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Preface

A Preface to a book on the History of English Literature is apt to be an apology, for a writer must be conscious of his inability to deal with a subject so immense and so multiplex in its aspects. This volume does not pretend to be an encyclopædia of our literature; or to include all the names of authors and of their works. Selection has been necessary, and in the fields of philosophy and theology but a few names appear. The writer, indeed, would willingly have omitted not a few of the minor authors in pure literature, and devoted his space only to the masters. But each of these springs from an underwood, as it were, of the thought and effort of men less conspicuous, whom it were ungrateful, and is practically impossible, to pass by in silence. Nevertheless the attempt has been made to deal most fully with the greatest names.

The author's object has been to arouse a living interest, if it may be, in the books of the past, and to induce the reader to turn to them for himself. Scantiness of space forbids the presentation of extracts; for poetry there is perhaps no better selection than that of the Oxford Book of Verse by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.[1] For prose, the Anthologies of Mrs. Barnett and Mrs. Dale may be recommended.[2]

It is unhappily the fact that the works of a majority of the earlier authors are scarcely accessible except in the publications of learned societies or in very limited editions; but from Chaucer onwards the Globe Editions are open to all; and the great Cambridge "History of English Literature" is invaluable as a guide to the Bibliography. It is better to study even a little of the greatest authors than to read many books about them. If the writer should perchance succeed in bringing any readers to the works of the immortals his purpose will be fulfilled But readers, like poets and anglers, are "born to be so"; and when born under a fortunate star do not need to be allured or compelled to come into the Muses' paradise.

That sins of commission as well as of omission will be discovered the author cannot doubt, for through much reading and writing they that look out of window are darkened, and errors come.

[1] University Press.

[2] Longmans, Green & Co.

I. Anglo-Saxon Literature: The Anglo-Saxon Way of Living--Minstrels, Story-Tellers, and Stories--Beowulf--The Wanderer--The Plaint of Deor--The Seafarer--Waldhere--The Fight at Finnsburg

II. Anglo-Saxon Christian Poetry: Cædmon--Cynewulf --Andreas--Dream of the Rood--Elene--Riddles--Phœnix

III. Anglo-Saxon Learning and Prose: Latin among the Anglo-Saxons--Bede--Alcuin--Alfred--The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle--The Monks and Learning--Ælfric

IV. After the Norman Conquest: Latin Literature--Walter Map--Changes Since the Conquest

V. Geoffrey of Monmouth: The Stories of Arthur

VI. Layamon's "Brut": Ormulum--Ancren Riwle--The Owl and the Nightingale--Lyrics--Political Songs--Robert of Gloucester--Cursor Mundi--Devotional Books--Minot

VII. The Romances in Rhyme: Tristram--Havelok--King Horn--Beues of Hamtoun--Guy of Warwick--Arthur and Merlin--The Tale of Troy--The Story of Troy from Homer to Shakespeare--King Alisaundre

VIII. Alliterative Romances and Poems: Gawain and the Green Knight--Pearl--Huchowne 72

IX. Chaucer: Early Poems--The Dethe of the Duchesse--Other Early Poems--Troilus and Criseyde--The Canterbury Tales 78

X. "Piers Plowman," Gower

XI. The Successors of Chaucer: Lydgate--Occleve--Hawes

XII. Late Mediaeval Prose: Wyclif--Chaucer's Prose Style--Trevisa--Mandeville--Pecock: "The Repressor"--Capgrave--Lord Berners

XIII. Malory

XIV. Early Scottish Literature: Barbour--Wyntoun--The Kingis Quhair--Henryson--Dunbar--Blind Harry--The Buke of the Howlat--Gawain Douglas--Sir David Lyndsay

XV. Popular Poetry. Ballads

Professional Poetry: Skelton--Barclay

XVI. Rise of the Drama: Heywood--Ralph Roister Doister--Gammer Gurton's Needle--"Gorboduc"

XVII. Wyatt and Surrey. Gascoigne. Sackville: The Earl of Surrey--Tottel's Miscellany--Gascoigne--Sackville

XVIII. Prose of the Renaissance: Elyot--Ascham--Lyly's Euphues--Sidney--Sidney's "Defence of Poesie" Spenser

XIX. The Elizabethan Stage and Playwrights: John Lyly --Peele--Greene--Lodge--Nash--Marlowe--Kyd--Shakespeare --The Sonnets--Later Plays--Jonson--Jonson's Prose

XX. Other Dramatists: Beaumont and Fletcher--Chapman--John Marston--Dekker--Middleton--Heywood--Webster--Massinger --Ford--Shirley

XXI. Elizabethan and Jacobean Prose Writers: Hooker--"Martin Marprelate"--Bacon--Raleigh--Overbury--Translators--Pulpit Eloquence

XXII. Late Elizabethan and Jacobean Poets: Minor Lyrists-- Drayton --Daniel--Davies--Giles and Phineas Fletcher--Corbet--Sir John Beaumont

XXIII. Late Jacobean and Caroline Prose: Burton--Herbert of Cherbury--Browne.

Caroline Prose: Milton--Jeremy Taylor--Thomas Fuller--Hobbes--Izaak Walton--John Bunyan--Clarendon

XXIV. Caroline Poets: Crashaw--Herbert--Vaughan--Herrick--Carew--Lovelace --Suckling--Habington--Cartwright--Davenant--Cowley --Denham--Sherburne--Stanley--Browne--Cotton --Waller--Marvell--Milton--Samuel Butler

XXV. Restoration Theatre: Congreve--Vanbrugh--George Farquhar --Otway--Nat Lee--Dryden

XXVI. Augustan Poetry: Alexander Pope--Prior--Gay--Ambrose Philips--Tickell

XXVII. Augustan Prose: Steele--Addison--Swift--De Foe

XXVIII. Georgian Poetry I.: Edward Young--James Thomson--William Collins--Thomas Gray--The Wartons--John Dyer--William Shenstone

XXIX. Georgian Poetry II.: Thomas Chatterton--William Cowper--Literature in Scotland (1550-1790)--Robert Burns--Charles Churchill--George Crabbe

XXX. Georgian Prose I.: The Great Novelists--Richardson--Henry Fielding--Tobias Smollet

XXXI. Georgian Prose II.: Samuel Johnson--Oliver Goldsmith--Edmund Burke--Horace Walpole--Laurence Sterne--David Hume--Robertson--Edward Gibbon--Richard Brinsley Sheridan--Lady Mary Wortley Montagu--Junius

XXXII. The Romantic Movement: Coleridge--Walter Scott--William Wordsworth--Robert Southey--Shelley--Byron --Keats--Walter Savage Landor

XXXIII. Later Georgian Novelists: Frances Burney-- Mrs. Radcliffe--Maria Edgeworth--Charles Brockden Brown--Jane Austen--Walter Scott, the Novelist--James Fenimore Cooper--Washington Irving.

Magazines and Essayists: Charles Lamb--Leigh Hunt--William Hazlitt--Thomas de Quincey

XXXIV. Poets after Wordsworth: Philip Freneau--William Cullen. Bryant--John Greenleaf Whittier--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--Alfred Tennyson--Robert Browning--Edgar Allan Poe--Ralph Waldo Emerson--James Russell Lowell--Matthew Arnold.

General Writers: John Ruskin

XXXV. Late Victorian Poets: Edward FitzGerald--George Meredith--Elizabeth Barrett Browning--Christina Rossetti--Dante Gabriel Rossetti--William Morris--Swinburne.

Poetic Underwoods

XXXVI. Latest Georgian and Victorian Novelists: Dickens-- Thackeray--The Brontë Sisters--Nathaniel Hawthorne--Oliver Wendell Holmes--Charles Kingsley--George Meredith--Anthony Trollope--George Eliot--Robert Louis Stevenson--Minor Novelists

XXXVII. Historians: Thomas Babington Macaulay--Thomas Carlyle--James Anthony Froude--Edward Augustus Freeman--William Hickling Prescott--John Lothrop Motley--J. S. Mill--Cardinal Newman--W. E. H. Lecky

Index (not included in this text ed.)

LIST OF AUTHORS.

Adamnan, Abbot (c. 625-704) Addison, Joseph (1672-1719) Ælfric (c. 955-1020) Ailred (c. 1109-1166) Ainsworth, William Harrison (1805-1882) Alcuin (735-804) Aldhelm, Bp. (c. 640--709) Alexander, Sir William, Earl of Stirling (c. 1567-1640) Alfred, King (849-901) Andrewes, Lancelot (1555-1626) Arbuthnot, John (1667-1735) Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888) Ascham, Roger (1515-1568) Asser, Bp. (fl. c. 900) Atterbury, Francis (1662-1732) Austen, Jane (1775-1817) Ayton, Sir Robert (1570-1638) Aytoun, William Edmonstoune, (1813-1865)

Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) Baillie, Lady Grizel (1665-1746) Bale, John (1495-1563) Bannatyne, George (1545-1608) Barbour, John (c. 1316-1396) Barclay, Alexander (c. 1475-1552) Barnfield, Richard (1574-1627) Barrow, Isaac (1630-1677) Baxter, Richard (1615-1691) Beattie, James (1735-1803) Beaumont, Francis (1584-1616) Beaumont, Sir John (1582-1628) Beckford, William (1759-1844) Beddoes, Thomas Lovell (1803-1849) Bede (673-735) Behn, Mrs. Aphra (1640-1689) Bentley, Richard (1662-1742) Berkeley, George (1685-1753) Berners, Lord (1467-1533) Besant, Sir Walter (1836-1901) Black, William (1841-1898) Blackwood, William (1776-1834) Blair, Robert (1699-1746) Borrow, George (1803-1881) Boswell, James (1740-1795) Bowles, William Lisle (1762-1850) Braddon, Mary Elizabeth (1837- ) Brome, Richard (fl. c. 1623-1652) Brontë, Anne (1820-1849) Brontë, Charlotte (1816-1855) Brontë, Emily (1818-1848) Broome, William (1689-1745) Brougham, Henry, Lord Brougham (1778-1868) Brown, Charles Brockden (1771-1810) Browne, Sir Thomas (1605-1682) Browne, William (c. 1591-1643) Browning, Elizabeth Barrett (1806-1861) Browning, Robert (1812-1889) Bryant, William Cullen (1794-1878) Bunyan, John (1628-1688) Burke, Edmund (1729-1797) Burnet, Gilbert (1643-1715) Burnett, James, Lord Monboddo (1714-1799) Burney, Charles (1726-1814) Burney, Frances (1752-1840) Burns, Robert (1759-1796) Burton, Robert (1577-1640) Butler, Samuel (1612-1680) Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824)

Cædmon (fl. c. 670) Campbell, Thomas (1777-1844) Campion, Thomas (fl. 1581-1619) Canning, George (1770-1827) Capgrave, John (1393-1464) Carew, Richard (1555-1620) Carew, Thomas (c. 1598-1639) Carlyle, Alexander (1722-1805) Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881) Cartwright, William (1611-1643) Caxton, William (c. 1422-1491) Chambers, Robert (1802-1871) Chapman, George (c. 1559-1634) Chatterton, Thomas (1752-1770) Chaucer, Geoffrey (c. 1340-1400) Chillingworth, William (1602-1644) Churchill, Charles (1731-1764) Churchyard, Thomas (c. 1520-1604) Cibber, Colley (1671-1757) Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of (1607-1674) Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) Collins, Wilkie (1824-1889) Collins, William (1721-1759) Colman, George (1762-1836) Congreve, William (1670-1729) Constable, Henry (c. 1560-1613) Cooper, Anthony Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) Cooper, James Fenimore (1789-1851) Corbet, Richard (1582-1635) Cotton, Charles (1630-1687) Coverdale, Miles (1488-1568) Cowley, Abraham (1618-1667) Cowper, William (1731-1800) Crabbe, George (1754-1832) Cranmer, Thomas (1489-1556) Crashaw, Richard (c. 1613-1649) Creighton, Mandell (1843-1901) Cross, Mary Ann: "George Eliot" (1819-1880) Cudworth, Ralph (1617-1688) Cynewulf (fl. c. 750)

Dalrymple, Sir David, Lord Hailes (1726-1792) Daniel, Samuel (1562-1619) D'Arblay, Madame, see Frances Burney. Darwin, Charles (1809-1882) Davenant, Sir William (1606-1668) Davies, Sir John (1569-1626) Day, Thomas (1748-1789) De Foe, Daniel (1661-1731) Dekker, Thomas (c. 1570-1641) De la Ramée, Louise (1840-1908) Denham, Sir John (1615-1669) De Quincey, Thomas (1785-1859) Dickens, Charles (1812-1870) Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield (1804-1881) Donne, John (1573-1631) Douglas, Gawain (c. 1473-1522) Drayton, Michael (1563-1631) Drummond, William, of Hawthornden (1585-1649) Dryden, John (1631-1700) Dunbar, William (c. 1460-1520) D'Urfey, Thomas (1653-1723) Dyer, John (c. 1700-1758)

Edgeworth, Maria (1767-1849) Edwards, Jonathan (1629-1712) Edwards, Richard (_c._1523-1566) Eliot, George, see Mary Ann Cross. Elliot, Jean (1727-1805) Elyot, Sir Thomas (c. 1499-1546) Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882), 579-82. Etherege, Sir George (c. 1635-1691) Evelyn, John (1620-1706)

Fairfax, Edward (fl. c. 1600) Farquhar, George (1678-1707) Fenton, Elijah (1683-1730) Ferguson, Rev. Adam (1723-1816) Fergusson, Robert (1750-1774) Ferrier, Susan (1782-1854) Fielding, Henry (1707-1754) FitzGerald, Edward (1809-1883) Fitzneale, Richard (fl. 1169-1198) Fletcher, Giles (c. 1549-1611)

Fletcher, John (1579-1625) Fletcher, Phineas (c. 1582-1650) Florence of Worcester (d. 1118) Florio, John (c. 1553-1625) Forbes, Bishop Robert (1708-1775) Ford, John (fl. c.. 1613-1633) Fordun, John (d. c. 1384) Forster, John (1812-1876) Fox, George (1624-1690) Francis, Sir Philip (1740-1818) Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790) Freeman, E. A. (1823-1892) Freneau, Philip (1752-1832) Froude, James Anthony (1818-1894) Froude, Richard Hurrell (1803-1836) Fuller, Thomas (1608-1661)

Galt, John (1779-1839) Gardiner, Samuel Rawson (1829-1902) Gascoigne, George (c. 1525-1577) Gaskell, Elizabeth (1810-1865) Gay, John (1685-1732) Geoffrey of Monmouth (c. 1100-1155) Gerald of Wales (c. 1147-1217) Gibbon, Edward (1737-1794) Gildas (c. 516-570) Giraldus Cambrensis, see Gerald of Wales. Glanvill, Joseph (1636-1680) Godric, St. (c. 1065-1170) Golding, Arthur (c. 1536-1605) Goldsmith, Oliver (1728-1774) Googe, Barnabe (1540-1594) Gosson, Stephen (1554-1624) Gower, John (c. 1325-1408) Gray, Thomas (1716-1771) Green, J. R. (1837-1883) Green, Matthew (1696-1737) Greene, Robert (c. 1560-1592) Griffin, B. (fl. 1596) Grimald, Nicholas (1519-1562) Grote, George (1794-1871) Gwynne, Talbot (fl. c. 1862-1865)

Habington, William (1605-1654) Hales, John (1584-1656) Hall, Joseph (1574-1656) Hallam, Henry (1777-1859) Hamilton, William, of Bangour (1704-1754) Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield (c. 1665-1751) Harington, Sir John (1561-1612) Harry, Blind (fl. c. 1480-1492) Harvey, Gabriel (c. 1545-1630) Hawes, Stephen (c. 1475-1523) Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864) Haywood, Eliza (c. 1693-1756) Hazlitt, William (1778-1830), 555-7. Henley, W. E. (1849-1903) Henry of Huntingdon (fl. 1125-1154) Henry son, Robert (fl. c. 1462) Herbert, Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1583-1648) Herbert, George (1593-1633) Herrick, Robert (1591-1674) Heywood, John (c. 1497-1580) Heywood, Thomas (fl. c. 1596-1650) Higden, Ranulf (d. 1364) Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679) Hogg, James (1770-1835) Holland, Philemon (1552-1637) Holland, Sir Richard (fl. c. 1450) Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809-1894) Home, Henry, Lord Kames (1696-1782) Home, John (1722-1808) Hood, Thomas (1799-1845) Hook, Theodore (1788-1841) Hooker, Richard (c. 1553-1600) Horner, Francis (1778-1817) Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey (c. 1517-1547) Howell, James (1594-1666) Huchown (fl. 1342-1377) Hume, David (1711-1776) Hunt, James Henry Leigh (1784-1859) Hutcheson, Francis (1694-1746) Huxley, T. H. (1825-1895)

Irving, Washington (1783-1859)

James I of Scotland (1394-1437) James, G. P. R. (1799-1860) Jeffrey, Francis (1773-1850) Jocelin de Brakelond (fl. 1173-1202) Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784) Jonson, Ben (c. 1573-1637) "Junius" (fl. 1768-1773)

Keats, John (1795-1821) Kingsley, Charles (1819-1875) Kingsley, Henry (1830-1876) Kirke, Edward (1553-1613) Knox, John (c. 1505-1572) Kyd, Thomas (c. 1558-1594)

Lamb, Charles (1775-1834) Landor, Walter Savage (1775-1864) Langland, William (c. 1332-1400) Lawrence, G. A. (1827-1876) Layamon (fl. c. 1200-1220) Lecky, W. E. H. (1838-1903) Leighton, Robert (1611-1684) Leslie of Ross, Bishop (1527-1596) Lever, Charles (1806-1872) Lingard, John (1772-1851) Locke, John (1632-1704) Lockhart, George, of Carnwath Lockhart, John Gibson (1794-1854) Lodge, Thomas (c. 1558-1625) Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882) Lovelace, Richard (1618-1658) Lowell, James Russell (1819-1891) Lydgate, John (c. 1370-1446) Lyly, John (c. 1554-1606) Lyndsay, Sir David (1490-1555) Lytton, Edward George Bulwer (1803-1873)

Macaulay, Thomas Babington (1800-1859) Mackenzie, Sir George (1636-1691). Macpherson, James (1736-1796) Malory, Sir Thomas (c. 1400-1471) Mandeville, Sir John (fl. c. 1322-1357) Map, Walter (c. 1137-1200) Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593) Marryat, Capt. Frederick (1792-1848) Marston, John (c. 1575-1634) Marvell, Andrew (1621-1678) Massinger, Philip (1583-1640) Mather, Cotton (1663-1728) Mayne, Jasper (1604-1672) Meredith, George (1828-1909) Meres, Francis (1565-1647) Middleton, Thomas (c. 1570-1627) Mill, James (1773-1836) Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873) Milman, Henry Hart (1791-1868) Milton, John (1608-1674) Minot, Laurence (c. 1300-1352) Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley (1689-1762) Montgomery, Alexander (c. 1556-1610) Montgomery, Robert (1807-1855) Moore, Thomas (1779-1852) More, Henry (1614-1687) More, Sir Thomas (1478-1535) Morris, William (1834-1896)

