of the fourteenth century we find John Gower writing long poems in Latin and French (see page 74) before he turned to English in his Latin-named Confessio Amantis. Gower also wrote French balades which have real literary merit, but he is the last English poet who seriously used a foreign language as the medium of poetry; and though later writers, such as Sir Thomas More and Bacon, used Latin for works in prose, this was with a view to appealing to a European audience rather than from distrust any of the capabilities of their native tongue. Coincident with this final disuse of Latin and French in literature intended for Englishmen, we find, a little before 1380, the beginning of a long series of translations of foreign works into Englishnot merely works of devotion and religious instruction as in the previous period, but works on every variety of subject. About 1380 also we have the beginning of a new influence in English poetry, for it was then that Chaucer turned from his French and Latin sources and enriched our literature from his study of the great Italian writers, Dante and Boccaccio Thenceforth what we may call the literary or Court poetry of England takes an entirely new turn; for, though Chaucer's successors could but very imperfectly follow in his footsteps, it was yet in his footsteps that they tried to walk. Thus the period of some three hundred and fifty years from the first revival of the literary use of English after the Norman Conquest in Layamon's Brut (c. 1205) to the accession of Elizabeth, with the nearly coincident literary landmark, the publication of Tottel's Miscellany in 1557, divides itself almost exactly at the half, about the year 1380. Before this date English is only one of three rival literary languages; after it English reigns supreme, and in prose advances unfalteringly. In poetry, as we shall see, there was no such steady progress, for until Surrey and Wyatt sought inspiration from the Italian models where Chaucer had found it, there was no English writer who could understand his secrets so as to prove in any way a worthy successor to him. The Arthurian Legend. The trilingual character of the literature written, for Englishmen in the early part of our period is well illustrated by the fact that the legendary history of Britain with which English literature takes its new beginning appeared first in Latin, then in French, and only finally in English. It was the Historia Regum Britannia of Geoffrey of Monmouth which started the legends on their This famous book, which differs literary career. widely from the ordinary Latin chronicles among which it has already been named, was extant, in a form now lost, before January 1139, and as we now have it dates from some eight or ten years later. Its author called himself Gaufridus Arturus (Geoffrey Arthur)—that is, the son of Arthur; his signature is found as witness to a charter of Oseney, near Oxford, in 1129; probably in 1140 he became Archdeacon of Monmouth; in 1152 he was consecrated Bishop of St Asaph; and in 1154 he died at Llandaff. He was certainly of Welsh origin, and Welsh tradition has it that he was born at Monmouth. He does not tell us, however, that what was new in his book was gathered from local Welsh tradition, but that he learnt it from a certain very ancient book in the British language which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany and gave him, and in which he found the acts of all the British kings, from Brut to Cadwalader, set forth in their order. This Archdeacon Walter was one of the co-signatories of the Oseney charter of 1129, and the attempts made to get rid of both him and his Breton book are rather unnecessary. Brutus, the great-grandson of Eneas, the supposed founder of the royal line of Britain, is mentioned by the præ-Conquest historian Nennius, and Nennius and Bede speak of Lucius, the first Christian king; of Vortigern and Ambrosius Aurelius; while Arthur appears in Nennius as a warrior, not a king, who won twelve battles against the Saxons. The insertion of intermediate British kings-among them Leir, whose story, as Shakespeare knew it, here first appears and the great development, though only in part, of the Arthur legend, were Geoffrey's innovations on the received version of British history, and they sufficed to set the literary world of France and England on fire. Writing almost certainly in 1149 or the following year, Alfred of Beverley remarks that he found it was thought a proof of clownishness to know nothing of the stories of the Britons, about which every one was talking, and he therefore made an abridgment of Geoffrey's History. Three versions or abridgments were made at early dates in Welsh. It is hardly possible to doubt that the book was used by Geoffrey Gaimar in the lost first part of his Estorie des Engles; and another French poet, Wace, the author of the Roman de Rou, with the help of some additions, turned it into a metrical chronicle of over fourteen thousand lines, to which he gave the title Geste des Bretons, or Brut d'Angleterre. This was in 1155; and about the end of the century Wace's romance and two other works, identified as the Latin original of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica and the Anglo-Saxon version of it, fell into the hands of Layamon (Lagamon), a priest at Areley Regis, on the Severn, in north Worcestershire, and spurred him to write on the same subject a poem of some thirty-two 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: for cuth hit is me nouthe. Seotthen heo me wes leathest : That he bithe unworth and lah: the mon the litul ah. And ich nas na wurdra : thenne ich nes weldinde. 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 : 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- but thereafter most loathsome, and that I was no worthier than my wealth made me. Over sooth said that youthful woman, there follows her much wisdom. 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 than warn me from her land. Not a great speech this certainly, but yet 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-t -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 cneo, 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, Reduced facsimile froin the Ormulum.1 1 ledenn hemm þe we33e rihht Till himm patt te33 þær sohhtenn¶ And te33 And he pe35m sennde sone forp Till beppleam and se33de Nu la ferrdinngess farepp for And se kepp swipe 3eorne Patt newe king patt borenn iss Ner i piss land to manne And sone summ 3e findenn himm Whær summ he beop onn eorpe Wipp 3ure madd mess lakepp himm And busheph himm and lutepp And cumepp eft onn 3æn till me And witepp me to seggenn Whær icc me mu3he findenn himm To lakenn himm and lutenn ¶And te33 pa wendenn fra þe king Till þe33re rihhte we3 3e And te33re steorne was hemm denn sohht And wærenn swipe blipe Pe33 fundenn ure laferrd crist And ure laffdis Mar3e And nohht ne se33) pe goddspell boc Patt iosæp wass pærinne Pær ure laferrd iesu crist Wass fundenn wipp hiss moderr And tatt wass don purrh godd tatt he Ne wass nohht ta þærinne 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 Pa þatt unncupe follc comm inn To lefenn upp o criste ¶ Pe33 fundenn ure laferrd crist And fellenn dun o cnewwess To bu3henn and to lutenn himm Wipp hæfedd and wipp heorrte And ille an king oppnede þær Hiss hord off hise maddmess And illc an 3aff himm prinne lac To lakenn himm and wurrpenn An lac wass gold te goddspell se33) ¶ An operr lac wass recless ¶ Pe pridde patt te33 gæfenn himm Wass an full deore sallfe And itt iss o pe goddspell boc Myrra bi name nemmnedd And her iss litell operr nohht I piss land off patt sallfe Acc 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 þ 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 thride 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, And forthi yerndest tu that ic This were the sholde wirken; And ic it hafé forthed the, Ac all thurh Cristés helpe. Now, brother Walter, brother mine After the flesh's kind, And brother mine in Christendom Through baptism and through truth, And brother mine eke in God's house, Once more, in a third way, Since that we two have taken both One book of rules to follow, Under the canons' rank and life So as Saint Austin set; I now have done even as thou bad'st, Forwarding to thy will, I now have turned into English The Gospel's holy lore, 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, Ancren 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 |