be settled, as scarcely any written specimens of romance, even of that age, have survived. In the eleventh century, among other more obscure productions, both in prose and metre, there appears what, if unquestioned as to authenticity, would be a valuable monument of this language, the laws of William the Conqueror. These are preserved in a manuscript of Ingulfus's History of Croyland, a blank being left in other copies where they should be inserted (Gale, xv. Script. t. i. p. 88). They are written in an idiom so far removed from the Provençal, that one would be disposed to think the separation between these two species of romance of older standing than is commonly allowed. But it has been thought probable that these laws, which in fact were a mere repetition of those of Edward the Confessor, were originally published in AngloSaxon, the only language intelligible to the people, and translated at a subsequent period, by some Norman monk, into French (Ritson's Diss. on Romance, p. 66). This, indeed, is not quite satisfactory, as it would have been more natural for such a transcriber to have rendered them into Latin; and neither William the Conqueror nor his successors were accustomed to promulgate any of their ordinances in the vernacular language of England. volumes which give us any poetical pleasure. | disputable; but the question is not likely to Some of the original poems have since been published, and the extracts made from them by the recent historians of southern literature are rather superior. The troubadours chiefly confined themselves to subjects of love, or rather gallantry, and to satires (sirventes), which are sometimes keen and spirited. No romances of chivalry, and hardly any tales are found among their works. There seems a general deficiency of imagination, and especially of that vivid description which distinguishes works of genius in the rudest period of society. In the poetry of sentiment, their favourite province, they seldom attain any natural expression, and consequently produce no interest. I speak of course on the presumption that the best specimens have been exhibited by those who have undertaken the task. It must be allowed, however, that we cannot judge of the troubadours at a greater disadvantage than through the prose translations of Millot. Their poetry was entirely of that class which is allied to music, and excites the fancy or feelings rather by the power of sound than any stimulancy of imagery and passion. Possess ing a flexible and harmonious language, they invented a variety of metrical arrangements perfectly new to the nations of Europe. The Latin hymns were striking but monotonous, the metre of the northern French unvaried; but in Provençal poetry almost every length of verse, from two syllables to twelve, and the most intricate disposition of rhymes were at the choice of the troubadour. The canzoni, the sestine, all the lyric metres of Italy and Spain, were borrowed from his treasury. With such a command of poetical sounds, it was natural that he should inspire delight into ears not yet rendered familiar to the artifices of verse; and even now the fragments of these ancient lays, quoted by M. Sismondi and M. Ginguené, seem to possess a sort of charm that has evaporated in translation. Upon this harmony, and upon the facility with which mankind are apt to be deluded into an admiration of exaggerated sentiment in poetry, they depended for their influence. And, however vapid the songs of Provence may seem to our apprehensions, they were undoubtedly the source from which poetry for many centuries derived a great portion of habitual language. It has been maintained by some antiquaries that the northern romance, or what we properly call French, was not formed until the tenth century, the common dialect of all France having previously resembled that of Languedoc. This hypothesis may not be in VOL. VI. The use of a popular language became more common after the year 1100. Translations of some books of Scripture and acts of saints were made about that time, or even earlier, and there are French sermons of St. Bernard, from which extracts have been published, in the royal library at Paris. In 1126, a charter was granted by Louis VI. to the city of Beauvais in French. Metrical compositions are in general the first literature of a nation, and even if no distinct proof could be adduced, we might assume their existence before the twelfth century. There is, however, evidence, not to mention the fragments printed by Le Boeuf, of certain lives of saints translated into French verse by Thibault de Vernon, a canon of Rouen, before the middle of the preceding age. And we are told that Taillefer, a Norman minstrel, recited a song or romance on the deeds of Roland, before the army of his countrymen, at the battle of Hastings, in 1066. Philip