Chapter V: Book II: , chap xiii, a free translation

CÆDMON (SEVENTH CENTURY). In a beautiful chapter of Bede's History we may read how Cædmon (d. 680) discovered his gift of poetry. He was, says the record, a poor unlettered servant of the Abbess Hilda, in her monastery at Whitby. At that time (and here is an interesting commentary on monastic culture) singing and poetry were so familiar that, whenever a feast was given, a harp would be brought in, and each monk or guest would in turn entertain the company with a song or poem to his own musical accompaniment. But Cædmon could not sing, and when he saw the harp coming down the table he would slip away ashamed, to perform his humble duties in the monastery:

"Now it happened once that he did this thing at a certain
festivity, and went out to the stable to care for the horses, this
duty being assigned him for that night. As he slept at the usual
time one stood by him, saying, 'Cædmon, sing me something.' He
answered, 'I cannot sing, and that is why I came hither from the
feast.' But he who spake unto him said again, 'Cædmon, sing to me.'
And he said, 'What shall I sing?' And that one said, 'Sing the
beginning of created things.' Thereupon Cædmon began to sing verses
that he had never heard before, of this import:

Nu scylun hergan hefaenriches ward ...
Now shall we hallow the warden of heaven,
He the Creator, he the Allfather,
Deeds of his might and thoughts of his mind...."

In the morning he remembered the words, and came humbly to the monks to recite the first recorded Christian hymn in our language. And a very noble hymn it is. The monks heard him in wonder, and took him to the Abbess Hilda, who gave order that Cædmon should receive instruction and enter the monastery as one of the brethren. Then the monks expounded to him the Scriptures. He in turn, reflecting on what he had heard, echoed it back to the monks "in such melodious words that his teachers became his pupils." So, says the record, the whole course of Bible history was turned into excellent poetry.

About a thousand years later, in the days of Milton, an Anglo-Saxon manuscript was discovered containing a metrical paraphrase of the books of Genesis, Exodus and Daniel, and these were supposed to be some of the poems mentioned in Bede's narrative. A study of the poems (now known as the Cædmonian Cycle) leads to the conclusion that they were probably the work of two or three writers, and it has not been determined what part Cædmon had in their composition. The nobility of style in the Genesis poem and the picturesque account of the fallen angels (which reappears in _Paradise Lost_) have won for Cædmon his designation as the Milton of the Anglo-Saxon period. [Footnote: A friend of Milton, calling himself Franciscus Junius, first printed the Cædmon poems in Antwerp (_cir_. 1655) during Milton's lifetime. The Puritan poet was blind at the time, and it is not certain that he ever saw or heard the poems; yet there are many parallelisms in the earlier and later works which warrant the conclusion that Milton was influenced by Cædmon's work.]

CYNEWULF (EIGHTH CENTURY). There is a variety of poems belonging to the Cynewulf Cycle, and of some of these Cynewulf (born _cir_. 750) was certainly the author, since he wove his name into the verses in the manner of an acrostic. Of Cynewulf's life we know nothing with certainty; but from various poems which are attributed to him, and which undoubtedly reflect some personal experience, scholars have constructed the following biography,--which may or may not be true.

In his early life Cynewulf was probably a wandering scop of the old pagan kind, delighting in wild nature, in adventure, in the clamor of fighting men. To this period belong his "Riddles" [Footnote: These riddles are ancient conundrums, in which some familiar object, such as a bow, a ship, a storm lashing the shore, the moon riding the clouds like a Viking's boat, is described in poetic language, and the last line usually calls on the hearer to name the object described. See Cook and Tinker, _Translations from Old English Poetry_.] and his vigorous descriptions of the sea and of battle, which show hardly a trace of Christian influence. Then came trouble to Cynewulf, perhaps in the ravages of the Danes, and some deep spiritual experience of which he writes in a way to remind us of the Puritan age:

"In the prison of the night I pondered with myself. I was stained
with my own deeds, bound fast in my sins, hard smitten with
sorrows, walled in by miseries."

A wondrous vision of the cross, "brightest of beacons," shone suddenly through his darkness, and led him forth into light and joy. Then he wrote his "Vision of the Rood" and probably also _Juliana_ and _The Christ_. In the last period of his life, a time of great serenity, he wrote _Andreas_, a story of St. Andrew combining religious instruction with extraordinary adventure; _Elene_, which describes the search for the cross on which Christ died, and which is a prototype of the search for the Holy Grail; and other poems of the same general kind. [Footnote: There is little agreement among scholars as to who wrote most of these poems. The only works to which Cynewulf signs his name are _The Christ_, _Elene_, _Juliana_ and _Fates of the Apostles_. All others are doubtful, and our biography of Cynewulf is largely a matter of pleasant speculation.] Aside from the value of these works as a reflection of Anglo-Saxon ideals, they are our best picture of Christianity as it appeared in England during the eighth and ninth centuries.

