he took his degree of doctor, he was eminently versed in the common law, as well as in the more ancient branches of the science. Full of professional erudition, and accomplished in all the learning of the period, he in due time removed to London, where his abilities quickly brought him into general notice, and recommended him to the patronage of Henry the Third. The monarch finding how valuable his services might be rendered in the conduct of the state, used every means to retain him near his person, and for that purpose granted him the use of the earl of Darby's house, till the heirs of that deceased nobleman should occupy it themselves. In the twenty-ninth year of his reign, he still further manifested the respect with which he regarded him, by appointing him to the office of justiciary-itinerant. In this capacity he evinced a prudence and discernment which at length raised him to the eminent station of chief-justice, which he held above twenty years. The most unmingled praise is accorded him for the virtues as well as talent which he exhibited in the exercise of his functions, while occupying this important office. He so tempered, it is said, his justice and authority with equity and integrity, that he was one of the chief pillars of the commonwealth, in which he allowed no one to offend without punishment, and no one to do well without being rewarded. As an author, he is celebrated for having produced a work of great learning, entitled 'De Consuetudinibus Anglicanis,' or 'De Consuetudinibus et Legibus Angliæ.' According to Bishop Nicholson, this production, like that of Lyttleton, was not printed till a considerable period after it had been received in the world as a valuable addition to the stock of legal literature. So numerous, indeed, were the manuscript copies which had been taken, that it was with the utmost difficulty the persons who undertook to edit it for the press could satisfy themselves in preparing the copy. Bishop Nicholson remarks that he must be pardoned his easy admission of the pope's supremacy, and his sometimes naturalizing the canon as well as civil law, when we consider the time wherein he wrote, that it was done after King John had made a formal conveyance of his realm to the see of Rome, and when the greatest part of Europe was entirely under the pope's dominion. The passages that savour strong of the iniquity and vassalage of those unhappy days, are not many; and there is that disagreeable obliquity in them from the description of our true English government, that they are readily discerned to be preternatural and monstrous, Some idea may be formed of the work from these observations of the bishop. They also serve to point out the important use which might be made of such early treatises in the study of English history, and, consequently, the place which Bracton and other writers of a similar kind ought to occupy, even in a literary point of view, among the authors of the country. The period of Bracton's death is equally uncertain with that of his birth, nor is it known where he was buried, or what became of his family. His work has been frequently appealed to in times of political excitement. Milton, in his celebrated Defensio pro populo Anglicans,' quotes largely from it, to prove that when the king attempts to govern by his will and not by the law, he ceases to possess authority. A similar use, it is said, was made of the work by Bradshaw, when as president of the high court of justice he addressed the judges of Charles the First. It is plain, however, from passages in the work expressed in language of equal force, that it was only to the most evident violation of the tenor by which the king reigns, that the opinions alluded to re fer. In those places where mention is made of the royal prerogative, he speaks of it in the usual language of the times when he wrote. It may, therefore, be justly inferred that, imperfectly as the theory of government might then be understood by the generality of people, this eminent civilian had formed very correct notions of the true balance which ought to be preserved between the several branches of the legislature. Robert of Gloucester. FLOR, CIRC. A. D. 1260. THE origin and earliest condition of the language and the poetic literature of England form a subject full of interest and attraction for the antiquarian and the philologist, but do not offer much to engage the attention of the lover of poetry for its own sake. Before the commencement of the 14th century we had a few versifiers, but hardly any poet. The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, who probably flourished about the year 1260, is the first long work in verse which can properly be considered as written in the English dialect, at that time a barbarous and unregulated medley of Saxon and Norman, and hardly in truth fit for the purposes of composition at all. The poem in question is nothing more than a metrical version of the famous Latin history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which had been previously translated in like manner into Norman-French verse by Wace of Jersey, and into a species of degenerated