de Than, a Norman subject of Henry I., seems to be the earliest poet whose works as well as name have reached us, unless we admit a French translation of the work of one Marbode upon precious stones to be more ancient. This de Than wrote a set of rules for computation of time, and an account of different 126 calendars. A happy theme for inspiration | son of Uther. An equally imaginary history without doubt! Another performance of the same author is a treatise on birds and beasts, dedicated to Adelaide, queen of Henry I. (Archæologia, vols. xii. and xiii.) But a more famous votary of the muses was Wace, a native of Jersey, who, about the beginning of Henry II.'s reign, turned Geoffrey of Monmouth's history into French metre. Besides this poem, called Le Brut d'Angleterre, he composed a series of metrical histories, containing the transactions of the dukes of Normandy, from Rollo, their great progenitor, who gave name to the Roman de Rou, down to his own age. Other productions are ascribed to Wace, who was at least a prolific versifier, and if he seem to deserve no higher title at present, has a claim to indulgence, and even to esteem, as having far excelled his contemporaries without any superior advantages of knowledge. In emulation, however, of his fame, several Norman writers addicted themselves to composing chronicles, or devotional treatises in metre. The court of our Norman kings was to the early poets in the Langue d'Oil what those of Arles and Toulouse were to the troubadours. Henry I. was fond enough of literature to obtain the surname of Beauclerc; Henry II. was more indisputably an encourager of poetry; and Richard I. has left compositions of his own in one or other (for the point is doubtful) of the two dialects spoken in France. If the poets of Normandy had never gone beyond historical and religious subjects they would probably have had less claim to our attention than their brethren of Provence. But a different and far more interesting species of composition began to be cultivated in the latter part of the twelfth century. Without entering upon the controverted question as to the origin of romantic fictions, referred by one party to the Scandinavians, by a second to the Arabs, by others to the natives of Brittany, it is manifest that the actual stories upon which one early and numerous class of romances was founded are related to the traditions of the last people. These are such as turn upon the fable of Arthur; for though we are not entitled to deny the existence of such a personage, his story seems chiefly the creation of Celtic vanity. Traditions current in Brittany, though probably derived from this island, became the basis of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin prose, which, as has been seen, was transfused into French metre by Wace. The vicinity of Normandy enabled its poets to enrich their narratives with other Armorican fictions, all relating to the heroes who had surrounded the table of the of Charlemagne gave rise to a new family of romances. The authors of these fictions were called Trouveurs, a name obviously identical with that of Troubadours. But, except in name, there was no resemblance between the minstrels of the northern and southern dialects. The invention of one class was turned to description, that of the other to sentiment; the firstre we epic in their form and style, the latter almost always lyric. We cannot perhaps give a better notion of their dissimilitude than by saying that one school produced Chaucer, and the other Petrarch. Besides these romances of chivalry, the trouveurs displayed their powers of lively narration in comic tales or fabliaux (a name sometimes extended to the higher romance), which have aided the imagination of Boccaccio and La Fontaine. These compositions are certainly more entertaining than those of the troubadours; but, contrary to what I have said of the latter, they often gain by appearing in a modern dress. Their versification, which doubtless had its charm, when listened to around the hearth of an ancient castle, is very languid and prosaic, and suitable enough to the tedious prolixity into which the narrative is apt to fall; and though we find many sallies of that arch and sprightly simplicity which characterizes the old language of France as well as England, it requires, upon the whole, a factitious taste to relish these Norman tales, considered as poetry in the higher sense of the word, distinguished from metrical fiction. A manner very different from that of the fabliaux was adopted in the Roman de la Rose, begun by William de Loris about 1250, and completed by John de Meun half a century later. This poem, which contains about sixteen thousand lines in the usual octo-syllable verse, from which the early French writers seldom deviated, is an allegorical