airy grace, or with the Italian in liquid music, to excel them far in
teeming resources and robust energy. Memorable and hallowed for ever be
the hour when the 'well of English undefiled' first sparkled to the day!

Previous to this the chief of the poets, after the Conquest, were
Normans. The country whence that people came had for some time been
celebrated for poetry. France was, as to its poetic literature, divided
into two great sections--the Provencal and the Northern. The first was
like the country where it flourished--gay, flowery, and exuberant; it
swam in romance, and its rhymers delighted, when addressing large
audiences under the open skies of their delightful climate, to indulge
in compliment and fanfaronade, to sing of war, wine, and love.

The Normans produced a race of simpler poets. That some of them were men
as well as singers, is proved by the fact that it was a bard named
Taillefer who first broke the English ranks at the battle of Hastings.
After him came Philippe de Thaun, who tried to set to song the science
of his day; Thorold, the author of a romance entitled 'Roland;' Samson
de Nauteuil, the translator of Solomon's Proverbs into French verse;
Geoffrey Gaimar, who wrote a Chronicle of the Saxon kings; and one
David, a minstrel of no little note and power in his day. But a more
remarkable writer succeeded, and his work, like Aaron's rod, swallowed
up all the productions of these clever but petty poets. This was Wace,
commonly called Maistre Wace, a native of Jersey. In 1160, or as some
say 1155, Wace finished his 'Brut d'Angleterre' which is in reality a
translation into French of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote a History
of Britain from the imaginary Brutus of Troy down to Cadwallader in
689. Literature owes not a little to Wace's poem. He collected into
a permanent shape a number of traditions and legends--many of them
interesting--which had been floating through Europe, just as Macpherson