ould be more
accurately denoted by the appearance of the history of William the
Marshal in 1225 (published for the _Societe de l'histoire de France_,
by Paul Meyer, 3 vols., 1891-1901). It owes its brilliancy largely to
the protection accorded by Henry II. of England to the men of letters
of his day. "He could speak French and Latin well, and is said to
have known something of every tongue between'the Bay of Biscay and
the Jordan.' He was probably the most highly educated sovereign of his
day, and amid all his busy active life he never lost his interest in
literature and intellectual discussion; his hands were never empty,
they always had either a bow or a book" (_Dict. of Nat. Biog._). Wace
and Benoit de Sainte-More compiled their histories at his bidding, and
it was in his reign that Marie de France composed her poems. An event
with which he was closely connected, viz. the murder of Thomas Becket,
gave rise to a whole series of writings, some of which are purely
Anglo-Norman. In his time appeared the works of Beroul and Thomas
respectively, as well as some of the most celebrated of the
Anglo-Norman _romans d'aventure_. It is important to keep this fact in
mind when studying the different works which Anglo-Norman literature
has left us. We will examine these works briefly, grouping them
into narrative, didactic, hagiographic, lyric, satiric and dramatic
literature.

_Narrative Literature:_ (_a_) _Epic and Romance_.--The French epic
came over to England at an early date. We know that the _Chanson
de Roland_ was sung at the battle of Hastings, and we possess
Anglo-Norman MSS. of a few _chansons de geste_. The _Pelerinage de
Charlemagne_ (Koschwitz, _Altfranzoesische Bibliothek_, 1883) was, for
instance, only preserved in an Anglo-Norman manuscript of the British
Museum (now lost), although the author was certainly a Parisian. The
oldest manuscript of the _Chanson de Roland_ that we possess is also
a manuscript written in England, and amongst the others of less
importance we may mention _La Chancun de Willame_, the MS. of which
has (June 1903) been published in facsimile at Chiswick (cf. Paul
Meyer, _Romania_, xxxii. 597-618). Although the diffusion of epic
poetry in England did not actually inspire any new _chansons de
geste_, it developed the taste for this class of literature, and the
epic style in which the tales of _Horn_, of _Bovon de Hampton_, of
_Guy of Warwick_ (still unpublished), of _Waldef_ (still unpublish