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ages, that when first printed (1541), and for several subsequent editions, it went under the name of Cornelius Nepos. The style, however, as Mr. Warton remarks, is a mixture of Ovid, Statius, and Claudian, who in Joseph's time were the most popular writers of antiquity. The diction is pure, the periods round, and the numbers harmonious. The subject is the fabulous history that was circulated in the middle ages under the name of Dares Phrygius. The other great work of Joseph of Exeter (his Antiocheis) is unhappily lost. The only portion of it that remains has been preserved to us by Camden. The date of Joseph's death is quite uncertain. Bale writes of him as flourishing in 1210.

GULIELMUS PEREGRINUS.

(Circa 1197.)

Tanner mentions as a poet of England one Gulielmus Peregrinus (William the Traveller), who accompanied Richard I. into the Holy Land, and sang his achievements there in a Latin poem, entitled Odoeporicon Ricardi Regis, dedicated to Herbert archbishop of Canterbury, and to Stephen Turnham, a captain in the expedition. He is called by Tanner "poeta per eam ætatem excellens."

ALEXANDER NECKAM.

(1157-1217.)

Alexander Neckam, called from his birth-place Alexander de Sancto Albano, was born at St. Alban's, September 1157; and his mother being honoured with the wet-nurseship of Richard I., who was born on the same night with himself, he became foster-brother of the Lion-heart. His tendencies, however, were quite in a different direction; he applied himself from early youth to learning, and with such success that, before he was out of his teens, he was intrusted with the school of Dunstable, and at twenty-three had become a distinguished professor in the University of Paris. On returning to England he conducted for a year his old school at Dunstable, and then, desirous of becoming a monk, applied to the Abbot of St. Alban's for admission in these terms: "Si vis, veniam ; sin autem, non." The abbot, wishing to be as terse as his applicant, replied, punning upon his name, "Si bonus es, venias: si nequam, nequaquam ;" whereupon Neckam withdrew in a huff and entered himself of the Augustine

monastery at Cirencester, of which, in 1213, he was elected abbot. He died in 1217, at Kemsey in Worcestershire, and was buried in Worcester Cathedral, punning pursuing him even to his epitaph, which ran thus:

"Eclipsim patitur sapientia, sol sepelitur;

Cui si par unus, minus esset flebile funus ;

Vir bene disertus et in omni more facetus;

Dictus erat nequam, vitam duxit tamen æquam."

Neckam, whose works embrace the whole circle of science, comes within our scope as one of the best Latin poets of his age. Mr. Wright, in his Biographia Britannica Literaria, gives an elaborate account of his grammatical and other productions, and large extracts from his chief poems.

WILLIAM THE TROUVERE.
(Circa 1197.)

William le Trouvère, as he is generally called, by himself inclusively, though he adds that his baptismal name was Adgar, was an Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastic in the reign of Henry II., who wrote a series of Miracles of the Virgin and Saints' Legends, in Anglo-Norman verse. Among them is the Legend of Theophilus, which was very popular in the middle ages.

MAURICE OF WALES.

(Circa 1197.)

Maurice, a Welshman, and a friend of Giraldus Cambrensis, by whom he is highly eulogised, is the author, according to Bale, of Epigrammata quædam, and of Carmina et Epistolæ.

MAURICE OF FORDE.

(Circa 1197.)

Maurice, a monk of Forde Abbey in Somersetshire, is the author De Schemate Pontificali, and of a book of Carmina.

of a poem

JOHN DE ST. OMER.
(Circa 1197.)

John de St. Omer was a native of Norfolk, and a member of some He is the author of a work entitled Norfolchic

monastic order.

descriptionis Impugnatio, which is an answer, in rhyming verse, to a bitter satire upon Norfolk, written by a monk of Peterborough, under the title of Descriptio Norfolciensium.

ADAM OF DORE.

(Circa 1197.)

Adam, abbot of Dore, near Hereford, wrote a metrical defence of the monastic orders against Giraldus Cambrensis. Bale also mentions under his name a Rudimenta Musices.

