belongs to the age of Henry I., when literature began once more to meet with encouragement and support. The works of authors were, then, read for three days successively before one of the Universities, or other judges appointed for the purpose, and if they met with approbation, copies were permitted to be taken by monks, scribes, illuminators, or readers. The paraphrase of Orm seems to have obtained the right granted by these old-fashioned critics, although it was written in a new metre, and characterized by a strange fondness for double consonants, as in the words brotherr, affterr, &c. Warton goes perhaps, too far, if he asserts that not a Gallicism is to be found in the whole work, nor even a Norman term. It is true, that all the essential forms of the Anglo-Saxon grammar are carefully observed, and that a few alterations would make it almost pure Saxon; but its merits as a model and a beacon, guiding the ancient tongue through the dangers of the Norman flood, are not less great because it really contains such an admixture of French as could hardly be avoided, without obscuring the meaning. Thus "benche" has, at least, taken a Norman termination, and "restee" is evidently derived from the French "rester."

The influx of French words produced, however, no sensible change as long as the two languages, spoken in England, were kept as distinct as the two races by whom they were used. It was only when both races and idioms were brought in immediate contact with each other, when they began to amalgamate about the middle of the thirteenth century, that the danger became imminent, and the Saxon was threatened with final destruction. Under such circumstances even the most artless

ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER.

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writers, if they but preserve the purity of their idiom, have their merit, and show what literary efforts can do towards the preservation of a language.

Such are the claims that Robert of Gloucester has on the gratitude of his country. A monk of the Abbey of Gloucester, under Henry III. and Edward I., he has left behind him a dry, metrical version of the fabulous Latin Chronicle, ascribed to Geoffrey of Monmouth. His work, compared with that of

Layamon, is far more French, as no doubt the language of his contemporaries was; still the very fact that he chose for his translation a West-Saxon dialect-that of Gloucestershire-and thus preserved a large number of Saxon idioms and constructions, had surely its effect upon the thousands who read his work or felt encouraged by its publication in their hopes for the permanence of their tongue. The sentiment he expresses in the following lines is as true as it was melancholy:

"I ween there be ne man in world's countreyes none
That ne holdeth to their kind speech, but England lone."

He wished to write a history of his country, which he at least considered authentic, and not in unintelligible Latin, in which he found it, but in a language which would place it within the reach of his illiterate countrymen. For this purpose he overcame the natural vanity of authors, and employed the language of the people without any attempt at embellishment, using even rhymes only to aid their memory.

The merits of his namesake and successor, Robert Mannyng, are greater in proportion to the purity of his Saxon. For fifteen years he lived at the priory of Black Canons, at Brunne, and thus explains his surname:

Even such a writer, uncouth and unpleasing as his words and his thoughts often appear to the fastidious ear of modern readers, contributed, in his way, to form a style, to polish his native tongue, and to encourage others by his example. It is, for instance, not improbable that his success induced Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, in Bury, to employ the leisure his retreat near the nunnery of Hampole, in Yorkshire, afforded him, in a metrical paraphrase of the Book of Job, some penitential psalms, and the Lord's Prayer. These English rhymes, and his more famous "Pricke of Conscience," were, it is thought, translated from Latin. Unattractive and tedious as a literary work, they are of great interest as having been written in a despised idiom, and from pure and noble motives. He says himself, that

"Therefore this boke is in Englis drawe,

Of fell matters that bene unknawe
To lewed men, that are unkonande
That con no latyn undirstande."

THE RHYMOUR.-MINOT AND DAVIE.

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CHAPTER XXX.

The Rhymour-Minot and Davie-Robert Langland-Barbour-Andrew of Wyntown-Trevisa-Gower-Chaucer-English Orthography.

IF Thomas Leirmouth, of Ercildoun, in the shire of Merch, generally known as the "Rhymour," and much praised by Robert de Brunne, can be safely considered the author of "Sir Tristrem," England owes to a Scotch poet of the thirteenth century the earliest model of a pure English style. Another poet of the same age, Lawrence Minot, is probably the first original poet whose works have survived. They are already far superior in true poetical genius, and especially in purity of language, to the obscure and more than half French works of Adam Davie, which seem to have been written about 1312, when the author was marshal of Stratford le Bow, near London. It is, however, but fair to add that Minot has had the advantage of a reprint of his words by Ritson, whilst the two MSS. of Davie, in the Bodleian and Lincoln's Inn Library, are wretchedly copied, so that the meaning is often utterly destroyed by the capricious peculiarities and stupendous ignorance of the transcribers. These defects of scribes were no small additional difficulties, with which the youthful language had to contend, and a good, faithful copyist

was in those days worth all the talent of a careless, Frenchified author.

A touching contrast with such caprice and ignorance is exhibited in the devoted affection which breathes in the works of Robert Langland, a secular priest of the County of Salop, born at Mortimer's Cleobury, Shropshire, and a fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. He seems to have been deeply enamored with the old Saxon poets and their spirit, imitates in his verses the metre and even the alliterations of Caedmon, and exhibits an astonishing familiarity with the forms and the character of the Anglo-Saxon. That his visions of Pierce Plowman are probably the most obscure work of his age, is to be attributed rather to the state of confusion and transition in which he found the language, than to his mode of thought. Nor must it be overlooked that the poor country priest wrote his bitter satires against church and state in fear of being crushed by the civil power, or being burnt by ecclesiastical discipline, and that the necessity of concealment dictated the vehicle of veiled allegory as the best means of disguising the meaning. The difficult task, moreover, of closely imitating models that belonged to a distant period, to which he added others of his own, like that of having "three wordes at the leaste in every verse whiche beginne with the same onne lettre," and the uncouth, rugged dialect of the midland counties in which he wrote, were by him triumphantly overcome, and furnish additional evidence of the power with which a poet may mould his rude and imperfect material so as to answer his great purposes. It is hardly less important to the philologist that the Mercian dialect, which he seems to have preferred, and which is still heard in the speech of Salopian laborers, appears visibly changed