quoer pensoe et diseie,
Sire, le vos presentereie.
Si vos les plaist a receveir.

Mult me ferez grant joie aveir,
A tuz juirs mais en serai lie, &c.[9]

But who is this monarch? 1. We may perceive in it her apprehension of
the envy which her success might excite in a strange country: for this
reason she could not have written in France. 2. When at a loss for some
single syllable, she sometimes intermixes in her verses words that are
pure English, when the French word would not have suited the
measure.--"Fire et chaundelez alumez." It should seem, therefore, that
she wrote for the English, since her lines contain words that
essentially belong to their language, and not at all to the _Romance_.
3. She dedicates her lays to a king who understood English, because she
takes care to translate into that tongue all the Welsh and Armoric
proper names that she was obliged to introduce. Thus in the Lay of
_Bisclaveret_, she says, the English translate this name by that of
_Garwaf_, (Were-wolf); in that of _Laustic_, that they call it
_Nihtgale_ (Nightingale); and in that of _Chevrefeuille, Gotelef_,
(Goatleaf) &c. It is certain, then, she composed for a king who
understood English. 4. She tells us that she had declined translating
Latin histories into _Romance_; because so many others having been thus
occupied, her name would have been confounded with the multitude, and
her labours unattended with honour. Now this circumstance perfectly
corresponds with the reign of Henry III. when such a number of Normans
and Anglo-Normans had, for more than half a century, translated from
the Latin so many romances of chivalry; and especially those of the
Round Table, which we owe to the Kings of England. 5. Fauchet and
Pasquier inform us, that Mary lived about the middle of the 13th
century, and this would exactly coincide with the reign of that
prince.[10] 6. Denis Pyramu[11], an Anglo-Norman poet, speaks of Mary as
an author, whose person was as much beloved as her writings, and who
therefore must have lived in his own time. Now it is known that this
poet wrote under Henry III. and this opinion could only be confuted by
maintaining that it was rather a King of France of whom she speaks,
which king must have been Louis VIII. or St. Louis his son. But this
alteration will not bear the slightest examination; for how could it be
necessary to explain Welsh and Armoric words to a French king in the
English language? How could the