Among the old romances of pris' (price or praise) referred to by Chaucer, is supposed to be the Squire of Low Degree. The daughter of the King of Hungary had fallen into a state of melancholy from the supposed loss of the squire, her lover, and the king comforts his daughter by promising her many presents and luxuries : To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare;1 Your pommels shall be ended with gold, Both claré, pyment, and Rochelle, Ye shall be set at such a tryst, When you come home your menzie' among, To a drawbridge then shall ye, ... Th' one half of stone, th' other of tree; A barge shall meet you full right, With twenty-four oars full bright, With trumpets and with clarion, The fresh water to row up and down. . . . Forty torches burning bright, At your bridges to bring you light. EARLY ENGLISH WRITERS. The century and a half from 1250 to 1400 has been designated the Early or Old English period of our language. A division into dialects also became more marked. There were the Northern (including the Lowlands of Scotland), the Midland, and the Southern; or as they have been historically termed, the Northumbrian, Mercian, and West Saxon dialects. THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN. The military spirit then abroad, and the chivalrous enthusiasm of the Normans, were displayed in the literature of the day no less than in tournaments or in war and crusades. The mixed English language became a vehicle for romantic metrical tales, derived from the French. The name of one minstrel, THOMAS THE RHYMER, or THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN, is great in traditional story. He was a person of some consideration, owner of an estate, which he transmitted to his son, and he died shortly before 1299. Thomas, besides being a seer or prophet, is supposed to have been the author of our first metrical romance. An English rhyming chronicler, Robert de Brunne, refers to Sir Tristrem, a 'sedgeing tale,' or story for recitation, by Thomas of Ercildoun, which was esteemed above all other tales, if recited as written by the author. Few of the minstrels, however, gave it as it was made, in quaint or difficult English, but corrupted and lowered it in the course of recitation. It was a matter of regret that this genuine version of Sir Tristrem had been lost, and great satisfaction was expressed when Mr (afterwards Sir) Walter Scott, in 1804, published what he conceived to be a faithful copy of it, though modified in language in passing orally through different generations. This copy is contained in an old collection in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, called, from the name of its donor, the Auchinleck Manuscript, being presented by Lord Auchinleck, father of James Boswell, the biographer of Johnson. The story of Sir Tristrem was familiar to poetical antiquaries. It was one of the ancient British legends taken up by the Norman minstrels. The style of the poem is elliptical and concise. It is divided into three 'fyttes' or cantos, and the following stanza will shew the style and orthography of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Glad a man was he The turnament dede crie, That maidens might him se And over the walles to lye; Thai asked who was fre To win the maistrie; Thai seyd that best was he In Tour: Forthi chosen was he To maiden Blaunche Flour. Sir Walter's theory as to the originality and Scottish origin of the poem has not been gener- art of printing was introduced. Chaucer, in his ally accepted. It is believed to be the production Rhime of Sire Thopas, has parodied the style of of some minstrel who had heard Thomas of these compositions, and made 'mine host' in the Ercildoun recite his romance. Mr Garnet, a high Canterbury Tales abuse all such 'drafty rhyming' authority on early English dialects, concludes that as destitute of mirth or doctrine. the present Sir Tristrem is a modernised copy of an old Northumbrian romance which was probably written between 1260 and 1300, and derived from a Norman or Anglo-Norman source, but the author may have availed himself of the previous labours of Ercildoun on the same theme. An elaborate work of about 20,000 lines, The Romance of King Alexander, appears to have been written previous to 1300. It has been ascribed, but erroneously, to ADAM DAVIE, marshal of Stratford-le-Bow, near London. Davie, however, was a voluminous versifier, and wrote Visions, The Battle of Jerusalem, &c. Two romances, Havelok the Dane, and William and the Werwolf, have been edited (1828 and 1832) by an able antiquary, Sir Frederick Madden. The story of Havelok relates the adventures of an orphan child, son of a Danish king; the author is unknown. Extract from Havelok. Hwan he was hosled1 and shriuen, And seyden, he moucthe hem best loke Till hise sone mouthe bere Helm on heued, and