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CHAPTER VI.
THE MORNING TWILIGHT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

Semi-Saxon Literature. Layamon. The Ormulum. Robert of Gloucester.
Langland. Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman's Creed. Sir Jean Froissart. Sir
John Mandevil.

SEMI-SAXON LITERATURE.

Moore, in his beautiful poem, "The Light of the Harem," speaks of that
luminous pulsation which precedes the real, progressive morning:
... that earlier dawn
Whose glimpses are again withdrawn,
As if the morn had waked, and then
Shut close her lids of light again.
The simile is not inapt, as applied to the first efforts of the early
English, or Semi-Saxon literature, during the latter part of the twelfth
and the whole of the thirteenth century. That deceptive dawn, or first
glimpse of the coming day, is to be found in the work of _Layamon_. The
old Saxon had revived, but had been modified and altered by contact with
the Latin chronicles and the Anglo-Norman poetry, so as to become a
distinct language--that of the people; and in this language men of genius
and poetic taste were now to speak to the English nation.


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