ROMANCE OF THE HOLY GRAAL,

And when Seraph them saw, the foe might soon see
His pole-axe fall proudly, with prowess downthrust.
Where the press was thickest, he proved his weapon;
He brake apart brains and bruised the men,
Bore death in his hand and dealt it about him.
He had on high a great-helved hatchet;

With grasp hard he held it in his two hands;
He struck and crushed them, and proved his strength,
That few might fare from him and go to flight.

There were steeds to destroy and struggles to strive in,
Men mightful to meet, and shields through to mall.
They burst hard hauberks and breasts they thrilled;
Shone the sheen of the warriors' blood on the shaft.
They that halted on horse, they hewed down helmets;

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They that held them on foot, they hacked through shoulders.
Lay many swooning for slashing of swords,

And, doomed, in a short while died the death.
There were heads unhoused and helms uplifted;
Hard shields were cloven and shattered in quarters.
They slew man and horse, at a stroke down hurled.1

It cannot be said that the single moments forming this account combine in the mind so as to give a clear picture of the whole. The general impression is nevertheless heightened and carried to the climax by the many forcibly drawn single scenes, that are oftentimes repeated. Happily, it is the tumult and whirl of battle that is here to be treated; and the sensation of stormy, eddying commotion to be called up by the picture is excited by the very manner of presentation. Yet we feel how inadequate these devices of style must prove to other tasks. Our poet has the tact not to attempt portrait or landscape painting, or perhaps it was merely good luck that denied him the opportunity. Detailed descriptions of this kind are entirely wanting in the fragment.

It contains, it is true, only seven hundred and nine verses; the beginning, probably numbering upward of a hundred verses, is lost.

The first of the two fragments of the Alexander romance tells the things that happened before the hero's birth, and the history of his boyhood, and breaks off in the midst of the siege of Byzantium by Philip. It is based upon various originals, some of them historical and some clearly romantic. The first class is represented by the compilation of Radulph of St. Albans (died 1151) and by the Universal History of Orosius; the second, by the Historia Alexandri de proeliis of

1 Joseph of Arimathie, ed. Skeat. v. 489, et seq.

the Arch-Presbyter Leo. The style agrees with this aerivation of the material, sometimes merely summarising in the manner of a chronicle, sometimes falling into the prolixity of the romance. The most brilliant passages of the fragment are in the episode of Nectanabus and Olympias. The poet portrays from head to foot the beauty of the Macedonian queen, but with no better success than has been won by a thousand other poets who have foolishly attempted to rival painting. Very graphic, on the other hand, is the description of the death of Nectanabus at the hand of Alexander. The second fragment, which language, style, and verse refer to the same pen, treats of Alexander's expedition into the land of the Oxydraches, which is followed by his correspondence with Dindimus, king of the Brachmanes, of whose identity with the Oxydraches the author does not seem to have been aware. The diction of these fragments is forcible and expressive; the poet constructs his verse with a stricter observance of the ancient rules of alliteration than most of those who essayed the same form at that time. What we have of his work causes us to regret the loss of so much of it.

The example given by the author of the Alexander was not without result. Another poet, named William, was plainly influenced by him, at least as regards metre and style. In 1355 he translated the French romance of Guillaume de Palerne into English verse, at the commission of the Earl of Hereford, Humphrey de Bohun. The original was a roman d'aventures in short couplets, written towards the end of the twelfth century for the Countess Yolande,1 daughterof Baldwin IV. of Flanders, and it purported to be a translation from the Latin. The fable may have originated among the Normans in Sicily, or southern Italy, and it contained many a topic tempting to the taste of the Middle Ages. A Spanish prince who is transformed into a were-wolf by the sorcery of his wicked stepmother; a Sicilian prince (William, the hero of the story), whose life is sought by his uncle, and whom the good were-wolf carries away from his unsuspecting parents, and brings to the vicinity of Rome; a Roman emperor, who discovers the youth that has been found and brought up by a cowherd, brings him to his court, and assigns

1 At first Countess of Soissons, after 1177, of St. Paul.

WILLIAM OF PALERNE.

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him to his daughter Melior as a page; a tender love-intrigue between William and Melior, that in many details recalls the sentimentality of Greek romances; add to this knightly combats, pursuit, and the "hair-breadth scapes" of the lovers fleeing from Rome, first enveloped in bear-skins and then in deer-skins, and finally the happy meeting of all concerned at Palermo, disenchantment, recognition, reconciliation, and various weddings;-all this, with some lapses into monotony, but in the main, attractively and skilfully, had been told by the French poet.

