generation. In point of fact, whatever may be alleged about the minstrels of the North Country, it is difficult, if it be possible, to find an English romance which contains no internal allusion to a French prototype. Ritson very grudgingly allows, that three old stories may be called original English romances, until a Norman original shall be found for them* ;

*Those are, "The Squire of Low Degree," "Sir Tryamour," and "Sir Eglamour." Respecting two of those, Mr. Ellis shows, that Ritson might have spared himself the trouble of making any concession, as the antiquity of The Squire of Low Degree [Ritson, vol. iii. p. 145] remains to be proved, it being mentioned by no writer before the sixteenth century, and not being known to be extant in any ancient MS. Sir Eglamour contains allusions to its Norman pedigree.

The difficulty of finding an original South British romance of this period, unborrowed from a French original, seems to remain undisputed: but Mr. Walter Scott, in his edition of "Sir Tristrem," has presented the public with an ancient Scottish romance, which, according to Mr. Scott's theory, would demonstrate the English language to have been cultivated earlier in Scotland than in Englanda. In a different part of these Selections (p. 17), I have expressed myself in terms of more unqualified assent to the

[a" The strange appropriation of the Auchinleck poem as a Scottish production, when no single trace of the Scottish dialect is to be found throughout the whole romance which may not with equal truth be claimed as current in the north of England, while every marked peculiarity of the former is entirely wanting, can hardly require serious investigation. From this opinion the ingenious editor himself must long ago have been reclaimed. The singular doctrines relative to the rise and progress of the English language in North and South Britain may also be dismissed, as not immediately relevant. But when it is seriously affirmed, that the English language was once spoken with greater purity in the Lowlands of Scotland, than in this country, we Sothrons' receive the communication with the same smile of incredulity that we bestow upon the poetic dogma of the honest Frieslander:Buwter, breat en greene tzies, Is guth Inglisch en guth Fries.

Butter, bread, and green cheese,

Is good English and good Friese."

-PRICE, Warton's Hist. vol. i. p. 196. Ed. 1824. "As to the Essayist's assertion (Mr. Price's) that the language of Sir Tristrem has in it nothing distinctively Scottishthis is a point on which the reader will, perhaps, consider the authority of Sir Walter Scott as sufficient to countervail that of the most accomplished English antiquary."-LockHART, Advt. to Sir Tristrem, 1833.

No one has yet satisfactorily accounted for the Elizabethan-like Inglis of Barbour and Blind Harry, or the Saxon Layamon-like Inglis of Gawain Douglas. Did Barbour, who wrote in 1375, write in advance of his age, and Douglas, who began and ended his " Æneid" in 1513-14, behind his age? Or did each represent the spoken language of the times they wrote in? For philological and poetical inquiry this is matter of moment. But is there sufficient material for more than felicitous conjecture; and who is equal to the task? If Barbour wrote his Bruce" as we have it, it is perhaps the most extraordinary poem in the English language. For the age of the first manuscript known (1488), supposing it to have been then written, it is still, though not equally so, a wonder.

Scott's view of the priority in cultivation of Inglis in Scotland over England is sanctioned by Ellis in the Introduction (p. 127,) to his Metrical Romances.]

while Mr. Tyrwhitt conceives, that we have not one English romance anterior to Chaucer, which is not borrowed from a French one.

supposition of Thomas of Erceldoune having been an original romancer, than I should be inclined to use upon mature consideration. Robert de Brunne certainly alludes to Sir Tristrem, as " the most famous of all gests" in his timeb. He mentions Erceldoune, its author, and another poet of the name of Kendale. Of Kendale, whether he was Scotch or English, nothing seems to be known with certainty.W With respect to Thomas of Erceldoune, or Thomas the Rhymer, the Auchinleck MS. published by my illus trious friend, professes to be the work not of Erceldoune himself, but of some minstrel or reciter who had heard the story from Thomas. Its language is confessed to be that of the fourteenth century, and the MS. is not pretended to be less than eighty years older than the supposed date of Thomas of Erceldoune's romance. Accordingly, whatever Thomas the Rhymer's production might be, this Auchinleck MS. is not a transcript of it, but the transcript of the composition of some one, who heard the story from Thomas of Erceldoune. It is a specimen of Scottish poetry not in the thirteenth but the fourteenth century. How much of the matter or manner of Thomas the Rhymer was retained by his deputy reciter of the story, eighty years after the assumed date of Thomas's work, is a subject of mere conjecture.

