afterwards called Maglamis le Rois Descoce, and we are later told that Leir went to that monarch's court in Scotland; but, later still, it appears that Leir went to his other son-in-law, the husband of Ragau, who lived in Scotland (“qui Ragau avoit, et qui en Escoce mariot ").1

There are some

Leir, after his

We now come to the first English, or rather SemiSaxon or Mercian, rendering of the story. Layamon, a priest of Ernley on Severn, included it in his long poem. The Brut, founded on Wace, and written at the beginning of the thirteenth century. In this account, which is far the longest and best of all the non-dramatic renderings of the tale known to us, Wace's French account, though on the whole followed, is greatly amplified. Geoffrey is also followed, but this fine and graphic rendering has much original matter (see Sir Frederick Madden's edition, 3 vols. 1847, vol. i. pp. 123-158). strange inconsistencies in Layamon. eldest daughter has pleased him with her reply, and before he has heard what her sisters have to say, declares, "thou shalt have the best share of my land," though he had said a little before, "I will prove which of my daughters loves me most, and she shall have the best share of my lordly land." Again, though we are told several times that Leir divided all his land between his two sons-in-law, Maglanus and Henninus (or Hemeri), yet later we read "that the Scottish King and the Duke spake together that they should have all the land in their own hand, and feed Leyre while he lived with forty

1 See Le Roman de Brut par Wace par M. le Roux de Lincy, Rouen, 1836, tom. i. pp. 81-98; from line 1697 to 2096.

t

t

knights," the probable meaning is that Leir's resignation was only nominal, and that he still kept much power in his own hands. Again, though here as in Geoffrey, Leir declares after disinheriting Cordoylle, that the Duke of Cornwall shall have Gornoille, and the Scottish King Regau the fair, yet, later, at the division of the kingdom, we read, as in Shakespeare, "he gave Gornoille to Scotland's King, and Cornwall's duke he gave Regau." Layamon, in the course of his exciting narrative, has some points which recall Shakespeare. We are told

several times a detail which is in no other pre-Shakepearian account, "that the two dukes found Leir hawks and hounds." This reminds us of Lear (I. iii. 8, 9), where Goneril says, "When he returns from hunting I will not speak with him," and soon after, just before Lear's entrance, we notice the old stage-direction of the Folio, "Horns within." It is very remarkable also, I think, that Leir, when excited, invokes Apollo as the Lear of Shakespeare does (1. i. 160); addressing his youngest child, he says, "I will hear, so help me, Apollo, how dear is my life to thee." Again, in The Brut, Maglaunus, like Albany, is mild, pleading with his fierce wife in Leir's favour, and opposing the lessening of his train, and Gornoille's scornful reply to him, "Be thou still, let me all be" (ie. leave me to manage), reminds us of Goneril's reply to Albany under similar conditions, "Pray you content" (Lear, I. iv. 355). And in The Brut as in Lear, Cornwall is savage and cruel-more so, indeed, than Regau; when she proposes to him to do away with twenty of her father's knights, and let ten suffice, we read, "Then Duke Hemeri, who betrayed his old father,

said, 'As I live, he shall have but five knights!" Other small points are these:-Gornoille, as we have seen she did in Wace, complains of her father's dotage; in Shakespeare (I. iv. 278) Lear says, "Woe that too late repents," while in The Brut Leir says, "Woe worth the man that hath land with honour, and giveth it unto his child while he may hold it, for oft it chanceth that he repents it." This account also most tallies with Shakespeare's picture of the old king's hundred knights with their crowd of squires. In the later accounts there is little or no mention made of Leir's retinue; in Layamon's account Leir lives with his retinue of forty armed knights (sixty in Geoffrey), with thane and swain and squire, with horse, and hawk, and hound; and the mention of the "knights' inn" recalls Goneril's complaint about their quarter in her palace, which she says "shows like a riotous inn" (I. iv. 264).

After The Brut, we come on the Leir story in the metrical chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (written after 1297). He tells it, greatly abbreviated, from Layamon's account; the story takes up 184 lines of seven (rarely six) accents. We read that after the dukes take the old king's land "the King of Scotland, against his wife's Gornoril's advice, takes him with sixty knights into his house." No reason is assigned for Leir questioning his daughters, except that he is about to give them away in marriage.1

Nearly half a century later, Robert Mannyng, of Brunne, in Lincolnshire, deals with the story in about

1See Mr. W. Aldis Wright's edition, Roll's Series, 1887, vol. i. pp. 50-64, lines 680-864.

280 lines of four accents. This part of his chronicle, we are often told, is translated from Wace; but Mannyng certainly does not follow Wace's Leir story closely; the circumstances leading to the questioning depart from Wace's account, and from Geoffrey's; it is parallel with that in Robert of Gloucester. Robert Mannyng tells us that soon they began ' to abate his lieure '" (compare " to scant my sizes," Lear, II. iv. 178), and afterwards they began "to abate his meyne" (meiny, retinue) of forty knights.

to

There is a Latin version of our story in the Flores Historiarum, that chronicle formerly attributed Mathew of Westminster. Exactly the same account

to a letter is found in the Chronica Majora of Mathew Paris, but this part of Paris' chronicle Luard has shown conclusively to be a thing of shreds and patches, in which he levies toll from various old chroniclers. This he seems to have taken from the Flores Historiarum, but Luard, in his Preface to the 1890 edition of that work, proves conclusively that Mathew never had a being, and that the Flores is a medley "partly written and partly composed by various writers of St. Albans and Westminster." The Leir story in each is absolutely identical; it takes up about sixty-six lines; the names of the two elder sisters are not given, only Cordeilla; Leir goes to France, attended by a knight and a standard-bearer ("cum uno milite et uno armigero").

And now to come to the English chroniclers. The first of them (if so he may be called), John Trevisa, in

1 See Dr. Furnivall's edition, Roll's Series, 1887, vol. i. pp. 81-91, lines 2267-2564.

2 See Luard edition of the Flores, 1890, vol. i. pp. 31-33; and his edition of the Chronica Majora, 1890, p. 31.

his translation of Higden's Polychronicon (1387), mentions "King Leir which gate (begot) three daughters, of the storys Britones," that is all. John Harding, the metrical chronicler, writing early in the reign of Henry the Sixth, gives a rude account of the story in seven seven-line stanzas (ed. 1812, pp. 52-54): here Regan's husband is described as "Hanemos of Wales and Cornwayle."

Robert Fabyan, in his New Chronicles of England and France, published (after the author's death) in 1516, professes to follow Geoffrey of Monmouth in his account of the story, but differs from him in this, that he entirely omits any reference to a motive for Leyr's question. His account runs thus: "Whane this Leyr, or Leyth, after some writers, was fallen in competent age ('in impotent age,' ed. 1559) to know the mynde of his three daughters, he firste askyd Gonorilla," etc. We find that the story is also briefly told in John Rastell's Chronicle, The Pastime of People, 1529 (ed. 1811, p. 90). This is the only chronicle account which does not follow Geoffrey's statement as to the husbands of the two elder daughters. Richard Grafton, in his Chronicle at large ... of the Affayres of England (1568), follows Fabyan's account almost, if not quite, verbatim (see ed. 1809, pp. 35 and 36). The version in Ralph Holinshed, our next chronicler (1577), has been already dealt with; and it is rather curious that in assigning a cause for Leir's conduct, he seems to follow no previous form of the story. There are several other versions which possibly Shakespeare may have seen, and taken a hint