anndenn" (to understand), and so forth. But, in
the first place, it fixes for all time, in a most invaluable manner,
the pronunciation of English at that time; and in the second, it shows
that Orm had a sound understanding of that principle of English which
has been set at nought by those who would spell "traveller"
"traveler." He knew that the tendency, and the, if not warned,
excusable tendency, of an English tongue would be to pronounce this
trav_ee_ler. It is a pity that knowledge which existed in the twelfth
century should apparently have become partial ignorance close to the
beginning of the twentieth.

[Sidenote: _The_ Ancren Riwle.]

The _Ancren Riwle_[91] has no oddities of this kind, and nothing
particularly noticeable in its form, though its easy pleasant prose
would have been wonderful at the time in any other European nation.
Even French prose was only just beginning to take such form, and had
not yet severed itself from poetic peculiarities to anything like the
same extent. But then the unknown author of the _Ancren Riwle_ had
certainly four or five, and perhaps more, centuries of good sound
Saxon prose before him: while St Bernard (if he wrote French prose),
and even Villehardouin, had little or nothing but Latin. I have called
him unknown, and he neither names himself nor is authoritatively named
by any one; while of the guesses respecting him, that which identifies
him with Simon of Ghent is refuted by the language of the book, while
that which assigns it to Bishop Poore has no foundation. But if we do
not know who wrote the book, we know for whom it was written--to wit,
for the three "anchoresses" or irregular nuns of a private convent or
sisterhood at Tarrant Keynes in Dorsetshire.

[Footnote 91: Ed. Morton, for the Camden Society. London, 1853. This
edition is, I believe, not regarded as quite satisfactory by
philology: it is amply adequate for literature.]

Later this nunnery, which lasted till the dissolution, was taken under
the Cistercian rule; but at first, and at the time of the book, it was
free, the author advising the inmates, if anybody asked, to say that
they were under "the rule of St James"--_i.e._, the famous definition,
by that apostle, of pure religion and undefiled. The treatise, which
describes itself, or is described in one of its MSS., as "one book
to-dealed into eight books," is of some length, but singularly
pleasing to read, and gives evidence of a very amiable and sensible