himself. The second part he wrote rapidly, for fear that he would be forestalled by the king's poet Benoit. The first part was written in Alexandrines, but for the second he adopted the easier measure of the octo-syllabic verse, of which this part contains seventeen thousand lines. In this poem are discerned the craving of the popular mind, the power of the subject chosen, and the reflection of language and manners, which are displayed on every page. So popular, indeed, was the subject of the Brut, indigenous as it was considered to British soil, that Wace's poem, already taken from Geoffrey of Monmouth, as Geoffrey had taken it, or pretended to take it from the older chronicle, was soon again, as we shall see, to be versionized into English. OTHER NORMAN WRITERS OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY. Philip de Than, about 1130, one of the Trouvères: Li livre de créatures is a poetical study of chronology, and his Bestiarie is a sort of natural history of animals and minerals. Benoit: Chroniques des Ducs de Normandie, 1160, written in thirty thousand octo-syllabic verses, only worthy of a passing notice, because of the appointment of the poet by the king, (Henry II.,) in order to forestall the second part of Wace's Roman de Rou. Geoffrey, died 1146: A miracle play of St. Catherine. Geoffrey Gaimar, about 1150: Estorie des Engles, (History of the English.) Luc de la Barre, blinded for his bold satires by the king (Henry I.). Mestre Thomas, latter part of twelfth century: Roman du Roi Horn. Probably the original of the "Geste of Kyng Horn." Richard I., (Cœur de Lion,) died 1199, King of England: Sirventes and songs. His antiphonal song with the minstrel Blondel is said to have given information of the place of his imprisonment, and procured his release; but this is probably only a romantic fiction. CHAPTER VI. THE MORNING TWILIGHT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, Semi-Saxon Literature. Layamon. Robert of Gloucester. Sir Jean Froissart, M SEMI-SAXON LITERATURE. OORE, in his beautiful poem, "The Light of the Harem," speaks of that luminous pulsation which precedes the real, progressive morning: that earlier dawn Whose glimpses are again withdrawn, The simile is not inapt, as applied to the first efforts of the early English, or Semi-Saxon literature, during the latter part of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth century. That deceptive dawn, or first glimpse of the coming day, is to be found in the work of Layamon. The old Saxon had revived, but had been modified and altered by contact with the Latin chronicles and the Anglo-Norman poetry, so as to become a distinct language — that of the people; and in this language men of genius and poetic taste were now to speak to the English nation. LAYAMON. Layamon' was an English priest of Worcester 1 Craik says, (i. 198,) “Or, as he is also called, Laweman — for the old character represented in this instance by our modern y, is really only a shire, who made a version of Wace's Brut, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, so peculiar, however, in its language, as to puzzle the philologist to fix its exact date with even tolerable accuracy. But, notwithstanding its resemblance, according to Mr. Ellis, to the "simple and unmixed, though very barbarous Saxon," the character of the alphabet and the nature of the rhythm place it at the close of the twelfth century, and present it as perhaps the best type of the Semi-Saxon. The poem consists partly of the Saxon alliterative lines, and partly of verses which seem to have thrown off this trammel; so that a different decision as to its date would be reached according as we consider these diverse parts of its structure. It is not improbable that, like English poets of a later time, Layamon affected a certain archaism in language, as giving greater beauty and interest to his style. The subject of the Brut was presented to him as already treated by three authors: first, the original Celtic poem, which has been lost; second, the Latin chronicle of Geoffrey; and, third, the French poem of Wace. Although Layamon's work is, in the main, a translation of that of Wace, he has modified it, and added much of his own. His poem contains more than thirty thousand lines. THE ORMULUM. - Next in value to the Brut of Layamon, is the Ormulum, a series of metrical homilies, in part paraphrases of the gospels for the day, with verbal additions and annotations. This was the work of a monk named Orm or Ormin, who lived in the beginning of the thirteenth century, during the reign of King John and Henry III., and it resembles our present English much more nearly than the poem of Layamon. In his dedication of the work to his brother Wal ter, Orm says—and we give his words as an illustration of the language in which he wrote: guttural, (and by no means either a j or a z,) by which it is sometimes rendered." Marsh says, "Or, perhaps, Lagamon, for we do not know the sound of y in this name." Icc hafe don swa summ thu bad I have done so as thou bade, After that little wit that me The poem is written in Alexandrine verses, which may be divided into octo-syllabic lines, alternating with those of six syllables, as in the extract given above. He is critical with regard to his orthography, as is evinced in the following instructions which he gives to his future readers and transcriber: And whase willen shall this booke And whoso shall wish this book The critics have observed that, whereas the language of Layamon shows that it was written in the southwest of England, that of Orm manifests an eastern or northeastern origin. To the historical student, Orm discloses the religious condition and needs of the people, and the teachings of the Church. His poem is also manifestly a landmark in the history of the English language. ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER. Among the rhyming chroniclers of this period, Robert, a monk of Gloucester Abbey, is noted for his reproduction of the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, already presented by Wace in French, and by Layamon in Saxon-English. But he is chiefly valuable in that he carries the chronicle forward to the end of the reign of Henry III. Written in West-country English, it not only contains a strong infusion of French, but distinctly states the prevailing influence of that language in his own day: Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of him well lute For unless a man know French, one talketh of him little; But low men hold to English, and to their natural speech yet, The chronicle of Robert is written in Alexandrines, and, except for the French words incongruously interspersed, is almost as 66 barbarous Saxon as the Brut of Layamon. The greatest of the im LANGLAND PIERS PLOWMAN. mediate heralds of Chaucer, whether we regard it as a work of literary art, or as an historic reflector of the age, is “The Vision of Piers Plowman," by Robert Langland, which appeared between 1360 and 1370. It stands between the SemiSaxon and the old English, in point of language, retaining the alliterative feature of the former; and, as a teacher of history, it displays very clearly the newly awakened spirit of religious inquiry, and the desire for religious reform among the English people: it certainly was among the means which aided in establishing a freedom of religious thought in England, while as yet the continent was bound in the fetters of a rigorous and oppressive authority. The author of the Poem; probably a somewhat disaffected monk, drops asleep on Malvern Hills, between Wales and England, and sees in his dream an array of virtues and vices pass before him-such as Mercy, Truth, Religion, Covetousness, Avarice, etc. The allegory is not unlike that of Bunyan. By using these as the personages, in the manner of the early dramas called the Moralities, he is enabled to attack and severely scourge the evil lives and practices of the clergy, and the abuses which had sprung up in the Church, and to foretell the punishment, which afterward fell upon the monasteries in the time of Henry VIII., one hundred and fifty years later: And then shall the Abbot of Abingdon, and all his issue forever, His attack is not against the Church itself, but against the |