of Archbishop Baldwin when, with a train of clergy, he preached a crusade through Wales. This caused him to write his Itinerary of Wales. In the following year, 1189, Gerald seems to have been present at the death of Henry II. He returned to Wales, and refused the bishopric of Bangor, which fell vacant while Prince John, during his brother Richard's absence, was managing the kingdom. His assigned reason for the refusal was a desire to resume study at Paris; the real reason a desire to wait for the bishopric of St. David's, that he might battle from that vantage-ground for the independence of the Welsh Church. War stopped him on the road to Paris, and Welsh Gerald then withdrew to Lincoln, at that time famous for its theological school. There he remained until 1198, when the see of St. David's again became vacant. The chapter of St. David's again elected Gerald, but the Archbishop of Canterbury refused to ratify the election. No Welshman, least of all Welsh Gerald, was to have the see. Gerald struggled against the archbishop's decision, travelled alone to the pope through a country made dangerous by war which had broken out between Philip Augustus and the Earl of Flanders, and reached Rome in November, 1199. Innocent III. there trifled with his suit; his zeal for the honour and independence of St. David's became a pontifical joke; and at home Gerald was attainted of treason. But when he found his cause to be helpless, Gerald's prompt energy of character enabled him to throw its burden off. He suddenly reappeared in England, frankly conceded the point he had been unable to gain, was repaid the costs of his suit, received sixty marks a year of preferment, and passed the remaining seventeen years of his life in peace. Among the many books produced by Gerald's active mind was one written in the reign of Richard I., called Gemma Ecclesiastica, or Jewel of the Church. He wrote also, in the reign of John, an autobiographical sketch, in three parts, De Rebus a se Gestis (Of the Things done by Himself), and when near the close of his life, a Symbolum Electorum, in four parts, containing (1), his Letters; (2), his Poems; (3), the descriptions of characters given in his works, and the orations put by him in the mouths of persons of his story; and (4), a collection of his prefaces.

25. The patriotic feeling which dictated the chief ambition of Gerald du Barri's life was strong in Wales in his time. Endeavours of our Norman kings to bring the Welsh into subjection produced in them an energy of contest for the rights and liberties

TO A.D. 1216.]

WELSH POETS. ROBERT GROSSETESTE.

71 which men hold dear. Whenever the soul of a people is stirred by a contest that brings out the nobler energies of men, its voice, the literature of the people, acquires higher dignity and power. Struggle for life and liberty against the force of Persia gave to Greece the full expression of her genius. The blossom time of our old Gaelic poetry, in the days of the battle of Gabhra, came of the struggle of a clan against the force which threatened its extinction. The blossom time of the old Cymric poetry, in the days of the battle of Cattraeth, came of the struggle of the Celts against invading Teutons. And thus it is that we find a famous second period of Cymric poetry which corresponds exactly to the time of the Welsh struggle for independence against the power of the Anglo-Norman kings, or from the latter part of the reign of Stephen to the extinction of Welsh independence at the death of Llewellyn in 1282. During this period Meilyr, Gwalchmai, Owain Prince of Powis, Prince Howel, Kynddelw, Llywarch ab Llywelyn, and many others became famous for the songs through which they poured the spirit of their countrymen. It was also during this period that Welsh fancy fastened upon the King Arthur stories, and told those and others in the language of the Cymry, as the romances of the Mabinogion. That word is the plural of the Cymric word Mabinogi, which (from Mab, a child) means entertainment or instruction for the young.

What is here said of Welsh literature is true not only of the reign of John and the preceding years, but also of the succeeding reign of Henry III., and of the earlier part of the reign of Edward I. We have now to complete the sketch of English literature in King John's time.

26. Gervase of Tilbury studied in foreign schools, and served abroad the Emperor Otho IV., for whom he wrote, about the year 1211, his Otia Imperialia, full of learning borrowed without acknowledgment from Petrus Comestor, but also an amusing book, most rich in illustration of the traditions, popular superstitions, history, geography, and science of its time.

27. There was no service of the foreigner in Robert Grosseteste, a man twenty-eight years younger than Gerald du Barri, who contended for the independence of the English Church as heartily as Gerald wished to contend for the independence or the Church of Wales. Grosseteste, whose name was variously spelt, and who was called also Grosthead, made himself famous

among the English people, by continuing in his own way the labour towards Church reform, which had already found expression in the writings of Nigel Wireker and Walter Map. Robert Grosseteste was born of poor parents at Stradbrook, in Suffolk, about the year 1175. He studied perhaps at Paris as well as at Oxford, where he graduated in divinity, and became master of the schools. Grosseteste was contemporary with the founders of those orders of friars, the Franciscans and Dominicans, who represented, in their first institution, a strong effort to give to the Church unity of faith and a pure Christian discipline. Dominic was five years older, Francis of Assisi seven years younger than Robert Grosseteste, who became, in 1224, at the request of Agnellus, the provincial minister of the Franciscans in England, their first rector at Oxford.

