DANIEL ELINGHAM. (Circa 1230.) Daniel Elingham was a Benedictine monk of Linton, about the time of Henry III., mentioned among the Latin rhymers of that period by Camden, who quotes his verses upon John the Baptist, painted in a white-friar's weed, in the White-Friars' church in Nottingham. ENNION AP MADAWG AP RHAHAWD. (Circa 1250.) Einion ap Madawc ap Rhahawd is the author of an ode to Prince Gruffyd, eldest son of Llywelyn the Great. "The poem," writes Mr. Stephens, "has merit, and strikingly portrays the prevalent sentiments of the Kymry at a time when the armies of England, scouring over the plains, frequently compelled them to fall back upon those palladia of Cambrian liberty, their mountain fastnesses. Our early literature breathes not a word of despair, not a hint at compromise, not a thought of submission; on the contrary, the national spirit, gaining strength from adversity, kept pace with the occasion, and mounted highest when the danger was greatest. There is throughout the Welsh poems of this period fierce defiance of the Saxons and Normans, or French,' as they are called, and vehement exultation in successes, however small.”* BLEDDYN VARDD. Bleddyn Vardd (Bleddyn the poet) was a Welshman of the thirteenth century, who wrote thirteen short poems, among which are an elegy on Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, two eulogies of his younger brother, and an elegy on the three brothers Owain, Llywelyn, and David. All these poems are characterised by a certain degree of merit, and have much historical value; the portrait of Llywelyn, most elaborately rendered, and with every indication of truthfulness, represents to us this last prince of Wales as a man of high merit in every respect. * Stephens' Literature of the Kymry. HYWEL VOEL. (Circa 1250.) Hywel Voel, a Welshman of Irish extraction, wrote, among other things, a spirited remonstrance in verse against the imprisonment of Owain ap Gruffyd by his brother, Llywelyn ap Gruffyd. JOHANNES CANONICUS. (Circa 1250.) Johannes, surnamed from his order, Canonicus, an Englishman, was author of a book of Latin poems, mentioned by Bale, in the reign of Henry III. ROBERT MANNING, OR DE BRUNNE. (Born circa 1265.) Robert Manning, born before 1270, at Brunne (Bourne) in Lincolnshire, and graduated at Cambridge, was a Gilbertine canon, first for fifteen years in the priory of Semperingham, Lincolnshire, and then in the priory of Sixhill, in the same county. His first work was a metrical paraphrase of William de Wordington's Manuel Peché (Manual of Sins), a treatise on the Decalogue and on the seven deadly sins, illustrated with many legendary stories and moral precepts, whose store is largely augmented by the zealous English translator. Wordington's work is itself supposed to have been a free version of a Latin poem called Floretus, by some ascribed to St. Bernard, and by others to Pope Clement. This production, which, from the preface, Robert de Brunne designed to be sung to the harp at public entertainments, and which was written, or begun, in the year 1303, has never been printed; but there are manuscript copies of it in the Bodleian Library and in the British Museum. Our author's second and more important work is a metrical chronicle of England, in two parts, the first of which, to William Rufus, is translated from Wace's Brut d'Angleterre, as continued by Geoffroi Gaimar; and the second from a French chronicle, written by Peter de Langtoft, an Augustine canon of Bridlington in Yorkshire, who is supposed to have died in the reign of Edward II., and was therefore contemporary with his translator. Mr. Hearne, in his edition of Robert de Brunne's works, has suppressed the whole of the first portion of this poem, except the prologue and a few extracts, which he found necessary to illustrate his glossary. The learned antiquary perhaps thought, that having carefully preserved the whole of Robert of Gloucester's faithful and almost literal version of Geoffrey of Mon mouth, it was unnecessary to print the paraphrase that had passed through the medium of a Norman poet. The second portion, as edited by Hearne, was printed in 1725, under the title of Peter Langtoft's Chronicle. Mr. Warton assigns to Robert de Brunne the metrical translation of Bishop Grossetête's Templum Domini, under the title of the Castel of Love; but the internal evidence is against the supposition. Hearne, with as little reason, ascribed to him the metrical English romance of Richard Coeur de Lion. He was, upon the whole, an industrious, and certainly, for the time, an elegant writer; and his extraordinary facility of rhyming (a talent, indeed, in which he has been seldom surpassed) must have rendered his work a useful study to succeeding versifiers. ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER. (Circa 1290.) Robert of Gloucester, whom his editor, Mr. Hearne, emphatically designates "the British Ennius," was a monk of the Abbey of Gloucester. He has left a poem of considerable length, consisting of a history of England in verse, from Brutus to the reign of Edward I., wherein the author has clothed the fables of Geoffrey of Monmouth in rhyme, which have often a more poetical air in Geoffrey's prose. The language is full of Saxonisms-an obscurity perhaps owing to the Western dialect, in whose atmosphere the writer lived. "It would be quite hopeless," says Mr. Ellis, "to attempt a defence of Robert of Gloucester's poetry as such; perhaps his own wish was merely to render more generally intelligible a body of history which he considered curious, and certainly believed to be authentic, because it was written in Latin, the language, as he deemed, of truth and religion. Addressing himself to his illiterate countrymen, he employed the vulgar language as he found it, without any attempt at embellishment or refinement; and perhaps wrote in rhyme only because it was found to be a useful help to the memory, and gave his work a chance of being recited in companies where it could not be read. The latter part of his poem, in which he relates the events of his own time, will not appear quite uninteresting to those who prefer the simple and desultory narratives of contemporary writers to the philosophical abridgments of the moderns; and a great part of his obscurity will be found to result from that unnecessary mixture of black letter with the Saxon characters, in which Mr. Hearne, from his inordinate appetite for antiquity, has thought proper to dress this ancient English author." Robert of Gloucester, though cold and prosaic, is not quite deficient in the valuable talent of arresting the attention; and the orations, with which he occasionally diversifies the thread of his story, are in general appropriate and dramatic, and not only prove his good sense, but exhibit no unfavourable specimens of his eloquence. In his description of the first Crusade he seems to change his usual character, and becomes not only entertaining but even animated; and the vision, in which " a holy man "is ordered to reproach the Christians with their departure from their duty, and at the same time to promise them the divine intervention to extricate them from a situation in which the exertions of human valour were apparently fruitless, would not perhaps, to contemporary readers, appear less poetical, or less sublime and impressive, than the introduction of the heathen mythology into the works of early classics. THOMAS LEARMOUNT OF ERCILDOUN. 39 68 JOHN BLAIR. (Circa 1300.) John Blair, or Blare, chaplain to Sir William Wallace, is the author of the metrical poem entitled Gesta Willelmi Wallas, from which Blind Harry's Actes and Deedes of the moste famous Champion, Sir William Wallace, was translated. He has left another Latin poem, De Liberata Tyrannide Scotia. In his Life of Wallace he appears to have been assisted by Thomas Gray, parson of Liberton. THOMAS LEARMOUNT OF ERCILDOUN. Of the authors of the compositions which we now call metrical romances, and which by older writers are termed gests (from the Latin word gesta), Robert de Brunne expressly mentions two poets, Thomas and Kendal, as excelling in this mode of writing.* In the story of Sir Tristram, he says that "Over gestes it has the esteem Over all that is or was, If men it said, as made Thomas." The bard who is thus distinguished from a crowd of competitors is supposed to have been Thomas Learmount, a name which Scotland formerly viewed with a reverence almost equal to that which Orpheus obtained in Greece, and who continued till a late period to be recognised in the combined character of prophet and poet. The talents and qualifications which procured him this distinction must certainly have been of no common kind; but of his real merits, it is to be feared, a correct estimate can scarcely now be formed. The history of his life and writings is involved in utter obscurity. As to his name, in one charter he is called Thomas Rymor, but in others, of an earlier date, Thomas Learmount of Ercildoun: it was his poetical fame that procured him the denomination of the Rhymer, by which he is still known among the common people of Scotland. He was the descendant of a respectable house; the principal family of his name was that of Esselment, and from this he is said to have derived his origin. He himself probably became the founder of a new family, taking its title from Ercildon, since Earlston, near Melrose. The period of his birth is unknown; but he had reached * Of Kendal nothing further appears to be known. |