WORK OF THE FRENCH WRITERS.  The French literature of the Norman period is interesting chiefly because of the avidity with which foreign writers seized upon the native legends and made them popular in England.  Until Geoffrey’s preposterous chronicle appeared, these legends had not been used to any extent as literary material.  Indeed, they were scarcely known in England, though familiar to French and Italian minstrels.  Legends of Arthur and his court were probably first taken to Brittany by Welsh emigrants in the fifth and sixth centuries.  They became immensely popular wherever they were told, and they were slowly carried by minstrels and story-tellers all over Europe.  That they had never received literary form or recognition was due to a peculiarity of mediaeval literature, which required that every tale should have some ancient authority behind it.  Geoffrey met this demand by creating an historical manuscript of Welsh history.  That was enough for the age.  With Geoffrey and his alleged manuscript to rest upon, the Norman-French writers were free to use the fascinating stories which had been-for centuries in the possession of their wandering minstrels.  Geoffrey’s Latin history was put into French verse by Gaimar (c. 1150) and by Wace (c. 1155), and from these French versions the work was first translated into English.  From about 1200 onward Arthur and Guinevere and the matchless band of Celtic heroes that we meet later (1470) in Malory’s Morte d’ Arthur became the permanent possession of our literature.

LAYAMON’S BRUT (c. 1200).  This is the most important of the English riming chronicles, that is, history related in the form of doggerel verse, probably because poetry is more easily memorized than prose.  We give here a free rendering of selected lines at the beginning of the poem, which tell us all we know of Layamon, the first who ever wrote as an Englishman for Englishmen, including in the term all who loved England and called it home, no matter where their ancestors were born.

Now there was a priest in the land named Layamon.  He was son of Leovenath —­may God be gracious unto him.  He dwelt at Ernley, at a noble church on Severn’s bank.  He read many books, and it came to his mind to tell the noble deeds of the English.  Then he began to journey far and wide over the land to procure noble books for authority.  He took the English book that Saint Bede made, another in Latin that Saint Albin made,[48] and a third book that a French clerk made, named Wace.[49] Layamon laid these works before him and turned the leaves; lovingly he beheld them.  Pen he took, and wrote on book-skin, and made the three books into one.