Nairne, Carolina, Lady (1766-1845) Napier, Sir William (1785-1860) Nash, Thomas (1567-1601) Nennius (c. 800) Newman, John Henry, Cardinal (1801-1890) Nicholas of Guildford (fl. 1250) Nicolls, Thomas (fl. 1550 North, Christopher, see John Wilson. North, Roger (1653-1733) North, Sir Thomas (c. 1535-1601)

Occleve, Thomas (c. 1368-1450) Oliphant, May Margaret Wilson, (1828-1897) Ormin (c. 1200) Otway, Thomas (1652-1685) Ouida, see De la Ramée. Overbury, Sir Thomas (1581-1613)

Painter, William (c. 1540-1594) Palgrave, Sir Francis (1788-1861) Parnell, Thomas (1679-1718) Pater, Walter Horatio (1839-1894) Payn, James (1830-1898) Peacock, Thomas Love (1785-1866) Pecock, Reginald (c. 1395-1460) Peele, George (c. 1558-1598) Pepys, Samuel (1633-1703) Percy, Thomas (1729-1811) Phaer, Thomas (c. 1510-1560) Philips, Ambrose (1675-1749) Poe, Edgar Allan (1809-1849) Pope, Alexander (1688-1744) Praed, Winthrop Mackworth (1802-1839) Prescott, William Hickling (1796-1859) Prior, Matthew (1664-1721) Prynne, William (1600-1669)

Radcliff, Ann (1764-1822) Raleigh, Sir Walter (c. 1552-1618) Ramsay, Allan (1686-1758) Randolph, Thomas (1605-1635) Reade, Charles (1814-1884) Reeve, Clara (1729-1807) Reynolds, John Hamilton (1796-1852) Rich, Barnaby (c. 1540-1620) Richard, Prior of Hexham (fl. 1138-1154) Richardson, Samuel (1689-1761) Ritson, Joseph (1752-1803) Robert of Gloucester (fl. c. 1260-1300) Robertson, William (1721-1793) Robynson, Ralph (fl. c. 1551) Rogers, Samuel (1763-1855) Rolle, Richard (c. 1290-1349) Rossetti, Christina (1830-1894) Rossetti, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) Rowe, Nicholas (1674-1718) Rowley, William (c. 1585-1642) Ruskin, John (1819-1900)

Sackville, Thomas (1536-1608) St. John, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751) Savile, Sir Henry (1549-1622) Scott, Alexander (c. 1525-1584) Scott, John (1783-1821) Scott, Michael (1789-1835) Scott, Sir Walter (1771-1832) Sedley, Sir Charles (c. 1639-1701) Shadwell, Thomas (1642-1692) Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822) Shenstone, William (1714-1763) Sherburne, Sir Edward (1618-1702) Sheridan, Richard Brinsley (1751-1816) Shirley, James (1596-1666) Sidney, Sir Philip (1554-1586) Simeon of Durham (fl. 1130) Skelton, John (c. 1460-1529) Smith, Horace (1779-1849) Smith, Captain John (1580-1631) Smith, Sydney (1771-1845) Smith, William (fl. 1596) Smollett, Tobias (1721-1771) South, Robert (1634-1716) Southerne, Thomas (1660-1746) Southey, Robert (1774-1843) Spencer, Herbert (1820-1903) Spenser, Edmund (c. 1552-1599) Stanley, Thomas (1625-1678) Stanyhurst, Richard (1547-1618) Steele, Sir Richard (1672-1729) Sterne, Laurence (1713-1768) Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894) Still, John (1543-1608) Strachey, William (fl. 1609-1618) Stubbs, William (1825-1901) Suckling, Sir John (1609-1642) Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745) Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909) Symonds, John Addington (1840-1893)

Talfourd, Sir T. N. (1795-1854) Tautphœus, Baroness (1807-1893) Taylor, Jeremy (1613-1667) Temple, Sir William (1628-1699) Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892) Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-1863) Thomas of Ercildoune (d. c. 1299) Thomson, James (1700-1748) Tickell, Thomas (1686-1740) Tourneur, Cyril (c. 1575-1626) Trevisa, John (c. 1326-1412) Trollope, Anthony (1815-1882) Turner, Sharon (1768-1847) Tusser, Thomas (c. 1524-1580)

Udall, Nicholas (1505-1556) Urquhart, Sir Thomas (1611-1660) Ussher, James (1581-1656)

Vanbrugh, Sir John (1666-1726) Vaughan, Henry (1622-1695) Villiers, George, second Duke of Buckingham (1627-1688)

Wace (fl. 1170) Waller, Edmund (1606-1687) Walpole, Horace (1717-1797) Walton, Izaac (1593-1683) Wardlaw, Elizabeth, Lady (1677-1727) Warton, Joseph (1722-1800) Warton, Thomas (c. 1688-1745) Warton, Thomas (1728-1790) Watson, Thomas (c. 1557-1592) Webster, John (c. 1580-1625) Whetstone, George (c. 1544-1587) Whittier, John Greenleaf (1807-1892) Whyte-Melville, George John (1821-1878) Wilkie, Prof. William (1721-1772) William of Malmesbury (c. 1095-1143) William of Newburgh (1136-1198) Willoughby, Henry (c. 1574-1596) Wilson, John (1785-1854) Wither, George (1588-1667) Wodrow, Robert (1679-1734) Wood, Mrs. Henry (1814-1887) Wordsworth, William (1770-1850) Wyatt, Sir Thomas (1503-1542) Wycherley, William (c. 1640-1716) Wyclif, John (c. 1329-1384) Wyntoun, Andrew (fl. c. 1413

Young, Edward (1683-1765)

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I. ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE

The literature of every modern country is made up of many elements, contributed by various races; and has been modified at different times by foreign influences. Thus, among the ancient Celtic inhabitants of our islands, the peoples whom the Romans found here, the Welsh have given us the materials of the famous romances of King Arthur, and from the Gaelic tribes of Ireland and Scotland come the romances of heroes less universally known, Finn, Diarmaid, Cuchulain, and the rest. But the main stock of our earliest poetry and prose, like the main stock of our language, is Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon tribes who invaded Britain, and after the departure of the Romans (411) conquered the greater part of the island, must have had a literature of their own, and must have brought it with them over sea.

For all early peoples, even the least civilized, possess the germs of literature. They have their hymns to their Divine Father above the sky, and to gods and spirits; they have magic songs, to win the love of women, or to cause the deaths of men; they have love-songs, and songs of feats of war. They possess fairy-tales, and legends in prose concerning gods and fabulous heroes; they have tales of talking birds and beasts; and they have dances in which the legends of old heroes are acted and sung. These dances are the germ of the drama: the songs are the germs of lyric poetry; the beast-stories are the sources of books like Æsop's Fables and Ovid's "Metamorphoses"; and the fairy-tales are the earliest kind of novels.

The Anglo-Saxon invaders were, of course, on a very much higher level than that of savages. They were living in the age of iron; they did not use bronze for their swords, spears, and axes; much more remote were they from the period of stone axes, stone, knives, and stone arrow-heads. They could write, not in the Roman alphabet, but in "Runes," adapted at some unknown time by the Germanic peoples, probably from the Greek characters; and there is no reason why they should not have used this writing to preserve their poetry, though it is not certain that they did so at this early, period.

One early Anglo-Saxon poem, indeed, "The Husband's Message," professes to be written in runic characters on a staff or tablet of wood. Even more ancient poems may have been written and preserved in this way, but the wood, the bóc (book) as it was called, has perished, while brief runic inscriptions on metal and on stone remain.

The Anglo-Saxon Way of Living.

The society of the Anglo-Saxons, as described in the oldest surviving poems, was like that of the early Irish about A.D. 200 as depicted in their oldest romances, and like that of the early Icelanders as painted in the sagas, or stories of 1100, and later. Each free man had his house, with its large hall, and a fire in the centre. In the hall, usually built of timber, the people ate and passed their time when not out of doors, and also slept at night, while there were other rooms (probably each was a small separately roofed house) for other purposes. The women had their "bower," the married people had their little bedclosets off the hall, and there were store-rooms. The house stood in a wide yard or court, where geese and other fowls were kept; it was fenced about with a palisade, or a bank and hedge. Tilling the soil, keeping cattle, hunting, and war and raiding, by sea and land, were the occupations of the men; the women sewed and span, and kept house.

A group of such homesteads, each house well apart from its neighbours, made the village or settlement: there were no towns with streets, such as the Romans left in Britain.

A number of such villages were united in the tribe, each tribe had its king, while the other chief men, the richest and best born, constituted a class of gentry. Later, tribes were gathered into small kingdoms, with a "Bretwalda" or "Over-Lord," the most powerful of the kings, at the head of all.

This kind of society is almost exactly the same as that which Homer describes among the Greeks, more than a thousand years before Christ. As in Homer, each Anglo-Saxon king had his Gleeman (scop) or minstrel, who sang to his household and to the guests in hall. The songs might be new, of his own making, or lays handed down from of old.

We shall see that the longer Anglo-Saxon poems, before Christianity came in, were stories about fabulous heroes; or real kings of times past, concerning whom many fables were told. Most of these tales, or "myths," were not true; they were mere ancient "fairy stories," in which sometimes real but half-forgotten warriors and princes play their parts. The traditions, however, were looked on as being true, and the listeners to the gleemen thought that they were learning history as well as being amused. Meanwhile any man might make and sing verses for his own pleasure, about his own deeds and his own fancies, sorrows, and loves.

There was no lack of old legends of times before the English invasion of Britain, or of legends quite fabulous about gods and heroes. We know from Roman and early Christian authors, that the other Germanic peoples, on the Continent, had abundance of this material for poetry: thus the Germans sang of Arminius, the Lombards sang of Alboin, or Ælfwine (died A.D. 573), and the Scandinavians and Germans had legends of Attila, the great Hun conqueror, in the fifth century, and of Sigurd, who slew Fafnir, the Snake-Man; of the vengeance of Brynhild, and all the other adventures of the Volsungs and Niblungs; in Germany fashioned, much later, into the famous "Nibelungenlied".[1]

The Anglo-Saxons, too, knew forms of these legends; and mention the heroes of them in their poetry. Thus there is no reason why the Anglo-Saxons should not have produced poems as magnificent as those of the early Greeks, except that they, like all other peoples, had not the genius of the Greeks for poetry, and for the arts; and had not their musical language, and glorious forms of verse. They were a rough country folk, and for long did not, like the Greeks, live in towns.

But even if they had possessed more genius than they did, much of their old literature would probably have been lost when they became Christians; and when the clergy, who had, most to do with writing, generally devoted themselves only to verses on Biblical or other Christian subjects, or to prose sermons; and to learned books in Latin. While plenty of Anglo-Saxon Christian poetry survives, of poetry derived from the heathen times of the Anglo-Saxons there is comparatively little, and much of it has been more or less re-written, and affected by later changes and additions, in early Christian times.

The fragments of old poetry enable us to understand the poetic genius of our remote ancestors as it was before they had wholly adopted Christianity, or come under Latin, French, and Norman influences. From the descendants of the Britons whom they had conquered, or who survived as their Welsh neighbours, they seem, at this time, to have borrowed little or nothing in the way of song or story.

Before beginning to try to understand the Anglo-Saxon literature, we ought to set before our minds two or three considerations. Though the language of these very old poems is the early form of our own English, we cannot understand them except in translations, unless we learn Anglo-Saxon. However well a translator may render the ideas of a poem, he cannot give the original words of it in another language. Now the poet's very own words have a beauty and harmony and appropriateness which a translation cannot reproduce. The ideas remain, but the essence of the poem is lost: gone is the vigour, the humour is weakened; the harmony is impaired. Once more we are accustomed to rhyme, and to certain forms of versification in our poetry. The early Anglo-Saxons did not employ rhyme; the peculiar cadence, with alliteration, of their verse cannot easily be reproduced; and there is much difference of opinion as to the prosody or scansion of Anglo-Saxon verse. Thus, till we can read Anglo-Saxon easily, and while we only read its poetry through translations, we are apt to think less highly of it than it deserves.

Again, the ideas and manners of the Anglo-Saxons were not like our own in many details. Their poets did not write for us, but for men of their own time, whose taste and ways of thinking and living were in many respects very different from ours.

If many people cannot now take pleasure in the novels of Fielding, Scott, Miss Austen, Thackeray, and Dickens--the novels of 1745-1870--because these seem "so old-fashioned," they will certainly be unable to admire the poetry of 500-800. Yet it may be excellent poetry, when we put ourselves as far as we can in the place of the hearers for whom it was composed. If we fail to do this we may read Anglo-Saxon poetry as a matter of history, but, as poetry, we cannot enjoy it.

Minstrels, Story-tellers, and Stories.

Perhaps the oldest of the Anglo-Saxon poems is that called "Widsith," after the name of the far-travelled minstrel or gleeman who sang it before the people in the hall of a prince or noble. This short poem tells us what kind of tales the people liked to hear. It begins:--

Widsith spoke His word-hoard unlocked,

that is, he opened his treasure of stories as a travelling pedlar opens his box of goods. He says that he has wandered, gathering songs and tales, all over the world from the German Ocean to Egypt and India. He means that he knows all, stories; he is merely giving his hearers their choice of a tale about any king and people in the known world.

Let us suppose that they choose to hear about Ælfwine, or Alboin, king of the Longobards or Lombards, whom Widsith says that he had visited. We know what tales were told of Ælfwine. One of these is a fair example of the rest; it is probably not true. Ælfwine had killed the father of his wife Rosamund, and had a cup made out of the skull, and he made Rosamund drink out of it at a feast. She determined to be revenged for this cruel insult, and took counsel with the king's shield-bearer and guardsman. By his advice she entrapped Beartheow, a very strong man, by a trick, so that he became guilty of high treason. He was now at her mercy, for she threatened to inform against him, and thus compelled him to murder her husband, Ælfwine, in his bed. After that, the king's shield-bearer tried to win the kingdom. But Rosamund gave him poisoned wine, and he, when he knew that it was poisoned, made her drink out the cup, and they two died in the same hour.

This makes a noble tragic song, but the story is only a form of a much older Greek tale which Herodotus, 1000 years earlier, tells of King Candaules of Lydia, of his wife, whom he insulted, and of the Captain of his guard, whom she induced to kill King Candaules.

Probably an Anglo-Saxon minstrel would recite the poem called "Widsith," and then the listeners would ask him for any of the stories which he had mentioned, perhaps for one about Ælfwine; or Alexander the Great; or Sigurd of the Volsungs, who slew the Serpent-Man, Fafnir; or of Hygelac (who is believed to have been the man named, in Latin, Chochilaicus, a real king of about 520); or of Hrothgar, whom Widsith mentions. This king is befriended by Beowulf, in the great Anglo-Saxon poem of that name, the noblest and most famous of all these old songs. The minstrel makes requests for gifts of rings and bracelets; and speaks of his desire to meet generous princes. In the same way Homer loves to tell how golden cups and beautiful swords were given by princes to the minstrels in Greece. The last verses of "Widsith" run thus, in modern English, and are a fair example of early Anglo-Saxon versification:--

Swa scrithende So wandering on gesceapum hweorfath the world about, glee men gumena gleemen do roam geond grunda fela; through many lands; thearfe secgath they say their needs thonc word sprecath, they speak their thanks, Simle suth oththe north sure, south or north sumne gemetath, some one to meet, gydda gleawne of songs to judge geofam unhncawne and gifts not grudge.[2]

There are few early Anglo-Saxon poems that can be called "lyrics"; they are rather narratives, as in the case of the songs of war, the battles of Brunanburh and Maldon; or "elegiac," and reflective, as in "The Ruined City," though personal emotion, a characteristic of the lyric, often appears in the Christian poems and elsewhere as we shall see.

"Beowulf" the chief poem may be called a brief "epic," a narrative of over 3000 lines, on great heroic adventures. Such a poem would be sung in hall, to beguile more than one long winter night.

Beowulf.

It is impossible to be certain about the date when the original form of this great old poem, "Beowulf," was first composed, because it contains, on the one hand, descriptions of the ancient heathen way of living, thinking, manners, and customs; and, on the other hand, has many allusions to Christian doctrine, which the Anglo-Saxons knew nothing of till after they had quite conquered this country. The poet of "Beowulf" as it now exists, had read the Bible, or knew part of its contents. We must look first at the poem as it stands, and the story as it is told, or rather at the stories, for there are several.

One Beowulf, not our hero, was the son of Scyld. Scyld died, and, in place of Christian burial, was placed in his ship, with arms and treasures, and so sailed out to sea at the wind's will. Not so, when his time came, was our Beowulf buried; that is, Beowulf the hero of the poem, for the earlier Beowulf, son of Scyld, was another man.

The grandson of Scyld was Hrothgar (whose name becomes Roger in later times), and Hrothgar was a Danish king, builder of Heorot, a princely hall. His happiness awoke the envy of Grendel, a fiend of the wilds.

The Christian author of the poem, as it stands, thinks that Grendel and other monsters are descendants of Cain!

The nobles slept in the great hall, whither Grendel came and caught away thirty of them. Men sought other sleeping-rooms, but Grendel still came and slew them. The house was empty, and men promised sacrifices to their false gods all in vain: "they knew not the true God," yet the poet often forgets their ignorance, and makes them speak like Christians:

There was a king of Gothland named Hygelac, a real king living at the beginning of the sixth century. The king's nephew, Beowulf, heard of the evil deeds of Grendel, and set sail with some of Hygelac's men to help the unhappy Hrothgar. They all wore shirts of mail made curiously of interlaced iron rings, they had spears with iron heads, and helmets crowned with the figure of a boar made in iron; some of these shirts of chain-mail and helmets still exist. Coming into the great hall, built of timber plated with gold, the heroes explained their errand, and were well received. As Grendel cannot be harmed with stroke of steel, Beowulf will carry neither sword nor shield, but be slain by Grendel; or slay him with his hands. If Grendel eats him, Hrothgar will not need to give him due burial--burning his body, and burying the bones in a mound of earth; the custom is that of the unconverted German tribes. Hrothgar accepts the offer, the warriors sit at their ale (they had not much wine), and listen to the clear voice of the minstrel as he sings of old adventures. But Hunferth, a thane of Hrothgar, out of jealousy, taunts Beowulf with having been beaten in a swimming match that lasted for seven nights. Beowulf replies that Hunferth "has drunk too much beer": he himself swam better than his opponent for five nights, and slew nine sea-monsters with his sword; Hunferth, on they other hand, dare not face Grendel, and has been the destroyer of his own brothers. Yet Hunferth does not draw his sword, after these insults, which is strange; and the feast in hall goes on merrily.