Saxon by Layamon. There does not appear to be much in any one of these three popular imitations of the fabulous annalist indicative of any thing like poetic inspiration; nor can we speak in greatly more flattering terins of the subsequent production of Robert Mannyng, or De Brunne, a fourth translator from the same favourite original, who is conjectured to have written about the close of the 13th century, and the most remarkable characteristic of whose compositions is merely an apparent ease and fluency of versification, which, however, it is agreeable to remark, were it only as evidencing the somewhat improved state to which the language had even already attained. Few or no materials exist to throw any light on the personal history of Robert of Gloucester, or on that of many of his contemporaries. Neither Bale nor Pits, those two laborious biographers of the fathers of our literature, make any mention of him. Selden has determined that he lived in the reign of Edward I. Other antiquaries have also discovered that he was a monk of Gloucester, and the learned Thomas Hearne supposes that he was sent to Oxford by the directors of the great abbey of Gloucester, to take care of the youth whom they placed in that university. The same writer says that he seems to have occupied an old house on the west side of the Stockwell-street, and on the site of which was afterwards built Worcester college, originally called Gloucester ball Much labour has been expended in endeavours to discover the surname of the monk, and the remarks of Hearne upon the subject show with what care that zealous antiquary exerted himself in elucidating every question relating to his favourite author. The result of his inquiries was, that his name is not to be found in either an ancient or modern hand in the Harleian manuscripts; that it appears only once in the Cottonian collection, and that without the surname; and that no previous antiquary seems to have been acquainted with him by any other appellation than that of Robert of Gloucester. It is supposed that his surname began to be disused after he attained notice as a writer, and from this circumstance it is inferred that he must have enjoyed, among his cotemporaries, his ordinary share of celebrity. "That his 66 fame was very great," says Hearne, may appear from hence, that though many Robert of Gloucesters are met with in old registers, yet, as far as we can learn, they were all eclipsed by the historian, the acts of all of them put together being not equal to what he hath done by compiling this work." Of the merits of the chronicler as a poet, Hearne prudently forbears, with all his zeal and veneration, to say much. But his authority is of weight in whatever concerns our ancient literature, and he boldly asserts, that of all books likely to prove useful in the study of the Saxon tongue, none is so valuable as the chronicle of Robert of Gloucester. Declining also, as he does, to compare him with Chaucer, in respect to poetical merit, he claims for him the honour of being the first of English writers. "He, and not Chaucer," says he, 66 as Dr Fuller and some others would have it, is the genius of the English nation, and he is, on that account, to be as much respected as ever Ennius himself was among the Romans, and I have good reason to think that he will be so by friends to our antiquities and our old history." "Tis the genius of the age that is to be regarded in such pieces of poetry. The poetry of those times consisted of rhythms both here and in other countries, and the poets thought they had done their parts well, if their rhythms, however mean otherwise, related matter of fact, and were agreeable to truth. Fuller, in the mention he has made of Robert of Gloucester among the other worthies of England, observes in his usual quaint but forcible style, they speak truly who term him a rhymer, whilst such speak courteously who call him a poet. Indeed, such his language, that he is dumb in effect to the readers of this our age, without an interpreter, and such a one will hardly be procured. Antiquaries, among whom Mr Selden, more value him for his history than poetry, his lines being neither strong nor smooth, but sometimes sharp." Camden, however, speaks more favourably of his poetry, and contends, like his editor Hearne, for the merit of his verses on the plea of their being thoroughly English. Robert of Gloucester," says he, " in the time of King Henry the Third, honoured his country with these his best English rimes, which, I doubt not, but some, (although most now are of the new cut,) will give the reading." The lines he quotes will afford as good a sample, perhaps, of his Chronicle, the only work he is known to have written, as could be selected. England is a well good land, in the stead best Set in the one end of the world, and reigneth west. 66 "Old Of folke of the self land, as me hath I sey while But folke it agult, other yeares the worse and worse be. The principal cities are thus briefly characterized :— In the countrey of Canterbury, most plenty of fish is, "Far short," it is shrewdly observed, "was he that would compris the