minster Hall, which Stowe repeats, is there mentioned; and that of his legs being fastened with iron fetters "under his horses wombe," is told with savage exultation. The piece was probably endited in the very year of the political murders which it celebrates: certainly before 1314, as it mentions the skulking of Robert Bruce, which, after the battle of Bannockburn, must have become a jest out of season *.

A few love-songs of that early period have been preserved, which are not wholly destitute of beauty and feeling. Their expression, indeed, is often quaint, and loaded with alliteration; yet it is impossible to look without a pleasing interest upon strains of tenderness which carry us back to so remote an age, and which disclose to us the softest emotions of the human mind, in times abounding with such opposite traits of historical recollection. Such a stanza as the following † would not disgrace the lyric poetry of a refined age.

For her love I cark and care,
For her love I droop and dare;
For her love my bliss is bare,
And all I wax wan.

For her love in sleep I slaket.
For her love all night I wake;
For her love mourning I make
More than any man.

In another pastoral strain the lover says:When the nightingale singés the woods waxen green; Leaf, and grass, and blosme, springs in Averyl, I ween: And love is to my heart gone with one spear so keen, Night and day my blood it drinks-my heart doth meteen. Robert, a monk of Gloucester, whose surname is unknown, is supposed to have finished his Rhyming Chronicle about the year 1280 §. He translated the Legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and continued the History of England down to the time of Edward I., in the beginning of whose reign he died. The topographical, as well as narrative, minuteness of his Chronicle has made it a valuable authority to antiquaries; and as such it was consulted by Selden, when he wrote his Notes to Dray[ Wright assigns it to 1306. Political Songs, p. 212.] ↑ It is here stript of its antiquated spelling. : I am deprived of sleep.

[§ Eilis, vol. i. p. 97. It was evidently written after the year 1178, as the poet mentions King Arthur's sumptoogs tomb, erected in that year before the high altar of

Glastonbury church: and he declares himself a living

witness of the remarkably dismal weather which distinguished the day upon which the battle of Evesham was

f sught, in 1265. From these and other circumstances this piece appears to have been composed about the year 1280. -WARTON, Vol. i p. 52.]

ton's "Polyolbion." After observing some traits of humour and sentiment, moderate as they may be, in compositions as old as the middle of the thirteenth century, we might naturally expect to find in Robert of Gloucester not indeed a decidedly poetical manner, but some approach to the animation of poetry. But the Chronicle of this English Ennius, as he has been called, whatever progress in the state of the language it may display, comes in reality nothing nearer the character of a work of imagination than Layamon's version of Wace, which preceded it by a hundred years. One would not imagine, from Robert of Gloucester's style, that he belonged to a period when a single effusion of sentiment, or a trait of humour and vivacity, had appeared in the language. On the contrary, he seems to take us back to the nonage of poetry, when verse is employed not to harmonise and beautify expression, but merely to assist the memory. Were we to judge of Robert of Gloucester not as a chronicler, but as a candidate for the honours of fancy, we might be tempted to wonder at the frigidity with which he dwells, as the first possessor of such poetical ground, on the history of Lear, of Arthur, and Merlin; and with which he describes a scene so susceptible of poetical effect as the irruption of the first crusaders into Asia, preceded by the sword of fire which hung in the firmament, and guided them eastward in their path. But, in justice to the ancient versifier, we should remember, that he had still only a rude language to employ

the speech of boors and burghers, which, though it might possess a few songs and satires, could afford him no models of heroic narration. In such an age, the first occupant passes uninspired over subjects which might kindle the highest enthusiasm in the poet of a riper period; as the savage treads unconsciously, in his deserts, over mines of incalculable value, without sagacity to discover, or implements to explore them. In reality, his object was but to be historical. The higher orders of society still made use of French; and scholars wrote in that language or in Latin. His Chronicle was therefore recited to a class of his contem

poraries to whom it must have been highly acceptable, as a history of their native country believed to be authentic, and composed in their

[By Tom Hearne, his very accurate editor.]

the next 100 years, their names became so popular in English song, that Langlande, in the fourteenth century, makes it part of 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 date 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 I 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 be. came a good Christian, during his whole abode there." This conclusive reasoning, it may be hoped, will entirely set at rest any idle suspieions 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.

* Pierce Plowman's Visions as quoted by Warton (vol. i. p92). Langland tells it of a friar, perhaps with truthful severity.]

