heathen mythology into the works of the early classics.-ELLIS, GEORGE, 17901845, Specimens of the Early English Poets, vol. I, p. 79.

After observing some traits of humour and sentiment, moderate as they may be, in compositions as old as the middle of the thirteenth century, we might naturally expect to find in Robert of Gloucester not indeed a decidedly poetical manner, but some approach to the animation of poetry. But the Chronicle of this English Ennius, as he has been called, whatever progress in the state of the language it may display, comes in reality nothing nearer the character of a work of imagination than Layamon's version of Wace, which preceded it by a hundred years. One would not imagine, from Robert of Gloucester's style, that he belonged to a period when a single effusion of sentiment, or a trait of humour and vivacity, had appeared in the language. On the contrary,

he seems to take us back to the nonage of poetry, when verse is employed not to harmonize and beautify expression, but merely to assist the memory.

As a relater of events, he is tolerably succinct and perspicuous; and wherever the fact is of any importance, he shows a watchful attention to keep the reader's memory distinct with regard to chronology, by making the date of the year rhyme to something prominent in the narration of the fact.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS 1819, An Essay on English Poetry.

The MS. from which Hearne published his edition was, I suspect, a very corrupt copy of the original; but, with all its faults, it tells our national story with a simplicity, and occasionally with a dramatic power, that have been much undervalued. In sketching the character of our kings this chronicler is sometimes singularly happy.-GUEST, EDWIN, 1838, A History of English Rhythms, vol. II, p. 412.

The poems for such we must call them if all rhymed compositions are poetryof Robert of Gloucester, who flourished about the year 1300, are of considerable philological importance, and of some. value as contributions to our knowledge of the history of England, though their literary merit is of a humble order.--MARSH, GEORGE P., 1862, The Origin and History of the English Language, etc., p. 231.

Robert as poet was much less gifted than Layamon, but had in him more of the scholar. Archæology, topography, ethnology, and topics of political economy aroused his interest. He was everywhere tempted to compare the past with the present. His erudition was not especially great, nor his field of vision broad, nor his insight very keen; but he was a man of warm feelings, and was clear-sighted within his sphere. He was fain to discern the finger of God in historical events; his moral standard of measurement was strict, but not illiberal. Although devoted to the interests of the church, he was a good Englishman. Party considerations and prejudices clouded his judgment less than they obscure that of many a prominent historian. It was always his aim to distribute praise or blame according to merit.-TEN BRINK, BERNHARD, 1877-83, History of English Literature (To Wielif), tr. Kennedy, p. 275.

It was in long lines of seven accents, and occasionally six, and was the first complete history of his country, from the earliest times to his own day, written in popular rhymes by an Englishman. The language is very free from Norman admixture, and represents West Midland Transitional English of the end of the thirteenth century. -- MORLEY AND TYLER, 1879, A Manual of English Literature, p. 64.

Robert of Gloucester wrote for "simple Englishmen," and his verse has all the interest of unadorned style, while the language in which he writes is a valuable illustration of the change through which our tongue was then passing. As a historian he is of considerable importance. -HUTTON, WILLIAM HOLDEN, 1888, Simon of Montfort and His Cause, p. 180.

Besides the industry he shows in consulting the best authorities, he takes a real interest in his subject on its moral side, and his reflections have often great significance, as showing the feelings of the native English towards the Norman conquerors. COURTHOPE, W. J., 1895, A History of English Poetry, vol. 1, p. 146.

Robert of Gloucester is a very interesting person, and a much better poet than it has been the fashion to represent him, though his first object was not poetry, and though, had it been so, he was but illequipped.-SAINTSBURY, GEORGE, 1898, A Short History of English Literature, p. 63.

The romance ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune is deservedly regarded as a precious relique of early British poetry; it is highly curious as a specimen of language, and not less curious as a specimen of composition. The verses are short, and the stanzas somewhat artificial in their structure; and amid the quaint simplicity of the author's style, we often distinguish a forcible brevity of expression. But his narrative, which has a certain air of originality, is sometimes so abrupt as to seem obscure, and even enigmatical. IRVING, DAVID, 1861, History of Scottish Poetry, ed. Carlyle, p. 60.

He had the fame not only of an epic poet or bard, but of a prophet, occupying in his own country somewhat of the position held by Merlin in England, and afterwards by Nostradamus in France.BURTON, JOHN HILL, 1867, The History of Scotland, vol. IV, p. 119.

We can see in him, as he lived, an obvious awakening to the powers of outward nature, the feeling of the spring-tide and the rejoicing birds, the love of lonely lingering among the hills, the sense of the unspeakable silence and solitude of the benty moorland, and the poetic yearning for some form of a mysterious life with which he might commune on the wild. Thomas of Erceldoune was the man of the time who felt these influences, and doubtless expressed them, more powerfully than any other. The mythical story of his intercourse and selection by the Queen of Faerie was the imaginative embodiment in a free, wild, and graceful form of the Rhymour as he appeared to the people around him the theory of his somewhat mysterious life.-VEITCH, JOHN, 1878, The History and Poetry of the Scottish Border, p. 236.

Whether the earlier figure of Thomas of Erceldoune is more than a phantom may still be doubted, and there is no satisfactory evidence for believing him to be the author of the "Romance of Sir Tristrem" which Scott published in 1804. We are not even certain that this romance has any claim to be regarded as a product of Scottish literature; it exists only in a transcript executed in England, and it has no Scottish peculiarities.-Ross, JOHN MERRY, 1884, Scottish History and Literature, ed. Brown, p. 107.

