itle to respect, but it is no longer
indispensable.

III.

With these resources at hand, and encouraged by the example of rulers
such as Henry "Beauclerc" and Henry II., the subjects of the kings of
England latinised themselves in great numbers, and produced some of the
Latin writings which enjoyed the widest reputation throughout civilised
Europe. They handle the language with such facility in the twelfth
century, one might believe it to be their mother-tongue; the chief
monuments of English thought at this time are Latin writings. Latin
tales, chronicles, satires, sermons, scientific and medical works,
treatises on style, prose romances, and epics in verse, all kinds of
composition are produced by Englishmen in considerable numbers.

One of them writes a poem in hexameters on the Trojan war, which
doubtless bears traces of barbarism, but more resembles antique models
than any other imitation made in Europe at the time. It was attributed
to Cornelius Nepos, so late even as the Renaissance, though the author,
Joseph of Exeter,[254] who composed it between 1178 and 1183, had
dedicated his work to Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, and mentioned
in it Arthur, "flos regum Arthurus," whose return was still expected by
the Britons, "Britonum ridenda fides." Joseph is acquainted with the
classics; he has read Virgil, and follows to the best of his ability the
precepts of Horace.[255] Differing in this from Benoit de Sainte-More
and his contemporaries, he depicts heroes that are not knights, and who
at their death are not buried in Gothic churches by monks chanting
psalms. This may be accounted a small merit; at that time, however, it
was anything but a common one, and, in truth, Joseph of Exeter alone
possessed it.

In Latin poems of a more modern inspiration, much ingenuity,
observation, sometimes wit, but occasionally only commonplace wisdom,
were expended by Godfrey of Winchester, who composed epigrams about the
commencement of the twelfth century; by Henry of Huntingdon, the
historian who wrote some also; by Alexander Neckham, author of a prose
treatise on the "Natures of Things"; Alain de l'Isle and John de
Hauteville, who both, long before Jean de Meun, made Nature discourse,
"de omni re scibili"[256]; Walter the Englishman, and Odo of Cheriton,
authors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries of Latin fables,[257]
and last, and above all, by Nigel Wireker, who wrote in picturesque
style and flowing verse the stor