CHAPTER II.

ENGLISH WRITINGS OF THE TRANSITIONAL

PERIOD.

1. State of English Literature in this Period. — 2. Layamon.-3. Orm.-4. Nicholas of Guildford; Devotional and Moral Writings; Romances; Ancren Riwle. 5. Robert of Gloucester and his Contemporaries. — 6. Robert of Brunne. - 7. Laurence Minot. -- S. Richard Rolle. —9. Dan Michel. — 10. Ralph Higden and English Miracle-Plays.-11. The Chester Plays.-12. The Shepherds' Play.-13. The Modern Drama.

1. We must now turn from the Latin and French writings produced by Englishmen during the three centuries between the Conquest and Chaucer, and must give our attention to whatever writings were produced during the same period in the English language.

For the first hundred and forty years of this period almost nothing was written in the language of the conquered race ; and we may think of English literature for all those hundred and forty years as in a state of abeyance, waiting for the time when the people who were inclined to write in the English language should rally from the depression caused by the Norman Conquest. In the reign of King John, which began in 1199, books in the English language once more made their appearance; and their number steadily increased from that time onward. Nevertheless, during this entire period, English was not the fashionable or dominant language in England; and the highest and best thought of England uttered itself in speech that was alien to England.

2. Perhaps the earliest book representing the revival of a desire for literary utterance in English is a long and notable poem called "Brut." Its author was Layamon, a priest of the church at Ernley, in Worcestershire. Living in the days when Geoffrey of Monmouth's "Chronicle" and Wace's French

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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, Layamon's "Brut" is a poem of 32,250 lines. Layamon's verse is the old First English unrhymed measure, with alliteration, less regular 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 synonyme 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 inflections, 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 Transitional English of Worcestershire in the beginning of the thirteenth century.

3. 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 Elfric, 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 fifteen syllables, with a metrical point at the end of the eighth; thus,—

"Thiss bocc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum,

Forrthi thatt Orrm itt wrohhte."

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 Transitional 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 Transitional 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.

4. 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.

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 Portesham 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.

To about the year 1250 belongs an English poem kindred in spirit to the "Ormulum," and, indeed, illustrative of the same feature in English character which was marked at the outset of our literature by Cædmon's "Paraphrase." This is a version of the Scripture narrative of Genesis and Exodus. Like "The Owl and the Nightingale," it illustrates the adoption of rhyme into our native poetry by use of the octosyllabic rhyming verse common in many French romances. The poem of "Genesis and Exodus" is by an unknown author. In its 4,162 lines there are only about fifty words of Norman origin. The writer begins by saying that men ought to love those who enable the unlearned to love and serve the God who gives love and rest of the soul to all Christians, and that Christian men should be glad as birds are of the dawn to have the story of salvation turned out of Latin into their own native speech.

The same spirit among the people is represented, from the date of Layamon onward, by Homilies, Metrical Creeds, Paternosters, Gaudia, or Joys of the Virgin, and short devotional or moral poems, of which MSS. remain. There is also a Bestiary, in English apparently of the same date; and in its 802 lines, except one or two Latin names of animals, which had already been adopted in First English, there are not more than eight words of Romance origin.

During the reign of Henry III. we meet the earliest translations into English verse of French popular romances. The most notable of these

were "King Horn" and "The Romance of Alexander."

"King Horn" belongs to an Anglo-Danish cycle of romance, from which the Norman trouvères drew material, and includes such tales as "Havelok the Dane," "Guy of Warwick and Colbrond the Dane."

"Alexander" was a famous subject of romance poetry, and reappears, during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteen centuries, in Greck, Latin, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, and Scandinavian. It became the basis of many French and English poems likewise.

We must observe that in the reign of Henry III. appeared the earliest Scottish poet, Thomas of Erceldoune, who produced an English version of "Sir Tristrem," and was in repute in his own day, not only as a poet, but as a prophet also.

Another of the English productions of this time, but one which has greater interest to students of language than to students of literature, is the "Ancren Riwle" ("Rule of the Anchoresses"), which seems to have been written by a Bishop Poor, who died in 1237. It was intended for the guidance of a small household of women withdrawn from the world for service of God at Tarrant Keynstone in Dersetshire.

5. Passing from the reign of Henry III. to that of Edward I. (1272-1307), we find our first example of an English chronicler in the period of Transitional English. This was Robert of Gloucester, a monk of the abbey in that town, who produced a rhymed "Chronicle of England," from the siege of Troy to the death of Henry III. in 1272. It was in long lines of seven accents, and occasionally six, and was the first complete history of his country, from the earliest times to his own day, written in popular rhymes by an Englishman. The language is very free from Norman admixture, and represents West Midland Transitional English of the end of the thirteenth century. Robert of Gloucester wrote also rhymed "Lives and Legends of the English Saints."

Among other books written in English during the reign of Edward I. was the English version of "The Lay of Havelok the Dane," which was made about the year 1280, and is one of the brightest and most interesting examples of the English of that time. To nearly the same date belongs "A Fragment on Popular Science," which cclors with religious thought an attempt to diffuse knowledge of some facts in astronomy, meteorology, physical geography, and physiology. "A Metrical Version of the Psalms" into English was another of the productions of this time; it is known as "The Northumbrian Psalter." Luxury of the monks was attacked with satire in an English poem of "The Land of Cockaygne," named from coquina, a kitchen (a form of satire current in many parts of Europe), which told of a region free from trouble, where the rivers ran with oil, milk, wine, and honey; wherein the white and gray monks had an abbey of which the walls were built of pasties, which was paved with cakes, and had puddings for pinnacles. Geese there flew about roasted, crying, "Geese, all hot!" and the monks as the song went on it did not spare them. To the close of the reign of Edward I. belongs also a set of moralized proverbs, called "The Proverbs of Hendyng," in a Southern English dialect.

6. Passing to the reign of Edward II. (1307-1327), we find a time of great literary barrenness, the most notable English writer being Robert of Brunne. He wrote in the previous