ROBERT DE BEAUFEY.
(Circa 1197.)

Robert de Beaufey (Robertus de Bellofoco, Robertus de Bellofago) was a canon of Salisbury, who wrote an Encomium Topographiæ, in honour of his friend Giraldus Cambrensis' Topographia Hiberniæ; and a Carmen de commendatione Cerevisia, in honour of ale.

LAYAMON.
(Circa 1197.)

While Norman literature was making a rapid progress in this country, under the fostering influence of royal patronage, and the Latin compositions of John of Salisbury, Joseph of Exeter, and others, bore testimony to the no less powerful encouragement of the Church, the Saxon language, however degraded, still continued to maintain its ground, as generally spoken, and even employed in works of information and amusement, for at least a century after the Norman Conquest. This is incontestably proved, not only by the Saxon Chronicle, which, as it relates the death of King Stephen, must have been written after that event, but by a much more curious composition, Wace's Brut, or Chronicles of Britain, by Layamon, a "priest of Erneleye-upon-Severn," as he calls himself, which circumstances probably indicate to have been completed somewhere in the reign of Richard I. The Brut itself is a French metrical version of the history of Britain, from the time of the imaginary Brutus to the reign of Cadwallader, A.D. 689, which Geoffrey of Monmouth had previously translated into Latin prose, from the British original imported from Britany by Walker, archdeacon of Oxford. The language of Laya

mon's version (writes Ellis), as it does not contain any word which we are under the necessity of referring to a French origin, we may consider as simple and unmixed, though very barbarous Saxon; but, at the same time, the orthography of the manuscript, in which we see, for the first time, the admission of the soft g together with the Saxon z, as well as some other peculiarities, seems to prove that the pronunciation of our language had already undergone a considerable change. Indeed, the whole style of this composition, which is broken into a series of short unconnected sentences, and in which the construction is as plain and artless as possible, and perfectly free from inversions, seems to indicate that little more than the substitution of a few French for the existing Saxon words were now necessary to produce an exact resemblance with that Anglo-Norman, or English, of which we possess a few specimens, supposed to have been written in the early part of the 13th century.

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Nicholas de Guildford, born at Guildford in Surrey, and a judge, settled at Portisham in Dorsetshire, is supposed to be the author of an English poem entitled The Owl and the Nightingale, a passage in which would appear to fix the period of its composition in the reign of Richard I. The poem has been edited for the Percy Society by Mr. Wright.

*The work is happily now no longer confined to manuscript, having been published (1847), with a literal translation, notes, and glossary, by Sir Frederick Madden.

D

ORME.

(Circa 1210.)

The earliest successor of Layamon, as an English poet, was one Orme, or Ormin, an Augustine monk in the north of England, who wrote a harmony of the Gospels, under the title of Ormulum, in verses of fifteen syllables, without rhyme, in imitation of the most common form of the Latin tetrameter iambic. Selections from this work are given by Mr. Thorpe in his Analecta Anglo-Saxonica; but Mr. Wright considers that the work ought to be presented entire, as a most interesting and important monument of the history of our language.

JOHN GARLAND.

(Circa 1210.)

John Garland, better known as Johannes de Garlandia, was an English poet and grammarian, who studied at Paris about the year 1210. The most eminent of his numerous Latin poems, which crowd our libraries, seem to be his Epithalamium on the Virgin Mary, in ten books of elegiacs; and his De Triumphis Ecclesiæ, in eight books, which contain much English history. These both remain in manuscript; but others of his pieces, both in prose and verse, have been printed.

MICHAEL, THE CORNISH POET.
(Circa 1216.)

Michael, surnamed the Cornish poet, was a notable rhymer in Latin verse in the time of King John and Henry III., out of whose Rhymes for Merry England, as Camden calls them, several passages are quoted by that author in his Remains.

Y PRYDYDD BYCHAN.
(Circa 1230.)

Y Prydydd Bychan, "the little poet, "contributed twenty-one poems to the metrical literature of Wales. His chief poem is an englynion addressed to Prince Owen the Red, son of Gruffyd ap Llywelyn.

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