cent events, with some of which he was contemporary. As a relater of events, he is tolerably succinct and perspicuous; and wherever the fact is of any importance, he shows a watchful attention to keep the reader's memory distinct with regard to chronology, by making the date of the year rhyme to something prominent in the narration of the fact. Our first known versifier of the fourteenth century is Robert, commonly called De Fourteenth Brunne. He was born (according to Century. his editor Hearne) at Malton, in Yorkshire; lived for some time in the house of Sixhill, a Gilbertine monastery in Yorkshire; and afterwards became a member of Brunne, or Browne, a priory of black canons in the same county. His real surname was Mannyng; but the writers of history in those times (as Hearne observes) were generally the religious, and when they became celebrated, they were designated by the names of the religious houses to which they belonged. Thus, William of Malmsbury, Matthew of Westminster, and John of Glastonbury, received these appellations from their respective monasteries.* De Brunne was, as far as we know, only a translator. His principal performance is a Rhyming Chronicle of the History of England, in two parts, compiled from the works of Wace and Peter de Langtoft. The declared object of his work is "Not for the lerid (learned) but for the lewed (the low). "For tho a that in this land wonn,b That the latyn noc Frankysd conn." He seems to reckon, however, if not on the attention of the "lerid," at least on that of a class above the "lewed," as he begins his address to "Lordynges that be now here." He declares also that his verse was constructed simply, being intended neither for seggers (reciters), nor harpours (harpers). Yet it is clear from another passage, that he * Sir F. Madden supposes, and on very fair grounds, that Mannyng was born at Brunne. Havelok, p. xiv. -C. † Peter de Langtoft was an Augustine canon of Bridlington, in Yorkshire, of Norman origin, but born in England. He wrote an entire History of England in French rhymes, down to the end of the reign of Edward I-Robert de Brunne, in his Chronicle, follows Wace in the earlier part of his history, but translates the latter part of it from Langtoft. Virgil, when he carries us back to very ancient manners, in the picture of Dido's feast, appropriately makes astronomy the first subject with which the bard Iopas entertains his audience. intended his Chronicle to be sung, at least by parts, at public festivals. In the present day it would require considerable vocal powers to make so dry a recital of facts as that of De Brunne's work entertaining to an audience; but it appears that he could offer one of the most ancient apologies of authorship, namely, "the request of friends"for he says, "Men besoght me many a time His Chronicle, it seems, was likely to be an acceptable work to social parties, assembled "For to haf solace and gamenƒ In fellawship when they sit samen." In rude states of society, verse is attached to many subjects from which it is afterwards divorced by the progress of literature; and primitive poetry is found to be the organ not only of history, but of science,‡ theology, and of law itself. The ancient laws of the Athenians were sung at their public banquets. Even in modern times, and within the last century, the laws of Sweden were published in verse. De Brunne's versification, throughout the body of the work, is sometimes the entire Alexandrine, rhyming in couplets; but for the most part it is only the half Alexandrine, with alternate rhymes. He thus affords a ballad metre, which seems to justify the conjecture of Hearne, that our most ancient ballads were only fragments of metrical histories. By this time (for the date of De Brunne's Chronicle brings us down to the year 1339) our popular ballads must have long added the redoubted names of Randal [Earl] of Chester, and Robin Hood, to their list of native subjects. Both of these worthies had died before the middle of the preceding century, and, in the course of the next hundred years, their names became so popular in English song, that Langlande, in the fourteenth century, makes it part of Cithara crinitus Iopas Personat aurata, docuit quæ maximus Atlas; Hic canit errantem lunam, solisque labores. Eneid I. "The conjectures of Hearne," says Warton, (vol. i. p. 91), "were generally wrong." An opinion re-echoed in part by Ellis. Spec. vol. i. p. 117.-C. Robert De Brunne, it appears, from internal evidence, finished his Chronicle in May of that year,-RITSON'S Minot. XII. He began it in 1303, as he tells us himself, in very or dinary verse.-C. a Those. Live.c Nor.-d French.- Know. f Game.-g Together. the confession of a sluggard, that he was unable to repeat his paternoster, though he knew plenty of rhymes about Randal of Chester and Robin Hood.