PILGRIMAGE OF SAINT BRANDAN.-CHARLEMAGNE.

Another of the poetical protégés or celebrators of Queen Adelais is the unknown author of a poem of between 800 and 900 verses on the Pilgrimage of St. Brandan. There were, it appears, in

the sixth century two Irish ecclesiastics of the name of Brandan or Brendan, both of whom have since been canonized, the day assigned in the Calendar to the one being the 29th of November, to the other the 16th of May. It is the latter with whom we have here to do. He has the credit of having been the founder of the abbey of Clonfert in Galway; but the most memorable passage of his history is his voyage, along with some of his monks, in quest of a more profound seclusion from the world, which was believed in an after age to have conducted him to one of the Fortunate Islands, or one of the Canaries according to a still later interpretation. He did not find the scheme of so distant a retirement to answer, and he soon returned to Ireland; but M. de la Rue thinks it probable that he drew up a narrative of his adventures for the information of the European public of that day, out of which there grew in course of time the legend which bears the name of his Voyage to the Terrestrial Paradise, and which is as full of marvels and miracles as that of Ulysses, or any of those of Sinbad the Sailor. Indeed, one of Sinbad's principal wonders, his landing on the whale, is actually found in the Voyage of St. Brandan. De la Rue has given copious extracts from the poem on this subject which he notices, and which professes to have been composed at the command of Queen Adelais, and immediately after her marriage in 1121. But the fullest account of St. Brandan and his Pilgrimage will be found in the Preface to a more recent publication by M. Achille Jubinal, entitled La Légende Latine de S. Brandaines, avec une traduction inédite en prose et en poésie Romane, publiée d'après les manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi, remontant aux xi, xii, et xiiie siècles; 8vo., Paris, 1836. Of the French metrical legend here printed, which is different from the AngloNorman romance analyzed by De la Rue, M. Jubinal states that there are many manuscripts. It is found as part of a poem of the thirteenth century written by Gauthier de Metz, entitled Image du Monde. Several copies of the story in Latin prose also exist; of the French prose version there is only one known text, which is in the Bibliothèque Impériale at Paris. It is found,

however, both in verse and prose in most of the other European tongues-in Irish, in Welsh, in Spanish, in German of various dialects, in Flemish, in English; and there are printed editions of it, both recent and in the earlier ages of typography, in several of these languages. M. Jubinal mentions an edition of it in English prose, printed by Wynken de Worde, in folio, in 1516: it appears to be a translation from a Latin version contained in a volume of Lives of the Saints, compiled under the title of Legenda Aurea, by John Capgrave, who was an English monk of the fourteenth century, and the author also of a quantity of verse, some of which still exists, in his native tongue.* It is remarkable that St. Brandan, or Brandain, has given his name to an imaginary island long popularly believed to form one of the Canary group, although become invisible since his day, or at least not to be discovered by modern navigators, to whom it was a frequent object of search from the beginning of the sixteenth down to so late a date as the beginning of the eighteenth century: the last expedition in quest of it was fitted out from Spain in 1721. The Spaniards, who call the lost island San Borendon, believe it to be the retreat of their King Rodrigo; the Portuguese assign it to their Don Sebastian. The acquaintance of the modern nations of Europe with the Canary Islands dates only from about the year 1330, when a French ship was driven upon one of them in a storm.

Along with this romance on the pilgrimage of St. Brandan may be noticed another old French poem on a fabulous journey of Charlemagne to Constantinople and Jerusalem, which is perhaps of still earlier date, and which has also from the language been supposed to have been written in England. An account of it is given by De la Rue (Essais, ii. 23-32); and the poem has been since published by M. Francisque Michel, from the Royal MS. 16 E. viii., at the British Museum, under the title of Charlemagne, an Anglo-Norman poem of the Twelfth Century, with an Introduction and a Glossarial Index; 12mo. Lon. 1836. It consists of only 870 lines.

* See Warton's Hist. of Eng. Poet., ii. 355; and additional note by Park, p. 514 (edit. of 1824).

+ Both the Abbé de la Rue and M. Jubinal refer the reader for information upon the subject of the Isle of St. Brandan to the Noticias de la Historia de las islas de Canaria of Dom Joseph da Viera Clavigo (Madrid, 1672 or

ANGLO-NORMAN CHRONICLERS:-GAIMAR ;-David.

