thousand lines (or half-lines) in alliterative verse of the Old English kind, but mixed with rhyming couplets. With this poem, the Historia Britonum, or Brut, English literature takes its new start. Whether out of his own head, or from legends of the Welsh border, or (as is most probable) from amplifications already in progress or made elsewhere, Layamon made some notable additions to the story as Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace had left it. He tells us of the 'elves' who came at Arthur's birth, and who wafted him at his death in the magic boat to Avalon. Merlin is more important; so is the Round Table (first mentioned by Wace); so is Guinevere; while Sir Gawain and Sir Bedivere make their appearance. He made additions also in the earlier part of the story, such as of a legend to account for the name Gloucester; but these are of less importance. But it is fair to note that, though as a rule he follows Wace closely, he is not a slavish translator. We may take as a specimen of his style, where it needs little explanation, the lament of Lear when the ingratitude of his elder daughters has been revealed to him. The text is that of Cotton MS. Caligula, A ix. (ll. 3454-3497), as edited by Sir F. Madden : Tha seide the alde king: æruu e was on herten : Wallan dæth! wela death! that thu me nelt for-demen. Seoth seide Cordoille : for cuth hit is me nouthe. Mi yengestte dohter : heo was me wel dure, Seotthen heo me wes leathest : Over soh seiden that yunge vismon : hire folweth mochel wisdom. Tha wile the ich hævede mi kinelond: luveden me mine leoden. For mine londe and for mine feo : mine eorles fulle to mine cneo. That ich ham was swa leof: That heo me leovede swa feire : swa mon his fader scolde. Wet wold ich bidde mare: of mire dohter dure. Nu ich wullen faren feorth: and ouer sæ fusen. I-hiren of Cordoille : wat beon hire wille. Hire seohthe word ich nam to grame : thar-fore ich habbe nu muchele scame. For nu ich mot bi-secchen : that thing that ich ær for-howede. Nule heo me do na wurse: thanne hire londe forwurnen. Then said the old king- My youngest daughter, Over sooth said that youthful woman, there follows her much wisdom. no man loves me therefore. and both her two sisters, lies they said me, that I to them was so lief, liefer than their own life. that she loved me so fairly Her sooth word I took in ill part, For now I must beseech that which erst I despised. She will do me no worse Not a great speech this certainly, but yett with more simplicity and pathos in it than is to be found in either Geoffrey or Wace. Nor in the rest of the incident, where, according to Geoffrey's generous imagination, Cordelia arranges that Lear shall visit her and her husband not as a forlorn beggar but in royal state, does Layamon fall below his theme. Altogether his poem is worth more study than has been given it since it was edited by Sir F. Madden for the Society of Antiquaries in 1847. In that handsome edition two texts are printed, the first, from which we have quoted, written about 1200, in which the author calls himself' Layamon the son of Leovenath;' while in the second, which is shorter by nearly a fourth, the names appear as 'Laweman the son of Leuca,' and the language is considerably later. Sir F. Madden asserted that in the first text there were only fifty words of French origin, and in the second only eighty. Even if, as is probable, this is an underestimate, it is clear that the author, writing with a French text before him, studiously endeavoured to keep his vocabulary wholly English. On the other hand, even the short extract here given will have shown that he had lost the secret of Old English verse-the four beats and triple alliteration in each pair of short lines-and was pleased to fall in with the French fashion of rhyme, when, as in lah and ah, feo and eneo, grame and scame, the rhymes came readily to his hand. Thus in form as well as in matter Layamon's Brut marks the beginning of new influences in English poetry. The poem of Wace which Layamon took as his main original had followed Geoffrey of Monmouth's with only a few additions. But the enthusiasm with which the History was received led in an extraordinarily short time to developments of far greater importance. In the Arthurian legend as we now know it the king's military exploits against Saxons, Romans, and the people of other countries are a mere incident or excrescence; the interest of the story moves within the two interlacing circles of the Quest of the Holy Graal and the love of Lancelot, the peerless knight, for Guinevere, Arthur's queen, both of them unmentioned in Geoffrey's History. The Graal (the word is possibly derived from the Low Latin gradalis, a shallow vessel) is the