of the Ormulum" The illustration we have here given from the Ormulum exhibits to the full Palaeography the peculiarities of the "very broad and rude hand" spoken of above. Those of the manuscripts of other English books which we shall have occasion to illustrate, though less rude than this, are yet plain and undecorated, a clear proof that they were written for no wealthy book lovers. For comparison with them we give on pages 80 and 83 two pages from manuscripts written in England during the thirteenth century which illustrate the beauty of the ornamentation in which the best English work of that period rivalled that of France. A comparison of the two classes of manuscripts shows the humble position which the vernacular literature then occupied in England. The poetical merits of Orm's work are entirely negative; it is to be Its vocabulary commended for its simplicity. Philologically and metrically it is, after Layamon's Brut, the most important work of its time. The author stands chronologically on the border-line between pure English and Latinised speech; but so little is he affected by the influences even then working to transform the language that he barely uses half-a-dozen French words, and his few Latin phrases are ecclesiastical, and may be termed technical. "He is," says Mr. Kington-Oliphant, "the last of our English Makers who can be said to have drunk from the pure Teutonic well." Belonging to the Mercian Danelagh, he has many Scandinavian words, and many words now in use are found for the first time in him. The Ormulum is also of importance metrically, from the consistency of the metrical structure. Orm's metre is substantially the same as that of the Poema Morale, a fifteen-syllable couplet, exact in rhythm, with something of rhyme and frequent alliteration, but no absolute system of either. "Brut" "Orm," says Mr. Gollancz, "was a purist in orthography as well as in vocabulary, and may fittingly be described as the first of English phoneticians. The Ormulum is perhaps the most valuable document we possess for the history of English sounds." His system of verse was probably adopted less on æsthetical grounds than with the purpose of impressing his teaching upon the memory of his hearers, for it must be remembered that he did not write for a reading public. The same circumstance explains much of his tedious repetition, and the simplicity and perspicuity of his syntax. A didactic motive cannot be alleged to account for the peculiarities of Layamon's the other chief poetical production of the time, the Brut of Layamon, the work of a real poet, and a landmark in English literature. It is Layamon's especial significance to symbolise the reconciliation then beginning to take place between the three long divided races of Saxon, Celt, and Norman, which he does both in virtue of his own personality and of the origin and subject of his poem. As the name imports, the groundwork of the Brut is the fabulous history of the settlement in Britain of Brutus and his Trojans, and, although in fact much more, it is professedly a paraphrase of the Brut of the French poet Wace, author of the Roman de Rou. The French Brut was written in 1155. Here, then, we have the English resorting to their conquerors for a theme, and admitting the legendary history of their now common country to be a subject of equal interest to both. But we must go farther back. Wace himself derived his tale from the Latin Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth, written about 1147, which has been Christ and the Doctors From Royal MS. 2B VII. (in the British Museum) known as Queen Mary's Psalter. Early fourteenth century justly called "a cornerstone of romance." Geoffrey was neither Englishman nor Norman, but a Welshman, born in the then Cymric town of Monmouth, and whose native speech was Welsh. In his time Welsh was but slightly differentiated from Breton, and there seems reason to believe that, in so far as his history did not follow Nennius, it was derived from a book of Breton legends, now lost. Among them was the tale of the Trojan colonisation of Britain, which could not have arisen either among Celts or Teutons until they had come under Latin influence; but, once invented, was soon accepted as an unquestionable fact. The doctrine of Nature's abhorrence of a vacuum, whether true or false in physics, is an indubitable verity in the things of the mind. All men rejoiced to see the chaos of Britain's primeval history abolished by so excellent an invention, and a myth of yesterday was credited with as undoubt ing a faith as if it had come down from the Flood. Its moral and political effects were most salutary. "The Historia Britonum," says Geoffrey's biographer, "exercised a powerful influence in the unification of the people of England. The race animosities of Briton, Teuton, and Frenchman would probably have endured much longer than they did but for the legend of an origin common to them all." LAYAMON'S "BRUT" circumstances 81 Layamon's circumstances pointed him out as a man meet to enrich the Layamon's literature of his people with this reconciling volume. He was an Englishman, and dwelt in England, but his home closely adjoined the Welsh border, being, as he says, "at Ernley, at a noble church on the Severn's bank; it seemed to him good to be there. Fast by Radestone, there he read book." That is, he was parish priest of Areley Regis, a North Worcestershire village upon the Severn, four miles south of Kidderminster, and within two or three miles of the Bishop of Worcester's residence at