excellencies of England in this one verse:" Montes, fontes, pontes, ecclesiæ, feminæ, lana. Mountains, fountains, bridges, churches, women and wool. It was more, however, owing perhaps to the naturally staid temperament of Robert himself, than to the taste of the age, that his poetry exhibited so few marks of vigour or imagination. Between the period when he flourished and that when the verses were written which exhibit so many traces of fancy, there had elapsed about fifty or sixty years. In that time, the people had been gradually acquiring a greater degree of freedom, and consequently of knowledge and refinement. What is still further to the purpose, there were in existence when this dry chronicle of facts was produced, a variety of chivalrous ballads and romances, remarkable for the strangeness of their fictions, and their unlicensed freedom of imagery. That such must have been in circulation at the time, we may fairly believe, when we consider the state of manners and the events which were then engrossing the thoughts of almost every individual in the kingdom. The crusades had just filled the world with the spirit of enthusiasm and adventure. Consequent on this were a train of new and more strongly excited sympathies than had ever before agitated the minds of men in general. Devotion led some, the love of novelty others, to undertake the perilous enterprize; but whatever was the motive which sent them to the plains of Syria, their course was contemplated by those they left behind with an intense and breathless emotion. Hence poetry would naturally strain every nerve to depict the virtues of the soldiers of the cross: would rejoice in relating their varied fortunes, in proving how well they deserved the applause or the tears which every heart was ready to bestow. But of the poetry which celebrated the grandeur of chivalry and the worth of its professors, few examples remain, few at least that can be ascribed to the age of which we are speaking. When we consider, says Warton, "the feudal manners, and the magnificence of our Norman ancestors, their love of military glory, and the enthusiasm with which they engaged in the crusades, and the wonders to which they must have been familiarized from those eastern enterprises, we naturally suppose, what will hereafter be more particularly proved, that their retinues abounded with minstrels and harpers, and that their chief entertainment was to listen to the recital of romantic and martial adventures." "But," continues the historian, "I have been much disappointed in my searches after the metrical tales which must have prevailed in their times. Most of those old heroic songs have perished, together with the stately castles in whose halls they were sung." We cannot, therefore, tell from an examination of the originals, what was the precise character of the old songs of English chivalry, but the substance of them, it is supposed, was wrought into the metrical romances of which so many specimens still remain, and most of which are strikingly opposed in character to the work of Robert of Gloucester. It is evident, therefore, that there were now in vogue two very distinct species of poetry, and it is not improbable, but that it was owing to this circumstance that the poetry of the next age possessed such high and genuine merit. The unambitious chroniclers, who so readily sacrificed every sparkling of fancy to the plain narrative of facts,—who were only desirous of being historians in rhyme, because in that form they would be more generally read, and the facts they related better remembered,—the writers of this class did, there is little doubt, important service to the poetical literature of the country, by teaching the people to regard verse as a fit medium for regular and sustained narrative, and thereby to look for those species of poetry in which fiction is imitative of reality, and the likenesses unbroken by any thing heterogeneous in the medium through which we see them. The obscurity which attends the personal fortunes and character of Robert of Gloucester pertains to most of the names which occur in the literary history of this period. There is not even a traditional lustre to attract the attention of the antiquarian to their fates. But it is in this as in other cases: the want of biographical materials is in great measure compensated for by the historical interest attached to the compositions of these obscure writers, and it is to that consequently, even the student of biography, when he passes a certain line in the annals of either this or any other nation, will chiefly direct his thoughts Robert Mannyng. FLOR. CIRC. A. D. 1270. THIS writer, like Robert of Gloucester, with whom he was cotemporary, was a monk, and belonged to the monastery of Brunne, or Bourne, near Depyng in Lincolnshire, of which he was a Gilbertine canon. A passage occurs in one of his poems, in which he alludes to his early education, and, according to the interpretation of Mr Ellis, it may be decided therefrom, that he was a native of Malton, and flourished as late as the reign of Edward the Third. The lines are: In the Third Edward's time was 1, |