Such scenes of boasting and quarrelling were, no doubt, common over the ale cups, but Waltheow, Queen of Hrothgar, "the golden-garlanded lady, the peace-weaver," enters the throng, and bears the cup of welcome to Beowulf, thanking God that she has found a helper to her heart's desire. Then she takes her place by her lord Hrothgar.

Night fell, Beowulf, committing himself "to the all-knowing God," takes off his armour and lays his head on the bolster--the word is the same in Anglo-Saxon. Grendel arrived, burst in the iron-bolted door, and laughed as he saw the sleeping men. One warrior he tore to pieces and devoured; but Beowulf, who had the strength of thirty, gripped the fiend, and the hall echoed with their wrestling and stamping up and down; the clamped benches were torn from the floor. Men smote at Grendel with swords, but the steel did not bite on his body. Beowulf tore his arm and shoulder clean away, and Grendel, flying to a haunted pool, described as a terrible place, dived down through the bloodstained water, and "hell caught hold of him".

In Heorot men now made merry, and the minstrel sang a new song of the fight.

After, the rejoicings, eight horses and princely armour are given to Beowulf. The minstrel sings of the hero Finn, with a pleasant description of the coming of spring after a long winter. The poem is not all about fiends and fighting; the descriptions of wild rocks and seas, and of happy nature, are beautiful. Then the gracious wife of Hrothgar bids Beowulf farewell, giving him a cup of gold. Other presents are offered, and on so happy a day, wine, not ale, is drunk in hall.

But Beowulf s adventure is not ended. That night he slept, not in hall, but in a separate room, and the mother of Grendel, a creature more terrible than himself, came to avenge her son, and slew a warrior.

Next day Hrothgar described to Beowulf the home of the fiends; they abode in dark wolf-haunted places, windy "nesses," or headlands, wild marshlands, where the hill-stream rushes through black shadows into a pool or perhaps sea-inlet, under the earth. The boughs of trees hang dense over the water, and at night a fire shines from it. Even the stag that ranges the moors, when he flies from the hounds to the lake, dies rather than venture there to take the water. This is a fine example of the descriptions of nature in the poem. Beowulf is not alarmed; we must all die at last, he says, but while we live we should try to win glory.

So they all rode to the haunted pool, Beowulf in his iron armour and helmet. The man who had insulted him now repents, and gives Beowulf the best of iron swords, named Hrunting; for famous swords in these days had names, like King Arthur's blade, Excalibur, or Roland's Durendal. "I will gain glory with Hrunting, or death shall take me," says Beowulf.[3]

Beowulf dived into the black water, the fiend strove to crush him, but his iron shirt of mail protected him, and she dragged him into the dreadful hall, her home, where the water did not enter. A strange light burned; Beowulf saw his hideous foe and smote at her with Hrunting; but the edge did not bite on her body. He threw away the useless sword, and they wrestled; they fell, Beowulf was under her, and she drew her short sword. She could not pierce his armour, but he saw and seized a huge sword, made for a giant in times long ago. With this he cut her down from the neck to the breast-bone, and his friends on shore saw the pool turn to blood; all but his own men had believed that Beowulf was dead, and had gone home.

Meanwhile the blade of the great sword melted away in the poisoned blood of his foe, and he swam to shore with the hilt, and with the heads of the two monsters, Grendel and his mother. With these he came gloriously to Hrothgar, who wondered at that sword hilt, covered with plates of gold, engraved with a poem in Runic letters; for the poet is fond of describing beautiful swords and armour.

Hrothgar now made a long speech about the goodness of God, which, of course, is a Christian addition to the poem. Beowulf gave back Hrunting to Hunferth, saying no word against the weapon though it had been of no service. Then they all departed in high honour, and their swift ship under sail cut the sea into foam as she flew homeward.

In time Hygelac and his son fell in battle, and Beowulf was for fifty years "the shepherd of the people". The last adventure of his old age was a fight with a fiery dragon which dwelt among the golden treasures in an ancient burial mound. In the tomb, says the poet, "there is no sound of swords or harness, no joy of the harp; the good hawk flits not through the hall; the swift horse does not beat the ground at the gate". Anglo-Saxon poetry is full of the melancholy of death, and of mournful thoughts awakened in presence of the ruined homes of men long dead.

In his last fight and his best fight, Beowulf, with a young prince to aid him, slew the Fire Drake, but he was mortally hurt by its poisonous flaming breath, and spoke his latest words: "Bid the brave men pile up a mound for me, high and far-seen on the headland, that seafaring men in time to come may call it Beowulf's mound". These are almost the very words of the ghost of the dead oarsman, Elpenor, to Odysseus in Homer.

So much has been said about the poem of "Beowulf," because it is by far the greatest poem that the Anglo-Saxons have left to us, and best shows how they lived. From "Beowulf" we learn that our ancestors lived almost exactly as did the ancestors of the Greeks, in Homer's poems, made perhaps 1600 years before the making of "Beowulf". Both these ancient Greeks and our own ancestors had, and expressed in poetry, the same love, of life and of the beauty of the world; and the same belief that, after death, hope was hopeless, and joy was ended. Both had the same sense of the mystery of existence, and, when they took time to think, had the same melancholy. Our poetry thus began like that of Greece, and, in the end, became the rival of the greatness of Greece.

We know from broken pieces of these old songs which have come down to us that the Anglo-Saxons, like their German neighbours on the Continent, had even better stories than "Beowulf". But they have been lost, and "Beowulf" was perhaps saved by the Christian parts of it, which must have been put in by some one who wrote it over again after the Anglo-Saxons were converted: the language is like what was spoken and written about 750. One beautiful poem is "The Ruined City". The minstrel, beholding the desolation of the towers and baths of some Roman town which the Anglo-Saxons have overthrown, laments its fall and the perishable state of human fortunes. Other poems may be briefly mentioned.

The Wanderer.

In "The Wanderer" there is abundance of gloom, but it is a less noble poem than "The Ruined City," for the speaker is in sorrow, not for the griefs of all mankind, but for his own. He is an exile, homeless, in fact a tramp, Eardstapa. He has lost his lord, his patron; and dreams of his kindness, in the old happy days; and wakens, an aged man, friendless, to see the snow falling in the ocean, and the seabirds flitting with their white wings through the snow. The house where he had been young has fallen, and he laments over the ruins.

The Plaint of Deor.

This complaint is also rueful, but it is manly. The poet calk to mind old heroes and heroines, such as Weland (remembered still as Wayland Smith, in Scott's "Kenilworth"), who suffered many misfortunes, but endured them bravely. The poem is in stanzas; each ending with the burden or refrain,

That evil he overcame, So may I this!

It is like the often repeated word of Odysseus in Homer:--

Endure my heart, Worse hast thou endured!

One sorrow of the poet is that his lord has taken from him the land which he held as a minstrel, and given it to another singer. Now he is in new trouble.

That I surmounted, So may I this!

Probably there were many other poems with refrains, or recurring lines at the end of each stanza; this is a very old poetic device; originally the refrains were sung in chorus by the listeners as they danced to the music of the minstrels.

The Seafarer.

In this poem, as in "Beowulf," the sea is spoken of as it would be by men who knew its wild moods; cold, tempest, biting salt water, danger, and grey waves under driving rain, yet the seafarer loves, it. The poet says that (like

The gentlemen of England Who live at home at ease,)

many a one knows not the dangers of the deep, while the minstrel has heard the swan sing through the ice-cold showers of hail and the spindrift. But the coming of spring and the cuckoo's cry, admonish the brave man to go seafaring, despite the distresses; they are more inspiriting than life on land. He is a Christian, but he falls back on the old melancholy for the passing of kings and gold-givers. Though he preaches over much, he still thinks of the bale-fire as the mode of burial, as if Christian rites of earth to earth were not yet adopted.

Waldhere.

Of this poem only some sixty lines exist. They were found at Copenhagen, written on two pieces of vellum which had been used in binding a book: it is common to find fragments of early printed books or manuscripts in the bindings of books more recent. One page of "Waldhere" contains a speech by the heroine of the tale, Hildeguthe, urging Waldhere to fight Guthere; the other fragment has portions of a dialogue between the two combatants.

The names of the personages show that the poem was one of which we have other versions, the most intelligible is a Latin form in verse.[4] The story deals with an adventure, real or romantic, in the wars of Attila with the Franks. Waldhere, an Aquitanian hostage, brought up in Attila's court, with his betrothed lady, Hildeguthe, daughter of the King of the Burgundians, is now keeper of Attila's treasures; he and his friend Hagen escape; Hagen, who first fled, reached the court of Guthere, King of the Franks, and hearing there that a lady and a knight, with a treasure, are wandering about, he recognizes his friends, and follows them with King Guthere (who mainly wants the treasure), and with eleven other warriors. Hildeguthe sees them coming, and Waldhere, who will not give up the treasures, slays the eleven companions of Guthere, who are chivalrous enough to "set him man for man," as the Scottish ballad says, in place of overpowering him by numbers. Hagen, of course, does not want to fight his friend Waldhere, but Fate, the Anglo-Saxon Wyrd, is too strong: Waldhere has to encounter both Guthere and Hagen, for Hagen is Guthere's man, or thegn, and may not disobey him; moreover, he must avenge his nephew, whom Waldhere has already slain. All three men receive terrible wounds, and then they make friends; and Waldhere keeps both his lady and the treasure.

This version of the story is more like a later romance than the other Germanic epics. In these, as in this tale, there is usually a tragic conflict of passions and duties, as when the law of blood-vengeance compels a woman to avenge a slain father or brother, or her husband or her lover. The end is always tragic, but the Latin poet has probably contrived "a happy ending," while retaining the many good fights, and the conflict of friendship and duty to a hero's lord, which make the interest of the story.

In the Anglo-Saxon fragments, Hildeguthe, encouraging, her lover to fight, praises the swordsmith, the old German hero, Weland, the Tubal Cain of the race. He made the sword Miming, the best of all swords, which never fails the fighter. Hildeguthe has never seen Waldhere flee the fight; now he must not be less noble than himself. The other fragment is like the dialogues of the heroes in the Iliad before they come to blows.

The whole of "Waldhere" must have been, when complete, a poem much more complex, and even more interesting (at least to modern readers) than "Beowulf". It had "love interest," a brave heroine, good duels, and the tragic conflict of duties, while it was full of allusions to other ancient epics of the Germanic peoples.

The Fight at Finnsburg.

In a song of the gleeman at Hrothgar's house in "Beowulf," there are obscure references to the slaying of Hnæf, brother of Hildeburh, wife of the Frisian King Finn, and the slaying of Hildeburh's own sons by the men of Hnæf, in a fight within the royal hall of Finn. They are all burned together on the funeral pyre, while Hildeburh weeps for sons and brother. A fragment of an Anglo-Saxon epic on this affair exists only in one copy, the original is lost. It is a complicated story of slayings and revenges among folk akin by marriage, and the interest clearly lay in the tragic situation of Hildeburh, who owes vengeance against her husband, Finn, and also against the family of her brother, who have slain her sons. As Hildeburh returns to her own people, the Danes, after her husband is killed, she probably preferred her own blood kindred to those of her husband.

[1] The best versions for English readers of these splendid stories are to be found in "The Volsungs and the Niblungs," translated by William Morris and Magnusson, and in "The Corpus Poeticum Boreale," with translations by F. York Powell and Vigfusson.

[2] This form of verse has been described thus by Prof. Saintsbury:--

"The staple line of this verse consists of two halves or sections, each containing two 'long,' 'strong,' 'stressed,' 'accented' syllables, these same syllables being, to the extent of three out of the four, alliterated. At the first casting of the eye on a page of Anglo-Saxon poetry no common resemblance except these seem to emerge, but we see on some pages an altogether extraordinary difference in the lengths of the lines, or, in other words, of the number of 'short,' 'weak,' 'unstressed,' 'unaccented' syllables, which are allowed to group themselves round the pivots or posts of the rhythm, that is, round the syllables on which strong stress is laid."

The eye and ear of the reader soon find out the essential facts of the measures; the strong pause in the middle of each verse, the alliteration, the accent, and the great variety in the number of the syllables which are slurred, or not dwelt upon, in each case. The poetry avoids rhymes, except in "The Rhyming Poem," later than King Alfred's time, and in two or three Other instances.

[3] The words are:--

Ic me mid Hruntinge dóm gewyrce, otthe mec death nimeth.

I (Ic, German Ich) with (German mit) Hrunting, glory will win, otherwise (otthe) me (mec) death taketh (nimmeth), German nehmen ("to take").

[4] Translated from a lost German form; the Latin is of the tenth century, by Ekkehard of St. Gall.

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II. ANGLO-SAXON CHRISTIAN POETRY

When the Anglo-Saxons became Christians (597-655) they took the Gospel, and the rules of the Church, in the North, from the Irish missionaries who, under St. Columba of Ireland, settled in the Isle of Iona: in the South from Roman teachers, such as Theodore of Tarsus, who had studied at Athens, and, in 668 became Archbishop of Canterbury. Both in the South, and North, in Northumberland, great schools were established, in connexion with the monkish settlements: in the monasteries Greek was not unknown, and the language of Rome, Latin, was taught and was used in writing all learned works, and hymns. With the language of Rome, almost dead as a living speech, came knowledge of ancient history, and of the great Roman poets, especially Virgil. The seventh and eighth centuries were thus a new epoch, a century of learning, and of division between the educated and the unlearned. The learned, mainly priests, no longer cared much for making songs and stories about fighting, love, and the adventures of their heathen heroes. They were occupied with the history of Rome and of the old world; and still more with their new religion, and the stories of apostles and saints and Hebrew kings and patriarchs, and with the making of sermons and hymns. Thus the old heathen tales and poems were lost or half forgotten.

Cædmon.

The first sacred poet of whom we hear is Cædmon. His tale is told by the great and learned Bede, born at Wearmouth in Northumberland in 673, and trained in the new monastery there. Says Bede: "There was in the monastery of St. Hilda at Whitby, a Brother who, when he heard the Scriptures interpreted, could instantly turn the lesson into sweet verses." Just so the minstrel of Hrothgar, when he heard the nobles talk about Beowulf's defeat of Grendel, turned the story at once into a song. This was "improvisation," and Cædmon "improvised" religious poems; no man has equalled them since, says Bede. But he began when he was far from young, and was not yet a priest. Till then he had not been a poet; indeed, if he were at a feast where every man sang in his turn, when the harp was brought to people near him at table, he arose and went home.

One night he ran away from the harp into the stalls of the cattle, and there fell asleep on the straw. In a dream One appeared to him, and bade him sing. He answered that he had left the feast because he could not sing.

"You must sing."

"About what am I to sing?"

"The beginning of things created."

Cædmon then made in his sleep a poem about the Creation, and when he awoke he remembered it, as Coleridge made "Kubla Khan" in a dream, and remembered part of it until he was disturbed by a person on business from Porlock. After this Cædmon made sacred poems, doing Scripture into verse, with perfect ease, and he became a monk.

Now there exist long Anglo-Saxon poems on parts of Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, and it has been very naturally supposed that these are the poems of Cædmon, which, as Bede thought, had never been equalled in the Anglian tongue. Nothing is known for certain, and only one short hymn has a good chance to be by the poet Cædmon. The ideas of the poet singing of the war in Heaven, so closely resemble those of Milton, in "Paradise Lost," that Milton has been supposed to have known something of the Anglo-Saxon poem.[1] No lines in "Paradise Lost," are more familiar than those which describe a land of fire,

Yet from these flames, No light, but rather darkness visible, Served only to discover sights of woe.

The old Anglo-Saxon poet says:--

They sought another land, That was devoid of light, And was full of flame.

The speech of Satan, too, in Anglo-Saxon, the speech in which he blames the justice of God; his threat of what he would do, were he free for but one winter; his design to avenge himself on Adam and his posterity, are all like Milton, whose

Fairest of her daughters, Eve,

is exactly like

The fairest of women, That have come into the world.

In the fighting scenes of these Anglo-Saxon Biblical poems, the poets appear to enjoy themselves most and to feel most at home. They have only to write in the manner of their own old battle songs, about the howling of wolves and crying of ravens to whom the victor gives their meat.

Indeed Anglo-Saxon poetry reminds us of an ancient casket of whalebone in the British Museum, with its scenes from the heathen story of Weland or Weyland Smith, the adoration of the Magi, Romulus and Remus and the wolf, and a battle between Titus and the Jews: such is the mixture of Christianity, heathenism, and learning in the Christian Anglo-Saxon literature.[2]

Thus in the long fragment "Judith," based on the well-known story of Judith and Holofernes in the Apocrypha, there is vigour in the descriptions of the intoxicated roaring Holofernes; and of the cries of wolf, raven, and eagle; and of the clash of swords and shields.

Cynewulf.

The best Christian poem, called "Crist," is full of the happiness bestowed by the new religion. The verses are by a poet named Cynewulf of whom nothing is known but his name, recorded in a kind of acrostic written in the Runic alphabet. He took his matter from sermons and hymns in Latin, but Cynewulf makes the poetry his own. He is joyously religious. After all the melancholy of the heathen or half-heathen minstrels, their wistful doubts about the meaning and value of our little life, the author of the "Crist" comes as one who "has seen a great light". He rejoices like the shepherds who heard good tidings of great joy at Bethlehem on the first Christmas night. It is as when spring comes to the world and the thrushes cannot have enough of singing: the night and the darkness are over: the grave has lost its sting and Death his victory. The poet is as happy as the birds in March. To him the message of Christ is no old story, but a new certainty; he has no doubt, no fear, and this gladness of faith is all his own, whether he sings of Our Lord or of Our Lady. That is the charm of Cynewulf; his fresh delight in his work.

Thou to us The bright sun sendest, And thyself comest, That thou may'st enlighten Those who long ago With vapour covered, And in darkness here Sat, in continual night.

The legends of "St. Guthlac" and "St. Juliana," on the other hand, are not, it must be confessed, such spontaneous bursts of song.

Andreas.

In the "Andreas" the poet, whoever he was, sings of what he has heard, adventures of St. Andrew and St. Mark. St. Matthew has fallen into the hands of the cannibals of old Greek legend, the Læstrygonians, the poet calls them the "Mermedonians".[3]

The cannibals have caught, and are about to eat St. Matthew, but the Lord appears first to him, in his dungeon, and then to St. Andrew, who is living among the Achæans, in Greece. The voyage, the fighting, are in the old heathen style, and the Deity appears with two angels, all three disguised as sailors. It is impossible to give the whole tale, which appealed to the natural man as a great story of adventure in waves and war, while it introduced religion. The adventures are many, and much more startling and wild than any that survive from the Anglo-Saxon poetry of heathen times.

