Metrical Homilies.-To the same period, the first half of the fourteenth century, and to the same part of the country, belongs a cycle of metrical homilies for all the Sundays in the year. They are somewhat similar in plan to the Ormulum': the writer first paraphrases the Gospel for the day, then he gives an explanation of the hidden meaning of the passage, and then he adds some pious story from the Bible, or from monkish legends, to impress on the minds of his hearers the lesson he has been teaching.

The homily for the third Sunday after the Epiphany begins thus:

The Hermit of Hampole.-Richard Rolle was born in Yorkshire about 1290, was educated at Oxford, and at the age of nineteen or twenty he determined to forsake the world and turn hermit. He preached sometimes, and moved his hearers to tears; he was unwearied in praying and writing, and he was believed to have the power to heal the sick and cast out devils. He lived in various spots in Yorkshire, and ended his days in 1349 at Hampole, near Doncaster. He wrote several religious works, but the chief is a poem of nearly 10,000 lines, and in seven books, called the Pricke of Conscience.' In it he treats of man's life, its sorrows and perils; of death; of purgatory; of the pains of hell, and the joys of heaven.

Some parts of the poem are very fanciful. In speaking of the helplessness of infancy, he says:

For ban may he noght stande ne crepe
Bot ligge and sprawel, and cry and wepe.
For unnethes 2 es a child born fully

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pat it ne bygynnes to goule and cry;
And by þat cry men may knaw þan
Whether it be man or weman,
For when it es born it cryes swa ';

If it be man, it says 'a, a,'
pat be first letter es of be nam
Of our forme-fader Adam.
And if he child a woman be
When it es born it says 'e, e.'
E es be first letter and Je hede

Of be name of Eve bat bygan our dede.

He says that man in his body is like a tree.

A man es a tre, þat standes noght hard

Of whilk þe crop es turned donward,

lie.

2 scarcely.

3 howl.

4 So. 5 first-father.

In the early years of the fourteenth century a poem was written which is peculiarly interesting. Its author, Robert Manning, has been called the Patriarch of the New English, much as Cædmon was of the Old English six hundred years earlier.' For among the conflicting dialects which were striving for supremacy, the East Midland (the language of Northampton and Lincoln) was destined to overcome and supersede the others. Manning was born at Bourne, in Lincolnshire, about 1260, and became a member of the Gilbertine monastery of Sempringham, a few miles away from his native place. There he lived many years. He says:—

Other persons also had he known, and

Dane Felyp was maystyr þat tyme,
pat y began bys Englysshe ryme,
pe 3eres of grace fyl þan to be

A bousynd and pre hundred and pre.

In bat tyme turnede y thys

On Englysshe tunge out of Frankys,

Of a boke as y fonde ynne

Men clepyn be boke Handlyng Synne.'

The French book of which Manning's was a translation was the Manuel des Péchés' written by William of Waddington, a monk of a Yorkshire monastery. It treated of the Ten Commandments, the seven deadly sins, the seven sacraments, and other matters of like nature, and it endeavoured by means of precepts and anecdotes to win men from evil to good. But Manning's work was much more than a mere translation, for he altered much in his original and added many new anecdotes. One of these is concerning the famous Robert Grosteste, Bishop of Lincoln.

pe vertu of be harpe, burghe skylle and ryzt Wyl destroye be fendes my3t;

And to be croys' by gode skylle

Ys be harpe lykened weyle.
Tharefor, god men, ze shul lere,
Whan je any glemen here

To wurschep Gode at 30ure powere
As Davyde seyb yn be sautere 2

Yn harpe yn þabour and symphan gle
Wurschepe Gode yn troumpes and sautre
Yn cordys, an organes and bellys ryngyng,
Yn al bese wurschepe ze hevene kyng.

Robert of Bourne has been likened to Chaucer, not in genius (for of that he had little), but in his cheerful nature, and in his desire to write in a simple style that simple men might understand him. He says:

For lewde men y undyrtoke

On Englysshe tunge to make þys boke;

For many ben of swyche manere

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5

rat talys and rymys wyl bleply here.

And he dedicates his work

To alle Crystyn men undir sunne,
And to gode men of Brunne;

And speciali alle be name

The felaushepe of Symprynghame.

Some twenty years later Robert, while living in another Gilbertine monastery, at Sixhille in Lincolnshire, wrote a longer work, the Chronicle of England.' In the first part (from Eneas to Cadwallader), he translates Wace as Lazamon and Robert of Gloucester had already done, and in the second part, which reaches to the death of Edward I., he translates a French metrical Chronicle written by Peter Langtoft of the monastery of Bridlington.

1 cross. 2 Psalter. "tales.

4 rhymes.

5 blithely.