* None of the extant ballads about Robin Hood are, however, of any great antiquity. The style of Robert de Brunne is less marked by Saxonisms than that of Robert of Gloucester; and though he can scarcely be said to come nearer the character of a true poet than his predecessor, he is certainly a smoother versifier, and evinces more facility in rhyming. It is amusing to find his editor, Hearne, so anxious to defend the moral memory of a writer, respecting whom not a circumstance is known, beyond the Idate of his works, and the names of the monasteries where he wore his cowl. From his willingness to favour the people with historic rhymes for their "fellawship and gamen," Hearne infers that he must have been of a jocular temper. It seems, however, that the priory of Sixhill, where he lived for some time, was a house which consisted of women as well as men, a discovery which alarms the good antiquary for the fame of his author's personal purity. "Can we therefore think," continues Hearne, "that since he was of a jocular temper, he could be wholly free from vice, or that he should not sometimes express himself loosely to the sisters of that place? This objection (he gravely continues) would have had some weight, had the priory of Sixhill been any way noted for luxury or lewdness; but whereas every member of it, both men and women, were very chaste, we ought by no means to suppose that Robert of Brunne behaved himself otherwise than became a good Christian, during his whole abode there." This conclusive reasoning, it may be hoped, will entirely set at rest any idle suspicions that may have crept into the reader's mind respecting the chastity of Robert de Brunne. It may be added, that his writings betray not the least symptom of his having been either an Abelard among priests, or an Ovid among poets. the French many compositions more poetical than those historical canticles, namely, gennuine romances. In most of those metrical stories, irregular and shapeless as they were, if we compare them with the symmetrical structure of epic fable, there was still some portion of interest, and a catastrophe brought about, after various obstacles and difficulties, by an agreeable surprise. The names of the writers of our early English romances have not, except in one or two instances, been even conjectured, nor have the dates of the majority of them been ascertained with any thing like precision. But in a general view, the era of English metrical romance may be said to have commenced towards the end of the thirteenth century. Warton, indeed, would place the commencement of our romance poetry considerably earlier; but Ritson challenges a proof of any English romance being known or mentioned before the close of Edward the First's reign, about which time, that is, the end of the thirteenth century, he conjectures that the romance of Hornchild may have been composed. It would be pleasing, if it were possible, to extend the claims of English genius in this department to any considerable number of original pieces. But English romance poetry, having grown out of that of France, seems never to have improved upon its original, or, rather, it may be allowed to have fallen beneath it. As to the originality of old English poems of this kind, we meet, in some of them, with heroes, whose Saxon names might lead us to suppose them indigenous fictions, which had not come into the language through a French medium. Several old Saxon ballads are alluded to, as extant long after the Conquest, by the Anglo-Norman historians, who drew from them many facts and inferences; and there is no saying how many of these ballads might be recast into a romantic shape by the composers for the native minstrelsy. But, on the other hand, the Anglo-Normans appear to have been more inquisitive into Saxon legends than the Saxons themselves; and their Muse was by no means so illiberal as to object to a hero, because he was not of their own generation. In point of fact, whatever may be alleged about the minstrels of the North Country, it is difficult, if it be possible, to find an English romance which contains no internal allusion to a Considerably before the date of Robert de❘ Brunne's Chronicle, as we learn from De Brunne himself, the English minstrels, or those who wrote for them, had imitated from Pierce Plowman's Visions, as quoted by Warton, (vol. i. p. 92.) Langlande tells it of a friar, perhaps with truthful severity.-C. French prototype. Ritson very grudgingly allows, that three old stories may be called original English romances, until a Norman original shall be found for them;* while Those are, "The Squire of Low Degree," "Sir Tryamour," and "Sir Eglamour." Respecting two of those, Mr. Ellis shows, that Ritson might have spared himself the trouble of making any concession, as the antiquity of The Squire of Low Degree [Ritson, vol. iii. p. 145] remains to be proved, it being mentioned by no writer before the sixteenth century, and not being known to be extant in any ancient MS. Sir Eglamour contains allusions to its Norman pedigree. The difficulty of finding an original South British romance of this period, unborrowed from a French original, seems to remain undisputed but Mr. Walter Scott, in his edition of "Sir Tristrem," has presented the public with an ancient Scottish romance, which, according to Mr. Scott's theory, would demonstrate the English language to have been cultivated earlier in Scotland than in England. In a different part of these Selections (p. 17), I have expressed myself in terms of more unqualified assent to the supposition of Thomas of Erceldoune having been an original romancer, than I should be inclined to use upon mature consideration. Robert De Brunne certainly alludes to Sir Tristrem, as "the most famous of all gests" in his time. He mentions Erceldoune, its author, and another poet of the name of Kendale. Of Kendale, whether he was Scotch or English, nothing seems to be known