Still, however, the fame of Erceldoune and Tristrem remain attested by Robert de Brunne: and Mr. Scott's doctrine is, that Thomas the Rhymer, having picked up the chief materials of his romantic history of Sir Tristrem from British traditions surviving on the border, was not a translator from the French, but an original authority to the continental romancers. It is nevertheless acknow. ledged, that the story of Sir Tristrem had been told in French, and was familiar to the romancers of that language, long before Thomas the Rhymer could have set about picking up British traditions on the border, and in all probability before he was born. The possibility, therefore, of his having heard the story in Norman minstrelsy, is put beyond the reach of deniale. On the other hand, Mr. Scott argues, that the Scottish bard must have been an authority to the continental romancers, from two circumstances. In the first place, there are two metrical fragments of French romance preserved in the library of Mr. Douced, which, according to Mr. Scott, tell the story of Sir Tristrem in a manner corresponding with the same tale as it is told by Thomas of Erceldoune, and in which a reference is made to the authority of a Thomas. But the whole force of this argument evidently depends on the supposition of Mr. Douce's fragments being the work of one and the same author-whereas they are not, to all

[ Over gestes it has the steem
Over all that is or was,

If men it sayd as made Thomas.]

[ Sir Tristrem, like almost all our Romances, had a foreign origin-its language alone is ours. Three copies in French, in Anglo-Norman, and in Greek, composed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and edited by Francisque Michel, appeared in two vols. 8vo. at London in 1835. But Scott never stood out for Thomas's invention. "The tale," he says, " lays claim to a much higher antiquity." P. 27. Ed. 1833.) To a British antiquity, however. See also Scott's Essay on Romance, in Misc. Prose Works, (vol. vi. p. 201,) where he contends that it was derived from Welsh traditions, though told by a Saxon poet.]

[ Now, by Mr. Douce's Will, among the Bodleian books.]

In the reign of Edward II., Adam Davie, who was marshal of Stratford-le-Bow, near London, wrote "Visions" in verse, which appear to be original; and the "Battle of Jerusalem," in which he turned into rhyme the contents of a French prose romance". In the appearance, by the same author. A single perusal will enable us to observe how remarkably they differ in style. They have no appearance of being parts of the same story, one of them placing the court of King Mark at Tintagil, the other at London. Only one of the fragments refers to the authority of a Thomas, and the style of that one bears very strong marks of being French of the twelfth century, a date which would place it beyond the possibility of its referring to Thomas of Ercel doune ". The second of Mr. Scott's proofs of the originality of the Scottish Romance is, that Gotfried von Strasburg, in a German romance, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, refers to Thomas of Britania as his original. Thomas of Britania is, however, a vague word; and among the Anglo-Norman poets there might be one named Thomas, who might have told a story which was confessedly told in many shapes in the French language, and which was known in France before the Rhymer could have flourished; and to this Anglo-Norman Thomas, Gotfried might refer. Eichorn, the German editor, says, that Gotfried translated his romance from the Norman French. Mr. Scott, in his edition of Sir Tristrem, after conjecturing one date for the birth of Thomas the Rhymer, avowedly alters it for the sake of identifying the Rhymer with Gotfried's Thomas of Britania, and places his birth before the end of the

twelfth century. This, he allows, would extend the Rhy

mer's life to upwards of ninety years, a pretty fair age for the Scottish Tiresias; but if he survived 1296, as Harry the Minstrel informs us, he must have lived to beyond an hundred f.

* [His other works were, the Legend of St. Alexius, from the Latin; Scripture Histories; and Fifteen Tokens before the Day of Judgment. The last two were paraphrases of Scripture. Mr. Ellis ultimately retracted his opinion, adopted from Warton, that he was the author of a romance entitled the "Life of Alexander." [Printed

in Weber's Collection.-See ELLIS's Met. Rom. vol. i. p. 130.]

[This passage is quoted by the late learned Mr. Price in his Note to Sir Tristrem, appended to his edition of Warton's History. "In addition," says Price," it may be observed that the language of this fragment, so far from vesting Thomas with the character of an original writer, affirms directly the reverse. It is clear that in the writer's opinion the earliest and most authentic narrative of Tristrem's story was to be found in the work of Breri. From his relation later minstrels had chosen to deviate; but Thomas, who had also composed a romance upon the subject, not only accorded with Breri in the order of his events, but entered into a justification of himself and his predecessor, by proving the inconsistency and absurdity of these newfangled variations. If, therefore, the romance of Thomas be in existence, it must contain this vindication; the poem in the Auchinleck MS. is entirely silent on the subject."]