Hartlebury; and close to his abode the river is overhung by a cliff called Redstone to this day. As Layamon's situation was near the borderland between two races, so His method was his book compacted out of three literatures, besides a fourth which he of composition does not expressly mention. Having conceived the idea of writing the legendary, by him held in good faith for the true, history of his country, he made a pilgrimage in quest of materials, and obtained "the English book made by Beda" (i.e. King Alfred's translation), "the Latin one of St. Albin and Austin" (no other, as would appear, than Beda's own Latin, in which he was assisted by Albinus, Abbot of Canterbury in his time), and Wace's Brut d'Angleterre. He was therefore acquainted with both Latin and French, as he speedily demonstrated : Layamon leide theos boc, & tha leaf wende. he heom leofliche bi-heold, fetheren he nom mid fingren, & fiede on boc-felle, & tha sothe word sette to-gadere : "Layamon laid before him these books, and turned over the leaves; lovingly he beheld them. May the Lord be merciful to him! Pen he took with fingers and wrote on book-skin, and the true words set together; and the three books compressed into one." "We suspect," the Quarterly Reviewer adds, "that the art of thrumming three or more old books into one new one is by no means obsolete among original authors of the present day; though perhaps few of them would avow it so frankly as the good priest of Erneleye." In fact, Layamon does himself an injustice. He is not so much a compiler as he makes himself appear, nor even a translator so much as a paraphraser who puts new life and spirit into his original, which he at the same time greatly enriches and expands. His indebtedness is chiefly to Wace's Brut, and this is equally indebted to him. Before, however, discussing his character as a poet, it will be convenient to give the literary history of his work, which is very simple. The only historical event actually alluded to is the burning of Leicester in 1173, but the poet's language in speaking of Queen Eleanor, consort of Henry the Second, shows that he wrote after her death in 1204, while a hint that "Peter's pence" might VOL. I. F Celtic influ ences on Layamon Layamon's merits as a poet shortly cease to be paid is plausibly connected by his editor, Sir Frederic Madden, with an agitation against that impost in the following year. The Brut is thus very nearly contemporary with the Ormulum. It exists in two manuscripts written within fifty years of each other, the later of which reveals "numerous liberties by the more recent transcriber in transposing, altering, or abridging those passages which he did not like or could not understand." Both are reproduced in Sir Frederic Madden's edition (1847), at present the only edition, and more likely to be republished than superseded. It is frequently found that after one race of men has expelled another, and appropriated its habitations, the remnants of the conquered people pass into the legendary poetry of the intruding tribe, and become objects of ideal admiration, sometimes even of superstitious awe. Such is now very generally deemed to have been the real origin of the folk-lore relating to the fairies, the good people of the hills. Such was in a measure the position of the Finns and Laplanders towards their Scandinavian supplanters; and in Ceylon and Madagascar at this day exist the remains of feeble, primitive races, venerated by the descendants of those by whom their ancestors were dispossessed. So in the England of the twelfth century we perceive traces of a Celtic revival. The Norman poet Wace resorts for his British epic to a Celtic source, and renders Geoffrey of Monmouth. As a native of Jersey, he may well have boasted some strain of Celtic blood, but his acquaintance with Celtic traditions can hardly have been other than merely literary. Layamon, on the other hand, though a perfect Saxon, as evinced by the name of his father, Leofenath, which is found in Herefordshire as early as the tenth century, had been born and brought up in a semi-Celtic atmosphere. He is consequently more Celtic than his original, and makes large additions to Wace's comparatively arid narrative, partly from Geoffrey of Monmouth, partly, as there is every reason to think, from popular traditions current in Wales and on the Welsh border. Others are Anglo-Saxon; others, such as that of the wondrous smith who forges Arthur's armour, descend from the earliest ages of Indo-European mythology. Sir Frederic Madden enumerates between thirty and forty remarkable episodes in Layamon not to be found in Wace. Two of the most interesting of his Celtic traditions occur neither in Wace nor Geoffrey; the dream which, warning Arthur of Modred's treachery, recalls him from Gaul to Britain as he is meditating the conquest of Rome; and his conveyance by the Fairy Queen to the isle of Avalon, so marvellously exalted in our own time by the genius of Tennyson. It would have sufficed for the fame of Layamon had he been no more than the first minstrel to celebrate Arthur in English song, but his own pretensions as a poet are by no means inconsiderable. He is everywhere vigorous and graphic, and improves upon his predecessor Wace alike by his additions and expansions, and by his more spirited handling of the subjects common to both. Arthur's defiance of the Danish invader Colgrim, in Sir Frederic Madden's prose version, is a good specimen of his style. Colgrim and his brother Baldulf, it must be understood, have retreated to "the hill that |