ALFRED THE GREAT (848-901). We shall understand the importance of Alfred's work if we remember how his country fared when he became king of the West Saxons, in 871. At that time England lay at the mercy of the Danish sea-rovers. Soon after Bede's death they fell upon Northumbria, hewed out with their swords a place of settlement, and were soon lords of the whole north country. Being pagans ("Thor's men" they called themselves) they sacked the monasteries, burned the libraries, made a lurid end of the civilization which men like Columb and Bede had built up in North-Humberland. Then they pushed southward, and were in process of paganizing all England when they were turned back by the heroism of Alfred. How he accomplished his task, and how from his capital at Winchester he established law and order in England, is recorded in the histories. We are dealing here with literature, and in this field Alfred is distinguished in two ways: first, by his preservation of early English poetry; and second, by his own writing, which earned for him the title of father of English prose. Finding that some fragments of poetry had escaped the fire of the Danes, he caused search to be made for old manuscripts, and had copies made of all that were legible. [Footnote: These copies were made in Alfred's dialect (West Saxon) not in the Northumbrian dialect in which they were first written.] But what gave Alfred deepest concern was that in all his kingdom there were few priests and no laymen who could read or write their own language. As he wrote sadly:

"King Alfred sends greeting to Bishop Werfrith in words of love and
friendship. Let it be known to thee that it often comes to my mind
what wise men and what happy times were formerly in England, ... I
remember what I saw before England had been ravaged and burned, how
churches throughout the whole land were filled with treasures of
books. And there was also a multitude of God's servants, but these
had no knowledge of the books: they could not understand them
because they were not written in their own language. It was as if
the books said, 'Our fathers who once occupied these places loved
wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and left it to us. We
see here their footprints, but we cannot follow them, and therefore
have we lost both their wealth and their wisdom, because we would
not incline our hearts to their example.' When I remember this, I
marvel that good and wise men who were formerly in England, and who
had learned these books, did not translate them into their own
language. Then I answered myself and said, 'They never thought that
their children would be so careless, or that learning would so
decay.'" [Footnote: A free version of part of Alfred's preface to
his translation of Pope Gregory's _Cura Pastoralis_, which
appeared in English as the Hirdeboc or Shepherd's Book.]

To remedy the evil, Alfred ordered that every freeborn Englishman should learn to read and write his own language; but before he announced the order he followed it himself. Rather late in his boyhood he had learned to spell out an English book; now with immense difficulty he took up Latin, and translated the best works for the benefit of his people. His last notable work was the famous _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_.

[Sidenote: ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE]

At that time it was customary in monasteries to keep a record of events which seemed to the monks of special importance, such as the coming of a bishop, the death of a king, an eclipse of the moon, a battle with the Danes. Alfred found such a record at Winchester, rewrote it (or else caused it to be rewritten) with numerous additions from Bede's History and other sources, and so made a fairly complete chronicle of England. This was sent to other monasteries, where it was copied and enlarged, so that several different versions have come down to us. The work thus begun was continued after Alfred's death, until 1154, and is the oldest contemporary history possessed by any modern nation in its own language.

* * * * *

ANGLO-NORMAN OR MIDDLE-ENGLISH PERIOD (1066-1350)

SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. A glance at the following selections will show how Anglo-Saxon was slowly approaching our English speech of to-day. The first is from a religious book called _Ancren Riwle_ (Rule of the Anchoresses, _cir_. 1225). The second, written about a century later, is from the riming chronicle, or verse history, of Robert Manning or Robert of Brunne. In it we note the appearance of rime, a new thing in English poetry, borrowed from the French, and also a few words, such as "solace," which are of foreign origin:

"Hwoso hevide iseid to Eve, theo heo werp hire eien therone, 'A!
wend te awei; thu worpest eien o thi death!' hwat heved heo
ionswered? 'Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me?
The eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto
biholden.'"

"Whoso had said (or, if anyone had said) to Eve when she cast her
eye theron (i.e. on the apple) 'Ah! turn thou away; thou castest
eyes on thy death!' what would she have answered? 'My dear sir,
thou art wrong. Of what blamest thou me? The apple which I look
upon is forbidden me to eat, not to behold.'"