[ There is now but one opinion of Scott's Sir Tristremthat it is not, as he would have it, the work of Thomas of Erceldoune, but the work of some after bard, that had heard Thomas tell the story-in other words an imperfect transcript of the Erceldoune copy. Thomas's own tale is something we may wish for, but we may despair of finding. That Kendale wrote Scott's Sir Tristrem is the fair enough supposition of Mr. David Laing.—Dunbar, vol. i. p. 38.]

course of Adam Davie's account of the siege of Jerusalem, Pilate challenges our Lord to single combat. From the specimens afforded by Warton, no very high idea can be formed of the genius of this poetical marshal. Warton anticipates the surprise of his reader, in finding the English language improve so slowly, when we reach the verses of Davie. The historian of our poetry had, in a former section, treated of Robert de Brunne as a writer anterior to Davie; but as the latter part of De Brunne's Chronicle was not finished till 1339, in the reign of Edward III., it would be surprising indeed if the language should seem to improve when we go back to the reign of Edward II.+ Davie's work may be placed in our poetical chronology, posterior to the first part of De Brunne's Chronicle, but anterior to the latter.

Richard Rolle, another of our earliest versifiers, died in 1349‡. He was a hermit, and led a secluded life, near the nunnery of Hampole, in Yorkshire. Seventeen of his devotional pieces are enumerated in Ritson's "Bibliographia Poetica.". The penitential psalms and theological tracts of a hermit were not likely

to enrich or improve the style of our poetry; and they are accordingly confessed, by those who have read them, to be very dull. His name challenges notice, only from the paucity of contemporary writers.

Laurence Minot, although he is conjectured to have been a monk, had a Muse of a livelier temper; and, for want of a better poet, he may, by courtesy, be called the Tyrtæus of his age. His few poems which have reached us are, in fact, short narrative ballads on the victories obtained in the reign of Edward III., beginning with that of Hallidown Hill, and ending with the siege of Guisnes Castle. As his poem on the last of these events was evidently written recently after the exploit, the era of his poetical career may be laid between the years 1332 and 1352. Minot's works lay in absolute oblivion till late in the last century, in a MS. of the Cotton Collection, which was

[ In this the usual accuracy and candour of Mr. Campbell appear to have forsaken him. Warton's observation is far from being a general one, and might have been interpreted to the exclusion of De Brunne. That such was Warton's intention is obvious, &c.-PRICE, Warton, vol. ii. p. 52.]

[Ellis, vol. i. p. 146. Warton (vol. ii. p. 90,) calls him Richard Hampole.]

supposed to be a transcript of the works of Chaucer. The name of Richard Chawfir having been accidentally scrawled on a spare leaf of the MS. (probably the name of its ancient possessor), the framer of the Cotton catalogue, very goodnaturedly converted it into Geoffrey Chaucer. By this circumstance Mr. Tyrwhitt, when seeking materials for his edition of the "Canterbury Tales," accidentally discovered an English versifier older than Chaucer himself. The style of Minot's ten military ballads is frequently alliterative, and has much of the northern dialect. He is an easy and lively versifier, though not, as Mr. G. Chalmers denominates him, either elegant or energetic*.

In the course of the fourteenth century our language seems to have been inundated with metrical romances, until the public taste had been palled by the mediocrity and monotony of the greater part of them. At least, if Chaucer's host in the "Canterbury Tales" be a fair representation of contemporary opinion, they were held in no great reverence, to judge by the comparison which the vintner applies to the "drafty rhymings" of Sir Topaz+. The practice of translating French metrical romances into English did not, however, terminate in the fourteenth century. Nor must we form an indiscriminate estimate of the ancient metrical romances, either from Chaucer's implied contempt for them, nor from mine host of the Tabard's ungainly comparison with respect to one of them. The ridiculous style of Sir Topaz is not an image of them all. Some of them, far from being chargeable with impertinent and prolix description, are concise in narration, and paint, with rapid but distinct sketches, the battles, the banquets, and the rites of worship of chivalrous life. Classical poetry has scarcely ever conveyed in shorter boundaries so many interesting and complicated events, as may be found in the good old romance of Le Bone Florence‡. Chaucer himself, when he strikes into the new or allegorical

[* An edition of Minot's poems was one of Ritson's many contributions to the elucidation of early English language and literature.]

[The Rime of Sir Topaz, which Chaucer introduces as a parody, undoubtedly, of the rhythmical romances of the age, is interrupted by mine host Harry Bailly with the

strongest and most energetic expressions of total and absolute contempt.-SIRWALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 209.]

Given in Ritson's Old Metrical Romances.

school of romance, has many passages more tedious and less affecting than the better parts of those simple old fablers. For in spite of their puerility in the excessive use of the marvellous, their simplicity is often touching, and they have many scenes that would form adequate subjects for the best historical pencils.