with certainty. With respect to Thomas of Erceldoune, or Thomas the Rhymer, the Auchinleck MS. published by my illustrious friend, professes to be the work not of Erceldoune himself, but of some minstrel or reciter who had heard the story from Thomas. Its language is confessed to be that of the fourteenth century, and the MS. is not pretended to be less than eighty years older than the supposed date of Thomas of Erceldoune's romance. Accordingly, whatever Thomas the Rhymer's production might be, this Auchinleck MS. is not a transcript of it, but the transcript of the composition of some one, who heard the story from Thomas of Erceldoune. It is a specimen of Scottish poetry not in the thirteenth but the fourteenth century. How much of the matter or manner of Thomas the Rhymer was retained by his deputy reciter of the story, eighty years after the assumed date of Thomas's work, is a subject of mere conjecture. Still, however, the fame of Erceldoune and Tristrem remain attested by Robert De Brunne: and Mr. Scott's doctrine is, that Thomas the Rhymer, having picked up the chief materials of his romantic history of Sir Tristrem from British traditions surviving on the border, was not a translator from the French, but an original authority to the continental romancers. It is nevertheless acknowledged, that the story of Sir Tristrem had been told in French, and was familiar to the romancers of that language, long before Thomas the Rhymer could have set about picking up British traditions on the border, and in all probability before he was born. The possibility, therefore, of his having heard the story in Norman minstrelsy, is put beyond the reach of denial.c On the other hand, Mr. Scott argues, that the Scottish bard must have been an authority to the continental romancers, from two circumstances. In the first place, there are two metrical fragments of French romance preserved in the library of Mr. Douce,d which, according to Mr. Scott, tell the story of Sir Tristrem in a manner corresponding with the same tale as it is told by Thomas of Erceldoune, and in which a reference is made to the authority of a Thomas. But the whole force of this ar Mr. Tyrwhitt conceives, that we have not one English romance anterior to Chaucer, which is not borrowed from a French one. In the reign of Edward II., Adam Davie, gument evidently depends on the supposition of Mr. Douce's fragments being the work of one and the same a "The strange appropriation of the Auchinleck poem as a Scottish production, when no single trace of the Scottish dialect is to be found throughout the whole romance, which may not with equal truth be claimed as current in the north of England, while every marked peculiarity of the former is entirely wanting, can hardly require serious investigation. From this opinion the ingenious editor himself must long ago have been reclaimed. The singular doctrines relative to the rise and progress of the English language in North and South Britain may also be dismissed, as not immediately relevant. But when it is seriously affirmed, that the English language was once spoken with greater purity in the Lowlands of Scotland, than in this country, we 'Sothrons' receive the communications with the same smile of incredulity that we bestow upon the poetic dogma of the honest Frieslander : Buwter, breat en green tzies, "As to the Essayist's assertion (Mr. Price's) that the language of Sir Tristrem has in it nothing distinctively Scottish-this is a point on which the reader will, perhaps, consider the authority of Sir Walter Scott as sufficient to countervail that of the most accomplished English antiquary"-LOCKHART, Advt. to Sir Tristrem, 1833. No one has yet satisfactorily accounted for the Eliza bethian-like Inglis of Barbour and Blind Harry, or the Saxon Layamon-like Inglis of Gawain Douglas. Did Barbour, who wrote in 1375, write in advance of his age, and Douglas, who began and ended his "Eneid" in 1513-14, behind his age? Or did each represent the spoken language of the times they wrote in? For philological and poetical inquiry this is matter of moment. But is there sufficient material for more than felicitous conjecture; and who is equal to the task? If Barbour wrote his "Bruce" as we have it, it is perhaps the most extraordinary poem in the English language. For the age of the first manuscript known, (1488), supposing it to have been then written, it is still, though not equally so, a wonder. Scott's view of the priority in cultivation of Inglis in Scotland over England is sanctioned by Ellis in the Introduction (p. 127), to his Metrical Romances.-C. b Over gestes it has the steem Over all that is or was, If men it sayd as made Thomas.-C. c Sir Tristrem, like almost all our Romances, had a foreign origin-its language alone is ours. Three copies in French, in Anglo-Norman, and in Greek, composed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and edited by Francisque Michel, appeared in two vols. 8vo, at London in 1835. But Scott never stood out for Thomas's invention. "The tale," he says, "lays claim to a much higher antiquity." (P. 27. Ed. 1833.) To a British antiquity, however. See also Scott's Essay on Romance, in Misc. Prose Works, (vol. vi. p. 201,) where he contends that it was derived from Welsh traditions, though told by a Saxon poet.-C. d Now, by Mr. Douce's Will, among the Bodleian books.