establishment of a popular form of municipal government, under an annually elective magistracy, by encouraging the spirit and furnishing the topics of daily discussion, could not fail of giving currency to new forms of speech, and of forming a language adopted to their new situation.

It is evident that nothing less than the most minute enquiry into all the circumstances of our history under the first Norman kings, would be sufficient for the full investigation of this subject; but the preceding observations will perhaps authorize us to assume, that the formation of the English language took its rise, and was probably far advanced, during the interval of about thirty years which preceded the accession of Henry III.

After quitting Layamon, we shall waste little time on the compositions of his immediate successors. The earliest of these, according to Mr. Tyrwhitt, is a paraphrase of the Gospel histories, called Ormulum, composed by one Orme or Ormin, which seems to have been considered as mere prose by Hickes and Wanley, who have given extracts from it, but is really written in verse of fifteen syllables, without rhyme, in imitation of the most common form of the Latin tetrameter iambick. The next is a moral poem on old age, written in rhyme, and extracted by Hickes, part of which is to be found in the G

VOL. I.

similar plan, called "Le Ordre de bel Eyse.” The same idea is also pursued by Rabelais, and seems to have been a great favourite with the early French satirists. The word cokaine seems to be Frenchified Latin; and our poem bears the strongest mark of being a translation; because the elegance of the sketch, and the refined irony of the general composition, are strongly contrasted with the rudeness of the language. As the poem is not excessively long, it is here printed entire, with such notes as appeared necessary to render it tolerably intelligible. There are, however, some passages, corrupted perhaps by the negligence of transcribers, the obscurity of which I have not been able to

remove.

Far in the sea, by West Spain,

Is a land ihote1 Cokaigne,2

1 Called. (Saxon.)

From coquina; whence cucina, cuisine, &c. and the old English word cockney. In P. Ploughman's Vision, p. 35, (quoted hereafter) P. P. says,

I have no salt bacon,

Ne no cokeney, by Christ! collops for to make. Perhaps the intelligence which the inhabitants of the metropolis displayed in the culinary art, may have procured them the appellation of cockneys from the uplandish or country-men.

There n'is land under heaven-reich,1
Of wel of goodness it y-like.

Though Paradise be merry and bright,
Cokayn is of fairer sight.

What is there in Paradise

But grass, and flower, and green-rise?3
Though there be joy and great dute,*
There n'is meat but fruit.

There n'is hall, bures, no bench;
But water, man-is thirst to quench.
Beth' there no men but two;

8

Hely and Enoch also.

Clinglich may hi10 go

Where there wonith" men no mo,12

• Heaven, the kingdom of heaven. Sax.

• Wealth, abundance of goodness. Sax.

Branches. Sax.

* Pleasure, deduit. Old Fr.

• Bower, (Sax.) synonimous with chamber. F. 6 No, and sometimes nether, are used for nør.

? There are.

• Elias.

• The sense seems to be, "It is easy for them to be clean " and of pure heart, because they are only two, and cannot "be corrupted by bad example."-Why Paradise should contain only two inhabitants is not very intelligible, but, it was thus represented in the pageants, as appears from a passage in the Fabian, quoted by Strutt, (View of Manners, &c. Vol. II. p. 53.) "In the border of this delicious place,

In Cokayn is meat and drink,
Without care, how1 and swink*
The meat is trie,3 the drink so clear,
To noon, russin,+ and suppér
I sigges (for south boot were"}
There n'is land on earth is
peer.
Under heaven n'is land I wiss
Of so muckle joy and bliss.

There is many a sweet sight:

All is day, n'is there no night;

1

"which was named Paradise, stode two forgrowen faders, "resemblynge Enoch, and Hely, the which had thys sayenge "to the kynge," &c.

10

They. The words they and them, instead of hi and hem, seem to have been introduced, as Mr. Tyrwhitt observes, about the time of Chaucer.

4 Rushing is still used, in the northern counties, for what the French call a gouter, or meal between dinner and supper. Vide Grose's Prov. Glossary. Noon was the usual time of dinner.

5 I say, or affirm.

This kind of phrase is now obsolete; and yet we might say" for falsehood boot-less were."

"Apparently for his, instead of its.

8 I know.

9 Much.