Lordynges that be now here,
If ye wille listene and lere [1]
All the story of Inglande,
Als Robert Mannyng wryten it fand,
And on Inglysch has it schewed,
Not for the lered [2] but for the lewed, [3]
For tho that on this land wonn [4]
That ne Latin ne Frankys conn, [5]
For to hauf solace and gamen
In felauschip when they sitt samen; [6]
And it is wisdom for to wytten [7]
The state of the land, and haf it wryten.

[Footnote 1: learn]
[Footnote 2: learned]
[Footnote 3: simple or ignorant]
[Footnote 4: those that dwell]
[Footnote 5: That neither Latin nor French know]
[Footnote 6: together]
[Footnote 7: know]

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. For a century after the Norman conquest native poetry disappeared from England, as a river may sink into the earth to reappear elsewhere with added volume and new characteristics. During all this time French was the language not only of literature but of society and business; and if anyone had declared at the beginning of the twelfth century, when Norman institutions were firmly established in England, that the time was approaching when the conquerors would forget their fatherland and their mother tongue, he would surely have been called dreamer or madman. Yet the unexpected was precisely what happened, and the Norman conquest is remarkable alike for what it did and for what it failed to do.

It accomplished, first, the nationalization of England, uniting the petty Saxon earldoms into one powerful kingdom; and second, it brought into English life, grown sad and stern, like a man without hope, the spirit of youth, of enthusiasm, of eager adventure after the unknown,--in a word, the spirit of romance, which is but another name for that quest of some Holy Grail in which youth is forever engaged.

NORMAN LITERATURE. One who reads the literature that the conquerors brought to England must be struck by the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman-French spirit. For example, here is the death of a national hero as portrayed in _The Song of Roland_, an old French epic, which the Normans first put into polished verse:

Li quens Rollans se jut desuz un pin,
Envers Espaigne en ad turnet son vis,
De plusurs choscs a remembrer le prist....

"Then Roland placed himself beneath a pine tree. Towards Spain he
turned his face. Of many things took he remembrance: of various
lands where he had made conquests; of sweet France and his kindred;
of Charlemagne, his feudal lord, who had nurtured him. He could not
refrain from sighs and tears; neither could he forget himself in
need. He confessed his sins and besought the Lord's mercy. He
raised his right glove and offered it to God; Saint Gabriel from
his hand received the offering. Then upon his breast he bowed his
head; he joined his hands and went to his end. God sent down his
cherubim, and Saint Michael who delivers from peril. Together with
Saint Gabriel they departed, bearing the Count's soul to Paradise."

We have not put Roland's ceremonious exit into rime and meter; neither do we offer any criticism of a scene in which the death of a national hero stirs no interest or emotion, not even with the help of Gabriel and the cherubim. One is reminded by contrast of Scyld, who fares forth alone in his Viking ship to meet the mystery of death; or of that last scene of human grief and grandeur in _Beowulf_ where a few thanes bury their dead chief on a headland by the gray sea, riding their war steeds around the memorial mound with a chant of sorrow and victory.

The contrast is even more marked in the mass of Norman literature: in romances of the maidens that sink underground in autumn, to reappear as flowers in spring; of Alexander's journey to the bottom of the sea in a crystal barrel, to view the mermaids and monsters; of Guy of Warwick, who slew the giant Colbrant and overthrew all the knights of Europe, just to win a smile from his Felice; of that other hero who had offended his lady by forgetting one of the commandments of love, and who vowed to fill a barrel with his tears, and did it. The Saxons were as serious in speech as in action, and their poetry is a true reflection of their daily life; but the Normans, brave and resourceful as they were in war and statesmanship, turned to literature for amusement, and indulged their lively fancy in fables, satires, garrulous romances, like children reveling in the lore of elves and fairies. As the prattle of a child was the power that awakened Silas Marner from his stupor of despair, so this Norman element of gayety, of exuberant romanticism, was precisely what was needed to rouse the sterner Saxon mind from its gloom and lethargy.

THE NEW NATION. So much, then, the Normans accomplished: they brought nationality into English life, and romance into English literature. Without essentially changing the Saxon spirit they enlarged its thought, aroused its hope, gave it wider horizons. They bound England with their laws, covered it with their feudal institutions, filled it with their ideas and their language; then, as an anticlimax, they disappeared from English history, and their institutions were modified to suit the Saxon temperament. The race conquered in war became in peace the conquerors. The Normans speedily forgot France, and even warred against it. They began to speak English, dropping its cumbersome Teutonic inflections, and adding to it the wealth of their own fine language. They ended by adopting England as their country, and glorifying it above all others. "There is no land in the world," writes a poet of the thirteenth century, "where so many good kings and saints have lived as in the isle of the English. Some were holy martyrs who died cheerfully for God; others had strength or courage like to that of Arthur, Edmund and Cnut."

