day at dinner before the king an ode of more than thirtyeight strophes, for which Canute gave him fifty marks of purified silver. "Brevity" could not have been "the soul of wit" in Canute's day. Young and Pollock would have been "men of mark at his court, and Wordsworth's entire "Excursion" might there have secured a patient hearing. When in the sixth century the Saxons succeeded to the Britons and became possessors of England, it is presumed that the tales of the Scandinavian Scalds still flourished among them. The Saxons were originally situated in those territories which have since been called Jutland, Angelan, and Holstein, and were fond of tracing the descent of their princes from Odin. They were therefore a part of the Scandinavian tribes who were literally our progenitors. That they imported with them into England the old Runic language and letters appears from inscriptions on coins, stones, and other monuments. Runic inscriptions, as we well know, have been discovered in Cumberland and Scotland, and a coin of King Offa, with a Runic legend, is still extant. The sacredness of the profession seems to have come down to a later period, for it is recorded that in Ireland to kill a bard or to seize his estate, even for the public service in time of national distress, was considered criminal in the highest degree. In the old Welsh laws whoever even slightly injured a bard was to be fined six cows, one hundred and twenty pence. The murderer of a bard was to be fined one hundred and twenty cows. The conversion of the Saxons to Christianity, which is placed about the seventh century, abolished the common use of the Runic characters, which were esteemed unhal lowed and necromantic; and with their ancient superstitions, their native and original vein of poetic feeling was in some measure destroyed. The genuine successors of the Northern Scalds were the Anglo-Saxon minstrels, or gleemen, a distinct order of men who got their livelihood by singing verses at the houses of the great. From the decline of the Scalds till many ages after the Norman Conquest there never was wanting a succession of them to hand down the art. Much greater honors had been heaped upon the ancient bards, in whom the characters of historian, genealogist, poet, musician, were all united; so that while the talents of the minstrels were chiefly calculated to entertain and divert, the Scalds professed to inform and instruct, and were the moralists and theologists of their countrymen. Yet the Anglo-Saxon minstrel, or harper, continued to command no small degree of public favor. "The arts he possessed were," says Bishop Percy, "so extremely acceptable to our ancestors that the word 'glee,' which peculiarly denoted his art, continues still in our own language to be of all others the most expressive of that popular mirth and jollity, that strong sensation of delight, which is felt by unpolished and simple minds." About the beginning of the tenth century the Arabian vein of fiction is supposed to have been introduced into the poetry of the North. "Of a more splendid nature,” says a learned critic, "and better adapted to the increasing civility of the times, less horrible and gross, it had a novelty, variety, and magnificence unknown to the earlier Scaldic era; and afterwards, enriched by kindred fancies brought from the Crusades, it gave rise to that singular and capricious mode of imagination which at length composed the marvellous machineries of the more sublime Italian poets and of their disciple, Spenser." The beautiful romantic fiction that King Arthur, after being wounded at the fatal battle of Camlan, was conveyed by an elfin princess into Faeryland to be cured of his wounds; that he reigns there still in all his pristine splendor and will one day return to resume his throne in Britain, is found only in the compositions of the Welsh bards who flourished after the native vein of British fabling had been tinctured with exotic imagery. Tennyson's "Morte D'Arthur" is an exquisitely beautiful version of this old Welsh fable. After the Conquest, which may be considered as favorable to the establishment of the minstrel profession in England, the Normans, who were early distinguished for their musical talent, and to whom a French writer refers the origin of all modern poetry, would listen to no other songs but such as were composed in their own Norman-French. Yet as the great mass of the native gentry and populace could only understand their own tongue, it is supposed that the English harper and songster was still honored among them. The founding of a priory and hospital by one of their order in 1162 is the first mention made of the native harper after the Conquest. In the reign of Henry II. an annuity from the Abbey of Hide was received by a harper as a reward for his music and songs, which, it is hence inferred, were in the English language. Henry I., called "fine scholar," was fond of poetry; and his queen, Matilda, - daughter of the Scottish king, Malcolm, and the English Margaret, - patronized the minstrel art so liberally that her generosity became universally known; and crowds of foreigners - scholars, equally famed for verse and singing-came to her court, and happy did he account himself," says the historian, "who by the novelty of his song could soothe the ears of the queen," 66 Henry's second queen, Alice, is also addressed by several of the Norman and Anglo-Norman troubadours as the patroness of their art. In the reign of the renowned and romantic King Richard I. the minstrel profession acquired additional splendor. Richard, who was the great hero of chivalry, was also the distinguished patron of poets and minstrels. He was himself of their number, and some of his poems are still extant. "The distinguished service which he received from his minstrel, Blondel, in rescuing him from his cruel and tedious captivity, ought," says Percy, "to be recorded for the honor of poets and their art." It is thus related by an ancient writer: — "The Englishmen were more than a whole year without hearing any tydings of their king, or in what place he was kept prisoner. He had trained up in his court a rimer, or Minstrell, called Blondel; who being so long without the sight of his lord, his life seemed wearisome to him, and he became confounded with melancholy. Known it was that he came back from the Holy Land; but none could tell in what country he arrived. Whereupon this Blondel resolved to make search for him in many countries, but he would hear some news of him; after expence of divers days in travell, he came to a towne by good help, near to the castell where his lord, King Richard, lay. Of his host he demanded to whom the castell appertained; and the host told him that it belonged to the Duke of Austria. Then he enquired whether there were any prisoners detained therein or no; for always he made such secret questionings wherever he came. And the host made answer that there was one only prisoner, but he knew not what he was, and yet he had been detained there more than the space of a year. "When Blondel heard this, he wrought such means that he became acquainted with them of the castell, as Minstrels do easily win acquaintance anywhere; but see the king he could not, neither understand that it was he. “One day he sat directly before the window of the castell, and began to sing a song in French which King Richard and Blondel had sometime composed together. "When King Richard heard the song, he knew that it was Blondel that sang it; and when Blondel paused at halfe of the song, the king began the other halfe and completed it. Thus Blondel won the knowledge of the king, his master, and returning home to England made the barons of the country acquainted where the king was." These lines are given as the original song. "Your beauty, lady fair, None views without delight, But still so cold an air No passion can excite; Yet this I patient see, While all are shunned like me." Richard completes the song, "No nymph my heart can wound, If favor she divide, And smile on all around, Unwilling to decide. I'd rather hatred bear Than love with others share." In the reign of King John it is related that a minstrel, who superadded to his other talents the character of soothsayer, by his skill in medicated drugs and potions was able to rescue a knight from imprisonment. In the reign of King Henry III. mention is made of Master Ricard, the king's harper, to whom in his thirtieth year that monarch gave forty shillings and a pipe of wine, and also a pipe of wine to Beatrice his wife. The title of Magister or Master, in the Middle Ages equivalent to the modern title of Doctor, given to this man, shows his respectable standing. This was in 1252. The minstrel, or harper, |