Dream of the Rood.

There is a singular poem "The Dream of the Rood," which with many other "masterless" poems, some critics assign to Cynewulf, on account of the style, and the deep personal feeling which we admire in the "Crist": others attribute it to Cædmon. This opinion was partly based on a curious set of facts. The followers of the great Reformer, John Knox, in Scotland (1560) destroyed almost all the "monuments of idolatry" as they called works of Christian art. But they forgot to break to powder a tall ancient cross of red sandstone, beautifully carved, and marked with Runic characters, in the church of Ruthwell, near Dumfries. Some eighty years later (1642) when the Covenanters were in arms against Charles I, the preachers began a new war against works of Christian art, and ordered the Ruthwell Cross to be destroyed. It was broken into several fragments, which have now been pieced together, and the Cross stands in an apse-shaped building adjoining the church. The Runic characters record a part of the poem styled "The Dream of the Rood," and give the inscription "Cædmon me made", probably Cædmon was really the artist who made and carved the stone cross: indeed the name is rather hard to read.

The poem speaks of the author's wonderful dream of the gold adorned and jewelled True Cross, and, in "Elene," Cynewulf also speaks of the revelation to him of the light of the Truth of the Cross. Conceivably, then, Cynewulf really had a dream or vision, and became devout after a life of war and minstrelsy.

Elene.

It would, in that case, be in old age that Cynewulf wrote, in the "Elene," a poetic version of the legend of the discovery of the True Cross by Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine. This poem, probably based on a Latin legend, has been very highly praised. But before we can take any pleasure in it, we must try to think ourselves back into the state of mind of England when the heathen poetry of war was still popular, and Christianity, with many mediaeval legends, was a fresh inspiration. Even when we have done that as well as we can, the "Elene" awakens only an historical kind of rapture. The natural man is much more at home with "Beowulf" and "Waldhere" than with "Elene".

The poet begins with an imaginary battle: allied Franks and Huns attack the Emperor Constantine. The motive of Cynewulf is to introduce plenty of fighting: probably he never fought himself, but like other men of peace, he loves to sing of war. His treatment of war is conventional; he introduces the usual cries of wolf, eagle, and raven. Constantine is encouraged by a dream of a bright being who urges him to trust in God; he also sees a vision of the Cross, gay with jewels (as in "The Dream of the Rood") and letters making the words "In this sign conquer". Then the battle is described, with more zest than originality, and the heathen are routed; many are converted. Helena next takes a large force, and sails to Palestine to look for the True Cross. The usual formulæ descriptive of a seafaring are employed.

Helena preaches to the Jews in the mediaeval way, and they, naturally, reply, "We know not, lady, why you are so angry with us". A crafty Jew, Judas, guesses that she has come to demand from them the True Cross, which he is reluctant to give up. Helena threatens to burn the Jews, and does put Judas in a pit, without meat or drink, for seven days. Broken in spirit at last, he says that he will do his best; he prays; a miraculous vapour arises from the spot where, twenty feet underground, three crosses are discovered. Another miracle points out which of the three is the Holy Rood; Judas is baptized, and the shining nails of the Cross are discovered. Then follow the verses in which the poet describes his own old age, and his beholding the true light that lighteneth all men.

Riddles.

Among other poems vaguely assigned, in part, to Cynewulf are Riddles. The Sword describes itself, so do the byrnie, or shirt made of iron rings, the helmet, the shield; and there are many other riddles, some derived from late Latin. The best are really poetical. In addition to the Riddles there are several curious magical songs, or charms, for curing diseases, and removing spells of witchcraft. In these there are remains of the old heathen magical songs.

Phœnix.

The "Phœnix," assigned to Cynewulf as usual, is based on a late Latin poem attributed to Lactantius (290-325) and ends as an allegory of Christ. It is interesting to observe in the "Phœnix" a description of an ideal land of peace "where comes not hail or rain or any snow," the picture is borrowed from Homer's lines on Olympus, the home of the gods, and Elysium, the abode reserved for Helen of Troy and Menelaus, in the Odyssey. Anglo-Saxon poetry, without knowing it, came in touch, through Lactantius, with the most beautiful verses in the most ancient poetry of Greece, verses paraphrased in Latin, by Lucretius, and in English by Tennyson, twice ("Lucretius," and the "Morte d'Arthur"), and in "Atalanta in Calydon," by Mr. Swinburne. The golden thread of ancient Greek poetry thus runs through Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and English literature.

[1] First published in his time (1655) by Francis Junius (of course not the Junius who has been identified with Francis).

[2] find that Mr. W. P. Ker has made the same comparison.

[3] Apparently he has confused the Læstrygonians who devoured some of the companions of Odysseus, with the Myrmidonians (Myrmidones) the Greeks who followed Achilles to Troy.

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III. ANGLO-SAXON LEARNING AND PROSE

Latin Among the Anglo-Saxons.

Books written on English soil in the Latin language are no part of English literature. It is necessary, however, to notice them, because they testify to the knowledge and taste of the educated; while the ideas expressed in Latin reached the less instructed people through sermons and in conversation, and through the translations into Anglo-Saxon which were directed and in part executed by King Alfred.

Though written by a native of our island we may omit the Latin book of Gildas, of about 516-570, for he was a Briton of the Romanized sort, who fled to Brittany. His book, where it does not contain mere lamentations, gives a kind of history, very vague, of events in the country, and of the sins and crimes of the British princes down to about 550. Such as the information was, Bede, the great early Anglo-Saxon historian, used it, as did the author of "The History of the Britons" attributed to Nennius (say 800), who, like Gildas, mentions the battle of Badon hill, but, unlike Gildas, brings in King Arthur. As we shall see later, Bede does not mention Arthur.

Leaving these vague British writers in Latin, we come to Bede.

Bede..

When we think of the time in which Bede, the greatest of our early scholars, lived and worked, it seems amazing that he had such a wide knowledge of books and so comparatively clear an idea of the way in which history should be written. Born in 673 (died 735), he was in his thirteenth year when his king, Egfrid of Northumbria, was killed by the Piets (practically Gaelic-speaking Highlanders), in the great battle of Nectan's mere (685), in Angus beyond the Tay, for so far into what is now Scotland had English Northumbria pushed her conquests. Great part of these was lost, and in the eighth century, there came an age of anarchy and civil war, as fierce as the contests of the old times of heathendom. To us the Anglo-Saxons of these ages seem barbarous enough, but Bede speaks of the Piets of Scotland as "barbarians". He constantly deplores the greed and ignorance of the clergy, in terms much like those used by the Protestants before the Reformation. In an ignorant age Bede wrote unceasingly and copiously about such natural science as was within his reach, especially using that popular and fanciful book of Pliny, mere fairy-tales of natural (or unnatural) history. He wrote much and usefully on chronology in relation to history; and on theology, of course, he wrote abundantly. Most important is his "Church History of the Race of Angles," without which we should know little indeed concerning the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain, and the development of events both in England and Scotland. His tale of the reception of Christianity by Edwin is very commonly quoted: it is of much literary interest, and proves that the sense of the mystery and melancholy of the world, so often expressed in Anglo-Saxon poetry, weighed heavily on men who were not poets.

A council or Witanagemot was held to consider the Christian doctrines preached by Paulinus. One noble, Coifi, said, in jest or earnest, that the heathen religion was useless, "for no man among your people does more to please our gods than I, but many are more favoured by you and by fortune". Coifi, therefore, voted that Christianity deserved consideration. But another noble, agreeing so far, added, "Human life, oh King,... seems to me to resemble the flight of a sparrow, which flits into your warm hall at a feast in winter weather. The bird flies into the bright hall by one door, and out by another, and after a moment of quiet, slips from the wintry darkness into the wintry darkness again. Such is the life of man, that is for a moment, but what went before, and what comes after, as yet we know not." The practical Coifi then proposed to destroy the old temples of the old gods; rode off, and threw his spear into a shrine.

Coifi's idea was merely to "change the luck," and to enjoy the pleasures of destruction; he was of a common type of reformers; while the other speaker desired intellectual satisfaction, and the understanding of the mystery of existence.

Latin and even Greek learning, we have seen, found footing in southern England with the arrival of Archbishop Theodore and Abbot Hadrian at Canterbury in 669. Latin had never been quite extinct. A non-English writer in Latin, in Scotland, is Adamnan (died 704), author of a Life of the Irish St. Columba, who brought Christianity to the Picts of Scotland, while later from his little holy Isle of Iona missionaries reached Northumbria. Adamnan's book may be read with more pleasure than any other of the time; it is so rich in pictures of Highland life and sport on sea and land, and in tales of magic and the second sight. This was one of the works used by Bede in writing his "History".

The numerous books which were within the reach of Bede were brought, in five journeys, by Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, from Rome to Northumberland. Before Bede, such books had been studied by Aldhelm (Bishop of Sherborne, died 709). He wrote poetry in the native language, which King Alfred greatly admired, but none of the extant poems are attributed to him. His Latin would have surprised Cicero; he delighted in strange words, and in strings of alliterations. He wrote edifying treatises on Christian virtues as exemplified by Biblical characters and by saints, some of them rather fabulous personages. He knew many early Christian authors, and Virgil, Cicero, Ovid, and Lucan, but his own style was as absurdly bombastic as that of many of the ancient Irish romances. He had disciples in style, who manufactured acrostics in Latin verse.

The Latin literature of the southern Anglo-Saxons thus fell for a time into full decadence; very different was the learning of the northern Bede. His taste was uncorrupted by the sudden arrival of ancient literature among a people almost barbarous. He wrote in plain Latin without affectation concerning things worthy to be known and remembered: he gave us a frank and charming picture of the great St. Cuthbert; he had, no doubt, too great a love of miracles, and rather exaggerated some which he found in earlier lives of early English saints, such as the said Cuthbert, the saint of the Border, whose body sleeps in Durham Cathedral. The authors whom he quotes are mainly Christian, including many of the chief Fathers of the Church, and he is not certain about the propriety of studying the heathen classics, though he cannot abstain from Virgil, who, it was fancied, predicted the coming of Christ. He had Greek enough to read the Greek New Testament, but this learning was lost, in England, in later times. The translation of Bede's "History" into Anglo-Saxon under King Alfred was not the least of his gifts to his people.

Alcuin.

Alcuin (735-804), a pupil of the school of York, lived at the worst period of the savage attacks made by the still heathen Danes on England. What the Anglo-Saxons had done to the Britons, the Danes after 780 did to the Anglo-Saxons, slaying, plundering, torturing, and burning, wherever they came. Happily for Alcuin he passed most of his life abroad, aiding the great Emperor Charlemagne in founding schools and fostering education. Charlemagne collected the old war-songs of his people, little dreaming that in three centuries he would become as fabulous a hero, in the French epic poems of the eleventh to the thirteenth century, as Beowulf or Alboin had been in Germanic lays. Alcuin had far more influence as a lecturer and as a writer of letters than as an author; in a poem he preserves the names of the books in the libraries of York and Wearmouth, beautiful manuscripts that would now be almost priceless, but the Danes burned them all. Other Latin writers there were, they mainly dealt with religious themes, and their works are of very little importance.

Alfred.

Not till the kingdom of the West Saxons, Wessex, became the most powerful state in England, and made successful resistance to the Scandinavian invaders, who had destroyed monasteries everywhere, were learning and literature able to raise their heads again. It was the most famous of English kings, Alfred (849-901), that, among all his other labours as warrior and ruler, restored education.

It is unfortunate that so many matters of interest in Anglo-Saxon times are veiled in obscurity. The "Life of Alfred," by Asser, a Welshman, Bishop of Sherborne, is a confused record.

Alfred was certainly taken to Rome by his father at a very early age, but all that is told on this subject is most perplexing. He is said to have been untaught in the art of reading till he was 12 years old, but he heard Anglo-Saxon poems repeated by others, and knew many of them by heart. The famous tale that his mother offered a book of Anglo-Saxon poems to the first of her sons who should "learn it," and that Alfred was taken by the beauty of the illuminations, learned to read, and won the prize, is absolutely unintelligible in Asser's Latin. But Asser says, and Alfred, in his Preface to an Anglo-Saxon translation of Pope Gregory's "Pastoral Care" himself avers, that learning was almost or quite extinct south of the Humber, when his reign began, while in Northumbria matters were little better. But his father's second wife, Judith, was daughter to the Emperor, Charles the Bald, and though Judith, a young girl, was far from being sedate and erudite, the connexion with the Continent enabled Alfred to bring over Frankish scholars, such as Grimbald, while from Wales came Asser, who, for part of each year, lived with Alfred as his tutor.

The king wrote a Handbook, or commonplace book, of Latin extracts, which he translated into his own native tongue; and later he translated, or caused to be translated, the "Pastoral Care" of Pope Gregory; the very popular work on "Consolation" by Boëthius, a philosopher who was slain about 524; the "Church History" of Bede; and a kind of "History of the World" by Orosius, a Christian writer of the fifth century. Of these books, the "History" by Bede was of the greatest value for Englishmen; the "Consolations" of Boëthius are at least as consolatory as any others, and were long popular; while whoever reads Orosius will learn many things, though he will learn them wrong, about the whole history of the human race. Still, the Anglo-Saxon reader became aware of the elements of geography, and of the existence of the powers of ancient Assyria, Egypt, Crete, and Athens, while much space is devoted to the empire of the Amazons.[1] "It is shameful," says Orosius, nobly, "to speak of such a state of things, when such miserable women, and so foreign, had subdued the bravest men of all this earth," a conquest which the women repeated, he says, during the Peloponnesian war!

When Orosius reaches Roman history he is much more copious, and not so amusingly incorrect. Alfred, as a rule, paraphrased rather than translated his originals, omitting and adding at pleasure, and amplifying the geography of the North, by information received through Otthere and Wulfstan, contemporary voyagers.

He found learning on its deathbed and he restored and revived it, saving erudition from the natural contempt of men by the royal example of a great statesman, sportsman, and warrior. It was plain to the world that, in spite of the human tendency to despise books, learning was not merely an affair for shavelings in cloisters, for the great king himself loved reading and writing.

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

To the influence of Alfred is attributed, with much probability, the organization of the earlier parts of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," which briefly tells the history of the country from year to year. There were several versions of these annals, containing the most notable events of each year. It seems that copies of one manuscript, containing the remotest events, beginning with the invasion of Britain by Julius Cæsar, and going on to Alfred's own age, were given to several monasteries. In each the scribe afterwards continued to make, as it were, a diary of the chief occurrences, and, later, various additions about past events would be inserted in various religious houses, so that the dates are not always to be trusted. After the year of Alfred's birth, the records become more full. In his "Life of Alfred," Asser turned much of the "Chronicle" for Alfred's reign into Latin: the materials of the "Chronicle," therefore, existed in his day (an early part of it was by a Northumbrian writer). The "Chronicle" now exists in several versions, done by various hands in various monasteries. Some "Chronicles" are lost, such as that of Kent, whence much matter has been borrowed by that of Peterborough, which is the longest, and reaches the year 1154.

The early entries in the "Chronicle" are very short: here is the history of the year 774.

"In this year a red Cross appeared in the heavens after sunset; and in this year the Mercians and Kentish men fought at Otford, and wondrous serpents were seen in the South Saxons' land."

This reads like a journal kept by a child. In later days events are recorded at more length, such as fights with the Danes; meetings of the Witanagemot, or great Council of the Wise; slayings of Kings and Earls; even foreign facts of interest about Popes and Emperors. But as late as 1066, the chronicler is brief enough, when he tells how William, Count of Normandy, sailed to Pevensey on Michaelmas Eve.

"This was then made known to King Harold, and he gathered a great army, and came to meet Count William at the hoar apple tree. And William came against him unawares, ere his people were in battle order. But the king, nevertheless, fought boldly against him with those men who would follow him, and there was a great slaughter made on each side. There were slain King Harold, and Earl Leofwine his brother, and Earl Gyrth his brother, and many good men; and the French held possession of the place of carnage, as to them God granted for the people's sins." We who write long books about a single battle, such as Waterloo, are surprised by the brevity of the "Chronicle".

Some seventy years later, just before it ends, the "Chronicle" has a long and famous passage about the cruel oppressions in Stephen's reign (1137). By that date the language has changed so much, that the meaning can easily be made out, even by readers who do not know Anglo-Saxon. The style of the "Chronicle" is always extremely simple, and the good monks are usually more interested in events affecting their own monasteries, than in matters which are of more importance to the history of the country. Nevertheless, there are records of periods in the "war-age" when the Danes were burning, plundering, and slaying through England, and there are characters of great interest among the kings, earls, and counsellors, lay or clerical, of whom we should know little or nothing if the monks had ceased to make their entries in the "Chronicle". To students of language, with its dialects and changes, the "Chronicle" is priceless, and a few poems and ballads are contained in its pages.

The most famous poem in the "Chronicle" is on the battle of Brunanburh (937), when the English, under Æthelstan, defeated the Scots and Danes. This song, translated by Tennyson, does not so much describe the fighting as the triumph after the battle.

Five lay On that battle-stead, Young kings By swords laid to sleep: So seven eke Of Olaf's earls, Of the country countless Shipmen and Scots.

Olaf fled in his ship over the barren sea, the aged Constantine, King of the Scots, left his son dead on the field. As usual the raven, wolf, and eagle have their share of the corpses: an Anglo-Saxon poet could not omit these animals. This poet boasts that there has been no such victory since first the Anglo-Saxons "the Welsh overcame". Perhaps the enthusiasm of English students rather overrates the poetical merits of this war-song.

There is more poetry, and more originality in "Byrhtnoth," a song of a defeat at the hands of the Danes. The warrior entering the field of battle

Let from his hands his lief hawk fly, His hawk to the holt, and to battle he stepped.

He haughtily refuses to accept peace in exchange for tribute which the Danes demand. The armies are divided from each other by a tidal river, and Byrhtnoth chivalrously allows the heathen to cross, at low tide, and meet him in fair field. There are descriptions of hand to hand single combats; and of the wounds given and taken, and the boasts of the slayers, who throw their spears, piercing iron mail, and shields of linden wood; and strip the slain of their armour and jewels. The friends of the fallen fight across the corpses. Byrhtnoth falls, some of his company flee, the rest make a ring of spears about the hero, one cries

The more the mood, as lessens our might,

that is,

The braver be we, as our strength fails.

The whole poem might be translated, almost without a change, into "the strong-winged music of Homer," or the verse of the old French "Song of Roland". The song is not conventional, it is a noble war-poem. For some reason the best war-poems are inspired by glorious defeats, at Maldon, at Flodden, at Bosworth, at Roncesvaux, at Culloden.

The Monks and Learning.