This poet, who was a Norman monk at Westminster Abbey, wrote about the glories of England in the French language, and celebrated as the national heroes a Celt, a Saxon and a Dane. [Footnote: The significance of this old poem was pointed out by Jusserand, _Literary History of the English People_, Vol. I, p. 112.]

So in the space of two centuries a new nation had arisen, combining the best elements of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French people, with a considerable mixture of Celtic and Danish elements. Out of the union of these races and tongues came modern English life and letters.

GEOFFREY AND THE LEGENDS OF ARTHUR. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a Welshman, familiar from his youth with Celtic legends; also he was a monk who knew how to write Latin; and the combination was a fortunate one, as we shall see.

Long before Geoffrey produced his celebrated History (_cir._ 1150), many stories of the Welsh hero Arthur [Footnote: Who Arthur was has never been determined. There was probably a chieftain of that name who was active in opposing the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, about the year 500; but Gildas, who wrote a Chronicle of Britain only half a century later, does not mention him; neither does Bede, who made study of all available records before writing his History. William of Malmesbury, a chronicler of the twelfth century, refers to "the warlike Arthur of whom the Britons tell so many extravagant fables, a man to be celebrated not in idle tales but in true history." He adds that there were two Arthurs, one a Welsh war-chief (not a king), and the other a myth or fairy creation. This, then, may be the truth of the matter, that a real Arthur, who made a deep impression on the Celtic imagination, was soon hidden in a mass of spurious legends. That Bede had heard these legends is almost certain; that he did not mention them is probably due to the fact that he considered Arthur to be wholly mythical.] were current in Britain and on the Continent; but they were never written because of a custom of the Middle Ages which required that, before a legend could be recorded, it must have the authority of some Latin manuscript. Geoffrey undertook to supply such authority in his _Historia regum britanniae_, or History of the Kings of Britain, in which he proved Arthur's descent from Roman ancestors. [Footnote: After the landing of the Romans in Britain a curious mingling of traditions took place, and in Geoffrey's time native Britons considered themselves as children of Brutus of Rome, and therefore as grandchildren of Æneas of Troy.] He quoted liberally from an ancient manuscript which, he alleged, established Arthur's lineage, but which he did not show to others. A storm instantly arose among the writers of that day, most of whom denounced Geoffrey's Latin manuscript as a myth, and his History as a shameless invention. But he had shrewdly anticipated such criticism, and issued this warning to the historians, which is solemn or humorous according to your point of view:

"I forbid William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon to speak of
the kings of Britain, since they have not seen the book which
Walter Archdeacon of Oxford [who was dead, of course] brought out
of Brittany."

It is commonly believed that Geoffrey was an impostor, but in such matters one should be wary of passing judgment. Many records of men, cities, empires, have suddenly arisen from the tombs to put to shame the scientists who had denied their existence; and it is possible that Geoffrey had seen one of the legion of lost manuscripts. The one thing certain is, that if he had any authority for his History he embellished the same freely from popular legends or from his own imagination, as was customary at that time.

[Sidenote: ARTHURIAN ROMANCES]

His work made a sensation. A score of French poets seized upon his Arthurian legends and wove them into romances, each adding freely to Geoffrey's narrative. The poet Wace added the tale of the Round Table, and another poet (Walter Map, perhaps) began a cycle of stories concerning Galahad and the quest of the Holy Grail. [Footnote: The Holy Grail, or San Graal, or Sancgreal, was represented as the cup from which Christ drank with his disciples at the Last Supper. Legend said that the sacred cup had been brought to England, and Arthur's knights undertook, as the most compelling of all duties, to search until they found it.]

The origin of these Arthurian romances, which reappear so often in English poetry, is forever shrouded in mystery. The point to remember is, that we owe them all to the genius of the native Celts; that it was Geoffrey of Monmouth who first wrote them in Latin prose, and so preserved a treasure which else had been lost; and that it was the French _trouvères,_ or poets, who completed the various cycles of romances which were later collected in Malory's _Morte d' Arthur._

TYPES OF MIDDLE-ENGLISH LITERATURE. It has long been customary to begin the study of English literature with Chaucer; but that does not mean that he invented any new form of poetry or prose. To examine any collection of our early literature, such as Cook's _Middle-English Reader_, is to discover that many literary types were flourishing in Chaucer's day, and that some of these had grown old-fashioned before he began to use them.