But the farther we pursue the history of this early Norman poetry, the closer becomes its connexion with our own country. Not only does it seek its chief audience in England, but the subjects with which it occupies itself come to be principally or almost exclusively English. The earliest of the old French versifiers of our English history appears to be Geffroy Gaimar, the author of a metrical chronicle, entitled Estorie des Engles (History of the English). It was probably completed about the middle of the twelfth century. Attention was first called to Gaimar and his work by the Abbé de la Rue, who appears, however, to have in part mistaken the sense of the account the old chronicler gives of himself. In the complete work the History of the English was preceded by a Brut d'Angleterre, or History of the Britons, which he had compiled principally, he tells us, from a Latin work, itself a translation from a Welsh original, the good book of Oxford belonging to Walter the archdeacon. Comparing this with what is stated by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Preface or Dedication to his History, we cannot doubt that that was the Latin original upon which Gaimar worked. He seems to say that he also made some use of another book which he calls the History of Winchester, and of an English book of Washingburgh (in Lincolnshire), where he found accounts of the Roman emperors who possessed the sovereignty of England and of the kings who had held of them. This portion of Gaimar's performance, however, is no longer known to exist. His English History extends from the coming of the Angles and Saxons to the death of William Rufus, and is for the most part based on the vernacular National Chronicle, but owes its chief interest and value to certain legendary matter gathered either from other written sources, or, in some cases perhaps, from mere popular tradition. The first portion of it which was printed was that containing the story of Havelok the Dane, which was given by Sir Frederic Madden in his edition of that romance prepared for the Roxburghe Club, London, 1828. The latter portion of the work, commencing from the Norman Conquest, was published by M. Francisque Michel, at Rouen, in 1835, in the first volume of his collection entitled Chroniques Anglo-Normandes. The portion relating to the period before.

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the Norman Conquest, again, extending to above 5300 lines in all, is contained in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, 1848. Finally, the whole has been edited by Mr. Thomas Wright, for the Caxton Society, under the title of Gaimar's Anglo-Norman Metrical Chronicle, with Illustrative Notes and Appendix, containing the Lay of Havelok, the Legend of Ernulf, and the Life of Herward; 8vo. London, 1850. A translation of Gaimar by Mr. Stevenson is given in the Second Part of the Third Volume of The Church Historians of England, 1854.

At the end of his History, Gaimar, who here describes himself as of Troyes, intimates his intention of writing a separate Life of King Henry I., of whom he says that he could tell a thousand things omitted by David, who did not go sufficiently into details to do justice to the nobleness, the liberality, the magnificence, and the other brilliant qualities of that great king, although his chronicle was highly esteemed, and in particular was a favourite book with the Queen Adelais. Of this David, who is nowhere else made mention of, nothing is known. His performance was in verse; Gaimar calls it a Chanson. Nor have we any evidence that Gaimar's own promised Life of King Henry was ever written.

WACE.

The most famous of these writers of early English history in romance verse is Master Wace-Maître Wace, clerc lisant (that is, writing clerk), as he calls himself-in Latin Magister Wacius. The name is also otherwise written in his own day Waice, Gace, Gasse, and Gasce; but Guace, Huace, Huistace, Wistace, Extasse, Eustace, Eustache, are the corruptions of a subsequent age or modern variations, and Wate, which is the form adopted by some modern writers, is a mere mistranscription.* His Christian name appears to have been Richard. He was a native of the island of Jersey, where he was probably born in the last decade of the eleventh century, and of a good family his father was one of the Norman barons who accompanied the Conqueror to England and fought at Hastings; he himself was educated for the ecclesiastical profession at Caen, and, after passing some

* Wace, however, according to Mr. Wright, is really "merely the vernacular form of the Latin Eustacius."-(Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 206.)

years in other parts of France, and also, it appears, visiting England, he returned and settled in that city, where he spent the rest of his life in writing his several poetical works. In his latter years he was made by Henry II. a canon of Bayeux. The Waces, probably descendants of the poet's father, obtained large possessions in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire; and another branch continued to flourish for some ages in Normandy. The first of Wace's chronicles is entitled the Brut d'Angleterre,* and is in the main a translation into romance verse of eight syllables of the British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth, although it contains also a good many things which are not in Geoffrey. It extends to upwards of 15,000 lines. After finishing his work Wace is said to have presented it to Henry II.'s queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Many manuscripts of it exist both in England and in France; and it has now been printed, under the title of Le Roman de Brut, par Wace; avec un Commentaire et des Notes, par Le Roux de Lincy; 2 vols. 8vo. Rouen, 1836, 1838. Wace's other great work is his Roman de Rou, that is, Romance of Rollo. It is a chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, in two parts: the first, in Alexandrine verses, extending only to the beginning of the reign of the third duke, Richard Sans-peur; the second, in eight-syllable rhymes, coming down to the year 1170, the sixteenth of Henry II. There are nearly 17,000 lines in all. The composition of the first part is stated to have been commenced in 1160, and it appears to have been published by itself; but some years after, on learning that the charge of writing the history of the Dukes of Normandy in verse had been confided by King Henry to another poet named Benoît, Wace, as M. de la Rue supposes, resumed his pen, and, adopting for expedition the easier octosyllabic verse, hastened to complete his task before his rival. The entire work was printed for the

* The British Chronicles are generally supposed to have been called Bruts from Brutus, the great-grandson of Æneas, who is represented in them as the first king of the Britons; but the author of Britannia after the Romans puts forward a new interpretation. "Brud," he says (p. xxii), "in construction Brut, is reputation, or rumour, and in the secondary sense, a chronicle, or history. It retains that original sense in the French and English word bruit ; and, though it is curious that all the Welsh Chronicles begin with the reign of Brutus, we must not be seduced by that accident into etymological trifling." + M. Le Roux de Lincy, however, denies that this latter part of the Roman des Ducs de Normandie is by Wace, or that he ever really attempted in his old age to compete with Benoît.