g's poet
_Benoit_. The first part was written in Alexandrines, but for the second
he adopted the easier measure of the octo-syllabic verse, of which this
part contains seventeen thousand lines. In this poem are discerned the
craving of the popular mind, the power of the subject chosen, and the
reflection of language and manners, which are displayed on every page.

So popular, indeed, was the subject of the Brut, indigenous as it was
considered to British soil, that Wace's poem, already taken from Geoffrey
of Monmouth, as Geoffrey had taken it, or pretended to take it from the
older chronicle, was soon again, as we shall see, to be versionized into
English.

OTHER NORMAN WRITERS OF THE TWELFTH CENTURY.

_Philip de Than_, about 1130, one of the Trouveres: _Li livre de
creatures_ is a poetical study of chronology, and his _Bestiarie_ is a
sort of natural history of animals and minerals.

_Benoit_: Chroniques des Ducs de Normandie, 1160, written in thirty
thousand octo-syllabic verses, only worthy of a passing notice, because of
the appointment of the poet by the king, (Henry II.,) in order to
forestall the second part of Wace's Roman de Rou.

Geoffrey, died 1146: A miracle play of St. Catherine.

Geoffrey Gaimar, about 1150: Estorie des Engles, (History of the English.)

Luc de la Barre, blinded for his bold satires by the king (Henry I.).

Mestre Thomas, latter part of twelfth century: Roman du Roi Horn. Probably
the original of the "Geste of Kyng Horn."

Richard I., (Coeur de Lion,) died 1199, King of England: _Sirventes_ and
songs. His antiphonal song with the minstrel Blondel is said to have given
information of the place of his imprisonment, and procured his release;
but this is probably only a romantic fiction.

CHAPTER VI.

THE MORNING TWILIGHT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Semi-Saxon Literature. Layamon. The Ormulum. Robert of Gloucester.
Langland. Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman's Creed. Sir Jean Froissart. Sir
John Mandevil.

SEMI-SAXON LITERATURE.

Moore, in his beautiful poem, "The Light of the Harem," speaks of that
luminous pulsation which precedes the real, progressive morning:

... that earlier dawn
Whose glimpses are again withdrawn,
As if the morn had waked, and then
Shut close her lids of light again.

The simile is not inapt, as applied to the first efforts of the early
English, or Semi-Saxon literature, during the latter part of the twe