part, whatever comes first to hand. The verse, irregular and rugged enough withal, is kept in such shape and order as it has by a crowd of tautologies, expletives, and other blank phrases serviceable only for filling up a gap, and is altogether such verse as might apparently be almost improvised or chanted extempore. These productions, therefore, are scarcely to be considered as forming any part of our literature, properly so called, interesting as they are on many accounts,-for the warm and vigorous imagination that often revels in them, for their vivid expression of the feelings and modes of thought of a remote age, for the light they throw upon the history of the national manners and mind, and even of the language in its first rude but bold essays to mimic the solemnities of literary composition. METRICAL CHRONICLE OF ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER. Nearly what Biography is to History are the metrical romances to the versified Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, a narrative of British and English affairs from the time of Brutus to the end of the reign of Henry III., which, from events to which it alludes, must have been written after 1297.* All that is known of the author is that he was a monk of the abbey of Gloucester. His Chronicle was printed-faithfully, I dare say," says Tyrwhitt, "but from incorrect manuscripts"-by Hearne, in 2 vols. 8vo., at Oxford, in 1724; and a re-impression of this edition was produced at London in 1810. The work in the earlier part of it may be considered a free translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History; but it is altogether a very rude and lifeless composition. "This rhyming chronicle," says Warton, "is totally destitute of art or imagination. The author has clothed the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth in rhyme, which have often a more poetical air in Geoffrey's prose." Tyrwhitt refers to Robert of Gloucester in proof of the fact that the English language had already acquired a strong tincture of French; Warton observes that the language of this writer is full of Saxonisms, and not more easy or intelligible than that of what he * This has been shown by Sir F. Madden in his Introduction to Haveloc the Dane, p. lii. calls "the Norman Saxon poems" of Kyng Horn and others which he believes to belong to the preceding century. Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, as printed, is in long lines of fourteen syllables, which, however, are generally divisible into two of eight and six, and were perhaps intended to be so written and read. The language appears to be marked by the peculiarities of West Country English. Ample specimens are given by Warton and Ellis; we shall not encumber our limited space with extracts which are recommended by no attraction either in the matter or manner. We will only transcribe, as a sample of the language at the commencement of the reign of Edward I., and for the sake of the curious evidence it supplies in confirmation of a fact to which we have more than once had occasion to draw attention, the short passage about the prevalence of the French tongue in England down even to this date, more than two centuries after the conquest "Thus come lo! Engelonde into Normannes honde, And the Normans ne couthe speke tho bote her owe speche, And speke French as dude atom, and here chyldren dude al so teche, So that heymen of thys lond, that of her blod come, Holdeth alle thulke speche that hii of hem nome. Vor bote a man couthe French, me tolth of hym well lute: Ac lowe men holdeth to Englyss and to her kunde speche yute. Ich wene ther be ne man in world contreyes none That ne holdeth to her kunde speche, but Engelond one. Ac wel me wot vor to conne bothe wel yt ys, Vor the more that a man con the more worth he ys." That is, literally:-Thus lo! England came into the hand of the Normans and the Normans could not speak then but their own speech, and spoke French as they did at home, and their children did all so teach; so that high men of this land, that of their blood come, retain all the same speech that they of them took. For, unless a man know French, one talketh of him little. But low men hold to English, and to their natural speech yet. I imagine there be no people in any country of the world that do not hold to their natural speech, but in England alone. But well I wot it is well for to know both; for the more that a man knows, the more worth he is. A short composition of Robert of Gloucester's on the Martyrdom of Thomas à Beket was printed by the Percy Society in 1845. ROBERT MANNYNG, OR DE BRUNNE. Along with this chronicle may be mentioned the similar performance of Robert Mannyng, otherwise called Robert de Brunne (from his birthplace,* Brunne, or Bourne, near Deping, or Market Deeping, in Lincolnshire), belonging as it does to a date not quite half a century later. The work of Robert de Brunne is in two parts, both translated from the French: the first, coming down to the death of Cadwalader, from Wace's Brut; the second, extending to the death of Edward I., from the French or Romance chronicle written by Piers, or Peter, de Langtoft, a canon regular of St. Austin, at Bridlington, in Yorkshire, who has been mentioned in a former page,† and who appears to have lived at the same time with De Brunne. Langtoft, whose chronicle, though it has not been printed, is preserved in more than one manuscript, begins with Brutus; but De Brunne, for sufficient reasons it is probable, preferred Wace for the earlier portion of the story, and only took to his own countryman and contemporary when deserted by his older Norman guide. It is the latter part of his work, however, which, owing to the subject, has