gide. For John Cornwaile, a maistre of grammar, chaungide the lore in grammar scole and construction of Frensch into Englisch, and Richard Pencriche lerned that maner teching of him, and other men of Pencriche. So that now, the yere of our lorde a thousand thre hundred foure score and fyve, in all the grammar scoles of Englond children leveth Frensch and construeth and lerneth an Englisch.'

LATIN AND FRENCH LITERATURE OF THE

NORMAN PERIOD.

It is foreign to the purpose of this little book to speak of any other than of our own native literature, but the Latin and French works of the Norman period were so many and so important that a few words must be given. to some of them. Lanfranc and Anselm, who were in succession Archbishops of Canterbury, were theologians of European fame, and some of their chief works were written after they came to England. The Norman clergy who came over here were in general more highly educated than the English, and through their coming a great stimulus was given to education and especially to the cultivation of Latin literature. Englishmen, no less than Frenchmen, distinguished themselves, and the Latin historical literature of the twelfth century is one of which any country might be proud. The English monk Eadmer, the friend and biographer of Anselm, wrote the history of the period from 1066 to 1122. Florence of Worcester gives in Latin the story of the old

English Chronicles, and Simeon of Durham does the same, but makes use of many northern annals which are now lost.

William of Malmesbury then wrote his noble' History of the Kings of England,' which was no mere collection of annals, but a work after the model of the great histories of Greece and Rome. He made use of many old English songs which are now lost, and in this he was followed by Henry of Huntingdon.

The story of the Conquest was written in Latin verse by Guy of Amiens, and in Latin prose by William of Poitiers. Ordericus Vitalis, another historian of Norman parentage, was born on the banks of the Severn, and in the retirement of a Norman monastery he wrote a history, of which that part is very valuable which deals. with the period after the Conquest.

To the same period belongs that wonderful book the "History of the Britons,' written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph's. The work contains hardly a shred of historical truth, but it is a rich storehouse of romance and fable. There for the first time appear in literature Locrine and Lear, and Merlin and Uther Pendragon, and the great Arthur, and others whose story has charmed so many generations. The book became at once immensely popular, and from it as from a well-head flowed many later tales of romance.

Within a few years Wace, a native of Jersey, turned Geoffrey's book from Latin into a French metrical romance, and presented it to Eleanor, the queen of Henry II. Wace called his work Brut d'Engleterre,' and it became in turn the foundation of the English

Brut' of Lagamon, of which we shall have soon to speak.

Towards the end of his life (about 1170) Wace wrote a metrical history of the Norman dukes, and called it 'Roman de Rou' (Romance of Rollo). The history is carried down to the year 1106, and the description which it gives of the incidents of the great battle of Hastings is the most picturesque and vivid and trustworthy which we possess.

OLD ENGLISH HOMILIES.

FROM the libraries in the British Museum and Lambeth Palace and from the Bodleian a considerable number of Old English homilies have been gathered and printed by the Early English Text Society. The authors are unknown, and the different homilies appear to belong to various periods during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Among them are twelfth-century transcripts of a few of Elfric's homilies, and in others it is plainly to be seen that Elfric has been taken as a model. These homilies, together with the later entries in the Peterborough Chronicle, are all that we now have left of English literature of the twelfth century. One of the earliest (about 1150) is entitled An Bispel' (A Parable), and in it the writer or preacher speaks thus of the goodness of God:

He is hure fader, he lens us his eorde to tolie, his corn to sawe, his corde us werpo corn and westm, niatt and dierchin, his loht leoem and lif, his water drench

He is our father, he grants us his earth to till, his corn to sow. His earth yields for us corn and fruit, cattle and deer-kind, his light (yields us) light and life, his

water drink and fishes, his fire manifold things. His sun, moon, stars, rain, dew, wind, wood (yield) untold favours. All that we have we have from this father.

May we at all call him mother ween we? Yea may we. What doth the mother to her bairn? First she cheereth and blesseth it by the light, and afterwards she putteth under it her arm, or covers its head to give it sleep and rest. This doth the Lord of you all; he blesseth us with the daylight, he sends us to sleep with the dark night.

THE 'ORMULUM.'

To the very beginning of the thirteenth century, if not even to the end of the twelfth, belongs a remarkable poem called the Ormulum.' It is a collection of metrical homilies intended to explain and illustrate the portions of the Gospels appointed to be read daily throughout the year. It was once perhaps complete, or nearly so, but the single copy now existing is imperfect, and contains the homilies for only thirty-two days.

In the whole poem there are but four or five French words, but it abounds in Scandinavian words and forms. "It is the most thoroughly Danish poem ever written in England that has come down to us,' and the writer almost certainly lived in one of the eastern counties, perhaps in the Peterborough region. A curious piece of

* Oliphant.

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by the fact that Northumbrian literature perished with the inroads of the Danes, and Northumbrian works are preserved only in a later and West-Saxon form.

About 1050 Leofric, bishop of Exeter, gave to the cathedral library a gift of books, and among them 1 mycel Englisc boc be gehwylcum dingum on leoðwisan geworht,' that is, 'One large English book about various things in lay [song] wise wrought.' This is the famous Codex Exoniensis' still preserved at Exeter, and so often referred to. The manuscript is in ten books, and it contains many poems, most of them of a religious character, such as A Dialogue between the Virgin Mary and Joseph,' Song of the Three Children,' 'The Last Judgment.' Perhaps the most interesting are The Traveller's Song' and The Phoenix.' The former is not much more than a catalogue of tribes and places, but it is believed to be a work of the fifth century, and, if so, is the most ancient relic of the kind that we possess; the latter is a poem of much beauty, and is thought to be the work of Cynewulf.

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In 1832 Dr. Blume discovered at Vercelli a book filled mainly with Saxon homilies, but also containing a small number of religious poems of great beauty. The chief of these are A Legend of St. Andrew,' 'A Dream of the Holy Rood,' and 'Elene, or the Invention of the Holy Cross,' and they are for the most part, if not all, the work of Cynewulf.

Archbishop Parker in Elizabeth's time was a great collector of Saxon books, and he gave to Corpus Christi College, in Cambridge, the celebrated Winchester Chronicle,' and a fine copy of King Alfred's laws.