Francis of Assisi, the son of a rich merchant, gave himself to the service of God by visiting with Christian love the leprous and plague-smitten haunts of the very poor and ignorant, from which the clergy held too much aloof. By his example he gathered others to his work of bringing religion home to the hearts of wretched men by works of loye. Francis and his brethren were first organised into a distinct body about the year 1209, when John was King of England. They abjured wealth and learning of the schools, that they might draw nearer to the poor, and trust the strength of Christian sympathy and Christian deeds for winning souls to God. It is remarkable that this abjuration of book learning opened a way to knowledge. Their mission of healing to the poor made the Franciscans students of Nature. In energetic and devoted men the intellect could not remain inactive, and the Franciscans became good physicians. To the best of their opportunity they explored secrets of Nature; and we shall find them presently yielding to England in a pupil of Grosseteste's her first great experimental philosopher.

Side by side with the Franciscans arose the Dominicans or Preaching Friars. The Spaniard Dominic was a devout theologian, whose deep conviction it was that, as there could be no salvation in heaven so there should be no mercy on earth for the heretic; that heresy already formed must be uprooted; and that its formation in after time was to be checked or prevented by the labours of a devout and well-trained order of preachers, able to demonstrate the truth of orthodox opinions and, by Church scholarship and strength of argument, to confute

TO A.D. 1216.]

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73

doubts as they arose. For this reason Dominic set on foot the work of his Dominicans, which also was begun in the days when John was King of England, and was organised by Pope Innocent III. at the close of that crusade against Waldensian heresy in Languedoc, in which, when one of the leaders of the bloody work asked a Cistercian abbot how, after the storm of a town, he was to know heretic from faithful, "Slay them all," said the abbot," and the Lord will know his own." King John had been dead eight years when Robert Grosseteste became head of the Franciscans at Oxford. During John's reign he had written Latin books of philosophy and Latin verse. The more important part of his life will have to be told in association with the other evidences of the course of English thought in the reign of Henry III.

But we

28. One other feature of our literature in the reign of John remains to be described, and that is the appearance of books written in the language of the people. Hitherto, since the Conquest, nearly all writing of mark had been in Latin; and those books which were not in Latin were in French. begin now to find writers in English, and the earliest of these is Layamon. Layamon, the son of Leovenath, called in the later text of his poem, Laweman, the son of Leuca, was a priest who read the services of the Church at Ernley, now Areley Kings, three or four miles from Bewdley, in Worcestershire. Living in the days when Geoffrey of Monmouth's Chronicle and Wace's French metrical version of it were new books in high fame among the educated and the courtly, "it came to him in mind, and in his chief thought," that he would tell the famous story to his countrymen in English verse. He made a long journey in search of copies of the books on which he was to found his poem; and when he had come home again, as he says, "Layamon laid down those books and turned the leaves; he beheld them lovingly; may the Lord be merciful to him!" Then, blending literature with his parish duties, the good priest began his work. Priest in a rural district, he was among those who spoke the language of the country with the least mixture of Norman French, and he developed Wace's "Brut" into a completely English poem, with so many additions from his own fancy, or his own knowledge of West country tradition, that, while Wace's "Brut" is a poem of 15,300 lines, in Layamon's Brut, the number of lines is 32,250. Layamon's verse is the old First English un-rhymed measure with alliteration, less regular

in its structure than in First English times, and with an occasional slip into rhyme. Battles are described as in First English poems. Here, as in First English poetry, there are few similes, and those which occur are simply derived from natural objects. There is the same use of a descriptive synonym for man or warrior. There is the old depth of earnestness that rather gains than loses dignity by the simplicity of its expression. From internal evidence, it appears that the poem was completed about the year 1205. It comes down to us in two thirteenth-century MSS., one written a generation later than the other, and there are many variations of their text; but the English is so distinctly that of the people in a rural district, that in the earlier MS. the whole poem contains less than fifty words derived from the Norman, and some of these might have come direct from Latin. In the second MS. about twenty of those words do not occur, but forty others are used. Thus the two MSS., in their 56,800 lines, do not contain more than ninety words of Norman origin. In its grammatical structure Layamon's English begins for us the illustration of the gradual loss of inflexions, and other changes, during the transition of the language from First English to its present form. It has been called semi-Saxon. It is better called Transition English of Worcestershire in the beginning of the thirteenth century.

29. A writer named Ormin, or Orm, began also, in the reign of King John, another English poem of considerable extent, called, from his own name, the Ormulum. He tells of himself in the dedication of his book that he was a regular canon of the order of St. Augustine, and that he wrote in English at the request of Brother Walter, also an Augustinian canon, for the spiritual improvement of his countrymen. The plan of his book is to give to the English people in their own tongue, and in an attractive form, the spiritual import of the Church Services throughout the year. He gave first a metrical paraphrase of the portion of the Gospel assigned to each day, and added to each portion of it a metrical Homily in which it was expounded doctrinally and practically, with frequent borrowing from the writings of Ælfric, and some borrowing from Bede. The metre is in alternate verses of eight and seven syllables, in imitation of a Latin rhythm; or in lines of fifteen syllables with a metrical point at the end of the eighth, thus :--"This boc iss nemmned Ormulum, Forthi that Orm itt wrohhte"