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 _Æneid_ 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
Early English Text Society by S.J. Herrtage, it is suggested that
both these poems were by the author of _Sir Percival_, and that all
three were originally in the dialect of the North of England.

_Iwain and Gawain_ and _The Wars of Alexander_ belong to quite the
beginning of the fifteenth century, and they appear to be among the
latest examples of the literary use of dialect in the North of England
considered as a vehicle for romances; but we must not forget the