been thought most valuable or interesting in modern times; it has been printed by Hearne, under the title of Peter Langtoft's Chronicle (as illustrated and improved by Robert of Brunne), from the death of Cadwalader to the end of K. Edward the First's reign; transcribed, and now first published, from a MS. in the Inner Temple Library, 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1725; [reprinted London, 1810.] This part, like the original French of Langtoft, is in Alexandrine verse of twelve syllables; the earlier part, which remains in manuscript, is in the same octosyllabic verse in which its original, Wace's chronicle, is written. The work is stated in a Latin note at the end of the MS. to have been finished in 1338. Ritson (Bibliographia Poetica, p. 33) is very wroth with Warton for describing De Brunne as having "scarcely more poetry than Robert of Gloucester;"-" which only proves,' Ritson says, "his want of taste or judgment." It may be admitted that De Brunne's chronicle exhibits the language in a considerably more advanced state than that of Gloucester, and also that he appears to have more natural fluency than his pre * See a valuable note on De Brunne in Sir Frederic Madden's Haveloc, Introduction, p. xiii. + See ante, p. 168. decessor; his work also possesses greater interest from his occasionally speaking in his own person, and from his more frequent expansion and improvement of his French original by new matter; but for poetry, it would probably require a "taste or judgment" equal to Ritson's own to detect much of it. It is in the Prologue prefixed to the first part of his Chronicle that the famous passage occurs about the romance of Sir Tristrem, its strange or quaint English, and its authors, Thomas and Ercildoune (assumed to be the same person), and Kendale, which has given rise to so much speculation and controversy. De Brunne is also the author of two other rhyming translations: one, of the Latin prose treatise of his contemporary, the Cardinal Bonaventura, De Coena et Passione Domini, et Pœnis S. Mariæ Virginis, which title he converts into Medytaciuns of the Soper of our Lorde Jhesu, and also of his Passyun, and eke of the Peynes of hys swete Modyr mayden Marye; the other a very free paraphrase of what has commonly been described as the Manuel de Péché (or Manual of Sin) of Bishop Grostête, but is, in fact, the work with the same title written by William de Wadington.* Copious extracts from these, and also from other translations of which it is thought that De Brunne may possibly be the author, are given by Warton, who, if he has not sufficiently appreciated the poetical merits of this writer, has at any rate awarded him a space which ought to satisfy his most ardent admirers.† ROLLE, OR HAMPOLE.-DAVIE. Other obscure writers in verse of the earlier part of the fourteenth century were Richard Rolle, often called Richard Hampole, or of Hampole, a hermit of the order of St. Augustine, who lived in or near the nunnery of Hampole, four miles from Doncaster, and after his death, in 1849, was honoured as a saint, and who is the author, or reputed author, of various metrical paraphrases of parts of Scripture, and other prolix theological effusions, all of which that are preserved (Ritson has enumerated seventeen of them) slumber in manuscript, and are not likely to be disturbed; and Adam Davie, who rather pre * See ante, p. 165; and notes by Price and Madden to Warton, i. 56. ceeded Rolle, being reckoned the only poet belonging to the reign of Edward II., and to whom are also attributed a number of religious pieces, preserved only in one manuscript, much damaged, in the Bodleian, besides the metrical romance of the Life of Alexander, of which two copies exist, one in the Bodleian, the other in the library of Lincoln's Inn; but there is every reason for believing that this last-mentioned work, which is printed in Weber's collection under the title of Kyng Alisaunder, and is one of the most spirited of our early romances, is by another author. There is no ground for assigning it to Davie except the circumstance of the Bodleian copy being bound up with his Visions, Legends, Scripture Histories, and other much more pious than poetical lucubrations; and its style is as little in his way as its subject. LAWRENCE MINOT. Putting aside the authors of some of the best of the early metrical romances, whose names are generally or universally unknown, perhaps the earliest writer of English verse who deserves the name of a poet is Lawrence Minot, who lived and wrote about the middle of the fourteenth century, and of the reign of Edward III. His ten poems in celebration of the battles and victories of that king, preserved in the Cotton MS. Galba E. ix., which the old catalogue had described as a manuscript of Chaucer, the compiler having been misled by the name of some former proprietor, Richard Chawfer, inscribed on the volume, were discovered by Tyrwhitt while collecting materials for his edition of the Canterbury Tales, in a note to the Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer prefixed to which work their existence was first mentioned. This was in 1775. In 1781 some specimens of them were given (out of their chronological place) by Warton in the third volume of his History of Poetry. Finally, in 1796, the whole were published by Ritson under the title of Poems written anno MCCCLII., by Lawrence Minot; with Introductory Dissertations on the Scottish Wars of Edward III., on his claim to the throne of France, and Notes and Glossary, 8vo. London; and a reprint of this volume appeared in 1825. Of the 250 pages, or thereby, of which it consists, only about 50 are occupied by the poems, which are ten in number, their |