Uppen Sevarne; Merie ther him thohte; Faste bi Radistone: Ther heo bokes radde. Hit com him on mode, And on his thonke, That he wolde of Engelond The rihtnesse telle; Wat the men i-hote weren, And wancne hi comen, The Englene lond Ærest afden After than flode, Japhet and Cam, And hire four wifes, That mid ham there weren. 991 The following is a literal translation: "He dwelt at Ernley, with the good knight, upon the Severn; pleasant it seemed to him there; close by Radistone: there he books read. It came into his mind, and in his thought, that he would of England the exact story tell; what the men were called, and whence they came, who first occupied the English land, after the flood that from God came, that quelled [killed] all here that it found quick [alive], except Noe and Sem, Japhet and Cam [Ham], and their four wives that were with them there." Robert Manning's English, as will be seen, is of a much more advanced character. The following passage is from the opening of the second part of his chronicle, which was composed about the year 1330: "Lordynges that be now here, If ye wille listene and lere [learn] All the story of Inglande, Als [as] Robert Mannyng wryten [written] it fand, And on Inglysch has it schewed, 1 Extracted, with a few slight corrections, from Craik's Outlines of the History of the English Language. Not for the lered but for the lewed [lay people]; For tho [those] that on this land wonn [dwell] That the Latin ne Frankys conn [know neither Latin nor French], For to hauf solace and gamen, In felauschip when tha sitt samen [together]; And it is wisdom for to wytten [know] The state of the land, and hef it wryten, What manere of folk first it wan, And of what kynde it first began; For to here [hear] the dedis of kynges, Whilk [which] were foles, and whilk were wyse, And whilk of tham couth [knew] most quantyse [quaintness, i.e., artfulness]; And whilk did wrong, and whilk ryght, And whilk mayntened pes [peace] and fight. Of thare dedes sall be mi sawe [story], In what tyme, and of what law, I sholl you tell, from gre to gre [degree, i.e., step by step] The language of the "Ormulum," a singular poem of the thirteenth century, not rhymed but rhythmical, is of an intermediate character; it has fewer Anglo-Saxon forms, and more French or Latin words, than Layamon's "Brut," but is much less modernized than that of Manning. It consists of passages and narratives, taken from Scripture, and rudely versified, with accompanying commentaries. The date of its composition is supposed to be about 1250. The following passage may serve as a specimen: "Annd o patt illke nahht tatt Crist Wass borenn her to manne, He sette a steorne upp o pe lifft "And on that same night that Christ Was He, as His will was, Manifested in yet another fashion. He set a star up in the sky Full broad, and bright, and fair, On the east side of this middle-earth, Even as the gospel declares, Among that people that knows insight Of many things through the stars, That knows insight of stars. And that people was a heathen people, To which Christ gave then such a token, Because that He them would then To right belief turn. And, as soon as they that star's gleam There saw up in the sky, Three kings of that same land Full well it understood, And knew clearly thereby That such a new king was showed forth, Who was true God and true man also, 1 The doubling of the consonants throughout this extract is merely a peculiar device employed by Ormin, the author, to indicate that the preceding vowel in all such cases is short. 2 From the Ormulum (edited by Dr. R. White, 1852), vol. i., line 3,426. CHAPTER II. EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD. 1350-1450. HITHERTO Such English writers as we have met with since the Conquest have generally appeared in the humble guise of translators or imitators. In the period before us we at last meet with original invention applied on a large scale: this, therefore, is the point at which English literature takes its true commencement. The Latin and French compositions, which engaged so much of our attention in the previous period, may in this be disposed of in a few words. That Englishmen still continued to write French poetry, we have the proof in many unprinted poems by Gower, and might also infer from a passage, often quoted, in the prologue to Chaucer's "Testament of Love." But few such pieces are of sufficient merit to bear printing. In French prose scarcely any thing can be mentioned besides the despatches, treaties, &c., contained in Rymer's "Fœdera," and similar compilations, and the original draft of Sir John Maundevile's "Travels in the Holy Land." Froissart's famous "Chronicle " may, indeed, almost be considered as belonging to us, since it treats principally of English feats of arms, and its author held a post in the court of Edward III. In Latin poetry there is nothing that deserves men tion except the "Liber Metricus" of Thomas Elmham, concerning the career of Henry V.; edited by Mr. Cole, for the Rolls Series, in 1858. Elmham, who flourished about the year 1440, was a Benedictine monk in the monastery of St. Austin's, Canterbury. The poem contains 1349 lines, and is, as Byron would have said, not so much poetry as "prose run mad;" in proof of which, let these lines suffice: 66 'Hic Jon Oldcastel Christi fuit insidiator, Obicibus Regis fert mala vota sacris." Whether the last line means, "He wishes ill to the king's devout objects," or any thing else, it is hard to say. In Latin prose, we have a version, made by himself, of "Maundevile's Travels," and the chroniclers (amongst others of less note) Robert de Avesbury, Henry Knyghton, Thomas Walsingham, and John Fordun. Robert de Avesbury was registrar of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Court, and wrote a fair and accurate history of the reign of Edward III. (published by Hearne in 1720), coming down to the year 1356, in which, or in the following year, he died. Henry Knyghton, the date of whose death is unknown, was a canon regular of Leicester; he is the author of "Compilatio de Eventibus Angliæ a tempore Regis Edgari usque ad mortem Regis Ricardi II." account of the rise of Lollardism, though written with a strong anti-Wycliffite bias, is highly interesting and valuable. His The "Historia Anglicana" of Thomas Walsingham, a work to which all modern historians continually refer in writing of the events of the fourteenth and earlier |