The "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," running from Alfred's day to King Stephen's, and thus surviving the Norman Conquest, is the earliest historical writing in English prose. As we have seen, it was the work of the monks, regular soldiers of learning, living together under strict rules. On the other hand the secular clergy, parish priests and others, were the irregular levies against ignorance. The monks were fallen on evil times for learning and literature.

During the long cruel wars against the Danish raiders and settlers (900-960) many monasteries were overthrown; others, like Abingdon, became poor neglected places; into others the kings and nobles placed their younger children, to live comfortably on the rents and revenues of the Church, and neglect prayer and books. Under Eadwig the Fair, St. Dunstan (born 925) appeared as a reformer, making the rule of the Church respected, and being therefore at feud with Eadwig, as Thomas à Becket was with Henry II. Under Edgar (957-975), peace was restored, and Dunstan could carry out reforms as Archbishop of Canterbury. He brought back from Flanders the new rule-of the Order of St. Benedict (which the monk in Chaucer despises as not up to date) for the strict living of monks, and was backed by Bishops Oswald and Æthelwald, men of learning and reformers of education.

New monasteries, which often had schools attached to them, were built, and old monasteries were restored. Dunstan was an artist (a picture of him as a monk is still preserved, and is said to have been drawn by himself). He was skilled in music and metalworking, and fond of the old Anglo-Saxon poetry. He has left no books of his own writing, but there are curious early Lives of him in Latin. As a boy he climbed in his sleep to the roof of a church; he used to see visions of people at the time of their deaths; a large stone is said to have flown at him of its own accord; and, before his death, his bed, with him in it, was slowly raised up in air, and softly let down again. According to these tales, Dunstan must have been a "medium"; there is nothing saintly in such prodigies. Like many people of genius who were not saints, he was of a visionary nature, though a thoroughly practical and energetic man.

Thus he, with Oswald, Bishop of Worcester, later Archbishop of York; Abbo; Æthelwold; Byrthferth; and others, introduced "regulars"--Benedictine monks--in place of married priests into the cathedrals, and encouraged schools and learning of all kinds. Æthelwold himself taught Latin to boys at Winchester, and had the Latin book of the rules of the Benedictine monks done into Anglo-Saxon. A set of Anglo-Saxon sermons survives from this age called "The Blickling Homilies" (from Blickling, a house of Lord Lothian, where the manuscript has been preserved). Homilies are simple statements of Scriptural facts for simple hearers. The preacher already addresses the congregation as "my dearest brethren" (mine gebrothra tha leofostan). "Bethlehem," says the preacher, "means being interpreted, the House of Bread, and in it was Christ, the true bread, brought forth." "The Divine nature is not mingled with the human nature, nor is there any separation: we might explain this to you by a little comparison, if it were not too lowly; see an egg, the white is not mixed with the yolk, yet it is one egg." The sermons (these quoted are by Ælfric) are all plain teaching for plain people, but there is a famous address by Bishop Wulfstan, encouraging the English, by Biblical examples of Hebrew fighting patriots, to defend themselves against the cruel heathen Danes (1014).

Ælfric.

In the school at Winchester Ælfric was trained (born 955?) and thence went to instruct the young monks in the abbey of Cerne in Dorset, where he preached homilies; he wrote them both in English and in Latin. His sermon on the "Holy Housel," that is the Holy Communion, contained ideas which the Protestants, at the Reformation, thought similar to their own, and they printed this homily. "All is to be understood spiritually." "It skills not to ask how it is done, but to believe firmly that done it is." The style of the prose is more or less alliterative, and a kind of rhythm is detected in some of the sermons, as if they were intended to be chanted.

The Latin grammars written by Ælfric do not concern English literature; his Dialogue (Colloquium) between a priest and a number of persons of various occupations, throws light on ways of living. He wrote Latin "Lives of Saints," and edited part of an English translation or paraphrase of the Bible, suitable as material for homilies. He produced many other theological works, and died about 102-(?) being Abbot of Eynsham in Oxfordshire.

The interest of Ælfric, Wulfstan, and the rest, for us, is that they upheld a standard of learning and of godly living, in evil times of fire and sword, and that English prose became a rather better literary instrument in their hands.

The "Leechdoms," and works on herb-lore and medicine of the period, partly derived from late Latin books, partly from popular charm songs, are merely curious; they are full of folk-lore. After the Conquest, Anglo-Saxon prose, save in the "Chronicle," was almost submerged, though, in poetry, there were doubtless plenty of popular ballads, for the most part lost or faintly traceable as translated into the Latin prose of some of the writers of history. There would be songs chanted among the country people about the deeds of Hereward the Wake and other popular heroes; minstrels, now poor wanderers, would sing in the farmhouses, and in the halls of the English squires, but not much of their compositions remains.

We have, however, a few famous brief passages of verse, like the poem of "The Grave," familiar through Longfellow's translation, and probably earlier than the Conquest. It is written on the margin of a book of sermons, and the author's mood is truly sepulchral. The "Rhymed Poem" is celebrated only because it is in rhyme, which was a novelty with a great future before it; it is older than 1046, its muse is that of moral reflection.

The one verse of a song of King Canute is handed down by a monkish chronicler who lived more than a century later. The king in a boat on the Ouse, near a church, bids his men row near the shore to hear the monks sing:--

Merie sungen the munaches binnen Ely, Tha Cnut ching rew therby: "Roweth cnihtes neer the land, And here we thes munches sang."

This contains a kind of rhyme, or incomplete rhyme, of the vowel sounds only (assonance) in Ely, ther_by_, "land", "sang."

St. Godric (died 1170) also left a hymn to Our Lady, in rhymed couplets, with the music.

Of about the same period is a rhymed version of the Lord's Prayer; the number of syllables to each line varies much, as in Anglo-Saxon poetry, contrary to the rule in the poetry of France.

There are other examples all showing the untaught tendency of the songs of the people towards rhyme and towards measures unknown to the early Anglo-Saxons.

[1] The Amazons appear to have been the armed priestesses of the Hittite empire in Asia Minor, about 1200 B.C.

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IV. AFTER THE NORMAN CONQUEST

At the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), the invaders possessed a literature in their own language, poems on the adventures of Charlemagne, and of Roland and the other peers and paladins. But perhaps none of the French poems on Charlemagne, or only one, the "Song of Roland," now exists in a form as early as the date of the Conquest, and they did not then reach the English people.

On the other hand the Norman clergy, many of whom obtained bishoprics and abbeys in England, were much more learned than they of England; and Lanfranc, the Conqueror's Archbishop of Canterbury, threatened to depose Wulfstan, the English Bishop of Worcester, for his ignorance of philosophy and literature. Yet Wulfstan excelled "in miracles and the gift of prophecy". Many new monasteries were founded by the Norman kings, homes of learning, each with its scriptorium (writers' room), in which new books were written, and old books were copied, almost all of them in Latin. St. Albans became a specially learned monastery and home of historians, while Roman law, medicine, and theology were closely studied, and books were lent out to students from the monastic libraries, a pledge of value being deposited by the borrower.

Latin Literature.

The books of the age which most interest us are the histories written in Latin, by various authors of known names, who often were not cloistered monks, but clergymen who lived much at court, and knew the men who were making history, kings and great nobles.

Of all of these authors the most important in the interests of literature, not of history, is Geoffrey of Monmouth, a Welshman, whose "History of the Kings of Britain" is really no veracious chronicle, but a romance pretending to be a history of Britain, especially of King Arthur. The name of Arthur spells romance, and Geoffrey's book is almost the first written source of all the poems and tales of Arthur which fill the literature of England and the Continent. But it is more convenient to discuss Geoffrey when we reach the age of the Arthurian romance.

It is not necessary to speak here of all the writers of Latin histories in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In the North were Simeon of Durham, and Richard, Prior of Hexham, who wrote "The Deeds of King Stephen," and Ailred, whose account of the defeat of David I of Scotland at the Battle of the Standard (1138) is very well told and full of spirit. In reading Ailred we find ourselves, as it were, among modern men: he speaks as a good English patriot, yet as a friend and admirer, in private life, of the invading Scottish king and prince. Florence of Worcester attempted a history of the world, compiled out of other books, called "Chronicon ex chronicis". The habit of "beginning at the beginning," namely with the creation, took hold of some of these historians, whose books are of little use till they reach their own times (if they live to do so), and speak of men and events known to themselves.

Eadmer, on the other hand, wrote of what he himself knew, a "History of Recent Times in England," down to 1122, and especially about the Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, and his dealings with William Rufus and Henry I (Henry Fairclerk, a patron of learning).

William of Malmesbury (1095?-1143?) like Geoffrey of Monmouth, was patronized by Robert, Earl of Gloucester, to whom they dedicated books. William understood, and said that there were two Arthurs, one a warrior of about 500-516 (?) the other a hero of fairy-land; but, as time went on, people began to confuse them, and to believe as historical the stories of Arthur which Geoffrey had written as a romance. William wrote the "History of the Kings of England," with several lives of saints and books on theology. The "History of the Kings" begins with the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, and ends in 1127, the reign of Henry; towards the close of its sequel, the "Historia Novella," his patron, Robert of Gloucester, an enemy of Stephen, is his hero. The book contains a history of the First Crusade.

William sometimes treats history in almost a modern way, he quotes his sources of information, chiefly Bede and the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". He refuses to vouch for the exact truth of events before his own time: he throws the responsibility on earlier authors, his authorities. Later, he speaks of what he has seen, or learned from trustworthy witnesses. When he reaches the time of the British resistance to the Anglo-Saxons, he mentions "warlike Arthur, of whom the Bretons fondly tell so many fables, even to the present day, a man worthy to be celebrated, not by idle tales, but by authentic history".

Happily for his readers, William is not above telling anecdotes like the romance of the statue at Rome, with an inscription on the head, "Strike here". How this was misunderstood, how at last a wise man marked the place where the shadow of the fore-finger of the statue fell at noon, and what wonderful adventures followed when men dug there, and found a golden palace lighted up by a blazing carbuncle stone, is narrated in a captivating way, but is not scientific history. (Bk. II, Ch. X.) William mingles real letters and other documents with miracles and ghost stories: indeed, he is determined to amuse as well as to instruct, and he succeeds. In describing the enthusiasm stirred by the preaching of the First Crusade, he falls into the very manner of Macaulay. "The Welshman left his hunting, the Scot his fellowship with lice, the Dane his drinking-party, the Norwegian his raw fish."

Certainly William was not a wholly scientific historian. He is never uninteresting. If he finds any set of events tedious, he says so plainly, and passes onwards. He is very fair, is learned in the manner of his age, and his love of digressions and good stories reminds us of the Greek Herodotus, "the Father of History," and the most entertaining of historians.

Among the names of other Latin chroniclers is that of Henry of Huntingdon (writing in 1125-1154). The author of the "Deeds of King Stephen" is unknown: the work of William of Newburgh in the reigns of Henry II and Richard Cœur de Lion, is well remembered for his attack on the "lies" of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The assault on Geoffrey's truthfulness was not so superfluous as it seems, because his romance won the belief of many generations.

Richard Fitz Neale, who was Treasurer of England and for nine years Bishop of London (1189-1198), wrote the Dialogue "De Scaccario," "concerning the Exchequer," which is still studied as the best authority on mediaeval national finance in England, and on our early constitutional history.

Jocelin de Brakelond left a "Chronicle" (1173-1202) much concerned with life in his own monastery at St. Edmundsbury, and with the wise rule of Abbot Sampson. This book forms the text on which Carlyle preaches in his "Past and Present": it proves sufficiently that the monks were not the lazy drones of popular tradition and abounds in vivid pictures of men and of society.

Gerald of Wales (Girald de Barri, called Cambrensis, "the Welshman," 1147-1217?) was of royal Welsh and noble Norman birth, his family, the de Barris, were among the foremost Norman knights who took part in the invasion (it can hardly be called the conquest) of Ireland, under Strongbow; and he himself was a great fighter in the disputes of churchmen. There was not much schooling to be had in wild Wales, then very rebellious, but he probably learned Latin from the chaplains of his uncle, a Bishop, before he went to the University of Paris, to study law and science. Gerald was more like a modern literary man than a mediaeval chronicler. He never ceased from travelling, now following the Court, now rushing to Paris, now to Rome. When Archdeacon of St. David's, which the Welsh wanted to make a Canterbury of their own, with their own Archbishop, he stood up against the Bishop of St. Asaph; when the Bishop threatened to excommunicate him, he had bell, book, and candle ready to excommunicate the Bishop, whom he frightened away.

But Henry II would not permit Gerald to be Bishop of St. David's, thinking him certain to stand up for Wales against England. In 1184, Gerald went to Ireland with Henry's son, Prince John, who cannot be better described, as an insolent ribald young man, than he is in Scott's "Ivanhoe".

Gerald wrote a "Topography of Ireland," which is really "A Little Tour in Ireland". His chapters on the "Marvels of Ireland" lead us to suppose that the natives hoaxed him with strange stories, for example the tale of a church bell that wandered about the country of its own will: the innumerable fleas at St. Nannan's in Connaught is more credible, but the tale of the wolves who asked to receive the Holy Communion was not believed in England. One miracle was only a beautifully illuminated manuscript of the kind decorated by Irish artists 400 years earlier. The art had been lost, and the artist was supposed to have copied the designs of an angel.

Gerald found the Irish very ignorant, lazy, dirty, and ferocious. Every man used a battle-axe in place of a walking stick, and man-slayings were frequent. The Irish clergy were devout and chaste, but drank too much. On the wild beasts and birds of Ireland Gerald wrote like a naturalist and a sportsman, though he supposed that salmon, before leaping a fall, put their tails in their mouths, and letting go, fly upward by the spring thus obtained.

His "History of the Invasion of Ireland" is valuable, but he introduced, in the manner of some Greek and many Roman historians, long speeches which were never made. He also, after an energetic wandering life, always fighting to be made Bishop of St. David's, wrote his own autobiography, an amusing conceited book, full of adventures of travel. He wrote, too, on the natural history and the inhabitants of Wales, a book very valuable to this day. He died after reaching the age of 70.

Walter Map.

Among his friends was a native of the Welsh border, Walter Map, Archdeacon of Oxford. "You write much, Master Gerald," said Map to him, "and you will write more; and I deliver many discourses. Your books are better than my speeches, and will be remembered longer; but I am much more popular, for you write in Latin, and I speak in the vulgar tongue," meaning French. Poor Gerald confesses that he made nothing by his books, and looked for his reward, not in vain, to the applause of future ages.

But Map has had his own share of praise, more than he should get, if, as he said, he wrote little. He was born about 1137, studied at Paris, was one of the king's judges who rode on circuit, and, in 1197, was made Archdeacon of Oxford. One book which he certainly wrote, "On Courtly Trifles" ("De Nugis Curialium," in Latin) is a collection of anecdotes clumsily told, and of reflections, with stories of the Welsh, historical jottings, folk-lore, tales, and attacks on the clergy of the Cistercian Order. As a judge he said that he was fair, except to Jews and Cistercians, "who did not deserve justice, for they gave none". Satirical Latin poems against Golias, a type of a noisy licentious Bishop, are also attributed to him. In the confession of this Bishop occur the famous lines, thus translated by Leigh Hunt,

I devise to end my days--in a tavern drinking; May some Christian hold for me--the glass when I am shrinking; That the Cherubim may cry--when they see me sinking, God be merciful to a soul--of this gentleman's way of thinking.

The lines, in rhyming Latin, became a drinking catch, conceivably they were that before, and were merely put into the Bishop's mouth as a proof of his bad character. The word "Golias" as a nickname for a ribald "Philistine" priest was hundreds of years older than Map's time. A long romance in French, on Launcelot, the Holy Grail, and the death of Arthur, is attributed to Map in some manuscripts, and as a contemporary romancer says that Map "could lie as well as himself"--that is, like himself wrote romances of love and tournaments--he may possibly have been the author of "the great book in Latin which treats openly of the history of the Holy Grail". But no copy of that Latin book is known to exist, nor is it certain that it ever existed, while Map, as we know, said that he did not write much of any sort, especially not in Latin.

Changes Since the Conquest.

It is plain that, within a century from the battle of Hastings, new influences of many kinds were working in England, and changing the national character and intellect. There was the learning from Paris University, and from the Continent in general; there was the clearer intellect and energy of the Normans; the vivacity of such Welshmen or men from the Welsh marches as Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald, and Map. Anglo-Saxon literature had never been vivacious.

There were the new topics, "the matter of Britain," the Celtic legends of Arthur, whether derived from Wales or from Brittany--matter most romantic, and suited to the coming poets who, unlike the Anglo-Saxons, were to glorify love. There was, too, the constant excitement and variety that came from travel, whether in the Crusades, in pilgrimages, or to France and Rome on public or private business, or in search of books and teachers. In various ways knowledge of Saracen science and learning, translations of Aristotle from the Arabic into the Latin, and romantic ideas derived from the fables and tales of far-off India, filtered into England.

These things were for priests and book-loving lords and courtiers. Their wits were sharpened by knowledge of several tongues. All educated men knew Latin; "all men of this land," said Robert of Gloucester (about 1270) "who are of Norman blood, hold to French, and low men hold to English," but high men of English blood would talk in English to their farmers and servants. All who learned Latin learned it through French books, but country priests would preach in English.

The Anglo-Saxon language and grammar were slowly changing, though very few new words from French or Latin had yet come into common use. Cow, sheep, calf, and swine were Anglo-Saxon words, as Gurth the swineherd says in "Ivanhoe". Englishmen herded the animals, but the meat of them was called by French names derived from Latin, like beef, mutton, veal, and pork. From the Conquest (1066) to 1200, learning, Latin, and knowledge of French books would filter slowly into the native English mind, partly through sermons; and rich Franklins, and Englishmen in the service of the conquering race, and English priests would be Anglicizing French words.

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V. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH

The Stories of Arthur.

Of all these Latin chroniclers by far the most important was Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who finished his "History of the Britons" about 1147. Geoffrey, as has been said, is not a real historian, but something much more interesting. He introduced to the world the story of King Arthur, which at once became the source and centre of hundreds of French romances, in verse or prose, and of poetry down to Tennyson and William Morris. To Geoffrey, or to later English chroniclers who had read Geoffrey, Shakespeare owed the stories of his plays, "Cymbeline" and "King Lear". Though Geoffrey did not write in English but in Latin, he is one of the chief influences in the literature, not only of England, but of Europe, mediaeval and modern.

All readers of the "Morte d'Arthur" of Sir Thomas Malory (about 1470), and the "Idylls of the King," and William Morris's short poems about Arthur and Guinevere, are naturally curious to know if ever there were a real fighting Arthur, and to trace the sources of the countless French and English romances about him and his Court. Where did Geoffrey of Monmouth get his information about this island, from the days of the fabulous Roman who settled it (Brut, or Brutus), to King Arthur's time? We must look at what is known or reported about Arthur.