leden ut here (In his hand a spere stark), When he was housled and shriven, The Geste of King Horn, the romantic history of Guy of Warwick (supposed to have been written about 1292 by a Cornish friar, WALTER OF EXETER), Sir Bevis of Southampton, Richard Cœur de Lion, The King of Tars, La Morte Arthur, Sir Eglamour, and a host of other metrical romances, belong to this period, and most of them were subsequently modernised when the 1 When he had the sacrament administered to him, and been shriven or confessed. The principal metrical chroniclers were two ecclesiastics-ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER and ROBERT DE BRUNNE. The former was a monk of Gloucester, who lived in the reigns of Henry III. and Edward I. His chief work is a rhymed chronicle of England from the legendary age of Brutus to the close of Henry III.'s reign, partly taken from the fabulous history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and written in the long line (or couplet) of fourteen syllables. This monk also wrote poems on the Martyrdom of Thomas à Becket, and the Life of St Brandan, and other saints. His language is strongly Anglo-Saxonninety-six per cent., according to Mr Marsh—but he speaks of the prevalence of the French tongue. England and the Normans about 1300. Thuse come, lo! Engelond 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, Ich wene ther ne be man in world contreyes none Vor the more that a man con, the more worth he ys. children did all so teach; So that high men of this land, that of their blood come, Hold all the same speech that they of them took ; For but [except] a man know French men tell of him well little; But low men hold to English and to their natural speech yet. I wene there not be man in world countries none That not holdeth to their natural speech but England alone. But well I wot for to know both well it is; For the more that a man knows, the more worth he is. Mr Ellis, in his Specimens of the Early English Poets, praises Robert of Gloucester's description of the first crusade, but the narrative is generally flat and prosaic. The following is a portion partly modernised: The Muster for the First Crusade. A good pope was thilk time at Rome, that hecht1 Urban, For self women ne beleved,1 that they ne wend thither fast, Ne young folk [that] feeble were, the while the voyage y-last. So that Robert Curthose thitherward his heart cast, And, among other good knights, ne thought not be the last. He wends here to Englond for the creyserie, And laid William his brother to wed" Normandy, The Earl Robert of Flanders mid3 him wend also, thereto. There wend the Duke Geoffrey, and the Earl Baldwin there, And the other Baldwin also, that noble men were, The Earl Stephen de Blois wend eke, that great power had on hond, And Robert's sister Curthose espoused had to wive. There wend yet other knights, the best that were alive; As the Earl of St Giles, the good Raymond, And Niel the king's brother of France, and the Earl And Tancred his nephew, and the bishop also The good knight Robert Curthose was the bastard son of the Conqueror, and the monk thus describes him : Thick man he was enow, but he nas well long, "By the uprising of God, Robelin, me shall i-see, Never yet man ne might, in Christendom, ne in Paynim, In battle him bring adown of his horse none time. ROBERT DE BRUNNE, or more properly ROBERT MANNING, a native of Brunne or Bourn, in Lincolnshire, in the year 1303, translated, under the name of Handlyng Synne, a French work by William de Waddington entitled Le Manuel des Pechiez. He afterwards (between 1327 and 1338) translated a French chronicle of England, which had been written by Piers or Peter de Langtoft, a contemporary of his own, and an Augustine canon of Bridlington, in Yorkshire. This chronicle comes down to the death of Edward I. in 1307. The earlier part is translated from Wace's Brut. Manning has been characterised as an industrious, and, for the time, an elegant writer, possessing, in particular, a great command of rhymes. The verse adopted in his chronicle is shorter than that of the Gloucester monk, making an approach to the octosyllabic stanza of modern times. language is also nearer modern English : The Lordynges, that be now here, Als Robert Mannyng wryten it fand, In felawschip when thai sitt samen.3 Manning, or De Brunne, speaks of disours (Fr. diseurs, reciters) and seggers, or sayers, in his day, who recited metrical compositions, and took unwarrantable liberties with the text of the poets. He did not write for them; he Made nought for no disours, The following is slightly modernised : Interview of Vortigern with Rowen, the beautiful Hengist that day did his might, 7 'Sir,' Bregh said, 'Rowen you greets, And gave the king, syne him kissed. Of that wassail men told great tale, Her attire full well it seemed, For of that maiden he wax all mad. And Hors his brother consented soon. They asked the king to give her Kent, Upon that maiden his heart was cast; Praise of Good Women.