The ancestor of the kings of Britain, among whom Lud, Bladud, Lear, Gorboduc, and Lucius are reckoned. The last king mentioned in the poem is Cadwalader, whose date is 689 a.d. exploits of Uther Pendragon and his more famous son Arthur are, as mentioned above,1 related with great fulness. 84. An interval of nearly a hundred years separates Lazamon from the next of the riming chroniclers, Robert of Gloucester. Robert, as he follows Geoffrey of Monmouth, travels partly over the same ground as Lazamon, whose prototype, Wace, also followed Geoffrey. But in everything else but their subject, the difference between the two chroniclers is enormous. Divest Robert of his strange orthography, and he becomes a readable, intelligible English writer. A monk of a great monastery in an important frontier city, his style is that of a man who is fully up to the level of the civilization, and familiar with the literature of his age, while Latamon's bespeaks the simple parish priest, moving among a rustic population, whose barbarous dialect he with a meritorious audacity adapts as best he can to literary purposes. Robert's chronicle, which is in long twelve syllable lines, is continued to the year 1272. 85. To Robert of Gloucester succeeds Robert Manning, a native of Brunne, or Bourn, in South Lincolnshire, and a monk of the Gilbertine monastery of Sixhill. Manning composed a riming chronicle in two parts: the first, a translation, in the ordinary octosyllabic verse of the romance writers, of the everlasting Brut by Wace, of which the reader has already heard so much; the second, a version in Alexandrine verse of a French metrical chronicle by Peter Langtoft, a canon regular of St. Austin at Bridlington in Yorkshire, ending with the death of Edward I. in 1307. The Prologue to the second part explains so simply and clearly the motives which induced the riming chroniclers to employ themselves on a task which to our modern notions involves a strange misapplication of poetical power, that it seems advisable to insert it here: Lordynges that be now here, If ye wille listen and lere [learn] All the story of Inglande, Als Robert Mannyng wryten [written] it fand, And on Inglysch has it schewed, Not for the lerid bot for the lewed [lay people], For tho [those] that on this lond wonn [dwell] That the Latyn ne Frankys conn [know neither Latin nor For to haf solace and gamen In felauschip when tha sitt samen [together]. 1 See ante, § 61. And it is wisdom for to wytten [know] The state of the land, and haf it wryten, Whilk [which] were foles, and whilk were wyse, And whilk of tham couth [knew] most quantyse [quaintness, i.e. artfulness]; And whilk did wrong, and whilk ryght, And whilk mayntend pes [peace] and fyght. Of thare dedes salle be my sawe [story], In what tyme, and of what law, I salle you schewe, fro gre to gre [degree, i.e. step by step], In this same Prologue, Manning speaks of the 'geste' of Tristrem, as written in verse by Thomas of Ercildoune, complaining that it is commonly not said as Thomas made it. A note at the end of the MS. states that this part of his chronicle was finished by Manning in 1338. Another poem by the same author, Meditacyuns of the Soper of oure Lorde Jesus, translated from St. Bonaventure's Vita Christi between the years 1315 and 1330, has been lately printed for the Early English Text Society. It opens thus: Allemyghty God yn trynyte, Save alle bys congregacyun; And graunte us grace of gode lyvyng, To wynne us blysse wythouten endyng. But the most interesting of all Manning's works is his Handlyng Synne, translated, with the addition of many original passages, from the Manuel des Peches of William de Waddington, written about thirty years before. The Handlyng Synne has been printed for the Roxburghe Club. The modern character of the language, and the large admixture of French words in this poem, have been well pointed out by Mr. Kington Oliphant.1 It was written in 1303, as the following lively passage shows :— To alle Crystyn men undir sunne, And to gode men of Brunne, And speciali alle bi name The felaushepe of Symprynghame, Roberd of Brunne greteth yow In all godenesse that may to prow [benefit]. 1 Sources of Standard English, p. 182. * Of Brymwake yn Kestevene, Syxé myle besyde Sympryngham evene [plain] Fyftene yere yn companye. * * * * Dane Felyp was mayster that tyme That Y began thys Englysch ryme. On Englysshe tunge out of Frankys. 