BOOK in classical metre; but three others of his Latin verses are in Leonine rimes. VI. LITERARY HISTORY OF Thus his "Historia Theophili Pænitentis:" Quidam magnorum, Vicedomus erat meritorum Quem sitio votis, nunc oscula porrigat oris. Prestans magnatis, summe vir nobilitatis 6th. PHILIP DU THAN wrote his poems between 1120 and 1135, entirely in them. I cite his lines on the turtle, as I have given before those of Theobald, which seem to have been his original. Turtre, ceo est oisel, simple caste e bel, E sun malle aime tant, que ja ci sun vivant These citations completely disprove the claim of any Leo, stationed near the year 1200, to the invention of this species of rime. But then, whence came the name? I submit that we may thus account for the origin of it, without creating any person for that purpose. The Physiologus of Theobald was a poem which, however moderate in its real pretensions, was a considerable favorite with our ancestors. Its being printed so soon after the discovery of printing, and its being so often referred to by authors in the middle age, prove its popularity. Now it happens, that its first subject was the lion, and that he wrote this in those middle riming lines, which were subsequently, and I think, from this very work and part, denominated Leonine. 12 VIII. AND PRO- These lines have been quoted in a preceding part CHAP. of this Work; and the present author is inclined to believe, that their popularity, by one of those capri- ORIGIN cious accidents which sometimes occur in human affairs, occasioned the term Leonine to be applied to this sort of verse, tho Theobald was not its inventor; as the name America became fixed on the great western continent, tho Americus Vesputius was not its discoverer. A peculiar species of rimed Latin poetry is exhibited by our celebrated GOWER, in part of his MS. Latin Chronicle of his own times. It exhibits a complication of rime, which must have been learnt from the Welsh bards of the middle ages, as they occasionally use it as a favorite difficulty; and it does not appear in any earlier works. It consists of a series of the same middle and final rimes continued for several lines. The following is a specimen from Gower's address to Henry IV. O recolende bone, pie rex, Henrice! patrone Rex confirmatus, licet undique magnificatus Cotton MS.-Titus, A 13. p. 166. In the next line, he names himself as the author: 12 See before in this volume, p. 209. RIME IN THE MID DLE AGES. HISTORY OF CHAP. IX. History of the Introduction of the Arabian Sciences into BOOK WHILE the vernacular literature of the Anglo-NorVI. mans was thus slowly advancing from rimed chroLITERARY nicles to rimed romances, and by deviating into the ENGLAND. romances in prose began to form a prose style of narrative composition, which must have improved the phrase of the conversation of the day, and have gradually increased the power of expressing the new associations and distinctions of thought that were every where arising in the minds of the studious, three important mines of intellectual wealth were opened in England and Europe, principally by Arabian scholars, or by those who acquired and cultivated their attainments. These were, the scholastic philosophy, which revived that activity of mind which the Grecian vanity had so much abused, and the gross habits of the Romans had so long paralyzed; those mathematical sciences, which the Grecians had imported from Alexandria, and had forgotten; and that natural and experimental knowlege, which neither Greeks nor Romans had ever much or permanently valued or pursued. Without these essential additions to the English intellect, the vernacular literature would have profited little, because it had nothing but vague feelings, uncultivated and rude estories,' unsifted from fable, and rarely connected with moral instruction, to impart. The great national improvements that soon became discernible in England after the twelfth cen IX. DUCTION OF THE SCIENCES. tury, arose from the combined operation of the scho- CHAP. lastic vigor and penetration of thought, of the sublime deductions and unerring reasoning of the ma- INTROthematical sciences, and of the stream of knowlege, perpetually enlarging, that began to pour into the ARABIAN world from natural and experimental philosophy. The crusades, and the commerce which they made necessary, added largely to our geographical information. The busy intermingling of the most active minds of all the nations and habits of Europe, in the Palestine expeditions; and the dangers, suffering, vicissitudes and romantic adventures, which were every day occurring in their prosecution; roused the human sensibilities into perpetual activity, and put them under perpetual discipline. From all these sources of improvement, the general tone of social mind was in England, as in varying degrees, also on the continent, enriched and enlivened, and the vernacular languages were polished, strengthened, enlarged, and exercised. The riming and prose literature already alluded to, first made these languages fitted for the use of the expanding mind of the day; and when the knowlege from all the channels we have noticed, began to flow around, cultivated individuals appeared every where ready to imbibe, and ambitious to increase it. Mental originality, increasing judgment, refining taste, and critical moral feeling, emerged with augmented frequency in every succeeding age; and have impressed upon the English nation that love of truth, science, reason, and sensibility, which has made our intellectual progress unintermitted, and is rapidly educating human nature to powers, knowlege, and virtues, which may cause its future history to be some atonement for its former degradation and abuse. BOOK VI. HISTORY OF ENGLAND. of litera ture. To put the human mind into this position, from its state of poverty and debility in the fourth century, LITERARY it was necessary to destroy that literary taste for sophistry and rhetoric, for contentious theology and vapid declamation, which had enslaved it so long. Apparent destruction But to keep the Gothic nations, in the ductile period of their ignorance, from the fascinations of the vain philosophy and elegant but corrupting mythology of Greece, and yet to convey to them the mathematical sciences of its Egyptian colony; to abolish the profligate system of Roman manners, the enervating despotism of the Roman government, and its oratorical cast of mind and forms of education; and yet to benefit society by that perfect taste, solid judgment, and manly style of thought, which the best Roman classics in their best passages contain; and to introduce the still nobler improvements which divine truth imparts and creates, as the reason becomes enlightened and enlarged, were effects so incompatible and opposing, that reason might have despaired of the possibility of their production. These contrary events, however, have occurred; and it is a worthy employment of the human intellect, to consider the means by which, in the very hour of its apparent destruction, its effective reformation was commenced and ensured. The æra of its reformation. The demolition of the Roman empire by the Gothic tribes ended that state of manners and literature, whose pernicious tendencies have been stated. The various attempts of the different Gothic nations to revive the study of the Roman literature, which would have renovated the evil from which it was become necessary to liberate mankind, signally failed. In Italy, the irruptions of the fierce Lombards, em |