the Gesta Romanorum.

After the accession of the Norman kings of England, the chief literary
works in England for two centuries are those of the Norman poets. Wace
in the twelfth century wrote in French his "Brut d'Angleterre." Brutus
was the mythical son of Aeneas, and the founder of Britain. The Britons
were settled in Cornwall, Wales and Bretagne, and were distinguished
for traditionary legends, which had been collected by Godfrey of
Monmouth in 1138. They formed the groundwork for Wace's poem, which was
written in 1160, and from that time proved to be an inexhaustible
treasury from which romantic writers of fiction drew their materials.

From this source Shakespeare obtained King Lear; Sackville found his
Ferrex and Porrex; and Milton and other poets are also indebted to
these legends. They furnished, also, the romances of chivalry for the
English Court, and have had an effect on English poetry that can be
seen even in the present day. The six romances of the British cycle,
celebrating Arthur, his Knights, and the Round Table, were written in
the last part of the twelfth century, at the instigation of Henry II.
They were the work of Englishmen; but were composed in French, and from
them the poets of France fashioned a number of metrical romances.

Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century borrowed freely from French,
Latin and Italian works. The comic Fabliaux and the allegorical poetry
of the Trouveres and Troubadours furnished him with many of his
incidents and characters. The Romance of the Rose was taken from a
French poem of the thirteenth century.

Troilus and Cressida is regarded as a translation from Boccaccio, and
Chaucer's Legend of Good Women is founded on Ovid's Epistles. John
Lydgate, a Benedictine monk in the fifteenth century, wrote poetry in
imitation of Chaucer, taking his ideas from the Gesta Romanorum, while
Thomas Mallory, a priest in the time of Edward IV, has given us one of
the best specimens of old English in the romantic prose fiction of
Morte d'Arthur, in which the author has told in one tale the whole
history of the Round Table.

The "Bruce" of the Scotch John Barbour in the same century, gives the
adventures of King Robert, from which Sir Walter Scott has drawn
largely for his "Lord of the Isles."

The close of the fifteenth century saw a passion develop for Scotch
poetry, which speedily became the fashion. Henry the Minstrel, or Blind
Harry, wrote his "Wallace," which is full of