into half-dramatic dialogue led to further advance in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by elaboration of the short Scriptural speeches, and by the insertion of new verses, always based on Scripture, that were sung in character. The piece from the first was closed with the Te Deum. That the earliest arrangement of this passage of Scripture for the Church services at Easter, whether in France or Germany, was devised by one man is reasonably inferred from the resemblance of all early copies to one another, not only in the treatment of the passage from Mark's gospel, but in the introduction of one passage from the corresponding part of the gospel of Matthew; he is risen, 66 as he said." In a Paris MS. of the eleventh century, and one at Einsiedeln of the twelfth, the lines run thus :—

The Einsiedeln MS. represents this as preceded by a Song of the Prophets, answered by a Chorus of the Church; the Paris MS. places before it only the short chorus, "Psallite regi magno, devicto mortis imperio." Another MS. edited by Martene* gives directions as to the manner of presentFour monks dress for it, during the third reading. One dressed in white, with a palm branch in his hand, who is to represent the angel, enters as if he came in for some

ment.

* "De Antiquis monachorum ritibus."

66

other purpose, and sits down quietly by the place that represents the tomb. When the responses are over, the remaining three enter capped, with censers of incense, with movement of hands and feet as if in search of something; they represent the women coming with sweet spices to anoint the Lord. When they approach the one who represents the angel, he begins to sing with a sweet voice, “Whom seek ye?" And when at the close of the dialogue the angel has said, 'Go, tell that he has risen from the dead," the direction is that the three who represent the women shall then turn to the chorus, saying, "Alleluia ! The Lord is risen!" Then he who represents the angel, as if recalling them, shall speak the antiphone (from Matthew xxviii. 6), "Come, see the place where the Lord lay," and shall draw a veil and show the place from which the corpse had been lifted, but with linen lying to represent graveclothes in which it had been wrapped; and they who represent the women taking up the linen and holding it towards the chorus, as manifesting that the Lord is risen and has put off the garment of death, shall sing the antiphone,

"The Lord is risen from the sepulchre,”

and place the linen on the altar. When the anthem is finished the Prior, joining in the triumph of our King, shall begin the hymn, TE DEUM LAUDAMUS.

CHAPTER VI.

WALTER MAP.

THE traveller seaward, over inland hill and plain, wearied at times by the long stretches of flat moor that he must cross upon his way, knows by the freshened breeze

Walter Map.

when he comes near the coast, and at the first sight of the distant water draws a glad breath and believes that he can smell the sea. So may it be now with us when the large wholesome spirit of English Chaucer, towards whom we are travelling, flashes upon us suddenly from afar, as we cross the high ground where dwells Walter Map. It is Gerald de Barri's friend, the Archdeacon of Oxford, the same pleasant and courteous Walter Map who called Gerald's attention to the fact that his own less valuable works were widely read because they were written in the vernacular, while Gerald's better Latin books found few learned enough to do them justice. Walter Map was no trivial jester, although the misreading of a piece of his most scathing satire has attached to him the cant name of "the jovial Archdeacon."

Undoubtedly he had a lively wit, could make even an abbot blush, and send table companions out of doors to explode in laughter at his broad contemptuous jest against a blasphemous hypocrisy.* He was a wit somewhat of

* Witness his comment at the table of Gilbert Foliot Bishop of London on the failure of Saint Bernard to raise a dead boy to life by lying on him." De Nugis Curialium," Distinct. i., cap. 24.

Chaucer's pattern, ready against cowled hypocrites, and striking, as Chaucer often did, after the manner of his time, with a coarse jest out of the strength of a clean heart. It was the wit also of a true poet. Among the high dignitaries of the Roman Church he was an entirely orthodox divine, and looked down from the heights of theological scholarship upon what seemed to him the ignorant piety of the Waldenses. But the first Church reform concerned Church morals more nearly than theology, and in this sense, by his Latin verse and prose, Walter Map represents the chief of the Reformers before Wyclif. In French, then the vernacular tongue of English literature, he it was who gave a soul to the Arthurian romances, writing, most probably, the Latin original of Robert Borron's introductory romance of the Saint Graal, and certainly Lancelot of the Lake, the Quest of the Saint Graal, and the Mort Artus. Unassuming as Chaucer, and, before Chaucer, the man of highest genius in our literature, Map was a frank man of the world with ready sympathies, a winning courtesy, warm friendships, and wellplanted hatreds. He especially detested a Cistercian. And is there not a report that Chaucer in his youth was "fined two shillings for beating a Franciscan friar in Fleet Street ?"

Among his many and various labours in illustration of the life and literature of the Middle Ages, special thanks are due to Mr. Thomas Wright for having been the first to rescue the Latin works of Walter Map from the obscurity of MS., and add them to the series of the Camden Society's well-edited volumes.*

"The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes, collected and edited by Thomas Wright, M.A., &c. London: Printed for the Camden Society" (1841). "Gualteri Mapes de Nugis Curialium Distinctiones Quinque. Edited from the Unique MS. in the Bodleian by Thomas Wright. Printed for the Camden Society" (1850). why did the Editor, admitting his author's name to be Map, follow those who have called him Mapes? He writes himself Map (not even

But

He

Walter Map was born on the marches of Wales. calls the Welsh his countrymen, and England our mother." In the early story of our literature we have often to notice the enlivening influence of Celtic blood. The Scot blood in Erigena followed in France with livelier and bolder speculation the monastic sturdiness of Yorkshire Alcuin. And so it was in the days of Henry II. The King of England, ruling not only over Normandy and over Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, but also, by his marriage with Eleanor of Poitou, over Poitou and Guienne, Lord over poets of the Langue d'Oc and of the Langue d'Oyl, had the richest court in Europe. The appointed duties of this world occupied the minds even of monks. The Church had failed in her natural struggle to retain political ascendency, and keep her servants independent of the civil power, while some men were discovering that there is religion in well-spent activity of life, and many time-servers were finding the reward they sought outside the monastery walls. The stream of literature widened as it was swollen by fresh interests, and broke, from its first seclusion between walls of stone, into the open country. And at this time, in busy growing England, three men with Cymric blood in their veins were foremost spirits of a small Augustan age. They were Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gerald de Barri, who was half Welsh, half Norman, and Walter Map, who claimed the Cymry for his countrymen. We may remember, too, that Orderic was a man of the Welsh border, and that William of Malmesbury was born of intermarriage between Norman and Saxon. The pure AngloSaxon mind at this stage of its life is as the good flour being mixed with the good yeast. Born on the marches of Wales, about the year 1137, of a family that had done good service to King Henry II., both before and after his accession,

Latinised into Mapus) in the very book Mr. Wright edits, and is always called Map, with an occasional variation of the vowel, as Maep, in the old French Arthurian MSS.