Bede, the historian, writing about 700-730, says nothing about Arthur, but he does speak briefly about the period (500-516) in which Arthur, if there were such a prince, must have existed. Bede takes from the Welsh writer in Latin, Gildas (about 550) the fact that, up to the date of the siege of Badon Hill (516), forty-four years after the Anglo-Saxons came into Britain, "the British (Welsh) had considerable successes under Ambrosius Aurelianus," perhaps the last of the Romans. "But more of this later," says Bede, who never returns to the subject. He may have expected to get more information, and that information might have included some account of Arthur, of whom Gildas makes no mention. Bede says nothing of the fable of Brut, which may not have been invented in his time, or, if known to him, was regarded by him as fabulous. Next we have a book attributed to the Welsh Nennius, a "History of the Britons," which is really a patchwork of several older records, and there is the "Annales Cambriæ," annals of Wales. Nennius (about 800?) makes Arthur ("the war-leader" not the king) win twelve great battles, ending with Badon Hill.

The names of the battles are given, the first is on the river Glein. Now one Glein is in Northumberland, the other in Ayrshire. Four battles are "on the Douglas water in the country called Linnuis"; if "Linnuis" is the Lennox, there are two Douglas waters there, which fall into Loch Lomond, between them is Ben Arthur. The sixth battle was "by the river Bassas," a "Bass" being a hill shaped like an artificial mound, for example the isle called "the Bass" in the Firth of Forth. There are two Basses on the river Carron, in Stirlingshire, and here may have been the sixth battle. The seventh was "Cat Coit Celidon," "the battle (cat) of the wood of Celyddon," that is Ettrick Forest, perhaps the fight was on the upper Tweed. The eighth battle is thought to have been waged at Wedale, in the strath of Gala water, a tributary of Tweed, which it reaches at Galashiels; the ninth at Dumbarton, which means "the castle of the Britons"; the tenth near Stirling, where a very late writer says that Arthur kept the Round Table; the eleventh at "Agned Hill"; that is Mynyd Agned--Edinburgh Castle rock; and the twelfth was "the siege of Badon Hill," perhaps a hill on the Avon, near Linlithgow, which has remains of strong fortifications, and is called "the Buden Hill," or "Bouden Hill". (It is not easy, however, to see how the a in Badon became the u in Buden.) Finally the great battle of Camlon, where Arthur fell, is taken to be at a place long called Camelon on the Carron, in Stirlingshire, where Arthur met Saxons, Picts, and Scots, under Medraut, (Modred), son of Llew, or Lothus, to whom Arthur had granted Lothian. On the other side of the river was an ancient building called, as far back as 1293, "Arthur's Oven"; it was destroyed by a laird at the end of the eighteenth century.

If all these conclusions, drawn by Mr. Skene from legends, Nennius, and place-names, be correct, Arthur was a real war-leader, fighting for the Britons, that is the Welsh of Strathclyde, whose country stretched from Dumbarton down through Cumberland. Even Geoffrey of Monmouth makes Arthur fight between Loch Lomond and Edinburgh, and give Lothian to King Lot, that is Llew, whose son, Medraut (Modred), turns traitor to Arthur. Bede places the battles at a time when the Picts had made an alliance with the Saxons, and these two peoples were in contact with each other not down in Cornwall, where later writers place "the last battle in the west," but exactly where Arthur seems to have fought, in the fighting place of Edward I and the Scots--from Carlisle to Dumbarton and Falkirk, and in Ettrick Forest and round Edinburgh, a region where several hills bear Arthur's name.

We need not, then, give up Arthur as a fabulous being, though legends far older than himself came to be told about him. In the oldest Welsh poems that survive he is mentioned among scores of other old heroes, now forgotten, and is always named as a great war-leader, "Emperor and conductor of the toil".

One mention is important. In a long Welsh poem on the graves of many heroes now forgotten, we read:--

The grave of March, the grave of Gwythar, The grave of Gwgwan Gleddyvrudd, A mystery to the world, the grave of Arthur. (Or "not wise to ask where is the grave of Arthur.")

Thus it appears that, even in very early Welsh poetry, the Grave of Arthur (like that of James IV, slain at Flodden), was unknown; hence he was believed, like King James, not to be dead; he was in "the island valley of Avilion," and would come again to help his people, when he was healed of his grievous wound.

Several of his companions in the later French and English romances, such as Geraint, Kay, and Bedivere, were also known to these very early Welsh poets. Moreover, there exist in the Welsh "Mabinogion" ("Tales for the Young"), very ancient stories of Arthur which do not resemble the ordinary later romances about him, but are infinitely older and more poetical: such are "Kulhwch and Olwen" and "The Dream of Rhonabwy".

Probably about 1066 there were many tales of Arthur surviving in Brittany, a Brython (Welsh) country from which the exiled prince of South Wales returned home in 1077. If he brought these tales back and if the Welsh poets took them up, there would be plenty of Welsh Arthurian literature between 1077 and 1140, or thereabouts, when Geoffrey of Monmouth produced his "History of the Britons". He says that he has had the advantage of using a book in the Breton tongue, which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany; this book he translates into Latin.

No such book can be found. It is probable that Geoffrey used Welsh and Breton traditions, and the patchwork book, parts of it very early, called the "History of the Britons," attributed to Nennius (about 796). In this we have a mixture of the real fighting Arthur of about 520, and the fabulous Arthur, a wonderful, powerful being, like all the old heroes of fable, who goes down to the mysterious land of darkness, like Odysseus and the Finnish Waïnamoïnen.

The patchwork book of Nennius derives the name of Britain from that person of pure fantasy, "Brut," "Brutus," great-grandson of Æneas; who sailed to the Isle of Albion. Now "Brut" was invented merely to explain the name "Britain," and to connect the Britons, or Welsh, with the Trojans. In the same way the Scots had framed false histories of their ancestress Scota, who came from Scythia to Ireland, by way of Egypt, Athens, and Spain.

All these legendary and fictitious materials, and others, were used by Geoffrey in what he called a "History"; and his "History," in spite of criticism, became the most popular book of the age. He begins with the flight of Æneas from Troy, and the flight of the great-grandson of Æneas, Brutus, to the Isle of Albion, "inhabited by none but a few giants". Brut builds New Troy (London) on the Thames, and so the romance runs on, a mere novel of adventures, those of Shakespeare's "King Lear" and "Cymbeline," for example, mixed up with history from Bede, till we come to Merlin the Enchanter, and Uther Pendragon, and the mysterious birth of Arthur, who is crowned king, and slays 900 Saxons with his own sword in one battle, conquers all Northern Europe and France, and defeats the Romans, all of which is sheer mediaeval fable. At home, in a great fight ("the battle of Camlan" it is called in older books than Geoffrey's) he kills Modred, and is carried to the Isle of Avallon or Avilion, to be healed of his wounds.

Geoffrey ends by requesting historians, his contemporaries, such as William of Malmesbury, "to be silent concerning the "History of the Britons," since they have not that book written in the British tongue, which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out of Brittany". This is mere open banter. Geoffrey was not likely to show them that book!

Even in the old Welsh tale of the great boar-hunt, a story far earlier than Geoffrey's time, Arthur is surrounded by many fabulous heroes, really characters of fairy-tale, like them who followed Jason in the search for the Fleece of Gold. All of them can do miraculous feats, like the heroes of "the dream-time," "the dark backward" of unknown ages. These companions of Arthur become, at least some of them do, the Knights of the Round Table in the later romances, but we do not yet hear of Launcelot, or of the Holy Grail.

From Geoffrey's book come the French poetical and adorned version of Wace (1155), many French romances, and finally a vast throng of chivalrous and romantic fancies cluster round the great name of Arthur. Geoffrey's was a book that gave delight to every one, ladies as well as men, for in the marriage of the traitor Modred with Guinevere the wife of Arthur, and in Arthur's revenge, was the germ of a world of romances. The conquest, too, by Arthur, of Gaul and Aquitaine, inspired, and, to their minds, gave an historical excuse for the ambition of English kings to recover these old dominions of Britain. Caxton, our first printer, long afterwards wrote that not to believe in Arthur was almost atheism.

Geoffrey also translated into Latin out of Welsh the prophecies attributed to the enchanter Merlin. If they had any meaning in Welsh, in Latin they have none. Hotspur, in Shakespeare's "Henry IV," is weary of Owen Glendower's talk

Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies, And of a dragon and a finless fish, A clip-wing'd griffin and a moulten raven, A couching lion, and a ramping cat, And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff.

Nevertheless, three centuries after Geoffrey wrote, men who thought themselves wise and learned believed that not only Merlin but Bede were true prophets, who foretold the victories of Joan of Arc (1429).

It must be kept in mind that Geoffrey says nothing about these great characters in later Arthurian romances, Launcelot, Galahad, Tristram and Iseult, and nothing about the mysterious Holy Grail, and the Quest of the Grail. How and whence these parts of the Arthurian legend arose, how much of them comes from ancient Celtic legend, how much from the invention of French romancers, is still a mystery. Geoffrey, however, made Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and Modred familiar to all his readers. All Englishmen were proud of Arthur of Britain, though, of course; in his life he was the deadly foe of the English.

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VI. LAYAMON'S "BRUT"

Thanks to Geoffrey, at last, some time about 1200-1220, came an English poet, Layamon, a true poet (now and then), whose work reminds us occasionally at once of the Greeks whom he had never read, of masters whom he did not know; and of the things most romantic in the verses of the last great poet of England. Layamon, the author of "The Brut," had no ambition; he had no hope of gain; the king and the courtiers would never hear of him.

Layamon was an English priest in a quiet country parish, not far from the Welsh Border, at Ernley, near Radestone, on the Severn, as he tells us. Yet the new French culture had reached him and inspired him; he gave it to Englishmen in their own English language and he is therefore readable: is more than a mere name. It "came into his mind" to tell the history of England, in verse, and he says that he travelled far to get the books of Bede (in Anglo-Saxon), "the fair Austin and St. Albin," in Latin, and the book made in French by a French clerk, Master Wace, "who well could write". "Lovingly he beheld these books," but, in fact, he only used one of them, namely Wace's French version (1155) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's romance. Wace had altered Geoffrey as he pleased, and Layamon took the same liberty with Wace; his book is twice as long as that of the French clerk; he also inserted many things not to be found in the text of Wace as now printed, but derived partly from still unprinted manuscripts of Wace, partly from other sources; perhaps from Welsh legends known to this priest who dwelt beside the Severn. Wace added to Geoffrey's account of Arthur, the story wherever he found it, of "The Table Round," so shaped that the knights could not quarrel about the highest place. Layamon adds that the Fairy ladies came to Arthur's birth--as in a very old belief, found in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt--and that they later carried him away to Avalon, there to be healed of his wounds.

He calls the fairy Queen "Argante," possibly a French corruption of a Breton name. His account of the birth of the enchanter Merlin, "No man's son," is romance itself. Merlin's mother, who had become a nun, knew not who was her child's father, only that in her dreams there came to her "the fairest thing that ever was born, as it were a tall knight, all dight in gold. This thing glided before me and glistened with gold. Oft me it kissed, and oft embraced."

What can be more romantic than this tale of the golden shadow of love that glides through the darkling bower--told by a nun with bowed head, shamefast! We are reminded of the lines in which Io, in Æschylus, tells of the shadowy approaches of Zeus, the king of gods; and the voice that spoke to her in dreams.

The Greeks had another such tale of the gold that fell in the tower of Danaë before the birth of Perseus. The origin of Layamon's story may be in some ancient Celtic myth of the loves of gods and mortal women, and of Merlin, son of a god.

From his shadowy nameless father, Merlin received his gift of prophecy, and, from the first, foretold the Passing of Arthur.

In Layamon's poem we find what does not occur in the older Anglo-Saxon poems, such as "Beowulf," the use of similes in the manner of Homer, whose warriors charge like lions, hungry, and beaten on by wind and snow. Thus, too, in Layamon's verse,

"Up caught Arthur his shield, before his breast, and he 'gan to rush as doth the howling wolf when he cometh from the wood, flecked with snow, and thinketh to seize what beasts he will."

Arthur defeats the Saxons, and drives them from the ford of the river, through the deep marshland,

"And as the wild crane in the fen, when the falcons follow him through air, and he wearies in his flight, but the hounds meet him in the reeds; as he can find no safety whether in field or flood, even so the Saxons were smitten in ford and field, and went blindly wandering."

These similes give clear, vivid pictures of life in fen and forest, and enliven the poem in the true epic way, and Layamon gives, perhaps, the first English picture of an English fox-hunt. In his poem, Guinevere does not love Launcelot, but the traitor Modred, and when Modred is defeated by her husband, Arthur, she flies to Caerleon, where "she hooded her and made her a nun," and her end is unknown.

In the last great battle in the west, both hosts fall--it is a field of the dead and dying. Arthur bears fifteen wounds. He is alone with Constantine, to whom he entrusts his kingdom. "But I will pass to Avalun, to the fairest of all maidens, to Argante the Queen, an elf most beautiful, and she shall make my wounds all whole with draughts of healing. And afterwards I will come again to my kingdom....

"Then came floating from the sea a little boat, and two women therein, shaped wonderfully; and they took Arthur anon, and bore him to that boat, and laid him softly down, and went their way. Bretons believe that he liveth yet, and wonneth in Avalun, with the fairest Queens of Faery."

Do we not already seem to hear the voice of Tennyson's weeping queens, as the king floats into the night?

Romance has come to England, and from the mingling of races and tongues--Celtic, French, English--an English poet has been born: a man who sees with the eyes of imagination, and who can make us share his visions of the golden shadow that was father of Merlin; of the wolf with the snow caked on his matted hide as he rushes from the wood; of the hawking party in the fens; of the battle by the tidal waters of the west.

Layamon is full of promise of good things to come, as in his description of Goneril and her husband, when she begins to grudge to her father, King Lear, the expensive service of his forty knights; while her husband feebly opposes her unnatural avarice. (The story of Lear is also in Geoffrey of Monmouth, and is based on a common folk-tale.)

Again, when Layamon's Arthur laughs over the slain Colgrem, "...Lie there, now, Colgrem; high hadst thou climbed this hill, as if thou wouldst win heaven, now shalt thou fare to hell, and there find thy kinsfolk,..." we are carried back to the boasts over the dead that Greeks and Trojans utter in the Iliad. But these great touches are rare in the 30,000 lines of Layamon, the mass of his poem "is blank enough".

Layamon thought himself a chronicler in rhyme, a historian; in his book he has many tales, not that of Arthur alone; he has dull passages in plenty, none the less the good priest had many qualities of the great poet.

The verse of Layamon is sometimes of the old Anglo-Saxon sort already described, with alliteration and without rhyme; and in other parts consists of rhyming couplets varying in length, all intermixed. A rhyming couplet is

Thet avere either other luvede alse if brother.

That ever either other Loved as if brother.

In the words the tendency is to drop the old inflections, the language is shaking off its original grammar and approaching modern English. In the later of two manuscripts of the poem this tendency is much more strong. Thus the older manuscript has

He wes a swithe aehte gume And he streonde (begat) threo snelle sunen.

The later copy has

He was a strong gome And he streonede threo sones.

The word "snell" in the older version still survives in Scots,

"There cam a wind out o' the East A sharp wind and a snell,"

snell meaning "keen".

Ormulum.

Layamon was too great a poet to mingle sermons with his song. The pulpit was his preaching place, he scarcely ever preaches in his poem. On the other hand the worthy brother Ormin or Orm did nothing but preach in his versified book "The Ormulum". He was an Augustinian canon of the North Midlands who, about 1200, paraphrased the Gospels read on each day, and the homily which followed, often drawn from Bede (for Orm was not an advanced theologian), in a kind of blank verse. Nothing could be more simply edifying to plain congregations, but edification is not the aim of literature. Orm is best known for his determination to have English properly pronounced. A vowel, in English is, and was, sounded short before two consonants, and Orm was bent on making the reader pronounce the vowels thus and not otherwise. He therefore wrote the two consonants after every short vowel, and explained himself thus, the lines also give the metre of his verses:--

And whase wilenn shall thiss hoc Efft others sithe writenn Him bidde Icc thatt het write rihht Swa summ thiss hoc him teachethh.... And tatt he loke wel thatt he An bocstaff write twiyess Eyywhaer thaes itt upo thiss boc Iss written o thatt wise.

By using some Scots words we may translate this in the original metre.

And whasae willen shall this book Another time be writing Him do I bid that he write richt Even as this book him teacheth. And that he do look well that he Ane letter writeth twice Aye there where it upon this book Is written in that wise.

The metre is very like that of the Scottish rhymed version of the Psalms, though Orm (as in the second verse above) only uses rhyme by accident. The "Ormulum" is not to be "read for human pleasure," though it is interesting to students of the language and versification while in a state of transition.

The same may be said of a number of works in prose or verse which are to be found by students in editions published by learned societies. It is necessary to say something of them, because it is a kind of duty to be aware of their existence, though few but specialists can be enthusiastic over their merits, save in one or two cases. They show how the language and the modes of versifying were going forward, and becoming such as a great poet like Chaucer could improve; or, on the other hand; language and verse were going backwards, deserting rhyme and depending (as in Anglo-Saxon) on alliteration, or alliteration mixed with rhyme.

Ancren Riwle.

Among the works of this period which were useful or pleasant in their day, the longest book in prose is the "Ancren Riwle," or "Rule of Anchoresses," ladies who were not exactly female solitaries, but lived together religiously, each with her maid. The author, whoever he may have been, bids them say, if any one inquires, that they are "of the Order of St. James". There was no such Order, but St. James bids us visit the widow and the orphan, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world. This, says he, is true religion. The three ladies dwelt together at Tarente in Dorset. The language is of the same period as Layamon's "Brut," very early in the thirteenth century. The style is simple and free from decoration, the dialect is that of western England. The advice to the ladies is excellently pious; no severe austerities are recommended, except silence at meals. An anchoress "should not speak with any man often or long," and should have a witness (probably out of ear-shot), even when she confesses, since "the innocent are often belied for want of a witness". Flirting, and belief in luck and in dreams and witchcraft, are severely reprobated. Scepticism is attributed to intellectual pride. "Wear no iron" (James IV wore an iron girdle under his clothes), "nor hair cloth, nor hedgehog skins"; the ladies are not to flog themselves, unless their confessor permits, and their shoes are to be thick and warm. The author remarks that, God knows, he would rather set out on a voyage to Rome than write his book over again: he may have feared that the ladies would lose their copy.

Other religious books of the time are the "Poema Morale," in lines of fourteen syllables ending in a double rhyme, as lorè, morè, deedè, redè, and a new metrical paraphrase of Genesis and Exodus. The story is told with some vivacity, in rhyming couplets of eight syllables.

