is earlier, though not much earlier,
contemporary. Here the Frenchman has enormous advantages--the
advantage of an infinitely more accomplished scheme of language and
metre, that of some two centuries of finished poetical work before
him, that of an evidently wider knowledge of literature generally, and
perhaps that of a more distinctly poetical genius. And yet Layamon can
survive the test. He is less, not more, subject to the _cliche_, the
stereotyped and stock poetical form, than Chrestien. If he is far less
smooth, he has not the monotony which accompanies and, so to speak,
dogs the "skipping octosyllable"; and if he cannot, as Chrestien can,
frame a set passage or show-piece, he manages to keep up a diffused
interest, and in certain instances--the story of Rouwenne (Rowena),
the Tintagel passage, the speech of Walwain to the Emperor of
Rome--has a directness and simple appeal which cannot be slighted. We
feel that he is at the beginning, while the other in respect of his
own division is nearly at the end: that he has future, capabilities,
opportunities of development. When one reads Chrestien or another
earlier contemporary, Benoit de Sainte-More, the question is, "What
can come after this?" When one reads Layamon the happier question is,
"What will come after this?"

[Sidenote: _The_ Ormulum. _Its metre._]

The _Ormulum_ and the _Ancren Riwle_ appear to be--the former exactly
and the latter nearly of the same date as Layamon, all being near to
1200. But though they were "good books," their interest is by no means
merely one of edification. That of the _Ormulum_[90] is, indeed,
almost entirely confined to its form and language; but it so happens
that this interest is of the kind that touches literature most nearly.
Orm or Ormin, who gives us his name, but of whom nothing else is
known, has left in ten thousand long lines or twenty thousand short
couplets a part only of a vast scheme of paraphrase and homiletic
commentary on the Four Gospels (the "four-in-hand of Aminadab," as he
calls them, taking up an earlier conceit), on the plan of taking a
text for each day from its gospel in the calendar. As we have only
thirty-two of these divisions, it is clear that the work, if
completed, was much larger than this. Orm addresses it to Walter, his
brother in the flesh as well as spiritually: the book seems to be
written in an Anglian or East Anglian dialect, and it is at least an
odd coincidence that the names Orm and Walt