in the formation of the English language and English literature. New
scenes and new victories created new inspiration in the poets; monarchs
like Henry I., called from his scholarship _Beauclerc_, practised and
cherished the poetic art, and thus it happened that the Norman poets in
England produced works of sweeter minstrelsy and greater historical value
than the _fabliaux_, _Romans_, and _Chansons de gestes_ of their brethren
on the continent. The conquest itself became a grand theme for their
muse.

RICHARD WACE.--First among the Anglo-Norman poets stands Richard Wace,
called Maistre Wace, reading clerk, (clerc lisant,) born in the island of
Jersey, about 1112, died in 1184. His works are especially to be noted for
the direct and indirect history they contain. His first work, which
appeared about 1138, is entitled _Le Brut d'Angleterre_--The English
Brutus--and is in part a paraphrase of the Latin history of Geoffrey of
Monmouth, who had presented Brutus of Troy as the first in the line of
British kings. Wace has preserved the fiction of Geoffrey, and has catered
to that characteristic of the English people which, not content with
homespun myths, sought for genealogies from the remote classic times.
Wace's _Brut_ is chiefly in octo-syllabic verse, and extends to fifteen
thousand lines.

But Wace was a courtier, as well as a poet. Not content with pleasing the
fancy of the English people with a fabulous royal lineage, he proceeded to
gratify the pride of their Norman masters by writing, in 1171, his "Roman
de Rou, et des Ducs de Normandie," an epic poem on Rollo, the first Duke
of Normandy--Rollo, called the Marcher, because he was so mighty of
stature that no horse could bear his weight. This Rollo compromised with
Charles the Simple of France by marrying his daughter, and accepting that
tract of Neustria to which he gave the name of Normandy. He was the
ancestor, at six removes, of William the Conqueror, and his mighty deeds
were a pleasant and popular subject for the poet of that day, when a
great-grandson of William, Henry II., was upon the throne of England. The
Roman de Rou contains also the history of Rollo's successors: it is in two
parts; the first extending to the beginning of the reign of the third
duke, Richard the Fearless, and the second, containing the story of the
conquest, comes down to the time of Henry II. himself. The second part he
wrote rapidly, for fear that he would be forestalled by the kin