to be considered really poetry, because entirely a fiction of the imagination. The text of Wace is enlarged throughout, and in many passages to such an extent, particularly after the birth of Arthur, that one line is dilated into twenty; names of persons and localities are constantly supplied, and not unfrequently interpolations occur of entirely new matter, to the extent of more than a hundred lines. Layamon often embellishes and improves on his copy, and the meagre narrative of the French poet is heightened by graphic touches and details, which give him a just claim to be considered, not as a mere translator, but as an original writer.'

After giving a minute account of the more remarkable additions to Wace, Sir Frederick observes,

'That Layamon was indebted for some of these legends to Welsh traditions not recorded in Geoffrey of Monmouth or Wace, is scarcely to be questioned; and they supply an additional argument in support of the Many circumstances opinion that the former was not a mere inventor. incidentally mentioned by Layamon are to be traced to a British origin -as, for instance, the notice of Queen Judon's death; the mention of Taliesin and his conference with Kimbelin; the traditionary legends relative to Arthur; the allusions to several prophecies of Merlin; and the names of various personages which do not appear in the Latin or French writers. References are occasionally made to works extant in the time of Layamon, but which are not now to be recognised. From these and other passages, it may be reasonable to conclude that the author of the poem had a mind richly stored with legendary lore, and had availed himself, to a considerable extent, of the information to be derived from written sources. We know that he understood both French and Latin; and when we consider that these varied branches of knowledge were combined in the person of an humble priest of a small church in one of the midland counties, it would seem to be no unfair inference that the body of the clergy, and perhaps the upper classes of the laity, were not in so low a state of ignorance at the period when Layamon wrote, as some writers have represented.'-Preface, vol. i. pp. xiii.-xvii.

After showing that the date of the composition of the poem may with great probability be fixed about A.D. 1205, and that the influence of Norman models, though considerable as to the external form of the work, was insignificant with relation to its phraseology, the editor observes,—

'It is a remarkable circumstance, that we find preserved in many passages of Layamon's poem the spirit and style of the earlier AngloSaxon writers. No one can read his descriptions of battles and scenes of strife without being reminded of the Ode on Ethlestan's victory at Brunan-burh. The ancient mythological genders of the sun and moon are still unchanged, the memory of the witena-gemot has not yet become extinct, and the neigh of the hængest still seems to resound in our ears.

Very

Very many phrases are purely Anglo-Saxon, and, with slight change, might have been used in Cædmon or Elfric. A foreign scholar and poet (Grundtvig), versed both in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian literature, has declared that, tolerably well read as he is in the rhyming chronicles of his own country and of others, he has found Layamon's beyond comparison the most lofty and animated in its style, at every moment reminding the reader of the splendid phraseology of AngloSaxon verse. It may also be added, that the colloquial character of much of the work renders it peculiarly valuable as a monument of language, since it serves to convey to us, in all probability, the current speech of the writer's time as it passed from mouth to mouth.'-pp. xxiii., xxiv.

The justice of the above criticism will be manifest to any one who, with a competent knowledge of Layamon's language, compares his orations and descriptions of battles with the corresponding passages of Wace or Robert of Gloucester. In the latter everything is flat and tame, many degrees below Geoffrey of Monmouth's prose in point of graphic power and animation; but Layamon often shows considerable skill and discrimination in selecting those parts of the narrative most capable of poetic embellishment; and, though he had to struggle with a language which was ceasing to be Anglo-Saxon but had not yet become English, he not unfrequently manifests great felicity of diction, and a ready command of words suitable to the subject. Much of this must be necessarily lost on the mere English scholar, as the proper appreciation of it depends upon the perception of the true force and import of the Saxon and semi-Saxon terms that stitute the chief staple of the poem. We therefore recommend those who wish to form a judgment of the merits of our early English epic to devote a little attention to the language of Alfred and his predecessors; and, whatever they may think of the Brut,' they may at all events acquire a kind of knowledge creditable to an Englishman, and capable of becoming useful in a variety of ways. Those who are unwilling to pass this ordeal must content themselves with Sir Frederick Madden's translation.

con.