86. Religious Poems.-Among those that remain to us, the most important is Ormin's work on the Gospels, usually called the Ormulum. It has been carefully edited by Dr. R. M. White, formerly the Oxford professor of Anglo-Saxon. Ormin and his brother Walter, to whom he dedicates the work, were both regular canons of St. Austin. To what part of England he belonged is unknown; but the dialect which he uses is considered to point to the district surrounding Peterborough. There are no means of fixing the date with certainty; it is roughly set down as the middle of the thirteenth century. The work is described by Dr. White as a series of Homilies, in an imperfect state, composed in metre without alliteration, and (except in very few cases) also without rime; the subjects of the Homilies being' the gospels daily read at the mass. The unique MS. is in the Bodleian Library; it is in a sadly mutilated condition. Ormin's plan was to paraphrase the gospel of the day, and then give a commentary upon it. He gives the heads of 230 gospels and twelve lessons from the Acts, but the part of the poem now extant only comes down to the thirty-second gospel, and is imperfect. In his prologue Ormin (whose system of orthography, invented by himself, requires the doubling of every consonant that follows a short vowel) thus describes his plan : 87. The Proverbs of Hendyng, written in the southern dialect, near the end of the thirteenth century, are of unknown author ship. They consist of forty stanzas of seven lines, each ending with a proverb, followed by 'Quoth Hendyng.' They have been printed in Reliquiæ Antiquæ. 88. The Cursor Mundi (date about 1320), a 'metrical version of Old and New Testament History,'1 in which are interwoven many legends of Saints, has never yet been printed entire; it was once very popular, as is shown by the existence of numerous MSS. 89. Richard Rolle, who lived as a hermit at Hampole near Doncaster, and died in 1349, is the author of a metrical version of the Psalms in the northern dialect, which obtained a wide notoriety, and also of a curious moral poem called The Pricke of Conscience. This he wrote both in Latin and English. The following passage 2 on the joys of Heaven is a favourable specimen of Hampole's manner : Alle manere of joyes er in that stede. And never mare wynter in that contre. 90. Of the other religious poems in English which remain to us from this period, some (as the two by Manning before described) are didactic poems on points of Christian doctrine or morality; some, Lives of Saints; some, lastly, short poems on devotional topics, such as the Crucifixion and the Blessed Virgin under the Rood. Many interesting relics of this kind have been lately published by the Early English Text Society, e.g. the metrical lives of St. Marherete [Margaret] and St. Juliana, and the Story of Genesis and Exodus. 91. The religious poems were probably written by ecclesiastics; but the occasional and miscellaneous poems of the period are evidently for the most part the productions of laymen. There is one of these which the certainty of its date, and the remarkable character of its contents, render so important from an historical point of view, that it must be noticed here. This is a piece (given by Warton in extenso) composed after the battle of Lewes 1 Specimens of Early English, Morris and Skeat, Part II. in 1264, by an adherent of Simon de Montfort. The number of French words which it contains, and the easy way in which they are employed, unite to prove that the new English language was well on in the process of formation, conditioned always by the necessity, which this writer frankly accepts, of incorporating a vast number of French words, expressive of the ideas which England owed to the Norman invasion. Again, the broad, hearty satire, the strong anti-royalist, or rather antiforeigner, prejudices of the writer, the energy of resolution which the lines convey, point unmistakably to the rise, which indeed must any way be dated from this century, of a distinct English nationality, uniting and reconciling the Norman and Saxon elements. A portion of this poem is subjoined : Sitteth alle still, and herkneth to me; Richard, thah thou be ever trichard,' 4 3 With hare sharpe swerdes he grounde the stel, Sire Simond de Mountfort hath suore bi ys chyn, Should he never more come to is yn," Ne with sheld, ne with spere, ne with other gyn,s Richard, &c. |