Alexander_,
_The Seven Sages_ (later version, edited by Wright); _Torrent of
Portugal_, _Sir Gowther_, _Sir Degrevant_, _Sir Eglamour_, _Le Bone
Florence of Rome_, and _Partonope of Blois_; the prose version of
_Merlin_, the later version of _Sir Guy of Warwick_, and the verse
Romance, of immense length, of _The Holy Grail_; _Emare_, _The Erl
of Tolous_, and _The Squire of Low Degree_. Towards the end of the
century, when the printing-press was already at work, we find Caxton
greatly busying himself to continue the list. Not only did he give us
the whole of Sir Thomas Malory's _Morte D'Arthur_, "enprynted and
fynysshed in thabbey Westmestre the last day of Iuyl, the yere of our
lord MCCCCLXXXV"; but he actually translated several romances into
very good English prose on his own account, viz. _Godefroy of Boloyne_
(1481), _Charles the Grete_ (1485), _The Knight Paris and the fair
Vyene_ (1485), _Blanchardyn and Eglantine_ (about 1489), and _The Four
Sons of Aymon_ (about 1490). We must further put to the credit of the
fifteenth century the remarkable English version of the _Gesta
Romanorum_, and many more versions by Caxton, such as _The Recuyell
of the Historyes of Troye_, _The Life of Jason_, _Eneydos_ (which is
Virgil's _Aeneid_ in the form of a prose romance), _The Golden Legend_
or Lives of Saints, and _Reynard the Fox_. When all these works are
considered, the fifteenth century emerges with considerable credit.

It remains to look at some of the above-named romances a little more
closely, in order to see if any of them are in the dialect of Northern
England. Some of them are written by scribes belonging to other parts,
but there seems to be little doubt that the following were in that
dialect originally, viz. (1) _Iwain and Gawain_, printed in Ritson's
_Ancient Metrical Romances_, and belonging to the very beginning of
the century, extant in the same MS. as that which contains Minot's
_Poems_: (2) _The Wars of Alexander_ (Early English Text Society,
1886), edited by myself; see the Preface, pp. xv, xix, for proofs that
it was originally written in a pure Northumbrian dialect, which the
better of the two MSS. very fairly preserves. Others exhibit strong
traces of a Northern dialect, such as _The Aunturs of Arthur_,
_Sir Amadas_, and _The Avowing of Arthur_, but they may be in a West
Midland dialect, not far removed from the North. In the preface to
_The Sege of Melayne_ (Milan) _and Roland and Otuel_, edited for the