cup used by Christ in the institution of the Eucharist, and afterwards—so the legend ran -by Joseph of Arimathæa, to catch the blood shed upon the Cross. Brought to Britain by Joseph's son (or brother-in-law), it forms part of the treasury of a mysterious king, and can only be seen by the pure in heart. This Christian legend may, as is strenuously maintained, have been grafted upon earlier tales, purely Celtic, of a miraculous food-producing vessel, but it is only in its Christian form that it here concerns us. According to the testimony of the romances themselves the story of the Graal was first written' in Latin, and translated thence into French. These earliest French versions are ascribed to Chrestien de Troyes, and to Robert de Borron, a knight of northern France, about the end of the twelfth century. The French prose romances of Lancelot and of the Queste del Saint Graal are connected with the name of Walter Map (the author of the De Nugis Curialium already mentioned), and he is also credited by some scholars with the authorship of the lost History of the Graal in Latin from which Robert de Borron translated. The whole question of the authorship and order of composition is immensely complicated, and all the study bestowed on the subject has only made it clear that materials do not exist from which any really convincing theory can be evolved. What is certain is, that by the beginning of the thirteenth century the main outlines of the Arthurian legend, with its wonderful combination of religious mysticism, chivalry, and passion, had come into existence, and that throughout that century they were being added to, either by the invention of new exploits for individual knights, or by the incorporation of other legends, such as the wonderful Tristram romance, the Celtic origin of which is generally admitted. In France, nearly a century before the Arthurian romance had taken root, there had sprung up a great literature round the personality of Charlemagne. These chansons de gestes, as they are called, differed from the later romances by their greater simplicity and directness, and their greater national feeling. They were being written in France in great numbers and at amazing length during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and translations of a few of them appeared at a later date in England, together with echoes of two other much smaller and less important French cycles, those connected with the stories of Alexander the Great and of the siege of Troy. As will be seen, moreover, England received back from France more than one story on an old English subject, which had passed to France (possibly in an epic form of the same kind as Beowulf, possibly merely as a legend told from mouth to mouth), had been rendered into French in the prevalent romance form, and reappeared in English verse as a translation from the French. These various French cycles of romance and the popular French books on other subjects to which we have alluded, whether written in France or in England, formed for a long time one-half of the literature sought after by the ruling class in England, while the Latin books already mentioned formed the other; for in those days people who could read at all, and were not merely dependent on the recitations of the wandering minstrels or the instruction of their priests, could mostly read Latin in addition to French. Books written in English had thus to fight their way into a field already occupied, and it is clear that until the fourteenth century they failed to obtain any real popularity among well-to-do people. Of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniæ there are thirty-five manuscripts in the British Museum alone, and nearly a third of these date from the twelfth century. Of English works, on the other hand, written before 1360, perhaps the majority survive only in a single copy, which in no single case bears any trace of the fine writing or illumination found in manuscripts written for wealthy book-buyers. At a later date there is no lack of manuscripts of Langland, the Wyclifite Bible, and Chaucer, some of them most beautifully written and decorated. The inference is obvious that in the earlier period English books appealed to a very small and by no means wealthy class of readers, and the development of our literature was retarded for lack of encouragement; while of the books written some at least, which we would gladly have inherited, perished utterly, partly, no doubt, because so few copies were made in the first instance. Religious Literature. About the same time as Layamon's Brut another long English poem was being written. This was the ormulum, a fragment, as we have it, of about ten thousand lines of a poem, originally