The reign of Edward III. was illustrious not for military achievements alone; it was a period when the English character displayed its first intellectual boldness. It is true that the history of the times presents a striking contrast between the light of intelligence which began to open on men's minds, and the frightful evils which were still permitted to darken the face of society. In the scandalous avarice of the church, in the corruptions of the courts of judicature, and in the licentiousness of a nobility who countenanced disorders and robbery, we trace the unbanished remains of barbarism; but, on the other hand, we may refer to this period for the genuine commencement of our literature, for the earliest diffusion of free inquiry, and for the first great movement of the national mind towards emancipation from spiritual tyranny. The abuses of religion were, from their nature, the most powerfully calculated to arrest the public attention; and poetry was not deficient in contributing its influence to expose those abuses, both as subjects of ridicule and of serious indignation. Two poets of this period, with very different powers of genius, and probably addressing themselves to different classes of society, made the corruptions of the clergy the objects of their satire-taking satire not in its mean and personal acceptation, but understanding it as the moral warfare of indignation and ridicule against turpitude and absurdity. Those writers were Langlande and Chaucer, both of whom have been claimed as primitive reformers by some of the zealous historians of the Reformation. At the idea of a full separation from the Catholic Church, both Langlande and Chaucer would possibly have been struck with horror. The doctrine of predestination, which was a leading tenet of the first Protestants, is not, I believe, avowed in any of Chaucer's writings, and it is expressly reprobated by Langlande. It is, nevertheless, very likely that their works contributed to promote the Reformation. Langlande, especially, who was

an earlier satirist and painter of manners than Chaucer, is undaunted in reprobating the corruptions of the papal government. He prays to Heaven to amend the Pope, whom he charges with pillaging the Church, interfering unjustly with the king, and causing the blood of Christians to be wantonly shed; and it is a curious circumstance, that he predicts the existence of a king, who, in his vengeance, would destroy the monasteries.

The work entitled "Visions of William concerning Piers Plowman," and concerning the origin, progress, and perfection of the Christian life, which is the earliest known original poem, of any extent, in the English language, is ascribed to Robert Langlande [or Longlande], a secular priest, born at Mortimer's Cleobury, in Shropshire, and educated at Oriel College, Oxford. That it was written by Langlande, I believe, can be traced to no higher authority than that of Bale, or of the | printer Crowley; but his name may stand for that of its author, until a better claimant shall be found.

Those Visions, from their allusions to events evidently recent, can scarcely be supposed to have been finished later than the year 1362, almost thirty years before the appearance of the Canterbury Tales +.

It is not easy, even after Dr. Whitaker's laborious analysis of this work, to give any concise account of its contents. The general object is to expose, in allegory, the existing abuses of society, and to inculcate the public and private duties both of the laity and clergy. An imaginary seer, afterwards described by the name of William, wandering among the bushes of the Malvern hills, is overtaken by sleep, and dreams that he beholds a magnificent tower, which turns out to be the tower or fortress of Truth, and a dungeon, which, we soon after learn, is the abode of Wrong. In a spacious plain in front of it, the whole race of mankind are employed in their respective pursuits; such as husbandmen, merchants, minstrels with their audiences, begging friars, and itinerant venders of pardons, leading a dissolute life

* The work is commonly entitled the "Visions of Piers Plowman," but incorrectly, for Piers is not the dreamer who sees the visions, but one of the characters who is beheld, and who represents the Christian life.

[See Mr. Price's Note in Warton, vol. ii. p. 101, and Appendix to the same volume.]

under the cloak of religion. The last of these are severely satirized. A transition is then made to the civil grievances of society; and the policy, not the duty, of submitting to bad princes, is illustrated by the parable of the Rats and Cats. In the second canto, True Religion descends, and demonstrates, with many precepts, how the conduct of individuals, and the general management of society, may be amended. In the third and fourth canto, Mede or Bribery is exhibited, seeking a marriage with Falsehood, and attempting to make her way to the courts of justice, where it appears that she has many friends, both among the civil judges and ecclesiastics. The poem, after this, becomes more and more desultory. The author awakens more than once; but, forgetting that he has told us so, continues to converse as freely as ever with the moral phantasmagoria of his dream. A long train of allegorical personages, whom it would not be very amusing to enumerate, succeeds. In fact, notwithstanding Dr. Whitaker's discovery of a plan and unity in this work, I cannot help thinking with Warton, that it possesses neither; at least, if it has any design, it is the most vague and ill-constructed that ever entered into the brain of a waking dreamer. The appearance of the visionary personages is often sufficiently whimsical. The power of Grace, for instance, confers upon Piers Plowman, or "Christian Life," four stout oxen, to cultivate the field of Truth; these are, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the last of whom is described as the gentlest of the team. She afterwards assigns him the like number of stots or bullocks, to harrow what the evangelists had ploughed ; and this new horned team consists of saint or stot Ambrose, stot Austin, stot Gregory, and stot Jerome ‡.