-From the Handling of Sins.' Nothing is to man so dear As woman's love in good manner. Where her love right and steadfast is. Than a chaste woman with lovely wurd. The death of Edward I.-'the greatest of the Plantagenets'-July 7, 1307, called forth an elegy, preserved among the Harleian MSS. The following are two of the stanzas (spelling simplified) : to the Conquest, who deserved the name of a poet. His dialect is Northumbrian : God that schope1 both se and sand And grante him joy withowten strife! In Fraunce and in Flandres both; And tharto Jhesu grante him might! A few more stanzas from the same poem (spelling simplified) will shew the animated style of Minot's narrative : How Edward the King came in Brabant. With many comely knight; To time 3 he think to fight. RICHARD ROLLE, a hermit of the order of St Augustine, and doctor of divinity, lived a solitary life near the priory of Hampole, four miles from Doncaster. He died in 1349. Rolle wrote metrical paraphrases of certain parts of Scripture, and an original poem of a moral and religious nature, entitled The Pricke of Conscience, an elaborate work in seven books and nearly ten thousand lines. It was published for the Philological Society, edited by Mr Morris, in 1863. This poem is also in the Northumbrian dialect, many words of which are still in use in Scotland-as thole, to bear; greeting, weeping; tine, lose; auld, old; fae, foe; frae, from ; &c. What is in Heaven.-From the 'Pricke of Conscience.' And ther is youthe without ony elde; And ther is alle manner frendshipe that may be, And ther is honeste without vileneye. In wham resteth alle mannere grace. WILLIAM LANGLAND, author of The Vision concerning Piers the Plowman, was the most vigorous, truly English, and popular of all the poets preceding Chaucer. He was born about 1332, supposed to be a native of Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire, and the son of a franklin or freeman. He wore the clerical tonsure, probably as having taken minor orders, and earned a precarious living by singing the placebo, dirige, and seven psalms for the good of men's souls. He says he was married, and this may perhaps explain why he never rose in the church. He has many allusions to his extreme poverty. Lastly, he describes himself as being in Bristol in the year 1399, when he wrote his last poem. This is the last trace of him, and he was then about sixty-seven years of age, so that he may not have long survived the accession of Henry IV. (September 1399). In personal appearance he was so tall that he obtained the nickname of Long Will, as he tells us in the line: I have lyved in londe, quod I, my name is Long Langland's poem is one of the most important works that appeared in England previous to the invention of printing. It is the popular representative of the doctrines which were silently bringing about the Reformation, and it is a peculiarly national poem, not only as being a much purer specimen of the English language than Chaucer, but as exhibiting the revival of the same system of alliteration which characterised the Anglo-Saxon poetry. It is, in fact, Introduction to Piers the Plowman, edited by Rev. W. W. Skeat (Oxford, 1869). both in this peculiarity and in its political character, characteristic of a great literary and political revolution, in which the language as well as the independence of the Anglo-Saxons had at last gained the ascendency over those of the Normans. Piers is represented as falling asleep on the Malvern Hills, and seeing in his sleep a series of visions; in describing these, he exposes the corruptions of society, and particularly the dissolute lives of the religious orders, with much bitterness. The first part of the work was written about 1362; it was enlarged in 1370, and still further enlarged after 1378. Its great popularity induced some unknown writer to give a supplement in the same alliterative verse, entitled Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, being a satire on the friars. Langland in his poem versifies the curious fable of the rats conspiring to bell the cat, which figures in Scottish history of the time of James III. The alliterative style of the work will be seen from the opening lines: In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne, I was wery forwandered, and went me to reste And as I lay, and lened, and loked in the wateres, Warton and Ellis quote the following as a remarkable prediction of the Reformation (spelling simplified): Ac now is Religion a rider, a roamer about, A pricker on a palfrey from manor to manor. Little had lords to done to give lond from her heirs In many places there they be parsons by hemself at |