perhaps seven or eight times as long, in which the gospel of each day is first paraphrased, and then elaborately expounded out of the writings of Elfric, Bede, and Augustine. Its author was an Augustinian monk named Orm or Ormin, possibly of Danish descent, who may have lived somewhere near the borders of Lincolnshire, and who dedicated his long work to his brother and fellow-monk, Walter. The book, we are told, was called Ormulum 'because that Orm it wrote;' and Orm must have been interested in matters of language, for he took the trouble to double the consonant after every short vowel, while his vocabulary is kept so free from French words that it is said not to contain five. On the other hand, in his metre he breaks away from Old English traditions, writing without alliteration in long lines of fifteen syllables, which divide quite regularly into short ones Reduced facsimile from the Ormulum.1 1 ledenn hemm þe we33e rihht Till himm And he pe33m sennde sone forp findenn himm To lakenn himm and lu- 3e And te33re steorne was hemm denn sohht And wærenn swipe blipe Pa þatt unncupe follc comm inn bu3henn and to lutenn himm Wipp illc an king oppnede þær i pe kalldeowisshe land Mann ma33 itt summ whær fin of eight and seven. In the following quotation, taken from the edition edited by the Rev. Robert Holt in 1878, the peculiarities of spelling are omitted, and the letters p and 3 represented by th and g, gh, or y, in order that no needless difficulties may repel modern readers. The extract is from Orm's dedication : Nu, brother Walter, brother min Thurh fulluht and thurh trowthe, And brother min i Godés hus Yet o the thridé wise, Swa sum Sant Awstin sette; Godspellés halghé lare, Gif English folc, for lufe of Crist And folghen it, and fillen it With thoht, with word, with dede, 5 IO 15 20 25 5 IO 15 20 25 In the body of his work Orm weakens his verse by repetition and diffuseness, but this prologue is direct enough, and the accidental rhyming of lines 18 and 20 immediately gives the quatrain a curiously modern lilt well sustained in the next four lines, till we are pulled up by the absence of the expected jingle at the end of the fourth. Another specimen of Orm's poetry may be spelt out from our facsimile of a page from the only extant manuscript of his work (Junius MS. I., in the Bodleian Library), and from the transcript, as printed by the Palæographical Society, in which all the author's peculiarities of spelling are faithfully preserved. The illustration, it need hardly be said, has not been chosen for its beauty, but rather to show, in its absence of grace of writing or illumination, how entirely shut off from the patronage of wealthy book-lovers were the English authors of this period who had the courage to use their native tongue. To the same period as the Ormulum—that is, the first quarter of the thirteenth century-belongs another religious work, Aneren Riwle ('Anchoresses' Rule'), a prose treatise written for a little community of three religious women living at Tarrant, on the Stour, in Dorsetshire. Richard Poor, who died in 1237 as Bishop of Durham, was born in Tarrant, and loved the place so well that he ordered that he should be buried there. The book has, therefore, been assigned to him, but nothing more can be said of the ascription than that it is not impossible. Certainly, whoever wrote the 'Rule' deserved to obtain high office in the Church, for he combined in a remarkable degree devotional feeling, wisdom, and a sense of humour. There are several beautiful passages in the eight books of which the 'Rule' is composed, notably the parable of the Love of Christ in the seventh. Of its wisdom we have proofs in the writer's refusal to let the nuns bind themselves with strict vows or to practise needless austerities. For the humour, perhaps this passage, which enforces the value of silence, may be chosen as an example. It is taken from page 66 (Part ii. § 2) of the edition of the Ancren Riwle, edited by the Rev. James Morton for the Camden Society in 1853, and in the modernised version use has also been made of Mr Morton's translation : Eve heold ine Parais longe tale mid te neddre, & told hire al the lescun the God hire hefde i-lered, & Adam, of then epple: & so the veond thurrh hire word understond anonriht hire wocnesse, & i-vond wei toward hire of hire vorlorenesse. Ure lefdi, Seinte Marie, dude al another wise: ne tolde heo then engle none tale auh askede him thing scheortliche the heo ne kuthe. Le, mine leove sustren, voleweth ure lefdi & nout the kakele Eve. Vorthi ancre, hwat se heo beo, alse muchel as heo ever con & mei, holde hire stille : nabbe heo nout henne kunde. The hen hwon heo haveth i-leid, ne con buten kakelen. And hwat birit heo