TO A.D. 1216] WELSH POETS. ROBERT GrossetesTE 71 which men hold dear. Whenever the soul of a people is stirred by a contest that brings out the nobler energies of men, its voice, the literature of the people, acquires higher dignity and power Struggle for life and liberty against the force of Persia gave to Greece the full expression of her genius. The blossom time of our old Gaelic poetry, in the days of the battle of Gabhra, came of the struggle of a clan against the force which threatened its extinction. The blossom time of the old Cymric poetry, in the days of the battle of Cattraeth, came of the struggle of the Celts against invading Teutons. And thus it is that we find a famous second period of Cymric poetry which corresponds exactly to the time of the Welsh struggle for independence against the power of the Anglo-Norman kings, or from the latter part of the reign of Stephen to the extinction of Welsh independence at the death of Llewellyn in 1282. During this period Meilyr, Gwalchmai, Owain Prince of Powis, Prince Howel, Kynddelw, Llywarch ab Llywelyn, and many others became famous for the songs through which they poured the spirit of their countryme. It was also during this period that Welsh fancy fastened upon the King Arthur stories, and told those and others in the language of the Cymry, as the romances of the Mabinogion. That word is the plural of the Cymric word Mabinogi, which (from Mab, a child) means entertainment or instruction for the young. What is here said of Welsh literature is true not only of the reign of John and the preceding years, but also of the succeeding reign of Henry III., and of the earlier part of the reign of Edward I. We have now to complete the sketch of English literature in King John's time. 26. Gervase of Tilbury studied in foreign schools, and served abroad the Emperor Otho IV., for whom he wrote, about the year 1211, his Otia Imperialia, full of learning borrowed without acknowledgment from Petrus Comestor, but also an amusing book, most rich in illustration of the traditions, popular superstitions, history, geography, and science of its time. 27. There was no service of the foreigner in Robert Grosseteste, a man twenty-eight years younger than Gerald du Barri, who contended for the independence of the English Church as heartily as Gerald wished to contend for the independence of the Church of Wales. Grosseteste, whose name was variously spelt, and who was called also Grosthead, made himself famous among the English people, by continuing in his own way the labour towards Church reform, which had already found expression in the writings of Nigel Wireker and Walter Map. Robert Grosseteste was born of poor parents at Stradbrook, in Suffolk, about the year 1175. He studied perhaps at Paris as well as at Oxford, where he graduated in divinity, and became master of the schools. Grosseteste was contemporary with the founders of those orders of friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans, who represented, in their first institution, a strong effort to give to the Church unity of faith and a pure Christian discipline. Dominic was five years older, Francis of Assisi seven years younger than Robert Grosseteste, who became, in 1224, at the request of Agnellus, the provincial minister of the Franciscans in England, their first rector at Oxford. Francis of Assisi, the son of a rich merchant, gave himself to the service of God by visiting with Christian love the leprous and plague-smitten haunts of the very poor and ignorant, from which the clergy held too much aloof. By his example he gathered others to his work of bringing religion home to the hearts of wretched men by works of love. Francis and his brethren were first organised into a distinct body about the year 1209, when John was King of England. They abjured wealth and learning of the schools, that they might draw nearer to the poor, and trust the strength of Christian sympathy and Christian deeds for winning souls to God. It is remarkable that this abjuration of book learning opened a way to knowledge. Their mission of healing to the poor made the Franciscans students of Nature. In energetic and devoted men the intellect could not remain inactive, and the Franciscans became good physicians. To the best of their opportunity they explored secrets of Nature; and we shall find them presently yielding to England in a pupil of Grosseteste's her first great experimental philosopher. Side by side with the Franciscans arose the Dominicans or Preaching Friars. The Spaniard Dominic was a devout theologian, whose deep conviction it was that, as there could be no salvation in heaven so there should be no mercy on earth for the heretic; that heresy already formed must be uprooted; and that its formation in after time was to be checked or prevented by the labours of a devout and well-trained order of preachers, able to demonstrate the truth of orthodox opinions and, by Church scholarship and strength of argument, to confute TO A.D. 1216] LAYAMON 73 doubts as they arose. For this reason Dominic set on foot the work of his Dominicans, which also was begun in the days when John was King of England, and was organised by Pope Innocent III. at the close of that crusade against Waldensian heresy in Languedoc, in which, when one of the leaders of the bloody work asked a Cistercian abbot how, after the storm of a town, he was to know heretic from faithful, “Slay them all," said the abbot," and the Lord will know his own." King John had been dead eight years when Robert Grosseteste became head of the Franciscans at Oxford. During John's reign he had written Latin books of philosophy and Latin verse. The more important part of his life will have to be told in association with the other evidences of the course of English thought in the reign of Henry III. But we 28. One other feature of our literature in the reign of John remains to be described, and that is the appearance of books written in the language of the people. Hitherto, since the Conquest, nearly all writing of mark had been in Latin; and those books which were not in Latin were in French. begin now to find writers in English, and the earliest of these is Layamon. Layamon, the son of Leovenath, called in the later text of his poem, Laweman, the