The drempte pharaoh king a drem That he stod by the flodes strem And the then ut come VII neat Everile wel swithe fet and gret, And VII lene after the.

In places the metre of Coleridge's "Christabel," which was the model of Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," is recognized in the casual couplets, thus:--

For sextenè yer Joseph was old Quane he was into Egypte sold.

But it is a far cry from this to

The feast was over in Branksome tower;

and the metre, when Scott's "Lay" appeared, seemed to be a novelty.

The Owl and the Nightingale.

in rhyming eight-syllable couplets, seems to have been written about 1250 (?). The theme is a debate, in the fashion of French poetry, between the owl and the nightingale, as to the comparative merit of their songs. The nightingale, deserting her art, rather feebly asserts the moral influence of her own music, and attacks the owl in a very personal strain of invective, reflecting on his want of good looks, and on his taste in food. We are far indeed from Keats's "Ode to the Nightingale", "If you are so great a teacher," replied the owl, "why do you not sing to men in Ireland, Norway, and Galloway?" La Fontaine might have made a witty poem on the dispute of the owl and the nightingale, but the poet was not a wit, and made a poor use of his opportunities. He is supposed, but not with certainty, to have been Nicholas of Guildford, who is credited with being neglected by the Bishop in the distribution of patronage.

The owl quotes the "Proverbs of King Alfred," of which there is a thirteenth century collection in rhyme; there are also the "Proverbs of Hendyng": the latter in stanzas of six lines each, the first two rhyming with each other, as do the last two, while the third line rhymes with the sixth: a very popular jingle.

Lyrics.

Far more interesting than these things, whether moral or religious, are the rhyming songs, the voice of the English people, laymen, not priests, the love lyrics (1300?), for example, one on Alison, beginning

Bytuene Mershe ant Averil When spray biginneth to springe, The lutel fowl hath hire wyll On hyre lud to synge,

each stanza ending

From alle wymen mi loue is lent Ant lyht on Alisoun.

This is the first sweet English love-song that has escaped the ruins of time. Everyone knows by heart

Sumer is icumen in;

and

Blow, northerne wynd, Send thou me my suetyng,

reminds us of

O gentle wind that bloweth south From where my love repaireth.

There were all the sounds and scents of spring in the hearts and songs of the poets:--

Lenten is come with love to toune, With blosmen ant with briddes roune, That all this blisse bryngeth.

This metre came to be used in telling stories in verse, a purpose for which it is not well fitted. But truly English poetry, with rich re-echoing rhymes and many forms of verse, is awake at last.

Political Songs..

To politics as well as to love and the delights of spring the Muse of the people was alive. The popular hatred of Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, expressed itself thus after the battle of Lewes (1264). The English is here but slightly modernized:--

Be thou lief, be thou loth, Sir Edward, Thou shalt ride spurless on thy lyard All the right way to Doverward Shalt thou never more break forward, Edward, thou did'st as a shreward, Forsook thine uncle's lore, Richard, though thou be ever trichard Trick shalt thou never more.

(A lyard is a grey, spoken of a horse,

The Dinlay snaws were ne'er so white As the lyart locks o' Harden's hair,

says the ballad of "Jamie Telfer".)

The English view of Wallace, the patriot knight of Scotland, cruelly executed, is thus set forth:--

To warn all the gentlemen that be in Scotland The Wallace was drawn, thereafter hanged, Beheaded alive, his bowels burned, The head to London Bridge was sent, To abide After Simon Frysel, That was traitor and fickle And known full wide.

(Frysel or Fraser; a later Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat of 1745, was traitor and fickle enough.)

Robert of Gloucester.

By no means so lively, though useful in its day, is the very long metrical chronicle (about 1300) of Robert of Gloucester, whether it be by two hands or by one. One, at least, named Robert, was living at the dates of a great Oxford town and gown row, which he describes, and of the battle of Evesham (1265). He was fortunately not nearer than a distance of thirty miles from that stricken field, and records his own fear of a dense darkness which prevented the monks from reading service in church. Robert dwelt in Gloucester, as his minute local allusions prove. He began his chronicle by versifying the fabulous work of Geoffrey of Monmouth, but put into it not a glimmer of the poetry of Layamon. For the rest, till he reached his own time, he copied Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and "Lives of the Saints".

Robert's learned modern editor, Mr. Aldis Wright, outworn by all the tediousness which the poet bestows on us, says "as literature, the book is as worthless as twelve thousand lines of verse without one spark of poetry can be". But Robert's praises of England, "a wel god loud," and of English folk, so clean and handsome, have a sound spontaneous note of patriotism, and there is a swing in what Mr. Wright cruelly styles his "doggerel verse in ballad metre," which is not to be despised. To be sure he has, without knowing it, several different sorts of verse, and is nearly as irregular as Layamon himself, in his measures. His readers would not be offended by these defects, and they learned from him, with a great deal of inaccurate history, a sense of pride in their country, and to speak English, though the nobles and gentry, he says, spoke French.

Cursor Mundi.

A book in verse about twice as long as the lengthy world-chronicle of Robert is the "Cursor Mundi," "the Over-Runner of the World". The author, like the makers of many pretty lyrics on religious subjects, perceived that people preferred songs to sermons, and romance to homilies. To modernize his language

Men yearn jests to hear And romances read in divers mannere.

He gives the themes of the romances, "Matter of Rome"--which includes all antiquity, Troy, and Greece as well as Rome--"Matter of Britain," the stories of Arthur and his Knights--and "Matter of France," concerning Charlemagne, and his Twelve Peers. Nothing is in fashion but love and lovers: but this poet will sing of Her whose love never fails, namely Our Lady. He begins before Satan and his angels fell, and goes on endlessly, yet, to his readers, perhaps not tediously, for he enlivens the Biblical narrative with legends to the full as fantastic as could be found in any romance. There is the story of how Moses found, through a dream, three wands that grew from three pips placed under Adam's tongue. David, through another dream, found these wands in the grave of Moses, which, like that of Arthur, "is a mystery to the world". The wands turned ugly black Saracens into handsome white men: the branches grew into a tree, and round that tree were thirty circles of silver. The wood was made into the True Cross, and Judas received the thirty pieces of silver. The most absurd tales are told of the boyhood, by no means exemplary, of our Lord, variegated by miracles not wholly beneficent.

Thus the "Cursor Mundi" may have been found amusing enough in its day, when the ceaseless octosyllabic rhyming couplets were not reckoned tedious (they are sometimes varied), and adventures wholly unknown to the authors of the Gospels occur in every page.

Devotional Books.

Books more purely devotional are "The Ayenbite of Inwyt" ("The Biting of Conscience") and "The Pricke of Conscience". The former states itself to be written "in English of Kent," by "dan Michelis of Northgate," and to be in the library of St. Austin's of Canterbury. The author, or rather translator from a French book of 1274, finished his writing in 1340. The author of "The Ayenbite" classifies sins and virtues in the allegorical manner: his moral advice, for example, as to the duty of giving alms promptly, gladly, and without the discourtesies with which too many accompany them, is excellent. But nothing, he says, is to be given to minstrels, he "calls their harmless art a crime". The dialect is uncouth and rather difficult.

"The Pricke of Conscience" is in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, about 10,000 lines in all, and is the work of a singular person, Richard Rolle, who, after being a wandering hermit, settled at Hampole, and died in 1349. A Latin biographer of Richard states that he was born at Thornton in the diocese of York, was well educated by the care of his parents, was sent to Oxford by Thomas Neville, Archdeacon of Durham, and made good progress in his studies, especially in theology. In his nineteenth year he left the temptations of Oxford, went home, and turned two dresses of his sister's, one white, one gray, into what he thought the appropriate costume of a hermit, covering his head with his father's rain-hood. His sister fled from before him, thinking him insane: he took Lady Dalton's seat in church, was allowed to preach a sermon, and was kindly received by the lady's husband, Sir John. In a cell provided by the knight he had unspeakable raptures, and felt as if he were being burned by a physical fire, which proved to be that of Divine love. Some ladies found him writing at a great pace, while he simultaneously discoursed to them for two hours. It seems to follow that either his writing or his preaching was "automatic". He wrought some miracles of healing, and he must have written rapidly indeed if he produced all the works attributed to him, His prose treatises of religion are as fervent as the Letters of Samuel Rutherford, the Covenanter: his anecdotes of his own temptation by the phantasm of "a full, fair young woman" who loved him dearly; and of a repentant scholar, who wrote out a list of his own sins which vanished from the paper, are interesting. He allows that the brains of eagerly pious people sometimes "turn in their heads," thereby causing empty hallucinations, and the hearing of wonderful songs that are merely subjective impressions. This strange being, with the ardour of Crashaw, had something of Crashaw's poetic fire.

Minot.

The verses of Laurence Minot, celebrating events from 1333 to 1352 are of almost no literary merit. The Muse of Laurence is the patriotic; he crows, for example, over the defeat of the Scots by English archers at Halidon Hill, in 1333, but he merely babbles in the vague, and does not give a single detail as to the fighting. When he promises to tell of the battle of Bannockburn, in place of doing that he glories in the recovery of Berwick by Edward III.

The best praise we can give him is that he loved to celebrate the victories of his countrymen; and had at his command many metres that were ready for some better poet to use. It must also be admitted that there are very few successes in our British essays in patriotic poetry, and that an enemy of the Scots, as Minot was, may be not impartially judged by a critic of that race.

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

VII. THE ROMANCES IN RHYME

When romance "is in," and, after Geoffrey of Monmouth, romance was in, every other kind of literature "is out"; is unfashionable and little regarded. The English rhyming chroniclers, and even religious writers such as the author of the "Cursor Mundi," felt constrained to make their works resemble fiction as nearly as possible; owing to the supremacy of French romances and English translations and adaptations of French romances, in the late twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.

Many of these productions grouped themselves round the Table of King Arthur, "matter of Britain"; others dealt with "matter of Rome," that is all the ancient world; others with "matter of France"; others with legends or fancies, English or foreign. Their subject was often the chivalrous theory and practice of love, as a kind of religion, a fantastic semi-idealized devotion to the beloved, who, as a rule, was another man's wife. This breach of recognized religion and morality was often set down to fate, to the power that the Anglo-Saxons named Wyrd.

The two greatest cycles of romantic love are found in the lives of Tristram and Iseult (the wife of King Mark of Cornwall, and aunt by marriage of Tristram), and of Lancelot and Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur. Tristram (whose name seems to be altered from the Welsh name Drysdan), has but little original connexion with the Court of Arthur, though he is a mythical hero of a very old Welsh "triad". He and Iseult love each other because they have by mischance drunk together of a love potion intended for Mark and his wife; their love is fatal and inevitable, and immortal.

Lancelot, on the other hand, has been sent to bring the bride Guinevere to Arthur, and they fall in love before the lady has seen her lord. Every one knows their joys and sorrows, from Malory's "Morte d'Arthur," (1470)--a prose selection and compilation of "the French books," which excels them and supersedes them--and from the poems of Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and Mr. Swinburne.

The romances of love and tournament are pervaded and darkened by the influence of the Celtic Merlin, the enchanter and prophet whom men call Devil's son; he represents Destiny. A wide circle of romances, "Merlin" and the "Suite de Merlin," attributed to Robert de Borron, at the end of the twelfth century, are concerned with him.

As if to counteract the fanaticism of love which, in the romances, becomes a non-moral counter-religion, the mysterious story of the Holy Grail came into literature, French, German, and English. The Grail is perhaps originally one of the many magical things of Celtic legend, a vessel as rich in food inexhaustible as the purse of Fortunatus in gold, but conceived by the romance writers to be a mystic dish or cup, used by our Lord before His passion, and still existing, but only to be seen by the pure of heart, such as Sir Percival, and Sir Galahad, the maiden son of Lancelot.

By accident or design the romances fall into a tragic sequence: the youth of Arthur, and his unconscious sin; the mysterious birth of Merlin; the fatal loves of Lancelot and Guinevere; the coming of the Grail and the search for the Grail by many knights; the failure of all but Galahad and Percival; the falling of Lancelot and Guinevere to their old love again; and the sorrows and treacheries that precede and lead up to the king's last battle in the west, and his passing to Avilion.

France and Ireland, like England, have their own romances on the adventures of knights under the feudal sway of a chief king; in France, Charlemagne; in Ireland, Conchobar or Fionn; in England, Arthur, and in all these cases the king becomes much less interesting than his knights, such as Roland and Oliver in France; Cuchulain and Diarmaid in Ireland; Lancelot, Tristram, Gawain, and Percival in England. Yet Arthur, at first and at the last, is the supreme as well as the central figure in the epic, or cycle, of romances. These are a great treasury of brilliant imaginations, rising from Celtic traditions of unknown antiquity, and then transfigured, first by the chivalrous counter-religion of love; next by the reaction to celibacy, and the yearning after some visible and tangible Christian relic and sign, "the vision of the Holy Grail". From this hoard of mediaeval fancies later poets have taken what they could, have placed the jewels in settings of their own fashioning.

The romance writers were by no means restricted to "matter of Britain," with Celtic traditions; or to "matter of France," the epics of Charlemagne and his peers, or even to "matter of Rome," ranging through all antiquity. Material came in from popular tales of all countries, and from recent historical events, as in the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion. In the fifteenth century there was a romance of Jeanne d'Arc, as fantastic as any; the matter of it survives partly in the prose of the "Chronique de Lorraine," and has drifted into "Henry VI," Pt. I. In France the most famous and fashionable novelists of the late twelfth century were Chrétien de Troyes and Benoît de Ste.-Maure, author of the great romance of Troy, whose manner, long-winded and elaborately courtly, was strangely revived by the French romancers of the years preceding Molière.

Tristram.

The earliest English romances, or novels of chivalrous adventures, are couched in metre. Among the first is "Sir Tristrem" (usually spelled Tristram); certainly this has been the most popular in modern times. Sir Walter Scott edited it, from the copy in the Auchinleck Manuscript (a collection of early poems once in the possession of Boswell of Auchinleck, father of Dr. Johnson's Boswell).[1]

Sir Walter was persuaded that "Sir Tristrem" was written from local Celtic tradition, by the famed Thomas of Ercildoune, called the Rhymer. Thomas, who dwelt at Ercildoune (Earlstone on Leader water), was a neighbour, as it were, of Scott at Abbotsford; he died between 1286 and 1299, and he had great though obviously accidental fame, as a prophet.

The poem on Tristram begins with the words,

I was at Erceldoune With Thomas spake I there, There heard I rede in roune Who Tristram gat and bare, (that is, "I heard who the father and mother of Tristram were") Who was King with croun; And who him fostered yare; And who was bold baroun. As their elders ware, Bi yere:-- Thomas tells in toun, This auventours as thai ware.

The English poet uses this difficult stanza in place of the simple rhymes of a French original which knew nothing of Ercildoune. In similar stanzas, of French origin as usual, the whole romance is told. Throughout "Tomas" is mentioned as the source of the story--"as Tomas hath us taught".

There are fragments of an earlier French romance in which Tomas is also quoted as the source, and an early German version, by Godfrey of Strasbourg refers to Thomas of Britanie.

Scott was well aware that the story of Tristram was popular in France long before the time of Thomas of Ercildoune, but he liked to believe that Thomas collected Celtic traditions of Tristram from the people of Leaderdale and Tweeddale, though they, by 1220-1290, were English in blood and speech.

In the romance, Tristram is peerless in music, chess-playing, the fine art of hunting, and of cutting up the deer; and his main virtue is constancy to Iseult, wife of his uncle, King Mark. This unfortunate prince is not the crafty avenger of his own wrongs, as in Malory's "Morte d'Arthur," but a guileless, good-natured being, constantly and ludicrously deceived. Iseult is treacherous and cruel, but everything is forgiven to her, and, as the manuscript, is defective, we do not know how the poet handled the close of the tale, the episode of the other Iseult "of the white hands". Scott finished the tale in the metre and language of the original. Tristram is dying in Brittany, only Iseult of Cornwall can heal him, as only Œnone could heal Paris. Tristram sends for her, the vessel is to carry white sails if it bears her; black, if it does not. The idea is from the Greek saga of Theseus. The second Iseult, wife of Tristram, falsely reports that the sails of the vessel are black. Tristram dies, and Iseult of Cornwall falls dead when she beholds him.

"Swiche lovers als thei Neer shall be moe,"

concludes Sir Walter.

Havelok.

In "Havelok" we naturally expect, thinking of our historical hero Havelock, to find a true English romance. The scene is partly in England, the tale is of a Danish king's son kept out of his own by one of the most fearsome guardians of romance (who chops up the hero's little sisters), is saved by the thrall Grim, who was ordered to murder him, and, after adventures as a kitchen lad, marries an English princess who is in the hands of another usurper. The story is truly English in sentiment and style. The poet curses Godard, the murderous oppressor of Havelok, in a thoroughly satisfactory fashion. The noble birth of the hero is recognized by the "battle-flame" of the ancient Irish romances; the flame with which Athene crowns Achilles in Homer shines round Havelok. This light warns Grim not to drown Havelok, and teaches the oppressed lady whom he wins that her wooer is no kitchen-knave but a prince in disguise. The story has abundance of spirit, and may be read with more pleasure than the romance of the perfidies of Iseult. It is written in no affected and entangled rhymes, but in rhyming couplets.

King Horn.

In "King Horn" we have a novel that must have been reckoned most satisfactory. The course of true love is interrupted by accidents which caused the utmost anxiety to the readers, who probably looked at the end to see "if she got him". "He" was Prince Horn, son of Murry, King of Saddene; the realm is "by west," and is invaded by Saracens. They spare Horn, for his beauty's sake, but launch him in a boat with his friends, Athulf and Fikenhild; his land they overrun, and disestablish the Church, being themselves professors of the Moslem religion. Horn drifts to the shore of the realm of Westerness, under King Aylmar. Here the king's daughter Rymenhild, falls in love with Horn, but cannot have an opportunity of declaring her passion. In the romances the lady, as a rule, begins the wooing. By Athelbrus, the steward, Athulf is brought to her bower, apparently in the dark, for she addresses him as Horn.

"Horn" quoth she, "well long I have thee loved strong."

Athulf undeceives her; Horn is brought, in the absence of King Aylmar: Rymenhild again speaks the secret of her heart, and when Horn alludes to their unequal ranks, she faints away--one of the earliest faints executed by any heroine in English fiction. Horn kisses her into consciousness, and she devises that he shall be knighted. The king consents, giving him a ring which secures him from "dread of dunts," sends him to win glory. Horn at once kills a hundred Saracens. But Fikenhild, his false friend, finds Horn consoling Rymenhild for a dream of a great fish that burst her landing net. Fikenhild, in jealousy, warns King Aylmar, who discovers Horn and his daughter embracing. Horn is exiled, and bids Rymenhild wait seven years, and then marry if she will. Like the daughter of "that Turk," in "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman," she "takes a vow and keeps it strong".

