Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/303

 offevtrat Anglo-Norman Poets of the i $th Century. 241 ANONYMOUS CONTINUATOR OP THE BRUTUS OF ROBERT WACE. Robert Wace in 1 155 turned the Brutus, compofed in Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, into French verfe. The manuscript of the Cottonian Library Vitellius A. X. comprifes this tranilation, with a Supplement in like manner, in French verSe, by an anonymous author [w]. That part of the work by Robert Wace fmifhes, like his original, at the death of king Cadwallader, at the end of the Seventh cen- tury ; but that of his continuator, beginning at this epocha, goes down to the twenty- fourth year of the reign of Henry the 1 1 Id. ; not however that he gives us any account of this monarch ; he does no more than name him. But he Speaks of the death of the prin- ceSs Eleanora, daughter of the duke of Bretagne, and fifter of the unfortunate Arthur, afTaffinated by king John his uncle ; and as me was interred in the priory of St. James at Briftol in 1341, it is at, or about this time that we ought to fix the compofition of this Supplement in French verSe. If the poet, the author of this work, has not tranSmitted to us his own name, he has however pointed out that of the place, where it was written, and where probably he was born. He lays that he tranf- lated his work at Amefbury in Wiltmire. But I mould be ftrongly inclined, whether by extraction he was Anglo-Saxon or Anglo- Norman, to" SuppoSe him to have been a deScendant of one of thofe families, who were deprived of their eftates at the time of the con- queft. The energetic manner in which he bitterly inveighs agaiiiil [] Archaeologia, Vol. XII. p. 57. VOL, XIII, I i the