the ingenuity of each successive student; it is in every case a delay to the gratification of his curiosity; and the talent of decyphering obsolete characters is not necessarily attached to the power of profiting by the information which is concealed under them. Besides, a scarce and valuable manuscript cannot possibly be put into general circulation; and many learned men are necessarily debarred, either by distance, or by infirmity, or by the pressure and variety of their occupations, from spending much time in those public repositories of learning, to which the access has indeed been rendered easy, but could not be made con venient, by the liberality of their founders.

CHAPTER III.

State of our Language and Poetry in the Reign of Henry II. and Richard I. exemplified by an Extract from Layamon's Translation of Wace-Conjectures concerning the Period at which the Anglo-Norman or English Language began to be formed.-Early Specimen of English Poetry from Hickes's Thesaurus.

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, Peter of Blois, 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, was 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 part of the Saxon Chronicle, which, as it relates the death of King Stephen, must have been written after

3

that event, but by a much more curious composition, a poetical translation of Wace's Brut, written by one LAYAMON, "a priest of Ernleye upon Severn," (as he calls himself,) a copy of which is preserved in the British Museum, MSS. Cot. Calig. A. ix.

As this very curious work never was, and probably never will be printed, it appeared necessary to depart, in this instance, from the practice usually adopted in the present sketch, and to give the following extract in the spelling of the original MS. This minute accuracy was requisite for the satisfaction of such readers as may choose to collate the transcript with the original, and for the purpose of enabling every reader to correct such mistakes as may have been committed in the glossarial notes. Perhaps, too, it may not be amiss to exhibit a single specimen of the strange orthography adopted in our early MSS. as a proof that the degree of obscurity attributed to this cause has not been over-rated.

2 Joy was in the household? drem, dream, jubilatio. Hirede, Sax. a retinue, household, &c. nearly equivalent to the French word, mesnie.

3 On the other half, side.

4 Her lodging (harbour) sought.

5 She, sometimes they, sometimes you.

6 Women.

7 Wonder a many one; i. e. she had wonderfully many women with her.

8 The accustive of the, Sax.

9 Saint Dubric, that was so good.

10 Took, Shakspeare's Nim.

"Off his head.

12 His high? royal? king-helm, i, e. crown.

1 The king him bear ne would, i. e. did not choose to carry so much gold on his head.

2 And did (i. e. placed) a less crown on the king's head. 3 Sith-then, afterwards.

4 He did the same to the queen.

5 Was the law or custom.

6 From their elder days.

7 When Britons came from thence ?

8 All the women that were well done (well educated) at

their meat sate asunder by themselves.

9 That they thought well done.

10 Habitation. To won, Johnson,

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