He fonder'd the Saracens o'twain, Without, the Christians gan cry, The Normans were sorry', Of countenance gan blacken. To slay down and to 'stroy, That in went all their press, Fightand, and won the hall. 'Forced. (Hearne's Glossary) Perhaps, however, it is a mistake of the transcriber for sonder'd, i. e. sundered, separated. 2 They would not leave off, either on account of the dead who fell round them, or of the annoyance of the enemy. 3 Probably a platform: and for this reason the principal table in the hall, being elevated above the common floor, was particularly called the Des. The canopy placed over such a table afterwards acquired the same name. Hence a good deal of dispute about the meaning of the word; but the conjecture here given, which is Mr. Tyrwhitt's, appears the most reasonable. Nobody but he alone Unto the Christians came; And slein he had ilk-one The lords, but three he name.1 With those three alive, His messengers went; To Philip made presént. Mr. Warton has given us a very long extract from an English translation of a work written by Grosthead, Bishop of Lincoln, in French verse, and called by Leland, Chateau d'Amour, which he conjectures to be from the pen of Robert de Brunne; and Hearne ascribes to him, though perhaps without reason, the metrical English romance of Richard Coeur de Lion. He was upon the whole an industrious, and certainly for the time, an elegant writer; and his extraordinary facility of rhyming (a talent, indeed, in which he has been seldom surpassed), must have rendered his works an useful study to succeeding versifiers. Took. Sax. CHAPTER V. Reign of Edward II.-Change in the Language produced by frequent Translations from the French.-Minstrels-Sources of Romance. Adam Davie-Specimens of his Life of Alexander.-Robert Baston. DURING the first period of our poetry, comprehending the greater part of the thirteenth, and about half of the fourteenth, century, our English versifiers are divided into two classes, the ecclesiastics, and lay-minstrels, who are generally distinguished from each other by a very different choice of subjects; the former exhibiting their talents in metrical lives of the saints, or in rhyming chronicles; the latter in satirical pieces, and lovesongs. Tales of chivalry, being equally the favourites of all descriptions of men, were, to a certain degree, the common property of both. There is reason to believe, that a marked difference of style and language, was apparent in the compositions of these rival poets, because the inferior orders of the priesthood, and the several monastic societies, being chiefly conversant with the inhabitants of the country and of the villages, were likely to retain more of the Saxon phraseology, and to resist the influx of French innovations much longer than their competitors and it is principally to this circumstance that it seems reasonable to attribute those peculiarities of style, which Mr. Warton thought he discovered in Robert of Gloucester, and which he has ascribed to the provincial situation of the writer. The northern provinces, it is true, on account, perhaps, of their long subjection to the Danes, are represented by John de Trevisa (in a passage often quoted) as differing materially in their pronunciation from those of the south: but Gloucester is not a northern county. The charge of provincial barbarism might, with more justice, be imputed to Robert de Brunne, as being a native of Yorkshire; but he has taken care to assure us, that his simple and unadorned diction was the result of care and design; that he considers his "fellows" as the depositaries of pure and true English; that he 2 "made nought for no disours," "Ne for no seggers,2 no harpours, Diseurs. Fr. Reciters. Sayers, the English name for the same profession. But for the love of simple men These disours or seggers, he tells us, took the most unwarrantable liberties with the diction of the works they recited; and he omits no opportunity of protesting against their licentious innovations in our language. The reader who shall take the pains of comparing a few pages of the glossary annexed by Mr. Tyrwhitt to his edition of Chaucer, with that which Mr. Hearne has compiled, for the illustration of Robert de Brunne, will probably think that our author's complaints were just, and that the language of the city and inns of court, was much more infected with Gallicisms, than that of the monasteries; although a rapid change in both, appears to have taken place during the reign of Edward III. Many of the Norman words then introduced, have, indeed, long since become obsolete, and the Saxon has recovered its superiority; because the gradual dissemination of wealth, and liberty, and learning, among the common people, has, in some measure, blended in our language all the provincial dialects; but the torrent of fashion, at the period of which we are now treating, was irresistible. It was, perhaps, in some degree assisted by the practice of the |