as all this work may seem, yet the prose in which he wrote was the best prose in the Old English language, and his translations from the Bible are the most intelligently made, not even excepting the work of Wycliffe, before Tyndale in the sixteenth century. Ælfric was not only highly intelligent, but he was also the most careful artist among the older prose writers, as Cynewulf had been the most careful artist among the older poets.

II. MIDDLE-ENGLISH

The historical background. - Middle-English literature might as well be called Norman-English, for it was the conquest of England by William of Normandy in 1066 and the subsequent severe discipline of both English and Normans under William and Henry I and Henry II that made the two races one in blood, in interests, and in language. William's feudal army and his fierce barons brought with them from France what little civilization northern France then possessed, and made easily possible the later influence upon the English people of the wonderful culture of northern France during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Architecture, sculpture, painting, music, poetry, all of these arts have been thought by many not to have reached a higher point at any time than they reached in Italy and France during the early centuries of the Crusades, and it was due to the conquest of England by William of Normandy that the influence of these arts could reach England's isolated shores. It was during the centuries from 1200 to 1500 that the Gothic cathedrals, with all the wealth of sculpture, painting, and music that followed them, were begun in northern France and England. It was during these centuries that great wars with France were almost constantly in progress, and this meant a constant contact with the rich culture which France was absorbing from Italy along with that which she was cultivating upon her own part.

Close touch with the science and learning and commerce of the East did not come until the next, or Renaissance period, which was most powerful after the fall of Constantinople into the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1453. But the Norman court,, the Norman clergy, and the Norman and English soldiers who went upon the continent to war for the possession of French territory, and those who went much farther, even to the Holy Land, as crusaders, or soldiers of the cross, in order to wrest from the Saracens the Holy Sepulcher, all of these helped greatly to make the production of the literature which flowered during this Middle- or Norman-English period, from 1154 to 1500,

I. To Chaucer

Layamon. While the Anglo-Saxon period of English literature closed with the ending of the Chronicle in 1154, yet it was not until 1200 that the Middle-English period began to be fruitful. It was about that date, usually said to be 1205, that Layamon wrote his Brut, or Brutus. Layamon borrowed his material. In 1147 Geoffrey of Monmouth had completed writing his History of the Kings of Britain. He had written it in Latin. It was a wonderful storybook. Incorporated within it were many ancient traditions from Wales. Then, in 1155, a writer named Wace had produced a book entitled Brut, borrowing much material from Geoffrey of Monmouth. Wace wrote his book in French. At last, Layamon in his turn borrowed from both Geoffrey and Wace, and in an English poem of 32,000 lines with less than fifty French words among them, introduced into purely English literature the Welsh traditions out of which grew the stories which Malory and Tennyson have converted into the legends of Arthur and the Round Table. Layamon is a man to be remembered for three reasons: because he made these old

British tales truly English, because his poetry was the best poetry in English since the days of Cynewulf, and because it was he who first told, so far as we know, the story of the Passing of Arthur.

Ballads; comic poems; romances; histories; religious and moral writings. The time from Layamon to the middle of the fourteenth century is rich in various kinds of literature. There are the popular ballads; there are the comic poems, such as The Fox and the Wolf, and The Owl and the Nightingale; there is that very original work among medieval romances, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; there is Pearl, our earliest In Memoriam and a sort of unorthodox theological argument, probably by the same Lancashire poet who wrote Sir Gawain; there are a few histories, sermons, and religious handbooks; there are the more important religious writings of William Langland and of John Wycliffe; and there are the works of Gower.

Ballads. - A few of the ballads have survived and are as interesting to us as they were to the readers of the thirteenth century. Folk tales furnished much of the material for the longer and earlier epics. They also provided the subject matter for these narrative songs we are here calling ballads. The ballad of Chevy Chase, that of the Twa Corbies, and the Lytell Gestes of Robin Hood are the most interesting of them all.

Comic poems. The monkish Anglo-Saxon writers had been too anxious about the saving of their souls to permit them to give much time to comic writings; but by the time the MiddleEnglish period was well under way much comic writing from the continent had become popular. The two poems in fable manner mentioned above, namely, The Fox and the Wolf and The Owl and the Nightingale, are the best among them all.

Gawain. - The story of Gawain has been called a chivalrous Pilgrim's Progress. The poem is the story of the ordeal, in

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courage, in loyalty, and in temperance, of Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Court. In this poem Gawain is treated as perfect in courtesy, though that has not been the attitude of all the poets who have written of him. The story revolves about a curious incident. While Arthur's court is feasting and awaiting some "main marvel," there rides into the hall of the king a Green Knight upon a green horse, and asks, “" Will any gentleman cut off my head, on condition that I may have a fair blow at him, and no favor, in a twelve-month's time?" Gawain accepts the hazard and cuts off the Green Knight's head, whereupon the head, which is picked up by the Green Knight, speaks, .summoning Gawain to meet him at the Green Chapel in a year's time and await the return blow.

Histories. Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain was, of course, feigned history, or fiction. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was true history, though often that of the states of mind of the monks at Peterborough rather than a record of outward events. But when Henry II, the great Angevin, became king of England in 1154, the chronicling of events began to be done only in Latin prose and in French rhyme. The French rhymers, however, stimulated the singers and sayers in English, among them no rhyming historian excelling in style Robert of Gloucester. Robert had much to inspire him, for he lived during the reign of Edward I, one of the greatest of the medieval kings.

The Travels of Sir John Maundeville is a storybook compiled by Jean de Bourgogne, a physician who died at Liège in 1372. An anonymous writer translated it into English late in the fourteenth century. We mention it here, because it seems to have been known in Chaucer's time, Maundeville is as much a fictive character as are the tales he tells, and the book belongs along with the feigned history by Geoffrey of Monmouth, so far as its

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relation to fact is concerned. But, in its translated form, it is classic English.

Religious and moral writings. - Among religious writings, the Ayenbite of Inwyt (Remorse of Conscience) is sometimes praised by historians of literature, but it is only a translation from the French made in 1340 by a monk at Canterbury, and a very poor translation at that. Its chief interest is that it is extant in the good monk's own handwriting. A work called Ormulum is also preserved in the handwriting of its author; we do not know who he was, though no doubt his name was Orm, for we read, This book is named Ormulum for that Orm it wrought." The book is a plea for the "simple life," but is more famous as a curiosity on account of its peculiar words. Its writer seems to have been a Dane in blood. The Ancren Riwle is the only other work of this sort which we need to think of as of much worth. The book was intended to be a rule book for Anchoresses, but the passages which hold our attention most are those that are humorous, whether so intended or not. For instance, it is related that a nun keeps a cow; when the cow strays she is impounded; the religieuse loses her temper and becomes rather furious in her speech; but in the end she finds it necessary to humble herself, implore the heyward, and pay the damages. Wherefore," says the chronicle, "it is best for nuns to keep a cat only."

While the Pearl had been a kind of theological thesis, intended to prove the somewhat heretical notion that all souls of the blessed are equal in happiness, each being a king or a queen, the Vision Concerning Piers Plowman by William Langland is the work of a passionately zealous moral reformer. The book is not unlike Pilgrim's Progress, though the writer is no such constructive artist as John Bunyan. Since the book is in the form of a dream which came to the author " in a May morning,