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Nobody but he alone

Unto the Christians came;

And slain he had ilk-one

The lords, but three he name.1

With tho three alive

His messengers went ;

Till Acre gan they drive,

To Philip made presènt.

Mr. Warton has given us a very long extract from an English translation of a work written by Grosthead Bishop of Lincoln in French verse, and called by Leland Chateau d'Amour, which he conjectures to be from the pen of Robert de Brunne; and Hearne ascribes to him, though perhaps without reason, the metrical English romance. of Richard Cœur de Lion. He was, upon the whole, an industrious and certainly (for the time) an elegant writer; and his extraordinary facility of rhyming (a talent, indeed, in which he has been seldom surpassed), must have rendered his works an useful study to succeeding versifiers.

Took. Sax.

CHAPTER V.

Reign of Edward II.-Change in the Language produced by frequent Translations from the French.-Minstrels.-Sources of Romance.-Adam Davie-Specimens of his Life of Alexander.—Robert Baston,

DURING the first period of our poetry, comprehending the greater part of the thirteenth, and about half of the fourteenth century, our English versifiers are divided into two classes, the ecclesiastics, and lay-minstrels, who are generally distinguished from each other by a very different choice of subjects; the former exhibiting their talents in metrical lives of the saints, or in rhyming chronicles; the latter in satirical pieces, and lovesongs. Tales of chivalry, being equally the favourites of all descriptions of men, were, to a certain degree, the common property of both.

There is reason to believe that a marked difference of style and language was apparent in the compositions of these rival poets, because the

inferior orders of the priesthood, and the several monastic societies, being chiefly conversant with the inhabitants of the country and of the villages, were likely to retain more of the Saxon phraseology, and to resist the influx of French innovations much longer than their competitors: and it is principally to this circumstance that it seems reasonable to attribute those peculiarities of style, which Mr. Warton thought he discovered in Robert of Gloucester, and which he has ascribed to the provincial situation of the writer. The northern provinces, it is true, on account, perhaps, of their long subjection to the Danes, are represented by John de Trevisa (in a passage often quoted) as differing materially in their pronunciation from those of the south but Gloucester is not a northern county. The charge of provincial barbarism might with more justice be imputed to Robert de Brunne, as being a native of Yorkshire; but he has taken care to assure us that his simple and unadorned diction was the result of care and design; that he considers his " fellows" as the depositaries of pure and true English: that he

"made nought for no disours,

2

"Ne for no seggers, no harpours,

Diseurs. Fr. Reciters.

́• Sayers, the English name for the same profession.

"But for the love of simple men
"That strange English cannot ken."

[de Brunne's Prol. Vid. Hearne's Pref. xcix.]

These disours or seggers, he tells us, took the most unwarrantable liberties with the diction of the works they recited; and he omits no opportunity of protesting against their licentious innovations in our language.

The reader, who shall take the pains of comparing a few pages of the glossary annexed by Mr. Tyrwhitt to his edition of Chaucer with that which Mr. Hearne has compiled for the illustration of Robert de Brunne, will probably think that our author's complaints were just, and that the language of the city and inns of court was much more infected with Gallicisms than that of the monasteries; although a rapid change in both appears to have taken place during the reign of Edward III. Many of the Norman words then introduced have, indeed, long since become obsolete, and the Saxon has recovered its superiority; because the gradual dissemination of wealth and liberty and learning among the common people has, in some measure, blended in our language all the provincial dialects; but the torrent of fashion, at the period of which we are now treating, was irresistible. It was, perhaps, in some degree assisted by the practice of the

dignified ecclesiastics, who, when they did not write in Latin, universally affected to use the French language; but it is principally to be ascribed to the numerous translations which were made at this time from the French writers of those fabulous histories which we now call romances. Such translations were hastily written, because eagerly called for; and their authors took the liberty (in which they were imitated by the disours or reciters) of admitting without scruple such "strange" words as happened to suit their rhyme, as well as those for which they could not immediately recollect the correspondent term in English.

As the public reciters here mentioned by Robert de Brunne may possibly be unknown to many readers, it will perhaps be proper in this place to take some notice of them, as well as of the minstrels, with whom they were nearly connected.

It appears that, during the reign of our Norman kings, a poet, who was also expected to unite with the talent of versifying those of music and recitation, was a regular officer in the royal household, as well as in those of the more wealthy nobles, whose courts were composed upon the same model. This practice seems to have originated in the admiration which all the northern nations entertained for their ancient scalds; and it gave rise to the appellation

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