Home they come sone anone, For they had take game at wille. He is afterwards knighted with great solemnity. And fourty dayes thys fest was holde." The metrical romance entitled LA MORT ARTHURE, preserved in the same repository, is supposed by the learned and accurate Wanley, to be a translation from the French: who adds, that it is not perhaps older than the times of Henry the Seventh.° But as it abounds with many Saxon words, and seems to be quoted in SYR BEVYS, I have given it a place here P. Notwithstanding the title, and the exordium which promises the history of Arthur and the Sangreal,-the exploits of Sir Lancelot du Lake king of Benwike, his intrigues with Arthur's queen Geneura, and his refusal of the beautiful daughter of the earl of Ascalot, form the greatest part of the poem. At the close, the repentance of Lancelot and Geneura, who both assume the habit of religion, is introduced. The writer mentions the Tower of London. The following is a description of a tournament performed by some of the knights of the Round Table. Tho to the castelle gon they fare,.. To the ladye fayre and bryht: Blithe was the ladye thare, That they wold dwelle with hyr that nyght. I venison. [hunting, game.] m Ippomedon. MS. f. 61. b. MSS. Harl. 2252. 49. f. 86. Pr. "Lordinges that are leffe and deare." Never printed. [The late Mr. Ritson was of opinion that [this romance] was versified from the prose work of the same name written by Malory and printed by Caxton; in proof of which he contended that the style is marked by an evident affectation of antiquity. But in truth it differs most essentially from Malory's work, P Signat. K. ii. b. T Hastely was there soper yare1 Off mete and drinke rychely dight; Myche there was of game and play, How Arthur's knightis rode that day, On fote his knightis ar led away. Thinkis to helpe yif that he may. The nexte way to grounde he chese: Ffule thynne he made the thikkest prees. Sir Lyonelle beganne to tene", And hastely he made hym bowne, To Launcellott, with herte kene, He rode with helme and sword browne; ready. See GLOSSARY to the Oxford edition of Shakespeare, 1771. In Launcellott hitte hym as I wene, Through the helme in to the crowne: Bothe hors and man there yod adoune. And gan with crafte, &c. I could give many more ample specimens of the romantic poems of these nameless minstrels, who probably flourished before or about the reign of Edward the Second". But it Octavian is one of the romances mentioned in the Prologue to Cure de Lyon, above cited. See also vol. i. p. 123. In the Cotton manuscripts there is the metrical romance of Octavian imperator, but it has nothing of the history of the Roman emperors. Pr. "Jhesu þat was with spere ystonge." Calig. A 12. f. 20. It is a very singular stanza. In Bishop More's manuscripts at Cambridge, there is a poem with the same title, but a very different beginning, viz. " Lytyll and mykyll olde and younge." Bibl. Publ. 690. 30.-[This romance will be found in Mr. Weber's collection, vol. iii. p. 157. -EDIT.-The emperor Octavyen, perhaps the same, is mentioned in Chaucer's Dreme, v. 368. Among Hatton's manuscripts in Bibl. Bodl. we have a French poem, Romaunce de Otheniem Empereur de Rome. Hyper. Bodl. 4046. 21. In the same line of the aforesaid Prologue, we have the romance of Ury. This is probably the father of the celebrated Sir Ewaine or Yvain, mentioned in the Court Mantell. Mem. Anc. Cheval. ii. p. 62. Li rois pris par la destre main Specimens of the English Syr Bevys may be seen in Percy's Ball. iii. 216, 217, 297. edit. 1767. And Observations on the Fairy Queen, § ii. p. 50. It is extant in the black letter. It is in manuscript at Cambridge, Bibl. Publ. 690. 30. And Coll. Caii. A 9. 5. And MSS. Bibl. Adv. Edinb. W 4. 1. Num. xxii. [It is in this romance of Syr Bevys, that the knight passes over a bridge, the arches of which are hung round with small bells. Signat. E iv. This is an oriental idea. In the ALCORAN it is said, that one of the felicities in Mahomet's paradise, will be to listen to the ravishing music of an infinite number of bells, hanging on the trees, which will be put in motion by the wind proceeding from the throne of God. Sale's KORAN, Prelim. Disc. p. 100. In the enchanted horn, as we shall see hereafter, in le Lai du Corn, the rim of the horn is hung round with a hundred bells of a most musical sound.