We cannot conclude our remarks on the original sources and character of Layamon's work without a few words on the obligations of our own literature and that of all Western Europe to a writer whom it has been greatly the fashion to abuse-Geoffrey of Monmouth. We leave entirely out of the question the truth or falsehood of his narrative. Scarcely a Welshman of the old school could now be found to vouch for Brutus's colonization of Britain; though we dare say it is to the full as true as the settlement of Italy by Æneas, and many other things gravely recorded by Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The merit of Geoffrey consists in having collected a body of legends highly sus

ceptible

ceptible of poetic embellishment, which, without his intervention, might have utterly perished, and interwoven them in a narrative calculated to exercise a powerful influence on national feelings and national literature. The popularity of the work is proved by the successive adaptations of Wace, Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Mannyng, and others; and its influence on the literature of Europe is too notorious to be dwelt upon.* It became, as Mr. Ellis well observes, one of the corner-stones of romance; and there is scarcely a tale of chivalry down to the sixteenth century which has not directly or indirectly received from it much of its colouring. Some matter-of-fact people, who would have mercilessly committed the whole of Don Quixote's library to the flames, Palmerin of England included, may perhaps think this particular effect of its influence rather mischievous than beneficial. We are far from sympathizing with such a feeling. Whatever might be the blemishes of this species of literature, it was suited to the taste and requirements of the age, and tended to keep up a high and honourable tone of feeling that often manifested itself in corresponding actions. Above all, we must not forget that it is to the previous existence of this class of compositions that we are indebted for some of the noblest productions of human intellect. If it were to be conceded that Wace, Layamon, and the whole cycle of romances of the Round Table might have been consigned to oblivion without any serious injury to the cause of literature, we may be reminded that Don Quixote certainly, and Ariosto's Orlando most probably, arose out of them. Perhaps Gorboduc, and Ferrex and Porrex, might not be much missed from the dramatic literature of Europe; but what should we think of the loss of Lear and Cymbeline? Let us, then, thankfully remember Geoffrey of Monmouth, to whom Shakespeare was indebted for the groundwork of those marvellous productions, and without whose Historia Britonum' we should probably never have had them. A spark is but a small matter in itself; but it may serve to kindle a light for all nations.'

The metre of Layamon is remarkable for its constant fluctuation between two perfectly distinct systems, the alliterative distich of the Anglo-Saxons, and the more recent rhymed couplet partially employed by the early Welsh bards, and on a still more extensive scale by the Norman trouvères. Supposing that we have the

*See particularly Mr. Panizzi's remarks on the influence of Celtic legends, in the Essay on the Romantic Narrative Poetry of the Italians, prefixed to his edition of the Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, vol. i. pp. 34-46, 390-92, &c. Mr. Beresford Hope has made an amusing attempt to show that Geoffrey's story of Brutus and his descendants may be substantially true.—Essays, pp. 95—141.

poem

poem nearly as the author left it, this irregularity is a strong indication of the rudimentary and unsettled state of our language and literature at the commencement of the thirteenth century. The remarks of the editor will place the matter in a clearer light:

'The structure of Layamon's poem consists partly of lines in which the alliterative system is preserved, and partly of couplets of unequal length rhyming together. Many couplets indeed occur which have both of these forms, whilst others are often met with which possess neither. The latter, therefore, must have depended wholly on accentuation, or have been corrupted in transcription. The relative proportion of each of these forms is not to be ascertained without extreme difficulty, since the author uses them everywhere intermixed, and slides from alliteration to rhyme, or from rhyme to alliteration, in a manner perfectly arbitrary. The alliterative portion, however, predominates on the whole greatly over the lines rhyming together, even including the imperfect or assonant terminations, which are very frequent. In the structure of Layamon's rhyme, Tyrwhitt thought he could perceive occasionally an imitation of the octo-syllabic measure of the French original, while Mitford finds in it the identical triple measure of Piers Ploughman. The subject, however, has been discussed more fully, and with greater learning, by Mr. Guest in his "History of English Rhythms," in which he shows that the rhyming couplets of Layamon are founded on the models of accentuated Anglo-Saxon rhythms of four, five, six, or seven accents. A long specimen is given by him in vol. ii. pp. 114-124, with the accents marked both of the alliterative and rhyming couplets, by which it is seen that those of six and five accents are used most frequently, but that the poet changes at will from the shortest to the longest measure, without the adoption of any consecutive principle. In the later text, as might be expected, both the alliteration and rhyme are often neglected; but these faults may probably be often attributed to the errors of the scribe.'-pp. xxiv., xxv.