At another court Horn, now styled Cutberd, not only slays giants, but encounters and routs the very Saracens who had invaded his father's dominions. The king of the country offers Horn his daughter and realm: he, however, is true to his vow, but, at the end of seven years, Rymenhild is betrothed to a king. She sends a boy to Horn with a message. In returning with Horn's reply the boy is drowned; the princess finds his dead body. Disguised as a palmer, like Ivanhoe, Horn returns to Westerness, and, like Odysseus, sits on the ground at the palace, as a beggar. Rymenhild does not recognize him, asks him if he has met Horn, and is shown her own ring. Horn, she is told, is dead. She had secreted a knife to kill her bridegroom, like the Bride of Lammermoor. Then Horn reveals himself, the pair are wedded, but he has still to recover his own kingdom. This he does, but Fikenhild has carried off Rymenhild. Disguised as minstrels, Horn and his friends surprise him in his new castle, and all ends happily.

"Horn" is a fair example, happily short, of the novels of the period, which, in essence, are like all good novels that end well. Assonance (rhyme of vowels but not of consonants) occurs in the verse:--

He lokede on his rynge, And thogte on Rymenhilde.

It is not necessary to analyze the plots of all the romances: two or three enable us to estimate the kind of fiction that was popular with ladies in bower.

Beues of Hamtoun.

"Sir Beues of Hamtoun" is another English romance, concerning the son of the Earl of Southampton and his wife, a princess of Scotland. The Earl is old, and his bride proposes to the Kaiser to kill the Earl and wed herself. The Emperor promptly invades England and cuts off the head of the good Earl. The Scottish traitress orders the murder of her son, Beues, but is deceived by her agent, and Beues knocks down the Kaiser.

The boy is sold and sent to Armenia, where he refuses to worship Apolyn (Apollo). The pagan king has a fair daughter, Josian, who becomes the mistress of Beues, while he has a conquered giant, Ascopart, for page. After a thousand adventures, Beues and Josian, being true lovers, make a good end, and die together. The English writer, prolix as he is, has shortened his French original, in places, made additions in others, and generally writes with freedom.

Guy of Warwick.

The same happy end, simultaneous death, rewards the hero and heroine of "Guy of Warwick". The hero's unexplained forgetfulness of his lady, Felice, is borrowed from the ancient popular tale in Scots, "The Black Bull of Noroway," where the forgetfulness is explained. Many stock incidents of the romances come from popular tales ("Märchen") of unknown antiquity. Felice is a very learned and rather hard-hearted maiden, and Guy, when in love, faints frequently. The romance contains every kind of adventure with dragons, lions, and human foes, and as much religion as devout damsels could desire, or even more, for Guy, in a devout mood, deserts the learned Felice for a life of chastity and military adventure. As usual he returns in the guise of a palmer.

Arthur and Merlin.

The "Arthour and Merlin," a rhymed romance of the old story, from the Auchinleck manuscript, about 1320, has not the gleams of true poetry that shine in Layamon's "Brut," and is verbose and incomplete--the tragedy of Arthur is absent. We find, however, the story of how Arthur won the sword Excalibur, thereby proving himself a true prince, for no other man could pluck it from the stone into which it was driven. King Lot (Llew, a historical personage apparently), could not draw forth Excalibur. Sir Kay, one of Arthur's companions in the oldest Welsh tales, appears, with Sir Gawain, whose character, as in the Welsh romances, is far above that which he displays in the "Idylls of the King"; Merlin continually exercises the art of glamour, appearing in various forms, and Arthur loves Guinevere, but the poet wearied of his toil long before the last battle in the west.

He professes that, as many gentlemen know not French, and as

Right is that Inglische understand That was born in Inglond.

he sings in English of the glory of England, Arthur. The final English-form of the great Arthurian tale may best be considered when we arrive at the date of Sir Thomas Malory and Caxton. In Malory's "Morte Arthur" the long dull wars of the king against the Anglo-Saxon invaders are much compressed, while the epic, tragic, and mystic elements, the great character of Lancelot, the mournful victory of the winning of the Grail, and the end of all, are handled with genius.

The Tale of Troy.

The story of Troy had a hold on the mediaeval mind only less strong than the story of Arthur. In early English, at the end of the fourteenth century, we find the romance in the revived Anglo-Saxon alliterative form; it is the "Geste Hystoriale" concerning the Destruction of Troy, and the story is told once more in the rhyming couplets of the "Troy Book". The manuscript of the "Troy Book" is marked "Liber Guilielmi Laud, Archiepiscopi Cantuar et Cancellarii Universitatis Oxon 1633". (The book of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of the University of Oxford.)

The author of the alliterative romance begins by saying that learned men wrote the history in Latin, but that poets have corrupted it by fables and partisanship. Homer, he says, was notoriously partial to the Greeks; moreover, he introduced incredible gods fighting like men. Ovid, on the other hand, was "honest"; Virgil was true to the rightful cause, that of Troy; but the best authority is Gydo (Guido de Colonna).

Such was the nature of historical criticism as understood by the mediaeval romancer. For love of lost causes, and, as descendants of the Trojans through the Brut of mediaeval myth, the romancers detested the Achæans, the conquering Greeks.

The Story of Troy from Homer to Shakespeare.

The history of the development of the "Tale of Troy," as Chaucer and even as Shakespeare knew it, is very curious. Homer himself, perhaps living about 1100-1000 B.C., tells, in the Iliad and Odyssey, parts of the "Tale" as it was known to his own people, the conquering Achæans, who were to the older dwellers in Greece what the Normans were to the English. They finally melted into the older population, who, about 800-700 B.C., wrote poems of their own about the "Tale of Troy," altered the facts, and blackened the characters of Homer's greatest heroes. Later, again, the great Athenian tragedians, of the fifth century B.C., wrote dramas more on the lines of the conquered population of Greece than on those of Homer, and they still more deeply degraded some of the heroes of Homer. The Romans, looking on themselves as descended from the Trojans, persevered in the same course, and a Greek, after the Christian era, wrote a prose version of the "Tale of Troy," pretending that it was a manuscript by Dictys of Crete, who was a spectator of the Trojan war. A similar prose book was attributed--to another spectator, Dares of Phrygia. These books tell the story of Troilus and Cressida, of Palamedes, and many other tales unknown to Homer. But, in Western Europe, Homer was unread, and unknown in England till Chapman translated him: and all the romancers about Troy--Lydgate, Chaucer, Caxton, and the rest, down to Shakespeare,--depend on the false tales whose growth we have described.

Probably the first romancer who expanded the bald prose narratives of Dares and Dictys, was Benoît de Sainte-Maure (1160) in a long French rhyming poem. He unites the fates of Briseida (Briseis, daughter of Calchas, the Greek priest who is made a Trojan), and Troilus, son of King Priam. Briseida, through a confusion with Homer's "Chryseis," daughter of Chryses, the Phrygian priest of Apollo, later becomes the "Cressid" of Chaucer and Shakespeare. Meanwhile "Gydo" or Guido de Colonna, did the French of Benoît into Latin prose (1287) and Guido is the source of the English authors of the alliterative and the rhyming romances of Troy. The pedigree of the story is

Pseudo-Dares--Pseudo-Dictys | Benoît de Sainte-Maure | Guido de Colonna | The English Romances.

Through Caxton's printed "Book of Troy," the story continued popular, a cheap edition appeared in the eighteenth century.

Each of Homer's poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, deals but with the adventures of a fortnight, or six weeks, but the mediaeval readers wanted, and from the romancers received, the whole history of the ten years' siege, and more, with Christian legends thrown in, with minute descriptions of all the characters--Cassandra "gleyit a little," had a slight cast of the eye like Mary Stuart. The heroes fight as mounted knights, not in chariots; they use cross-bows as well as long-bows; and Hector kills men by the thousand, with more than Irish exaggeration. As Hector must be killed, Achilles suddenly charges him in front, while his shield is slung behind. Had a Trojan poet left an epic on the war he would not have told the story otherwise. The poet of the Laud "Troy Book" bids God curse Æneas as a traitor, forgetting, apparently, that the British are descendants of Æneas.

King Alisaundre.

The history of Alexander with all manner of romantic and fabulous additions, under the name "King Alisaundre," is in rhyming couplets of eight syllables to each line; the couplets are often irregular, as in Coleridge's "Christabel," and the story, like most of the English romances of this period, is borrowed through the French, from a late fabulous Greek work.

This kind of versified romance endured till Chaucer thought it tiresome, and parodied it, in "Sir Thopas". These rhyming English romances, in various forms of verse, were made for ladies and gentlemen who, already, were not able to read the more artistic and elaborate French romances for themselves; but were very well able to take pleasure in stories of true love and miraculous adventures. The romances set a fashion which was continued in the endless heroic novels in prose, French, and English, down to the end of the seventeenth century. The Middle Ages had no taste for novels of ordinary life, about people of their own time. These, in England, do not begin to appear till the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and then nearly a century and a half passed before they became really popular.

If much has been said about these old romances it is because they have so powerfully impressed themselves on the fancy of all later English poets, from Shakespeare and Milton, who dreamed of an epic on Arthur, and delighted in the sonorous names of Arthur's knights, to Tennyson and William Morris.

The romances, composed of fancies from so many sources and times, Greek, Celtic, Roman, and French, and English, are like that Corinthian bronze composed of gold and silver, copper and lead, all molten together at the burning of Corinth. In this rich metal poets of later times have moulded figures in their own fashion.

[1] Scott's edition of 1819 is the fourth, while other romances in verse are to be read in the volumes of learned societies. No doubt people bought the book for the interesting essays and notes of Sir Walter; few of them would look at the old romance itself.

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VIII. ALLITERATIVE ROMANCES AND POEMS

Though English poets, in the fourteenth century, had a full command of rhyme, and of many forms, simple or complicated, of rhyming verse, there began a return to the old Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse, sometimes combined with rhyme. Chaucer, later, makes his parson say,

I am a Southren man, I can nat geste--rum, ram, ruf--by lettre; Ne, God wot, rym holde I but litel bettre.

The parson's Opinion is his own, not that of Chaucer, who certainly "liked rhyme," whether he liked alliterative rhythm or not.

Gawain and the Green Knight.

A famous and really amusing alliterative romance, with a rhymed close to each passage, is "Gawain and the Green Knight". This tale is found in a manuscript which also contains two devout poems, "Patience," and "Cleanness," with an elegy of remarkable merit, "The Pearl". All four poems are attributed by several critics to the same author, and some of the Scottish learned believe that author to have been a very prolific and accomplished Scot. A few words may be said on this question later, meanwhile "Gawain and the Green Knight" has the merit of being readable. Though Gawain is best known in modern times through Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," in the romance he was by no means the "false, fleeting, perjured" knight of the great Laureate. In the Welsh Triads and other early Welsh versions, he is one of the three "golden-mouthed heroes," one of the three most courteous. He was the eldest son of King Llew, Loth or Lot, a contemporary of Arthur, from whom he received Lothian. In Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gawain appears as Walwainus. The figure of Lancelot comes later, as we saw, into romance, and Lancelot and Gawain then become foes. When Tristram (or Tristan) was introduced into the circle of Arthur, later, the authors of the Tristan (under Henry II and Henry III) had, for some reason, a bitter spite against King Lot and all his family; and calumniated Gawain on every occasion. This vein of detraction pervades Malory's "Morte Arthur," where Tennyson, looking for a false fleeting knight, found the Gawain of the "Idylls".

In "Gawain and the Green Knight," Arthur's friend displays great courage, courtesy, tact, and chastity under severe temptations, while, if he falls for a moment short of heroic virtue, he redeems his character by frank confession. The story is too good to be spoiled by a brief summary: grotesque as is the figure of the gigantic Green Knight, who suffers no inconvenience from the loss of his head, the trials of Gawain are most ingeniously invented, and he overcomes them like the Flower of Chivalry. He is rewarded by the magical "green lace" which may, it has been suggested, symbolize the Order of the Garter (about 1345), though the ribbon of the Garter is now dark blue.

Pearl.

In the manuscript volume containing "Gawain and the Green Knight," is the singular poem, "Pearl," which has been described as the "In Memoriam" of the fourteenth century. It is, indeed, an elegy by one who has lost a "Pearl," probably a Margaret, who dies before she is two years old. The poet bewails his loss, and speaks, in a vision, with his Pearl, concerning religion and the future life. The poem (edited, paraphrased, and annotated by Mr. Gollancz) was praised by Tennyson as "True pearl of our poetic prime".

"Pearl" is written in stanzas of twelve lines, with some resemblance to the form of the Italian sonnet (in fourteen lines), with which the author may have been familiar. The system of rhyming may be roughly illustrated thus,

Pearl that for princes' pleasure may Be cleanly closed in gold so clear, Out of the Orient dare I say, Never I proved her precious peer; So round, so rich, and in such array, So small, so smooth the sides of her were, Whenever I judged of jewels gay Shapeliest still was the sight of her. Alas, in an arbour I lost her here, Through grass to ground she passed, I wot, I dwine, forsaken of sweet love's cheer, Of my privy Pearl without a spot.

The same rhymes persevere through the first eight lines, as in a sonnet, the rhyme of the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines continues in the ninth and eleventh; a new rhyme appears in the tenth and twelfth lines: and throughout there is much alliteration. In stanzas 1 to 5, "pearl withouten spot" comes always as a "refrain" at the close, and other refrains end each set of five or six stanzas, as in the old French ballade. The form is thus difficult and highly artificial, the making of the poem was, as Tennyson says, "the dull mechanic exercise" to deaden the pain of the singer.

The poet, fallen on the grassy grave of the lost child, lies entranced, but his spirit floats forth to a strange land of cliffs and woods, where the leaves shine as burnished silver, and birds of strange hues float and sing. He comes to a river crystal-clear, whose pearls glow like sapphire and emerald, but that river has no ford, and may not be crossed by living man. On the farther shore he sees a maiden clad in white and in pearls, fresh as a fleur-de-lis; she is the Blessed Damosel, the Lady Pearl. Her locks are golden, and her crown is of pearls and gold. She tells the dreamer that she is not lost: his Pearl is in a coffer; safely set in the garden of Paradise. She comforts him with the hope and comfort of Christ. Henceforward her discourse is religious: he strives to cross that River, and to reach the shining city of the Apocalypse; but he wakes on the grave of his child; and consoles himself with the promise of the Communion of the Saints. The machinery of the Dream, and the River, are borrowed (as all poets then borrowed), from the famous French "Roman de la Rose" (1240) with its allegorical characters. This fashion of poetry, always beginning with a dream, in which the dreamer has visionary adventures with allegorical personages, became a kind of literary epidemic, terribly tedious and conventional, as time went on.

The poet has given to his lay the charm of sorrow not without hope, and a dainty grace of artifice that is not insincere; "of his tears are pearls made".

As to the author of "Pearl," there is much difference of opinion. Nothing in the two edifying poems in the same manuscript, "Cleanness" and "Patience," makes it improbable that he wrote them. "Gawain and the Green Knight" is a very different composition, yet of lofty character; the author of "Pearl" may have written it, just as the author of "The Lotus Eaters" wrote "The Northern Farmer," and "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

Huchown.

With a number of other poems, "Pearl" has been claimed for a Scot, Huchown, Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, an Ayrshire laird, known as a fighting man, a diplomatist, and a judge, in the reign of David II of Scotland; he "flourished" between 1342 and 1377. Or perhaps Huchown was a priest, nobody knows.

The process of argument is this; some forty-three years after Sir Hugh died, in 1420, a Scottish writer of history in rhyme, Wyntoun, produced his "Orygynale Cronykil" (his spelling is original enough). He says that "Huchown of the Awle Ryale," wrote learnedly, on the Brut and Arthur themes, in his "Geste Hystorialle," that is a rhymed romance named "Morte Arthur". Wyntoun also says that Huchown made the "Gret Gest off Arthure" (apparently the "Morte Arthur"), the "Awntyre off Gawaine" (perhaps "Gawain and the Green Knight," or perhaps the "Awntyrs of Arthur"), and the "Pystyll of Swete Susane" (a poem still extant, on Susannah and the Elders, the story in the Apocrypha).

Some claim for Huchown not only these pieces, but "Pearl," "Cleanness," and "Patience," and long poems on Alexander the Great, and the Tale of Troy, and much more. Huchown, on this theory, must have been a professional poet, yet he has been identified, we saw, with Sir Hugh of Eglintoun, a soldier, diplomatist, and man of affairs.

It is certainly improbable that a man so busy as Sir Hugh of Eglintoun wrote such a huge mass of poetry unless he were as energetic as Sir Walter Scott.

The great alliterative "Morte Arthur" wanders from the true way, pointed out in the ancient Welsh verses on "The Graves of Heroes," and by Layamon. "The Grave of Arthur" is no mystery to honest Huchown; of the King it cannot be said "in Avalon he groweth old," he does not dwell with "the fairest of all Elves": he is buried at Glastonbury, a fable invented late, in the honour of that beautiful and desolate home of old religion.

Huchown shows that he was intimately familiar with minutiæ of English law, which Sir Hugh of Eglintoun was more likely to know than an obscure parish priest. Many other curious arguments in favour of Sir Hugh of Eglintoun as author of the "Morte Arthur" have been set forth (by the learned ingenuity of Mr. George Neilson, who also claims for him "Pearl"), but we still marvel how a busy man like Sir Hugh, living in a rough age, found time for all his labours.

The "Pistyl of Susan" adds little, save in one passage, to the laurels of Huchown. It is a tale of Susannah and the Elders, told in stanzas, both alliterative and rhyming, of eight lines, followed by one short line of two syllables, then come three, rhyming lines of three feet, and a fourth rhyming to the first in this set: thus,

And told How their wickedness comes Of the wrongous dooms That they have given to gomes (men) These Judges of old.

The garden of Susan is described in a manner both copious, florid, and inconsistent with botanical science, but there is a touching scene between the falsely-accused Susan and her husband.

Huchown is also credited with the "Awntyrs (Adventures) of Arthur"; which contains a curious appearance of the ghost of Guinevere's mother to Sir Gawain and "Dame Gayenour," Guinevere. This is certainly "the gryseleste gaste,"--the grisliest of ghosts, but she has all of Huchown's delight in theology and edification, prophecy, heraldry, and hunting. The metre is not unlike but is not identical with that of "Susan".

By Scottish critics the "Morte Arthur" and "Susan," at least, are claimed for the Ayrshire bard, Sir Hugh, and, if they are right, Scotland was civilized enough, and fortunate enough, to have a considerable poet before Barbour, author of "The Brus" (1376), a rhymed history of King Robert Bruce, the great hero of his country. But the literature of Scotland is more conveniently to be treated in a separate chapter.

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