William, the English imitator, impresses one as a modest, naïvely good humoured, and by no means untalented personage. While he in general closely conforms to the original, he takes liberties with details, and hesitates neither to abridge nor to add much new matter. Although he obliterates a few of the beauties of his model, all in all, he excels the French poet. Happy in the delineation of combat and of love, his main strength lies in the painting of tender or unaffectedly touching scenes, and many a trait thus added bears witness to a refined sense and keen observation. He shows great skill in managing the alliterative verse, which the precedent of the Alexander poet probably led him to adopt; and his apology to the reader for the choice of this metre is quite unnecessary; he tells us that he lacked confidence to write in short couplets:

In this manner William has finished his work, just as it was required by the French, and as far as his wit reached, that was indeed weak. But if everybody is not pleased with the metre, let not the poet have reproach; he would willingly have done better if his wit had in any, way been sufficient.1

We are especially attracted in William of Palerne by the author's mind, which is reflected in the whole work, and is plainly shown in single passages. Rather naïve in his judgment of the relations between William and Melior, that, from a strictly moral standing-point are somewhat questionable, the poet is, at the same time, a man of piety and goodness of heart, capable of appreciating the nobler impulses of human nature, and fond of presenting them; an admirer of virtue and strength in all relations of life, and an advocate of the poor and the weak.

1 Willian of Palerme, v. 5521, et. seq.

II.

At first, the verse combining alliteration and rhyme seems t have been more fully developed and adapted to a wider range of subjects in the northwestern counties, and chiefly in Lancashire. It occurs earliest in romances having to do with Gawayne; this was a favourite theme of poetry at the north, as was the Arthurian saga in general. Cumberland, Westmoreland, the districts between the Tyne and Tweed, and all the south of the Scotland of to-day, are rich in names of places that point to a localising and a more or less independent growth of the Arthurian traditions in that region. This phenomenon is easily accounted for by the long duration of British rule in Strath-Clyde, and the intercourse kept up by these Britons with their own race, on the one side, in Wales, and with the Gaels of Caledonia, on the other.

The short and attractive poem, The Anturs of Arther at the Tarnewathelan (the Adventures of Arthur at Tarn Wadling) is a clear case of the separate growth of known sagamaterial. There is reason to believe that it was written in Lancashire, perhaps about, or some time before the middle of the fourteenth century. A most simple plot, giving opportunity for strong typical scenes, is worked out in somewhat obscure, but picturesque language. The ethical purpose of the author lies in the exhortation to moderation and discretion; but one suspects a more directly practical purpose, and is tempted to ask whom the poet meant to represent by Gawayne, the central subject of the whole. Barring some amplification, the style recalls that of the ballad. The metrical form is a strophe in which nine alliterative, but rhymed long lines are followed by four short lines, the rhyme-sequence being a ba bababcddd c. Like Laurence Minot, the author is fond of connecting the close of one strophe with the beginning of the next by words of identical or similar sound.

Another writer, also nameless, appears in the sixties or seventies of the century, not very long after the poet of Arthur's adventures. This writer has stamped himself upon several works, so that we are able to portray him with some exactness. This is worth while because his was a personality of moment.

But in no case long before 1350, and still less before 1300, as has been claimed.

POET OF THE SIR GAWAYNE.

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It is hard to determine his rank in life. After being educated at the cloister-school, he probably entered the house of some nobleman, where he was occupied as scribe or reader, or perhaps as director of the minstrels. Although versed in Latin and French, and tolerably well-read both in the Bible and profane literature, he was also at home in the mysteries of the hunt and in other knightly exercises. He knew wel! how a knight was armed, and what occurred in courtly circles at festivals, at the reception of strangers, et cetera; for he had often seen them. He evidently took pleasure in this merry, brilliant life.

But he was especially attracted by nature. His musing disposition found charm in watching her in the different phases of the year, and he seems acquainted by personal observation with a great part of western England, traversed perhaps in company with his lord, or at his behest. Nor did he know the ocean from a merely fleeting view; he describes it in storm and calm as finely as he does the thicklyleaved forest or the rugged mountain landscape.

As an epic poet, for such he was, he chose his materials and shaped them with the strictest regard to the moral ideas he wished to present. These ideas did not merely attract him unconsciously to the materials, and determine the manner of forming them; they were the real incentives that moved him to write. If he did not become a didactic poet or allegorist, like a hundred of his contemporaries, it is because his intuition saw a deep symbolism in life and nature.

Only one secular poem from his pen is preserved, Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight. He largely borrowed his subject-matter from the Perceval (or Conte del Graal) of Crestien de Troyes, but in such a way that what is merely episodical in the source becomes the centre of his work, is put into new relations, and entirely remoulded. Few mediæval romance-poets can so justly lay claim to originality as he.1

The plot is extremely simple. King Arthur, surrounded by the knights of the Round Table, solemnises the Yule festival at Camelot, in Somersetshire. The festal jubilee lasts fifteen days. New Year's day is kept in chapel and hall,

This is not incompatible with the fact that his poem has many points in common with other Arthurian romances.

W