[Sidenote: METRICAL ROMANCES]

In the thirteenth century, for example, the favorite type of literature in England was the metrical romance, which was introduced by the French poets, and written at first in the French language. The typical romance was a rambling story dealing with the three subjects of love, chivalry and religion; it was filled with adventures among giants, dragons, enchanted castles; and in that day romance was not romance unless liberally supplied with magic and miracle. There were hundreds of such wonder-stories, arranged loosely in three main groups: the so-called "matter of Rome" dealt with the fall of Troy in one part, and with the marvelous adventures of Alexander in the other; the "matter of France" celebrated the heroism of Charlemagne and his Paladins; and the "matter of Britain" wove the magic web of romance around Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.

One of the best of the metrical romances is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," which may be read as a measure of all the rest. If, as is commonly believed, the unknown author of "Sir Gawain" wrote also "The Pearl" (a beautiful old elegy, or poem of grief, which immortalizes a father's love for his little girl), he was the greatest poet of the early Middle-English period. Unfortunately for us, he wrote not in the king's English or speech of London (which became modern English) but in a different dialect, and his poems should be read in a present-day version; else will the beauty of his work be lost in our effort to understand his language.

Other types of early literature are the riming chronicles or verse histories (such as Layamon's _Brut_, a famous poem, in which the Arthurian legends appear as part of English history), stories of travel, translations, religious poems, books of devotion, miracle plays, fables, satires, ballads, hymns, lullabies, lyrics of love and nature,--an astonishing collection for so ancient a time, indicative at once of our changing standards of poetry and of our unchanging human nature. For the feelings which inspired or gave welcome to these poems, some five or six hundred years ago, are precisely the same feelings which warm the heart of a poet and his readers to-day. There is nothing ancient but the spelling in this exquisite Lullaby, for instance, which was sung on Christmas eve:

He cam also stylle
Ther his moder was
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the gras;
He cam also stylle
To his moderes bowr
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the flour;
He cam also stylle
Ther his moder lay
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the spray.

[Footnote: In reading this beautiful old lullaby the _e_ in "stylle" and "Aprylle" should be lightly sounded, like _a_ in "China."]

Or witness this other fragment from an old love song, which reflects the feeling of one who "would fain make some mirth" but who finds his heart sad within him:

Now wold I fayne som myrthis make
All oneli for my ladys sake,
When I hir se;
But now I am so ferre from hir
Hit will nat be.

Thogh I be long out of hir sight,
I am hir man both day and night,
And so will be;
Wherfor, wold God as I love hir
That she lovd me!

When she is mery, then I am glad;
When she is sory, then am I sad,
And causë whi:
For he livith nat that lovith hir
So well as I.

She sayth that she hath seen hit wreten
That 'seldyn seen is soon foryeten.'
Hit is nat so;
For in good feith, save oneli hir,
I love no moo.

Wherfor I pray, both night and day,
That she may cast al care away,
And leve in rest
That evermo, where'er she be,
I love hir best;

And I to hir for to be trew,
And never chaunge her for noon new
Unto myne ende;
And that I may in hir servise
For evyr amend.

[Footnote: The two poems quoted above hardly belong to the Norman-French period proper, but rather to a time when the Anglo-Saxon had assimilated the French element, with its language and verse forms. They were written, probably, in the age of Chaucer, or in what is now called the Late Middle-English period.]

* * * * *

SUMMARY OF BEGINNINGS. The two main branches of our literature are
the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman-French, both of which received some
additions from Celtic, Danish and Roman sources. The Anglo-Saxon
literature came to England with the invasion of Teutonic tribes,
the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (_cir._ 449). The Norman-French
literature appeared after the Norman conquest of England, which
began with the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

The Anglo-Saxon literature is classified under two heads, pagan and
Christian. The extant fragments of pagan literature include one
epic or heroic poem, _Beowulf_, and several lyrics and battle
songs, such as "Widsith," "Deor's Lament," "The Seafarer," "The
Battle of Brunanburh" and "The Battle of Maldon." All these were
written at an unknown date, and by unknown poets.

The best Christian literature of the period was written in the
Northumbrian and the West-Saxon schools. The greatest names of the
Northumbrian school are Bede, Cædmon and Cynewulf. The most famous
of the Wessex writers is Alfred the Great, who is called "the
father of English prose."