This is perhaps all that, in the present state of our information, can be safely advanced on the subject of Layamon's metrical system. The rhythmical irregularities here adverted to are the more remarkable when contrasted with Langland, who, though a century and a half later, adheres with the utmost strictness to the alliterative system of the Anglo-Saxons; and with Orm, who, in a work of about the same extent, employs scrupulously throughout the fifteen-syllable couplet, without either rhyme or alliteration, but modulated with an exactness of rhythm which shows that he had no contemptible ear for the melody of versification. It is true that in this instance we have the rare advantage of possessing the author's autograph, a circumstance which cannot with confidence be predicated of any other considerable work of the same period. The author was, moreover, as Mr. Thorpe observes, a kind of critic in his own language; and we therefore find in his

work

work a regularity of orthography, grammar, and metre, hardly to be paralleled in the same age. All this might in a great measure disappear in the very next copy; for fidelity of transcription was no virtue of the thirteenth or the fourteenth century, at least with respect to vernacular works. It becomes, therefore, in many cases a problem of no small complication to decide with certainty respecting the original metre or language of a given mediæval composition, with such data as we now possess. As the general subject, and its particular application to the work of Layamon, present several points of considerable interest, we shall devote a little space to the discussion of them. Sir F. Madden says:

6

With respect to the dialect in which Layamon's work is written, we can have little difficulty in assuming it to be that of North Worcestershire, the locality in which he lived; but as both the texts of the poem in their present state exhibit the forms of a strong western idiom, the following interesting question immediately arises-how such a dialect should have been current in one of the chief counties of the kingdom of Mercia? The origin of this kingdom, as Sir Francis Palgrave has remarked, is very obscure; but there is reason to believe that a mixed race of people contributed to form and to occupy it. We may therefore conclude, either that the Hwiccas were of Saxon rather than Angle origin, or that, subsequent to the union of Mercia with the kingdom of Wessex, the western dialect gradually extended itself from the south of the Thames, as far as the courses of the Severn, the Wye, the Tame, and the Avon, and more or less pervaded the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Warwick, and Oxford.

'That this western dialect extended throughout the Channel counties from east to west, and was really the same as the southern, appears from a remarkable passage in Giraldus Cambrensis (written in 1204), in which he says, "As in the southern parts of England, and chiefly about Devonshire, the language now appears more unpolished (incomposita), yet in a far greater degree savouring of antiquity-the northern parts of the island being much corrupted by the frequent incursions of the Danes and Norwegians-so it observes more the propriety of the original tongue, and the ancient mode of speaking. Of this you have not only an argument but a certainty, from the circumstance that all the English books of Bede, Rabanus, King Alfred, or any others, will be found written in the forms proper to this idiom.' It is difficult at present to understand how far Giraldus meant to assimilate together the spoken language of Devonshire and the written works of Alfred and others, but in all probability the chief difference must have consisted in pronunciation, and in the disregard of certain grammatical forms, which would not of themselves constitute a separate dialect. There can be no doubt that the written language, previous to the Conquest, was more stable in its character, and more observant of orthographical and grammatical accuracy, than the spoken; but it is impossible to collate together Anglo-Saxon manuscripts without being struck with the occasional use of anomalous forms, which are termed by grammarians, rather too arbitrarily perhaps,

corruptions.