makes it valuable to those who study the history of pronunciation. It consists of paraphrases of the Gospel of the day followed by homilies. As he reached only the thirty-second day and wrote twenty thousand lines, we must at least respect the industry of the old monk.

Of "Lawmon" (or Layamon) little is known except what may be gathered from incidental references in his Layamon, poem. It is written in middle English. The 1200(?). date is supposed to be early in the thirteenth century, and the form is the Saxon short, rhymeless line, with an occasional lapse into rhyme. Modernizing the speech, the poem in Professor Earle's version or translation opens thus:

"There was a priest in the land
Who was named Layamon,
He was the son of Lovenath;
May the Lord be gracious to him,
He dwelt at Ernly

At a noble church

Upon Severn's bank,

Good it seemed to him,

Aton Radstone

When he read book.

It came to him in mind
And in his chief thought
That he would of England
Tell the noble deeds,

What the men were named

And whence they came

Who English land first had

After the flood

That came from the Lord,

That destroyed all here

That were found alive

Except Noah and Shem,

Japhet and Cam,

And their four wives

That were with them in the ark.

Layamon began the journey

Wide over the land

And got the noble books
Which he took for pattern,

And he took the English book
That Saint Bede made.

Another he took in Latin

That Saint Albin made

And the frere Austin

Who brought baptism hither in;
The third book he took,

Laid there in the midst,

That a French clerk made
Who was named Wace,

Who could write well,

And gave it to the noble Eleanor
That was Henry's queen.

Layamon laid down these books

And turned the leaves,

He beheld them lovingly;

May the Lord be merciful to him.

Pen he took with fingers

And wrote a book-skin

And the true word set together
And the three books
Compressed into one."

The poem extends to fifty-six hundred lines without much plan. The stories of Lear and Cymbeline are rehearsed; the death or "passing" of Arthur is finely told. There is the old simplicity and earnestness, and some softening of the old, rough strength. As Mr. Morley says, "There is something very touching in the picture of this simple English priest in his quiet home in a remote parish of Worcester, putting the books on his rough oaken

table and turning the leaves lovingly' while he transcribes into the language of the people, the rude epic of their nation." That he should write in English a poem on a subject which was already treated in French in a far more finished manner than he could hope to render it, shows how stubbornly the English held on to their mother tongue. Layamon, with his Latin book, and his French book, and his Anglo-Saxon book open on the table before him, and "compressing them into one," seems to be presiding at the birth of the composite English-language.

Robert of
Gloucester.

may

Among the numerous writers of the period, poets, theologians, chroniclers, and romancers, -Robert of Gloucester be mentioned, not on account of any great literary merit, but because he wrote in middle English and in rhyme, using a long line copied from the Alexandrine of the French trouvère and entirely unlike the Saxon form. His chief work is a rhymed chronicle of England, from the siege of Troy to the death of Henry III. (1272). The first part is a rendition of Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Historia"; but as the author approaches his own time he draws from contemporary accounts (oral, perhaps, in some cases), and consequently his book, like most of the monkish chronicles, possesses some historical value for the two or three generations preceding that of the writer. The vocabulary is free from Norman words, but the rhyme and the more sustained cadence of the line mark a change in poetic art. The following extract shows that the language (the Gloucestershire dialect) was not much different from our modern English, except in the absence of words of French derivation:

"Thus come lo! Engelonde into Normannes honde,

And the Normans ne couthe speke tho bote her owe speche,

And speke French as dude atom, and here chyldren dude al so teche, So that heymen of thys lond, that of her blod come,

Holdeth alle thulke speche that hii of hem nome.

Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of hym well lute:
Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss and to her kunde speche yute.

Ich wene ther be ne man in world contreyes none

That ne holdeth to her kunde speche, but Engelonde one.

Ac wel me wot vor to conne bothe wel yt ys,

Vor the more that a man con the more worth he ys."

The passage is thus rendered by Mr. Craik :

"Thus lo! England came into the hands of the Normans: and the Normans could not speak then but their own speech, and spoke French as they did at home, and their children did all so teach; so that high men of this land, that of their blood come, retain all the same speech that they of them took. For, unless a man know French, one talketh of him little. But low men hold to English, and to their natural speech yet. I imagine there be no people in any country of the world that do not hold to their natural speech, but in England alone. But well I wot it is well for to know both; for the more that a man knows, the more worth he is."

The authors named above have been selected to give an idea of the transition character of the period and of the obstinacy with which the native English adhered to the use of their own language. There were many other writers in Latin and French. Good judges declare that as many books were written in England during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, in proportion to the population, as have appeared at any other time. By degrees English prevailed over the other languages, Latin and French. Among the chroniclers were William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geraldus Cambrensis; among the sermonizers, or theologians, Robert Grosseteste, the monk, Orm, and the writer of the "Ancren Riwle" (Rule of living for nuns or anchoresses), and Richard Rolle of

Hampole; among the philosophers, Roger Bacon and John Duns Scotus.

Metrical

Toward the end of the period, many French romances and shorter "lays" were translated into English by unknown authors. Among these, besides parts Romances. of the Arthurian romances, are the long poems, "Alexander," "Guy of Warwick," "Richard Cœur de Lion," "Florice and Blanchfleur," "Amys and Amylon." The point of view of these "metrical romances" is that of mediæval chivalry, and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida" may be said to have inherited a portion of their spirit and method. No matter whether the characters are Greeks, or Persians, or Saracens, or Romans, they are represented as medieval knights. French words, of necessity, creep into the vocabulary to represent chivalric notions. One fine poem, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," appears in a formless waste of narrative poems and semiepic ballads. The language and the nation were forming. Normandy was lost, and England became the native country of the descendants of the Norman knights. In 1362, Edward III. being king, French and Latin gave place to English in the courts of law. Latin remained the language of theology, philosophy, and diplomacy for two hundred years longer, but French became the language of the national enemy. The nation took up many elements of song and story from the Norman French, and the new composite English became the national language. Beginning as the language of poetry with its use by Chaucer, this language has, in the course of five centuries, been molded into many beautiful and artistic forms by the genius of a composite race. Its literary methods and to some extent its literary spirit have at