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 the French many compositions more poetical than those historical canticles, namely, genuine 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 anything 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 French prototype. Ritson very grudgingly allows, that three old stories may be called original English romances, until a Norman original shall be found for them; *Those are, 66 The Squire of Low Degree," "Sir Tryamour," and "Sir Eglamour." Respecting two of those, Mr. Ellis shows, that Ritson might have spared himself the trouble of making any concession, as the antiquity of The Squire of Low Degree [Ritson, vol. iii. p. 145] remains to be proved, it being mentioned by no writer before the sixteenth century, and not being known to be extant in any ancient MS. Sir Eglamour contains allusions to its Norman pedigree.

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

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

Butter, bread, and green cheese,

Is good English and good Friese."

-PRICE, Warton's Hist. vol. i. p. 196. Ed. 1824.

"As to the Essayist's assertion (Mr. Price's) that the language of Sir Tristrem has in it nothing distinctively Scottishthis is a point on which the reader will, perhaps, consider the authority of Sir Walter Scott as sufficient to countervail that of the most accomplished English antiquary.”—LockHART, Advt. to Sir Tristrem, 1833.

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

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

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

supposition of Thomas of Erceldoune having been an original romancer, than I should be inclined to use upon mature consideration. Robert de Brunne certainly alludes to Sir Tristrem, as "the most famous of all gests" in his 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 illus trious friend, professes to be the work not of Erceldoune himself, but of some minstrel or reciter who had heard the story from Thomas. Its language is confessed to be that of the fourteenth century, and the MS. is not pretended to be less than eighty years older than the supposed date of Thomas of Erceldoune's romance. Accordingly, whatever Thomas the Rhymer's production might be, this Auchinleck MS, is not a transcript of it, but the transcript of the composition of some one, who heard the story from Thomas of Erceldoune. It is a specimen of Scottish poetry not in the thirteenth but the fourteenth century. How much of the matter or manner of Thomas the Rhymer was retained by his deputy reciter of the story, eighty years after the assumed date of Thomas's work, is a subject of mere conjecture.

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

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

If men it sayd as made Thomas.]

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

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

In the reign of Edward II., Adam Davie, who was marshal of Stratford-le-Bow, near London, wrote "Visions" in verse, which appear to be original; and the "Battle of Jerusalem," in which he turned into rhyme the contents of a French prose romance*. In the

appearance, by the same author. A single perusal will erable us to observe how remarkably they differ in style. They have no appearance of being parts of the same story, cne 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 e. The second of Mr. Scott's proofs of the originality of the Scottish Romance is, that Gotfried von Strasburg, in a German romance, | written about the middle of the thirteenth century, refers to Thomas of Britania as his original. Thomas of Britania is, however, a vague word; and among the Anglo-Norman poets there might be one named Thomas, who might have told a story which was confessedly told in many shapes in the French language and which was known in France before the Rhymer could have flourished; and to this Anglo-Norman Thomas, Gotfried might refer. Eichorn, the German editor, says, that Gotfried translated his romance from the Norman French. Mr. Scott, in his edition of Sir Tristrem, after conjecturing one date for the

birth of Thomas the Rhymer, avowedly alters it for the sake of identifying the Rhymer with Gotfried's Thomas of Britania, and places his birth before the end of the twelfth century. This, he allows, would extend the 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 f.

His other works were, the Legend of St. Alexius, from the Latin; Scripture Histories; and Fifteen Tokens Sefore the Day of Judgment. The last two were paraphrases of Scripture. Mr. Ellis ultimately retracted his pinion, adopted from Warton, that he was the author of a romance entitled the "Life of Alexander." [Printed in Weber's Collection.-See ELLIS's Met. Rom. vol. i.

This passage is quoted by the late learned Mr. Price

Note to Sir Tristrem, appended to his edition of Warton's History. "In addition," says Price," it may be served that the language of this fragment, so far from wsting 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 Tristree story was to be found in the work of Breri. From relation later minstrels had chosen to deviate; but Thomas, who had also composed a romance upon the subject, not cay accorded with Breri in the order of his events, but entered into a justification of himself and his predecessor, by proving the inconsistency and absurdity of these new fanated variations. If, therefore, the romance of Thomas be m existence, it must contain this vindication; the poem in the Auchinleck MS. is entirely silent on the subject."]

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

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

Richard Rolle, another of our earliest versifiers, died in 1349+. He was a hermit, and led a secluded life, near the nunnery of Hampole, in Yorkshire. Seventeen of his devotional pieces are enumerated in Ritson's "Bibliographia Poetica." The penitential psalms and theological tracts of a hermit were not likely to enrich or improve the style of our poetry; and they are accordingly confessed, by those who have read them, to be very dull. His name challenges notice, only from the paucity of contemporary writers.

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

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

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