-ADDITIONS.] Sidracke was translated into English verse by one Hugh Campden; and printed, probably not long after it was translated, at London, by Thomas Godfrey, at the cost of Dan Robert Saltwood, monk of saint Austin's in Canterbury, 1510. This piece therefore belongs to a lower period. I have seen only one manuscript copy of it. Laud, G 57. fol. membran. Chaucer mentions, in Sir Topaz, among others, the romantic poems of Sir Blandamoure, Sir Libeaux, and Sir Ippotis. Of the former I find nothing more than the name occurring in Sir Libeaux. [This has been copied from Percy's Essay referred to below, the last edition of which reads Blaundemere, while the best MSS. of Chaucer read Pleindamoure.-EDIT.] To avoid prolix repetitions from other is neither my inclination nor intention to write a catalogue, or compile a miscellany. It is not to be expected that this work should be a general repository of our antient poetry. I cannot however help observing, that English literature and English poetry suffer, while so many pieces of this kind still remain concealed and forgotten in our manuscript libraries. They contain in common with the prose-romances, to most of which indeed they gave rise, amusing images of antient customs and institutions, not elsewhere to be found, or at least not otherwise so strikingly delineated: and they preserve pure and unmixed, those fables of chivalry which formed the taste and awakened the imagination of our elder English classics. The antiquaries of former times overlooked or rejected these valuable remains, which they despised as false and frivolous; and employed their industry in reviving obscure fragments of uninstructive morality or uninteresting history. But in the present age we are beginning to make ample amends: in which the curiosity of the antiquarian is connected with taste and works in the hands of all, I refer the Her bi ginnith a tretys Seynt John the evangelist witnesseth it. And when the child of grete honour I must not forget here, that Sir is celebrated in a separate romance. Gawaine, one of Arthur's champions, Among Tanner's manuscripts, we have the Weddynge of Sir Gawain, Numb. 455. Bibl. Bodl. It begins, "Be ye blythe and listeneth to the lyf of a lorde riche." Dr. Percy has printed the Marriage of Sir Gawayne, which he believes to have furnished Chaucer with his Wife of Bath. Ball. i. 11. It begins, King Arthur lives in merry Carlisle." I think I have somewhere seen a romance in verse entitled, The Turke and Gawaine.-[This romance occurs in Bishop Percy's catalogue given from his folio MS-EDIT.] genius, and his researches tend to display the progress of human manners, and to illustrate the history of society. ancestors. As a further illustration of the general subject, and many particulars, of this section and the three last, I will add a new proof of the reverence in which such stories were held, and of the familiarity with which they must have been known, by our These fables were not only perpetually repeated at their festivals, but were the constant objects of their eyes. The very walls of their apartments were clothed with romantic history. Tapestry was antiently the fashionable furniture of our houses, and it was chiefly filled with lively representations of this sort. The stories of the tapestry in the royal palaces of Henry the Eighth are still preserved; which I will here give without reserve, including other subjects, as they happen to "The seconde part of the Inventorye of our late sovereigne lord kyng Henry the Eighth, conteynynge his guardrobes, houshold-stuff, &c. &c." MSS. Harl. 1419. fol. The original. Compare vol. i. p. 118. and Walpole's Anecd. Paint. i. p. 10. [I make no apology for adding here an account of the furniture of a CLOSET at the old royal palace of Greenwich, in the reign of Henry the Eighth; as it throws light on our general subject, by giving a lively picture of the fashions, arts, amusements, and modes of life, which then prevailed. From the same manuscript in the British Muscum. "A clocke. A glasse of steele. Four battell axes of wood. Two quivers with arrowes. A painted table [i. e. a picture]. A payre of ballance [balances], with waights. A case of tynne with a plot. In the window [a large bowwindow], a rounde mapp. A standinge glasse of steele in ship.-A branche of flowres wrought upon wyre. Two payre of playing tables of bone. A payre of chesmen in a case of black lether. Two birds of Araby. A gonne [gun] upon a stocke wheeled. Five paxes [crucifixes] of glasse and woode. A tablet of our ladic and saint Anne. A standinge glasse with imagery made of bone. Perhaps Tyrone in Ireland. A A A |