vision, wherein love, and the other passions or qualities connected with it, pass over the stage, without the intervention, I believe, of any less abstract personages. Though similar allegories were not unknown to the ancients, and, which is more to the purpose, may be found in other productions of the thirteenth century, none had been constructed so elaborately as that of the Roman de la Rose. Cold and tedious as we now consider this species of poetry, it originated in the creative power of imagination, and appealed to more refined feeling than the common metrical narratives could excite. This poem was highly popular in the middle ages, and became the source of those numerous allegories which had not wholly ceased in the seventeenth century. The French language was employed in prose as well as in metre. Indeed it seems to have had almost an exclusive privilege in this respect. The language of Oil, says Dante, in his treatise on vulgar speech, prefers its claim to be ranked above those of Oc and Si (Provençal and Italian), on the ground that all translations or compositions in prose have been written therein from its greater facility and grace; such as the books compiled from the Trojan and Roman stories, the delightful fables about Arthur, and many other works of history and science. MORNING. BY JAMES BEATTIE. But who the melodies of morn can tell? The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide; The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark; -The Minstrel. THE ARAB MAID'S SONG. So came thy every glance and tone, -Lalla Rookh-THOMAS MOORE. MANSIE WAUCH'S ANCESTORS.1 [David Macbeth Moir, M.D., born at Musselburgh, Edinburgh, 5th January, 1798; died at Dumfries, 6th July, 1851. As the "Delta" of Blackwood's Magazine, Dr. Moir earned wide and enduring fame, and at the same time he faithfully performed the arduous duties of a popular medical practitioner in his native borough. He contributed about four hundred poems to Blackwood, besides prose sketches; and he was an occasional contributor to other periodicals. His works are: The Bombardment of Algiers, and other poems; The Legend of Genevieve, with other tales and poems; The Life of Mansie Wauch, tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself (from which we quote); Outlines of the Ancient History of Medicine; two treatises on Malignant Cholera; Domestic Verses, including "Casa Wappy," and other poems on the death of three of the author's children; and Sketches of the Poetical Literature of the Past Half-century. His Poetical Works, with an appreciative memoir by Mr. Thomas Aird, were published in two volumes by Blackwood & Sons, 1852. "His indeed was a life far more devoted to the service of others than to his own personal aggrandizement."-Blackwood's Magazine. Mr. Aird says of the poet: "Good sound sense, and simple, healthy feeling, excited and exalted though these may be, never fail him. He draws from nature, and from himself direct."] Auld Grandfaither died when I was a growing callant, some seven or aught year auld: yet I mind him full well; it being a curious thing how early matters take haud of one's memory. He was a straught, tall, auld man, with a shining bell-pow, and reverend white locks hinging down about his haffets; a Roman nose, and twa cheeks blooming through the winter of his lang age like roses, when, puir body, he was sand-blind with infirmity. In his latter days he was hardly able to crawl about alone: but used to sit resting himself on the truff seat before our door, leaning forit his head on his staff, and finding a kind of pleasure in feeling the beams of God's ain sun beaking on him. A blackbird, that he had tamed, hung above his head in a whand-cage of my faither's making; and he had taken a pride in learning it to whistle twa three turns of his ain favourite sang, "Oure the Water to Charlie." I recollect, as well as yesterday, that on the Sundays he wore a braid bannet with a red worsted cherry on the tap o't; and had a single "The Autobiography of Mansie Wauch' began in 1824, and the series ran on for the three following years [in Blackwood]. So popular was it in Scotland, that I know districts where country clubs, waiting impatiently for the magazine, met monthly, so soon as it was issued, and had 'Mansie' read aloud by one of their number, amidst explosions of congregated laughter."