-C. * who was marshal of Stratford-le-Bow, near London, wrote "Visions" in verse, which appear to be original; and the "Battle of Jerusalem," in which he turned into rhyme the contents of a French prose romance. In the course of Adam Davie's account of the siege of Jerusalem, Pilate challenges our Lord to single combat. From the specimens afforded by Warton, no very high idea can be formed of the genius of this poetical marshal. Warton anticipates the surprise of his reader, in finding the English language improve so slowly, when we reach the verses of Davie. The historian of our poetry had, in a former section, treated of Robert de Brunne as a writer anterior to Davie; but as the latter part of De Brunne's Chronicle was not finished till 1339, in the reign of Edward III., it would be surprising indeed if the language should seem to improve when we go back to the reign of Edward II.† Davie's work may be placed in our poetical chronology, posterior to the first part of De Brunne's Chronicle, but anterior to the latter. Richard Rolle, another of our earliest versifiers, died in 1349. He was a hermit, author-whereas they are not, to all appearance, by the same author. A single perusal will enable us to observe how remarkably they differ in style. They have no appearance of being parts of the same story, one of them placing the court of King Mark at Tintagil, the other at London. Only one of the fragments refers to the authority of a Thomas, and the style of that one bears very strong marks of being French of the twelfth century, a date which would place it beyond the possibility of its referring to Thomas of Erceldoune.a The second of Mr. Scott's proofs of the originality of the Scottish Romance is, that Gotfried von Strasburg, in a German romance, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, refers to Thomas of Britania as his original. Thomas of Britania is, however, a vague word; and among the AngloNorman poets there might be one named Thomas, who might have told a story which was confessedly told in many shapes in the French language, and which was known in France before the Rhymer could have flourished; and to this Anglo-Norman Thomas, Gotfried might refer. Eichorn, the German editor, says, that Gotfried translated his romance from the Norman French. Mr. Scott, in his edition of Sir Tristrem, after conjecturing one date for the birth of Thomas the Rhymer, avowedly alters it for the sake of identifying the Rhymer with Gotfried's Thomas of Britania, and places his birth before the end of the twelfth century. This, he allows, would extend the Rhymer's life to upwards of ninety years, a pretty fair age for the Scottish Tiresias; but if he survived 1296, as Harry the Minstrel informs us, he must have lived to beyond an hundred.b His other works were, the Legend of St. Alexius, from the Latin; Scripture Histories; and Fifteen Tokens before the Day of Judgment. The last two were paraphrases of Scripture. Mr. Ellis ultimately retracted his opinion, adopted from Warton, that he was the author of a romance entitled the "Life of Alexander." Printed in and led a secluded life, near the nunnery of Hampole, in Yorkshire. Seventeen of his devotional pieces are enumerated in Ritson's "Bibliographia Poetica." The penitential psalms and theological tracts of a hermit were not likely to enrich or improve the style of our poetry; and they are accordingly confessed, by those who have read them, to be very dull. His name challenges notice, only from the paucity of contemporary writers. Laurence Minot, although he is conjectured to have been a monk, had a Muse of a livelier temper; and, for want of a better poet, he may, by courtesy, be called the Tyrtæus of his age. His few poems which have reached us are, in fact, short narrative ballads on the victories obtained in the reign of Edward III., beginning with that of Hallidown Hill, and ending with the siege of Guisnes Castle. As his poem on the last of these events was evidently written recently after the exploit, the era of his poetical career may be laid between the years 1332 and 1352. Minot's works lay in absolute oblivion till late in the last century, in a MS. of the Cotton Collection, which was Weber's Collection.-See ELLIS's Met. Rom. vol. i. p. 130. -C. In this the usual accuracy and candour of Mr. Campbell appear to have forsaken him, Warton's observation is far from being a general one, and might have been interpreted to the exclusion of De Brunne. That such was Warton's intention is obvious, &c.-PRICE, Warton, vol. ii. p. 52.-C. Ellis, vol. i. p. 146. Warton (vol. ii. p. 90) calls him Richard Hampole.-C. a This passage is quoted by the late learned Mr. Price in his Note to Sir Tristrem, appended to his edition of Warton's History. "In addition," says Price, "it may be observed that the language of this fragment, so far from vesting Thomas with the character of an original writer, affirms directly the reverse. It is clear that in the writer's opinion the earliest and most authentic narrative of Tristrem's story was to be found in the work of Breri. From his relation later minstrels had chosen to deviate; but Thomas, who had also composed a romance upon the subject, not only accorded with Breri in the order of his events, but entered into a justification of himself and his predecessor, by proving the inconsistency and absur dity of these new-fangled variations. If, therefore, the romance of Thomas be in existence, it must contain this vindication; the poem in the Auchinleck MS. is entirely silent on the subject."