therof? Kumeth the cove anonriht & reveth hire hire eiren, & fret al the of hwat heo schulde vorth bringen hire cwike briddes: & riht also the luthere cove deovel berth awei vorm the kakelinde ancren, & vorswoluweth al the god the heo i-streoned habbeth, the schulden ase briddes beren ham up touward heouene, gif hit nere i-cakeled. The wreche peoddare more noise he maketh to yeien his sope, then a riche mercer al his deorewurthe ware. Eve held, in Paradise, long talk with the adder, and told him all the lesson that God had taught her and Adam concerning the apple; and so the fiend, through her word, understood at once her weakness and found the way to her for her destruction. Our lady, Saint Mary, did all another wise; nor told she the angel any tale, but asked him shortly the thing she did not know. Do you, my dear sisters, follow our lady, and not the cackling Eve. Wherefore let an anchoress, whatso she be, as much as ever she can and may, hold herself still. Let her not have the hen's nature. The hen, when she has laid, cannot but cackle. And what buys she thereof? Comes the chough at once and bereaves her of her eggs, and eats all that of which she should bring forth her living birds. And right so the wicked chough, the devil, beareth away from the cackling anchoresses, and swalloweth up all the good they have brought forth, and which ought, as birds, to bear them up toward heaven, if it were not cackled. The poor peddler makes more noise to cry his soap than a rich mercer all his precious wares. It is best to assign to this period, at any rate in the earliest versions in which it has come down to us, the so-called Moral Ode (Poema Morale), written in rhyming couplets, with, as a rule, fourteen syllables, or seven accents, to the line. It has been claimed for this poem that it represents a later version of an original much older than the second half of the twelfth century, or the beginning of the thirteenth, to which we should assign it. Such an hypothesis, however, appears to be quite superfluous. Words of French origin appear as rhymes—that is, in a position where they could not easily have been foisted in by a later scribe-and the literary and metrical features of the poem make for as late a date as philology will allow to be assigned to it. The poem is of man's life, of the joys of heaven, and, still more, of the pains of hell. It is full of striking lines, mostly dictated by the vivid sense of punishment to come. For example: Beter is worie wateres drunc thane atter meynd myd wyne. Swynes brede is swete, so is of the wilde deore. Al to deore he hit buth, that yeveth thar-vore his sweore. Ful wombe may lihtliche speken of hunger and of festen; So may of pyne that not hwat it is that evermo schal lesten. Worie, turbid; drunc, drink; atter . . . wyne, poison mixed with wine; al to sweare, all too dearly he it buys who gives for it his neck; wombe, belly; festen, fast; pyne, punishment; not, knows not. But the opening passage (here quoted from Morris's Specimens of Early English) is perhaps the finest of the poem: Ich am eldre than ich wes a winter and ek on lore. Unneth lif ich habbe ilad and yet me thinkth ich lede, The muchel foleweth his wil him seolve he biswiketh. A winter... lore, in winters and also in learning; welde, own; auhte, ought; habbe, have; ibco, been; Thah, though; on rede, in counsel; Unneth, useless; Hwenne . . . adrede, when I bethink me of it full sorely I dread; Mest, most; chilce, childishness; de me mylce, show me mercy; Veole, many; seotthe, since; cuthe, could; feole, many; of-thincheth, repents; nuthe, now; lome, frequently; agult, trespassed; The, he who; biswiketh, deceives. Judging from the number of manuscripts which have come down to us, the Ancren Riwle and the Moral Ode both enjoyed exceptional popularity. With the Ancren Riwle we may group, though without claiming for them common authorship, the legends of St Katherine, St Margaret, and St Juliana, and the vehemently anti-matrimonial homily on Holy Maidenhead (Hali Meidenhad), all written in an alliterative unrhymed metre with four accents; also the high-flown prose of the Wooing of our Lord (Wohunge of Ure Lauerd), Ureisun (Orison) of God Almihti, and some smaller pieces, printed among the Old English Homilies published by the Early English Text Society. Of more literary value than any of these are the poetical paraphrases of Genesis and Exodus, written probably in Suffolk about the middle of the century, from which we may take, as the shortest possible extract, eighteen lines from the scene between Isaac and Esau, when Jacob has stolen his brother's blessing. The text followed is that of the Story of Genes's and Exodus, edited by Richard Morris, E.E.T.S., 1865 (ll. 1553–1570): |