-Memoir by Thomas Aird. Aberlady, that came across with a valuable cargo of smuggled gin. When grandfaither had been obliged to take the wings of flight for the preservation of his life and liberty, my faither was a wean at grannie's breast: so, by her fending-for she was a canny industrious body, and kept a bit shop, in the which she sold oatmeal and red herrings, needles and prins, potaties, and tape, and cabbage, and what not-he had grown a strapping laddie of eleven or twelve, helping his two sisters, one of whom perished of the measles in the dear year, to gang errands, chap sand, carry water, and keep the housie clean. I have heard him say, when auld grandfaither came to their door at the dead of night, tirling like a thief o' darkness at the window brod to get in, that he was so altered in his voice and lingo, that no living soul kenned him, not even the wife of his bosom; so he had to put grannie in mind of things that had happened between them, before she would allow my faither to lift the sneck, or draw the bar. Many and many a year, for gude kens how long after, I've heard tell, that his speech was so Dutchified as to be scarcely ken-speckle to a Scotch European; but nature is powerful, and in the course of time he came in the upshot to gather his words together like a Christian. breasted coat, square in the tails, of light Gil- | his neck over in a sloop from Rotterdam to merton blue, with plaited white buttons, bigger than crown-pieces. His waistcoat was low in the neck, and had flap pouches, wherein he kept his mull for rappee, and his tobacco-box. To look at him wi' his rig-and-fur Shetland hose pulled up oure his knees, and his big glancing buckles in his shoon, sitting at our door-cheek, clean and tidy as he was kept, was just as if one of the auncient patriarchs had been left on earth, to let succeeding surveevors witness a picture of hoary and venerable eld. Puir body, mony a bit Gibraltar rock and gingebread did he give to me, as he would pat me on the head, and prophesy I would be a great man yet; and sing me bits of auld sangs about the bloody times of the Rebellion and Prince Charlie. There was nothing that I liked so well as to hear him set a-going with his auldwarld stories and lits; though my mother used sometimes to say, "Wheesht, grandfaither, ye ken it's no canny to let out a word of thae things; let byganes be byganes, and forgotten." He never liked to gie trouble, so a rebuke of this kind would put a tether to his tongue for a wee; but when we were left by ourselves, I used aye to egg him on to tell me what he had come through in his far-away travels beyond the broad seas; and of the famous battles he had seen and shed his precious blood in; for his pinkie was hacked off by a dragoon of Cornel Gardener's, down by at Prestonpans, and he had catched a bullet with his ankle over in the north at Culloden. So it was no wonder that he liked to crack about these times, though they had brought him muckle and no little mischief, having obliged him to skulk like another Cain among the Hieland hills and heather, for many a long month and day, homeless and hungry. No dauring to be seen in his own country, where his head would have been chacked off like a sybo, he took leg-bail in a ship, over the sea among the Dutch folk; where he followed out his lawful trade of a cooper, making girrs for the herring barrels, and so on; and sending, when he could find time and opportunity, such savings from his wages as he could afford, for the maintenance of his wife and small family of three helpless weans, that he had been obligated to leave, dowie and destitute, at their native home of pleasant Dalkeith. At lang and last, when the breeze had blown oure, and the feverish pulse of the country began to grow calm and cool, auld grandfaither took a longing to see his native land; and though not free of jeopardy from king's cutters on the sea, and from spies on shore, he risked Of my auntie Bell, that, as I have just said, died of the measles in the dear year, at the age of fourteen, I have no story to tell but one, and that a short ane, though not without a sprinkling of interest. Among her other ways of doing, grannie kept a cow, and sold the milk round about to the neighbours in a pitcher, whiles carried by my faither, and whiles by my aunties, at the ransom of a ha'penny the mutchkin. Well, ye observe, that the cow ran yield, and it was as plain as pease that she was with calf:-Geordie Drouth, the horse-doctor, could have made solemn affidavy on that head. So they waited on, and better waited on for the prowie's calfing, keeping it upon draff and ait-strae in the byre; till one morning everything seemed in a fair way, and my auntie Bell was set out to keep watch and ward. Some of her companions, howsoever, chancing to come by, took her out to the back of the house to have a game at the pallall; and in the interim, Donald Bogie the tinker from Yetholm, came and left his little jackass in the byre, while he was selling about his crockery of cups and saucers, and brown plates, on the auld ane, thro the town, in two creels. In the middle of auntie Bell's game, she heard an unco noise in the byre; and kenning that she had neglected her charge, she ran round the gable, and opened the door in a great hurry; when seeing