of the Scottish patriots, Sir William Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser. The diction is as barbarous as we should expect from a song of triumph on such a subject. It relates the death and treatment of Wallace very minutely. The circumstance of his being covered with a mock crown of laurel in Westminster Hall, which Stowe repeats, is there mentioned; and that of his legs being fastened with iron fetters "under his horses wombe" is told with savage exultation. The piece was probably endited in the very year of the political murders which it celebrates; certainly before 1314, as it mentions the skulking of Robert Bruce, which, after the battle of Bannockburn, must have become a jest out of season.§ * "Though some make slight of libels," says Selden, " yet you may see by them how the wind sits; as, take a straw, and throw it up into the air, you shall see by that which way the wind is, which you shall not do by casting up a stone. More solid things do not show the complexion of the times so well as ballads and libels."— Table Talk. + [See it in Percy's Reliques,' and in Wright's Political Songs of England, p. 69.] Ritson's Ancient Songs.' § [Wright assigns it to 1306.-Political Songs, p. 212.] A few love-songs of that early period have been preserved, which are not wholly destitute of beauty and feeling. Their expression, indeed, is often quaint, and loaded with alliteration; yet it is impossible to look without a pleasing interest upon strains of tenderness which carry us back to so remote an age, and which disclose to us the softest emotions of the human mind in times abounding with such opposite traits of historical recollection. Such a stanza as the following* would not disgrace the lyric poetry of a refined age. For her love I cark and care, For her love in sleep I slake,† In another pastoral strain the lover says,— When the nightingale singés the woods waxen green; Robert, a monk of Gloucester, whose surname is unknown, is supposed to have finished his 'Rhyming Chronicle' about the year 1280. He translated the Legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued the History of England down to the time of Edward I., in the beginning of whose reign he died. The topographical, as well as narrative, minuteness of his Chronicle' has made it a valuable authority to antiquaries; and as such it was consulted by Selden, when he wrote his Notes to Drayton's 'Polyolbion.' After observing some traits of humour and sentiment, moderate as they may be, in compositions as old as the middle of the thirteenth century, we might naturally expect to find in Robert of Gloucester not indeed a decidedly poetical * It is here stripped of its antiquated spelling. † I am deprived of sleep. [Ellis, vol. i. p. 97. It was evidently written after the year 1278, as the poet mentions King Arthur's sumptuous tomb, erected in that year before the high altar of Glastonbury church; and he declares himself a living witness of the remarkably dismal weather which distinguished the day upon which the battle of Evesham was fought, in 1265. From these and other circumstances this piece appears to have been composed about the year 1280.-Warton, vol. i. p. 52.] C manner, but some approach to the animation of poetry. But the 'Chronicle' of this English Ennius, as he has been called,* whatever progress in the state of the language it may display, comes in reality nothing nearer the character of a work of imagination than Layamon's version of Wace, which preceded it by a hundred years. One would not imagine, from Robert of Gloucester's style, that he belonged to a period when a single effusion of sentiment, or a trait of humour and vivacity, had appeared in the language. On the contrary, he seems to take us back to the nonage of poetry, when verse is employed not to harmonise and beautify expression, but merely to assist the memory. Were we to judge of Robert of Gloucester not as a chronicler but as a candidate for the honours of fancy, we might be tempted to wonder at the frigidity with which he dwells, as the first possessor of such poetical ground, on the history of Lear, of Arthur, and Merlin; and with which he describes a scene so susceptible of poetical effect as the irruption of the first crusaders into Asia, preceded by the sword of fire which hung in the firmament, and guided them eastward in their path. But, in justice to the ancient versifier, we should remember, that he had still only a rude language to employ—the speech of boors and burghers, which, though it might possess a few songs and satires, could afford him no models of heroic narration. In such an age, the first occupant passes uninspired over subjects which might kindle the highest enthusiasm in the poet of a riper period; as the savage treads unconsciously, in his deserts, over mines of incalculable value, without sagacity to discover, or implements to explore them. In reality, his object was but to be historical. The higher orders of society still made use of French; and scholars wrote in that language or in Latin. His 'Chronicle' was therefore recited to a class of his contemporaries to whom it must have been highly acceptable, as a history of their native country believed to be authentic, and composed in their native tongue. To the fabulous legends of antiquity he added a record of more recent events, with some of which he was contemporary. As a relater of events, 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 * [By Tom Hearne, his very accurate editor.] chronology, by making the date of the year rhyme to something prominent in the narration of the fact. Our first known versifier of the fourteenth century is Robert, commonly called De Brunne. He was born (according to his editor, Hearne) at Malton, in Yorkshire; lived for some time in the house of Sixhill, a Gilbertine monastery in Yorkshire; and afterwards became a member of Brunne or Browne, a priory of black canons in the same county. His real surname was Mannyng; but the writers of history in those times (as Hearne observes) were generally the religious, and when they became celebrated they were designated by the names of the religious houses to which they belonged. Thus, William of Malmsbury, Matthew of Westminster, and John of Glastonbury, received those appellations from their respective monasteries.* De Brunne was, as far as we know, only a translator. His principal performance is a Rhyming Chronicle of the History of England, in two parts, compiled from the works of Wace and Peter de Langtoft. The declared object of his work is "not for the lerid (learned) but for the lewed (the low). "For thoa that in this land wonn,b That the latyn noc Frankysd conn."e He seems to reckon, however, if not on the attention of the "lerid," at least on that of a class above the "lewed," as he begins his address to "Lordynges that be now here." He declares also that his verse was constructed simply, being intended neither for seggers (reciters) nor harpours (harpers). Yet it is clear, from another passage, that he intended his 'Chronicle' to be sung, at least by parts, at public festivals. In the present day it would require considerable vocal powers to make so dry a recital of facts as that of De Brunne's work entertaining to an audience; but it appears that he could offer one of the most * [Sir F. Madden supposes, and on very fair grounds, that Mannyng was born at Brunne.-Havelok, p. xiv.] Peter de Langtoft was an Augustine canon of Bridlington, in Yorkshire, of Norman origin, but born in England. He wrote an entire 'History of England' in French rhymes, down to the end of the reign of Edward I.— Robert de Brunne, in his 'Chronicle,' followers Wace in the earlier part of his History, but translates the latter part of it from Langtoft. a Those. b Live. Nor. French. e Know. |