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

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in the successive MS. copies that were made during the lifetime of the author, and thus show how, within the limits of one generation, the language was improved and developed.

As literature revived in England, and authors employed the vernacular for purposes of science as well as in poetry, the language became purer and purer; so that the works of the latter part of the fourteenth century already present much fewer and less striking differences from the English of our day. This was the age of the great masters, to whom the present form of that language may fairly be ascribed. A series of political and satirical songs and poems in the vernacular, which belong to the time from Henry III. to Chaucer, form, as it were, the background upon which the works of men like Mandeville, Trevisa, Wicliffe, and Chaucer himself, stand forth prominently. Even Scotland, whose language in those days differed but slightly from that of the sister kingdom, could boast of her Barbour, whose biographical romance, "The Bruce," procured him a pension from David Bruce, and from posterity the renown of having adorned the English language by a strain of versification, expression, and poetical imagery, far superior to his age, and admirably calculated to aid it in its onward course. Another Scot, Andrew of Wyntown, long prior of a convent on St. Serf's Island, in Loch Levin-one of the most ancient religious establishments in Scotland-has left behind him, in his "Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland," a more curious than important specimen of the language of his time. Still his language is pure, his Alexandrines flow easily, though not over correct, and his history was in his day generally read and admired. It is, however, to English authors like Gower that we must look for evidences of

the gradual change wrought in the language of those days, and to Chaucer, the father of English poetry, for the final and triumphal result of such efforts. Trevisa's English version of Higden's Polychronicon, an absurd farrago of all events he had read or heard of since the creation of the world; the small portion of Wicliffe's Bible that alone was printed, and which is characterized by a liberal and almost instinctive adoption of vernacular diction; and Sir John Mandeville's English writings-the first prose work in the new language-were no doubt powerful aids in the steadily progressing development of the English tongue. They show clearly how it gradually absorbed the Norman elements with which it had been first mechanically and forcibly united, to assume in the hands and by the genius of great authors a complete and finished existence. The English language appeared now, thanks to such assistance, no longer overawed and ruled by the French; but enriched by new elements, and endowed with new powers which it had adopted and naturalized, thus overcoming the fatal effects of a proximity so close and a contact so continual as to threaten the complete subjugation of the weaker idiom. Literature had, in fact, rescued the Saxon element from utter destruction, through a process of absorption and amalgamation, directed by the genius of poets, the tact and judgment of scholars, and a happy instinct in those who wrote for the people. The greatest merit in this great work is due to Geffray Chaucere, as he calls himself, of whom already Occleve speaks as of "the great finder of our language; " whilst modern critics claim for him, as the founder of modern English, the same honor that Germany gives to her Luther. That he was of Norman descent, as the frequent mention of his name in the

Battel Abbey Roll and his personal appearance seem to indicate, but adds to his claims on the gratitude of his countrymen. It is true that his early familiarity with metrical romances, and his extensive translations from that rich mine of poetry, led him to introduce a large number of foreign words, and even to attempt, for the sake of harmony, a new accent and new pronunciation in many cases, which have earned him the title of "French Brewer." But he deserves this blame as little as Spenser's praise, that his English was "a well of English undefiled." Careful comparisons have proved, that in no part of his work, not even in his Romaunt of the Rose, are less than two-thirds pure Anglo-Saxon: his Canterbury Tales are even purer, as in the well-known words of the jovial monk:

"When he rode, men might his bridle hear

Jingling in a whistling wind, as clear
And eke as loud as doth his chapel bell."

And further on

"That Cristes love, and his apostles twelve,
He taught; but first he followed himselve "—

probably the most touching description of a true minister of Christ which English poetry possesses, and as superior in its simple force and vividness to Dryden's imitation as to similar verses of Goldsmith and Cowper.

In selecting the language of his day for his romances, and even for the most remarkable of his works--the "Conclusions of Astrolabie" for "lytel Lowis in lith Englyshe "-he showed that superior tact and judgment which gave him such unsur