Amenities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac

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once applied to certain strange metres which our monk avoided, for many “that read English would be confounded by them.”

      A great curiosity of the genuine homeliness of our national idiom at this time has come down to us in a manuscript in the Arundel Collection, now in our national library. It is a volume written by a monk of St. Austin’s at Canterbury, in the Kentish dialect, about a century and a half after Layamon, and half a century after Robert of Gloucester, in 1340. This honest monk, like others of the Saxon brotherhood, was writing for his humbled countrymen, or, as he expresses himself, with a rude Doric simplicity,

      Vor Vader and for Moder and for other Ken.

      The poems of Laurence Minot consist of ten narrative ballads on some of the wars of Edward the Third in Scotland and in France. The events this bard records show that his writings were completed in 1352. His editor is surprised that “the great monarch whom he so eloquently and so earnestly panegyrised was either ignorant of his existence or insensible of his merit.” Minot was probably nothing more than a northern minstrel, whose celebrity did not extend many leagues. His verses convey to us a perfect conception of the minstrel character, throwing out his almost extemporaneous “Lays” on the predominant incidents of his day. All these narrative poems open by soliciting the attention of the auditors:—

Lithes! and I sall tell you tyll The bataile of Halidon Hyll.

      And in another—

Herkins how long King Edward lay, With his men before Tournay.

      The Latin Chronicle of Higden, twenty years later, was translated into English by John de Trevisa. On this passage the translator furnishes the important observation, that, since this was written, a revolution had occurred through our grammar-schools: the patriotic efforts of one Sir John Cornewaile, in teaching his pupils to construe their Latin into English, had been generally adopted; “so that now,” proceeds Trevisa, “the yere of our Lorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond, children leaveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth in Englische.” The innovation had startled our translator, for, like all innovations, there was loss as well as profit, when, quitting what we are accustomed to, we launch dubiously into a new acquisition. The disuse of the French would detriment their intercourse abroad, and, on great occasions, at home. This was a time when Trevisa himself, in selecting some Scriptural inscriptions for the chapel of Berkley Castle, where he was chaplain, had them painted on boards in Norman-French, and Latin, in alternate lines. They are still visible. English itself was yet too base for the service of God.

      It was still a debateable question, as appears by the prefatory dialogue between Trevisa and his patron, Lord Berkley, whether any translation of the Chronicle were at all necessary, Latin being the general language. It was, however, a noble enterprise, being the first great effort in our vernacular prose. This mighty volume is a universal history, which, in its amplitude and miscellaneous character, seemed to contain all that men could know; and the version long enjoyed the favour of all readers as the first historical collection in the English language. It bears the seal of the monkish taste, being equally pious and fabulous. It not only opens before the days of Adam, but, like the creation, has its seven divisions; it has monsters, however, which are not found in Genesis. The monk is doubtful whether they came of Adam or of Noah. They, indeed, came from the elder Pliny, to whose puerile wonders and hasty compilation we owe the foundation of our natural history.

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