The Normans were originally Northmen, or sea rovers from
Scandinavia, who settled in northern France and adopted the
Franco-Latin language and civilization. With their conquest of
England, in the eleventh century, they brought nationality into
English life, and the spirit of romance into English literature.
Their stories in prose or verse were extremely fanciful, in marked
contrast with the stern, somber poetry of the Anglo-Saxons.

The most notable works of the Norman-French period are: Geoffrey's
_History of the Kings of Britain_, which preserved in Latin
prose the native legends of King Arthur; Layamon's _Brut_, a
riming chronicle or verse history in the native tongue; many
metrical romances, or stories of love, chivalry, magic and
religion; and various popular songs and ballads. The greatest poet
of the period is the unknown author of "Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight" (a metrical romance) and probably also of "The Pearl," a
beautiful elegy, which is our earliest _In Memoriam_.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Without special study of Old English it is
impossible to read our earliest literature. The beginner may,
however, enter into the spirit of that literature by means of
various modern versions, such as the following:

_Beowulf_. Garnett's Beowulf (Ginn and Company), a literal
translation, is useful to those who study Anglo-Saxon, but is not
very readable. The same may be said of Gummere's The Oldest English
Epic, which follows the verse form of the original. Two of the best
versions for the beginner are Child's Beowulf, in Riverside
Literature Series (Houghton), and Earle's The Deeds of Beowulf
(Clarendon Press).

_Anglo-Saxon Poetry_. The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The
Husband's Message (or Love Letter), Deor's Lament, Riddles, Battle
of Brunanburh, selections from The Christ, Andreas, Elene, Vision
of the Rood, and The Phoenix,--all these are found in an excellent
little volume, Cook and Tinker, Translations from Old English
Poetry (Ginn and Company).

_Anglo-Saxon Prose_. Good selections in Cook and Tinker,
Translations from Old English Prose (Ginn and Company). Bede's
History, translated in Everyman's Library (Dutton) and in the Bohn
Library (Macmillan). In the same volume of the Bohn Library is a
translation of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Alfred's Orosius (with
stories of early exploration) translated in Pauli's Life of Alfred.

_Norman-French Period_. Selections in Manly, English Poetry,
and English Prose (Ginn and Company); also in Morris and Skeat,
Specimens of Early English (Clarendon Press). The Song of Roland in
Riverside Literature Series, and in King's Classics. Selected
metrical romances in Ellis, Specimens of Early English Metrical
Romances (Bohn Library); also in Morley, Early English Prose
Romances, and in Carisbrooke Library Series. Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, modernized by Weston, in Arthurian Romances Series.
Andrew Lang, Aucassin and Nicolette (Crowell). The Pearl,
translated by Jewett (Crowell), and by Weir Mitchell (Century).
Selections from Layamon's Brut in Morley, English Writers, Vol.
III. Geoffrey's History in Everyman's Library, and in King's
Classics. The Arthurian legends in The Mabinogion (Everyman's
Library); also in Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur and The
Boy's Mabinogion (Scribner). A good single volume containing the
best of Middle-English literature, with notes, is Cook, A Literary
Middle-English Reader (Ginn and Company).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For extended works covering the entire field of
English history and literature, and for a list of the best
anthologies, school texts, etc., see the General Bibliography. The
following works are of special interest in studying early English
literature.

_HISTORY_. Allen, Anglo-Saxon Britain; Turner, History of the
Anglo-Saxons; Ramsay, The Foundations of England; Freeman, Old
English History; Cook, Life of Alfred; Freeman, Short History of
the Norman Conquest; Jewett, Story of the Normans, in Stories of
the Nations.

_LITERATURE_. Brooke, History of Early English Literature;
Jusserand, Literary History of the English People, Vol. I; Ten
Brink, English Literature, Vol. I; Lewis, Beginnings of English
Literature; Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest
to Chaucer; Brother Azarias, Development of Old-English Thought;
Mitchell, From Celt to Tudor; Newell, King Arthur and the Round
Table. A more advanced work on Arthur is Rhys, Studies in the
Arthurian Legends.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake; Lytton,
Harold Last of the Saxon Kings; Scott, Ivanhoe; Kipling, Puck of
Pook's Hill; Jane Porter, Scottish Chiefs; Shakespeare, King John;
Tennyson, Becket, and The Idylls of the King; Gray, The Bard; Bates
and Coman, English History Told by English Poets.