-C. b There is now but one opinion of Scott's Sir Tristrem -that it is not, as he would have it, the work of Thomas of Erceldoune, but the work of some after bard, that had heard Thomas tell the story-in other words, an imperfect transcript of the Erceldoune copy. Thomas's own tale is something we may wish for, but we may despair of finding. That Kendale wrote Scott's Sir Tristrem is the fair enough supposition of Mr. David Laing.-Dunbar, vol. i. p. 38.-C. B supposed to be a transcript of the works of Chaucer. The name of Richard Chawfir having been accidentally scrawled on a spare leaf of the MS. (probably the name of its ancient possessor), the framer of the Cotton catalogue, very good-naturedly converted it into Geoffrey Chaucer. By this circumstance Mr. Tyrwhitt, when seeking materials for his edition of the " Canterbury Tales," accidentally discovered an English versifier older than Chaucer himself. The style of Minot's ten military ballads is frequently alliterative, and has much of the northern dialect. He is an easy and lively versifier, though not, as Mr. G. Chalmers denominates him, either elegant or energetic.* In the course of the fourteenth century, our language seems to have been inundated with metrical romances, until the public taste had been palled by the mediocrity and monotony of the greater part of them. At least, if Chaucer's host in the "Canterbury Tales" be a fair representation of contemporary opinion, they were held in no great reverence, to judge by the comparison which the vintner applies to the "drafty rhymings" of Sir Topaz. The practice of translating French metrical romances into English did not, however, terminate in the fourteenth century. Nor must we form an indiscriminate estimate of the ancient metrical romances, either from Chaucer's implied contempt for them, nor from mine host of the Tabard's ungainly comparison with respect to one of them. The ridiculous style of Sir Topaz is not an image of them all. Some of them, far from being chargeable with impertinent and prolix description, are concise in narration, and paint, with rapid but distinct sketches, the battles, the banquets, and the rites of worship of chivalrous life. Classical poetry has scarcely ever conveyed in shorter boundaries so many interesting and complicated events, as may be found in the good old romance of Le Bone Florence.‡ Chaucer himself, when he strikes into the new or allegorical school of romance, has many passages more tedious and less affecting than the better parts of those simple old fablers. For in spite of their puerility in the excessive use of the marvellous, their * An edition of Minot's poems was one of Ritson's many contributions to the elucidation of early English language and literature.-C. †The Rime of Sir Topaz, which Chaucer introduces as a parody, undoubtedly, of the rhythmical romances of simplicity is often touching, and they have many scenes that would form adequate subjects for the best historical pencils. The reign of Edward III. was illustrious not for military achievements alone; it was a period when the English character displayed its first intellectual boldness. It is true that the history of the times presents a striking contrast between the light of intelligence which began to open on men's minds, and the frightful evils which were still permitted to darken the face of society. In the scandalous avarice of the church, in the corruptions of the courts of judicature, and in the licentiousness of a nobility who countenanced disorders and robbery, we trace the unbanished remains of barbarism; but, on the other hand, we may refer to this period for the genuine commencement of our literature, for the earliest diffusion of free inquiry, and for the first great movement of the national mind towards emancipation from spiritual tyranny. The abuses of religion were, from their nature, the most powerfully calculated to arrest the public attention; and poetry was not deficient in contributing its influence to expose those abuses, both as subjects of ridicule and of serious indignation. Two poets of this period, with very different powers of genius, and probably addressing themselves to dif ferent classes of society, made the corrup tions of the clergy the objects of their satire taking satire not in its mean and personal acceptation, but understanding it as the moral warfare of indignation and ridicule against turpitude and absurdity. Those writers were Langlande and Chaucer, both of whom have been claimed as primitive reformers by some of the zealous historians of the Reformation. At the idea of a full separation from the Catholic church, both Langlande and Chaucer would possibly have been struck with horror. The doctrine of predestination, which was a leading tenet of the first Protestants; is not, I believe, avowed in any of Chaucer's writings, and it is expressly reprobated by Langlande. It is, nevertheless, very likely that their works contributed to promote the Reformation. Langlande, especially, who was an earlier the age, is interrupted by mine host Harry Bailly with the strongest and most energetic expressions of total and absolute contempt.-SIR WALTER SCOTT, Misc. Prose Works, vol. vi. p. 209.-C. Given in Ritson's Old Metrical Romances. 1 |