son of Leuca, was a priest who read the services of the Church at Ernley, now Areley Kings, three or four miles from Bewdley, in Worcestershire. Living in the days when Geoffrey of Monmouth's Chronicle and Wace's French metrical version of it were new books in high fame among the educated and the courtly, "it came to him in mind, and in his chief thought," that he would tell the famous story to his countrymen in English verse. He made a long journey in search of copies of the books on which he was to found his poem; and when he had come home again, as he says, "Layamon laid down those books and turned the leaves; he beheld them lovingly; may the Lord be merciful to him!" Then, blending literature with his parish duties, the good priest began his work. Priest in a rural district, he was among those who spoke the language of the country with the least mixture of Norman French, and he developed Wace's "Brut" into a completely English poem, with so many additions from his own fancy, or his own knowledge of West country tradition, that, while Wace's "Brut" is a poem of 15,300 lines, in Layamon's Brut, the number of lines is 32,250. Layamon's verse is the old First English un-rhymed measure with alliteration, less regular D* in its structure than in First English times, and with an occasional slip into rhyme. Battles are described as in First English poems. Here, as in First English poetry, there are few similes, and those which occur are simply derived from natural objects. There is the same use of a descriptive synonym for man or warrior. There is the old depth of earnestness that rather gains than loses dignity by the simplicity of its expression. From internal evidence, it appears that the poem was completed about the year 1205. It comes down to us in two thirteenth-century MSS., one written a generation later than the other, and there are many variations of their text; but the English is so distinctly that of the people in a rural district, that in the earlier MS. the whole poem contains less than fifty words derived from the Norman, and some of these might have come direct from Latin. In the second MS. about twenty of those words do not occur, but forty others are used. Thus the two MSS., in their 56,800 lines, do not contain more than ninety words of Norman origin. In its grammatical structure Layamon's English begins for us the illustration of the gradual loss of inflexions, and other changes, during the transition of the language from First English to its present form. It has been called semi-Saxon. It is better called Transition English of Worcestershire in the beginning of the thirteenth century. 29. A writer named Ormin, or Orm, began also, in the reign of King John, another English poem of considerable extent, called, from his own name, the Ormulum. He tells of himself in the dedication of his book that he was a regular canon of the order of St. Augustine, and that he wrote in English at the request of Brother Walter, also an Augustinian canon, for the spiritual improvement of his countrymen. The plan of his book is to give to the English people in their own tongue, and in an attractive form, the spiritual import of the Church Services throughout the year. He gave first a metrical paraphrase of the portion of the Gospel assigned to each day, and added to each portion of it a metrical Homily in which it was expounded doctrinally and practically, with frequent borrowing from the writings of Ælfric, and some borrowing from Bede. The metre is in alternate verses of eight and seven syllables, in imitation of a Latin rhythm; or in lines of fiftecy syllables with a metrical point at the end of the eighth, thus ; "This boc iss nemmned Ormulum, TO A.D. 1272] THE OWL AND THE NIGHTINGALE 75 Of the homilies provided for nearly the whole of the yearly service nothing remains beyond the thirty-second, and there remains no allusion that points to the time when the work was written. Its language, however, places it with the earliest examples of Transition English, and it belongs, no doubt, to the reign of John, or to the first years of the reign of Henry III. It seems to be the Transition English of a north-eastern county, and the author had a peculiar device of spelling, on the adherence to which by copyists he laid great stress. Its purpose evidently was to guide any half Normanized town priest in the right pronunciation of the English when he read these verses aloud for the pleasure and good of the people. After every short vowel, and only then, Orm doubled the consonant. 30. In the reign of Henry III. (1216—1272), which we have now reached, the production of books in the English language became more and more common. Some hold that a short Proclamation issued in this reign, in the year 1258, should be taken as representing the change from that form of Transition English which we have in Layamon, to a form which they call English, as distinguished from semi-Saxon. This shows how an ill-chosen name is able to confuse the understanding. There is a bright English poem called The Owl and the Nightingale, which tells how those birds advanced each against the other his several claims to admiration and the demerits of his antagonist; and how they called upon the author, Nicholas of Guildford, to be judge between them. Master Nicholas lets us know that from a gay youth in the world, he had passed into the Church, where his merits had been neglected, and that he was living at Portsham, in Dorsetshire. In this poem we have the rhyming eight-syllabled measure of many a French romance, but it is so distinctly English of a rural district, that its 1,792 lines contain only about twenty words which are distinctly Norman in their origin. It remains to us in two transcripts made in the West of England, both of the thirteenth century. One of them is the same which contains the earliest MS. of Layamon, followed by a brief chronicle to the beginning of the reign of Henry III., and "The Owl and the Nightingale" in the same handwriting. There is reference in the poem to the death of a King Henry, who probably was Henry II. There can be very little doubt that "The Owl and the Nightingale" is rightly assigned to the reign of Henry III. Another of the early pieces of Transition English, of much |