The verse of Langlande is alliterative, without rhyme, and of triple time. In modern pronunciation it divides the ear between an anapastic and dactylic cadence; though some of the verses are reducible to no perceptible metre. Mr. Mitford, in his "Harmony of Lan

[ If some of the criticisms in this genial Essay prove rather startling to the zealous admirer of our early literature, he will attribute them to the same cause which, during an age of romantic poetry, makes the effusions of Mr. Campbell's Muse appear an echo of the chaste simplicity and measured energy of Attic song.-PRICE, Warton, vol. i. p. 107.]

guages," thinks that the more we accommodate the reading of it to ancient pronunciation, the more generally we shall find it run in an anapæstic measure. His style, even making allowance for its antiquity, has a vulgar air, and seems to indicate a mind that would have been coarse, though strong, in any state of society. But, on the other hand, his work, with all its tiresome homilies, illustrations from school divinity, and uncouth phraseology, has some interesting features of originality. He employs no borrowed materials; he is the earliest of our writers in whom there is a tone of moral reflection; and his sentiments are those of bold and solid integrity. The zeal of truth was in him; and his vehement manner sometimes rises to eloquence, when he denounces hypocrisy and imposture. The mind is struck with his rude voice, proclaiming independent and popular sentiments, from an age of slavery and superstition, and thundering a prediction in the ear of papacy, which was doomed to be literally fulfilled at the distance of nearly two hundred years. His allusions to contemporary life afford some amusing glimpses of its manners. There is room to suspect that Spenser was acquainted with his works; and Milton, either from accident or design, has the appearance of having had one of Langlande's passages in his mind, when he wrote the sublime description of the lazar-house, in “Paradise Lost ⚫."

Chaucer was probably known and distinguished as a poet anterior to the appearance of Langlande's Visions. Indeed, if he had produced nothing else than his youthful poem, "The Court of Love," it was sufficient to indicate one destined to harmonise and refine the national strains. But it is likely, that before his thirty-fourth year, about which time Langlande's Visions may be supposed to have been finished, Chaucer had given several compositions to the public.

The simple old narrative romance had become too familiar in Chaucer's time to invite him to its beaten track. The poverty of his native tongue obliged him to look round for subsidiary materials to his fancy, both in the Latin language, and in some modern foreign source that should not appear to be trite and

[* B. xi. l. 475 &c. This coincidence is remarked by Mrs. Cooper in her Muses' Library.-ELLIS, vol. i. p. 157.]

exhausted. His age was, unfortunately, little conversant with the best Latin classics. Ovid, Claudian, and Statius, were the chief favourites in poetry, and Boethius in proset. The allegorical style of the last of those authors seems to have given an early bias to the taste of Chaucer. In modern poetry, his first and long continued predilection was attracted by the new and allegorical style of romance which had sprung up in France in the thirteenth century, under William de Lorris. We find him, accordingly, during a great part of his poetical career, engaged among the dreams, emblems, flower-worshippings, and amatory parliaments of that visionary school. This, we may say, was a gymnasium of rather too light and playful exercise for so strong a genius; and it must be owned, that his allegorical poetry is often puerile and prolix. Yet, even in this walk of fiction, we never entirely lose sight of that peculiar grace and gaiety which distinguish the muse of Chaucer; and no one who remembers his productions of the "House of Fame," and "The Flower and the Leaf," will regret that he sported for a season in the field of allegory. Even his pieces of this description the most fantastic in design and tedious in execution are generally interspersed with fresh and joyous descriptions of external nature.

In this new species of romance, we perceive the youthful muse of the language in love with mystical meanings and forms of fancy, more remote, if possible, from reality than those of the chivalrous fable itself; and we could sometimes wish her back from her emblematic castles to the more solid ones of the elder fable; but still she moves in pursuit of those shadows with an impulse of novelty, and an exuberance of spirit, that is not wholly without its attraction and delight.

Chaucer was afterwards happily drawn to the more natural style of Boccaccio, and from him he derived the hint of a subject‡, in which, besides his own original portraits of contemporary life, he could introduce stories of every description, from the most heroic to the most familiar.

[ The Consolation of Boethius was translated by Alfred the Great and by Queen Elizabeth. No unfair proof of its extraordinary popularity may be derived from The Quair of King James I. It seems to have been a truly regal book.] [The Canterbury Tales.]