The arguments which assail the trustworthiness of these documents are suggested by somewhat hypercritical doubts, and the theories designed to supplant them are based upon conjectures wholly unsupported by evidence.-M'NEILL, G. P., 1886, ed. Sir Tristrem (Scottish Text Society).

The poem is written in an involved stanza in striking contrast to the simple style of the narrative and the obvious eagerness of the narrator to press on with his tale. The design of the composition, as in most old romances, is of the character best adapted for recitation-a series of adventures, each complete in itself, strung upon the lives of the lovers. At the same time there is a certain arrangement, a proportion and balance of parts around the central idea, which give to the story an artistic unity. The situations frequently possess strong dramatic point, as when Tristrem, having drunk the love-potion with Isonde, has to fulfil his mission and hand her over in marriage to the king. Most notable of all, the characters of the tale from first to last are firmly and even subtly drawn. Limned from the outside by their action and words, they stand distinct as if reproduced from life or from the most intimate tradition.EYRE-TODD, GEORGE, 1891, Early Scottish Poetry, p. 17.

"Thomas the Rhymer"

is

a brilliant example of a ballad in which the art of minstrelsy is employed to preserve, in a glorified form, the memory of a real man in whom the popular imagination is interested. From the beginning

of the fourteenth century the fame of Thomas of Erceldoune, or Thomas Rymour, or True Thomas, for prophecy, was celebrated through Scotland, and the predictions attributed to him had so much consistency, that in 1603 they were collected into a volume with the Prophecies of Merlin. Thomas Rymour of Erceldoune is known to have been a real person, who is reported to have been alive in the closing years of the thirteenth century.

Not original enough to invent a story for himself, the minstrel who took Thomas as his hero sought his materials in existing romances, and by the middle of the fifteenth century a poem, which forms the groundwork of the ballads on the subject, was committed to writing. In its most

the same time, the most sternly orthodox of Theologians. On the eternity of matter he transcends his master: he accepts the hardy saying of Avicembron, of the universality of matter. He carries matter not only higher than the intermediate world of Devils and Angels, but up into the very Sanctuary, into the Godhead itself. God is still with him the high, remote Monad, above all things, though throughout all things. In him, and not without him, according to what is asserted to be Platonic doctrine, are the forms and ideas of things. With equal zeal, and with equal ingenuity with the Thomists, he attempts to maintain the free will of God, whom he seems to have bound in the chain of inexorable necessity. He saves it by a distinction. which even his subtlety can hardly define. Yet, behind and without this nebulous circle, Duns Scotus, as a metaphysical and an ethical writer, is remarkable for his bold speculative views on the nature of our intelligence, on its communication with the outward worid, by the senses, by its own innate powers, as well as by the influence of the superior Intelligence. He thinks with perfect freedom; and if he spins his spiderwebs, it is impossible not to be struck at once by their strength and coherence. Translate him, as some have attempted to translate him, into intelligible language, he is always suggestive, sometimes conclusive. MILMAN, HENRY HART, 1855, History of Latin Christianity, vol. VI, bk. xiv, ch. iii, pp. 467, 468.

Between his Scholasticism and the Romanic Scholasticism of Thomas Aquinas, there is, indeed, this distinction: that in the former, clearer traces are discernable of the ethical tendency which characterizes the Germanic mind. Scotus presents to us the picture of a vigorous wrestling mind, in which a new principle travails unto birth, still struggling with the chains imposed upon it by the antagonistic principle which had held sway. Whereas, previously, the theoretical and physical, necessity and nature (essence), had held almost undisputed sway, he now puts forth the claims of free will, though his mode of doing so is marked by abruptness and exclusiveness. -DORNER, J. A., 1861, History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ, tr. Simon, vol. I, div. ii, p. 346.

As an opponent of Thomism he founded the philosophical and theological school names after him. His strength lay rather in acute, negative criticism of the teachings of others, than in the positive elaboration of his own. Strict faith in reference to the theological teachings of the Church and the philosophical doctrines corresponding with their spirit, and farreaching skepticism with reference to the arguments by which they are sustained, are the general characteristics of the Scotist doctrine. After having destroyed by his criticism their rational grounds, there remains to Scotus as the objective cause of the verities of faith only the unconditional will of God, and as the subjective ground of faith only the voluntary submission of the believer to the authority of the Church. Theology is for him a knowledge of an essentially practical character. UEBERWEG, FREDERICH, 1862-71, A History of Philosophy, tr, Morris, vol. 1, p. 452.

If the disputed question, as to whether Duns Scotus was an Englishman, a Scotchman, or an Irishman were to be decided by asking which land was the most devoted to the extension of his fame, he belongs unquestionably to Ireland.ERDMANN, JOHANN EDUARD, 1865-76, A History of Philosophy, ed. Hough, vol. 1, p. 485.

He was rightly named by the crowds that flocked round him in Paris and Cologne the Subtle Doctor; he made distinctions and definitions until he seemed to bewilder himself, but his erudition, his patience, his industry, and his dialectic skill, have not had a compeer altogether in European literature. The services he rendered to the cause of psychology and theology have never been fairly acknowledged; by giving extreme and undue prominence to one principle, which had been almost entirely overlooked by his predecessors, he banished others equally as important into the shade, and thus vitiated his whole system as a system, but he undoubtedly drew attention to some points which have never since lost their hold in philosophy or dogma, and which have tended to give increased richness and fulness to each of them. Had his genius been less critical and more philosophic, less merely microscopic. and more comprehensive, he might have