of Minstrel (ministrellus, an officer or servant), which, therefore (as Dr. Percy has observed in his learned Dissertation on this subject), was not strictly synonymous with those of jougleur, or jongleur (joculator), called, in old English, a glee-man, juggler, or jangler; because the latter might or might not be attached to a particular patron, and frequently travelled from castle to castle, for the purpose of reciting his compositions during the principal festivals. But as it is very difficult for the same person to attain equal excellence in all the sister arts, the professions of the poet, the harper, and the reciter, were afterwards undertaken by several associates, all of whom, on account of the privileges attached to the official minstrels, thought fit to assume the same honourable but equivocal title.

That these purveyors of poetry and music to the king and principal barons were, during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, a privileged class, is perfectly certain from the universal testimony of contemporary writers. Indeed they were essential, not only to their amusement, but, in a great measure, to their education; because even the use of arms, and the management of a horse, were scarcely more necessary to a courteous knight, than the talent of playing on the harp, and composing a

song in praise of his mistress. But in the course of the fourteenth century the minstrels, in France at least, had greatly declined in talents and reputation. There was a street at Paris, called la Rue St. Julien des Menétriers, peculiarly appropriated to their habitation; and they had a fraternity, or confrérie in the church of that saint, the well-known patron of hospitality: but these minstrels are described as a set of pantomimical fidlers, accompanied by monkies or bears, who were hired at weddings for the amusement of the guests: so much had they degenerated from the ingenious inventors of the fabliaux.

The history of this order of men in England is, for various reasons, very obscure and embarrassed. On the one hand it is evident, that if English began to be introduced at court as a colloquial language, about the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was not yet considered, either by our kings, or by the nobles, or by the dignitaries of the church, as fitted for literary purposes: and as our native minstrels, not having yet attempted any original poetry, could only have offered to their courtly audience, translations much more barbarous, and at the same time less familiar to their ears, than the compositions of the French trouveurs, it is not K

VOL. I.

likely that such rivals could have displaced the Norman minstrels, already established in the post for which they were candidates. On the other hand, the testimony of Robert de Brunne to the existence of a body of disours, or seggers, accustomed to recite English metrical compositions in public, who were listened to with applause, and habituated to make arbitrary alterations in the language or metre of such compositions, is direct and positive. The most obvious solution of this difficulty would be to suppose, that the more opulent inhabitants of the towns, in imitation of their superiors, had adopted the mode of introducing at their banquets the amusements of music and recitation, and thus laid the foundation of a native minstrelsy on the French model; and this order of men being once established, might, on the decline of the rival language, find their way to the castles of our nobility; to which they would be recommended, by their previous exhibitions at the neighbouring fairs, where they never failed to appear as attendants on the merchants.

Indeed we have numerous proofs of their increasing popularity; for Chaucer, in his address to his Troilus and Cressida, tells us that it was intended to be "read or elles sung," which must relate to the chanting recitation of the minstrels ;

and a considerable part of our old poetry is simply addressed to an audience, without any mention of readers.

That our English minstrels at any time united all the talents of the profession, and were at once poets, and reciters, and musicians, is extremely doubtful but that they excited and directed the efforts of their contemporary poets to a particular species of composition, is as evident, as that a body of actors must influence the exertions of theatrical writers. They were, at a time when reading and writing were rare accomplishments, the principal medium of communication between authors and the public; and their memory in some measure supplied the deficiency of manuscripts, and probably preserved much of our early literature till the invention of printing: so that their history, if it could be collected, would be by no means uninteresting. But our materials for this purpose are too scanty, to enable us to ascertain the date of their formation, their progress, or their disappearance. Judging from external evidence, we should be disposed to place the period of their greatest celebrity, a little before the middle of the fifteenth century; because at that time our language had been successively improved by the writings of Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate. Much

wealth and luxury had been introduced by the two victorious reigns of Edward III. and Henry V.; and the country had not yet suffered any distress either from internal revolution, or from the length and disastrous termination of the war with France. The general poverty and discontent that prevailed during the subsequent period, the declension of chivalry, and the almost utter extirpation of our principal nobles, during the contest between the houses of York and Lancaster, must have been fatal to the prosperity of the minstrels; and two causes of a different nature, viz. the invention of printing in A. D. 1474, and the taste for religious disputation introduced by Henry VIII. may have tended to complete their ruin.

Though the minstrel character be now lost both in England and France, the traces of it are not universally effaced. In Wales, the modern harper is occasionally found to possess the accomplishments of the ancient bard: and among the Italians, the improvisatori of Rome and Florence, who are usually ready to attend the table of a traveller, and greet him with an extemporary poem on any subject which he shall prescribe, and protracted to a length which is only measured by his patience, are no bad representations of the antique minstrels; particularly when they are accompanied