the beastie, she pulled it to again, and fleeing, half out of breath, into the kitchen, cried—“Come away, come away, mother, as fast as ye can. Ay, lyst, the cow's cauffed, and it's a cuddie!" My own faither, that is to say auld Mansie Wauch with regard to myself, but young Mansie with reference to my grandfaither, after having run the errands, and done his best to grannie during his early years, was, at the age of thirteen, as I have heard him tell, bound a prentice to the weaver trade, which, from that day and date, for better for worse, he prosecuted to the hour of his death;-I should rather have said to within a fortnight o't, for he lay for that time in the mortal fever that cut through the thread of his existence. Alas! as Job says, 66 'How time flies like a weaver's shuttle!" He was a tall, thin, lowering man, blackaviced, and something in the physog like myself, though scarcely so well-faured; with a kind of blueness about his chin, as if his beard grew of that colour-which I scarcely think it would do-but might arise either from the dust of the blue cloth, constantly flying about the shop, taking a rest there, or from his having a custom of giving it a rub now and then with his finger and thumb, both of which were dyed of that colour, as well as his apron, from rub bing against, and handling the webs of checkit cloth in the loom. Ill would it become me, I trust a dutiful son, to say that my faither was anything but a decent, industrious, hard-working man, doing everything for the good of his family, and winning the respect of all that kenned the value of his worth. As to his decency, few-very few indeed-laid beneath the mools of Dalkeith kirk-yard, made their beds there, leaving a better name behind them; and as to industry, it is but little to say that he toiled the very flesh off his bones, caaing the shuttle, from Monday morning till Saturday night, from the rising up of the sun, even to the going down thereof; and whiles, when opportunity led him, or occasion required, digging and delving away at the bit kail-yard, till moon and stars were in the lift, and the dews of heaven that fell on his head were like the oil that flowed from Aaron's beard, even to the skirts of his garment. But what will ye say there? Some are born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and others with a parritch-stick. Of the latter was my faither, for with all his fechting, he never was able much more than to keep our heads above the ocean of debt. Whatever was denied him, a kind Providence, howsoever, enabled him to do that; and so he departed this life contented, leaving to my mother and me, the two survivors, the prideful remembrance of being respectively, she the widow, and me the son of an honest man. Some left with twenty thousand cannot boast as much, so ilka ane has their comforts. Having never entered much into public life, farther than attending the kirk twice every Sabbath, and thrice when there was evening service, the days of my faither glided over like the waters of a deep river that make little noise in their course; so I do not know whether to lament or to rejoice at having almost nothing to record of him. Had Buonaparte as little ill to account for, it would be well this day for him:-but, losh me! I had amaist skipped over his wedding. In the five-and-twentieth year of his age he had fallen in love with my mother, Marion Laverock, at the Christening of a neighbour's bairn, where they both happened to forgather, little, I daresay, jalousing at the time their een first met, that fate had destined them for a pair, and to be the honoured parents of me, their only bairn. Seeing my faither's heart was catched as in the net of the fowler, she took every lawful means, such as adding another knot to her cockernony, putting up her hair in screw curls, and so on, to follow up her advantage; the result of all which was, that, after a three months' courtship, she wrote a letter out to her friends at Loanhead, telling them of what was more than likely to happen, and giving a kind invitation to such of them as might think it worth their whiles, to come in and be spectators of the ceremony. And a prime day I am told they had of it, having by advice of more than one consented to make it a penny-wedding; and hiring Deacon Laurie's maltbarn for five shillings, for the express purpose. Many yet living, among whom are James Batter, who was the best-man, and Duncan Imrie, the heelcutter in the Flesh-market Close, are yet above board to bear solemn testimony to the grandness of the occasion, and the unaccountable numerousness of the company, with such a display of mutton-broth, swimming thick with raisins, and roasted jiggets of lamb,-to say nothing of mashed turnips and champed potatoes, -as had not been seen in the wide parish o' Dalkeith in the memory |