Page:Archaeologia Volume 13.djvu/61

Rh It is certain, then, that Mary composed for a king who understood English. 4. She tells us that me had declined translating Latin histories into Romance, because, so many others having been thus occupied, her name would have been confounded with the multitude, and her labours unattended with honour. Now this circumstance perfectly corresponds with the reign of Henry III. when such a number of Normans and Anglo-Normans had for more than half a century translated from the Latin so many Romances of chivalry, and especially those of the Round Table, which we owe to the kings of England. 5. Fauchet and Pasquin inform us that Mary lived about the middle of the 13th century, and this period exactly coincides with the reign of that prince. 6. Denis Pyramus, an Anglo-Norman poet, speaks of Mary as an author whose person was as much be- loved as her writings, and who, therefore, must have lived in his own time. Now it is known that this poet wrote under Henry III.

For these consolidated reasons I think that it was Henry III. to whom Mary dedicated her Lays. This opinion could only be combated by maintaining that it was rather a king of France of whom she speaks, which king must have been Louis VIII. or St. Louis his son. But this alternative will not bear the slightest examination; for how indeed could it be necessary to explain Welsh and Armoric words to a French king in the English language? How could the writer permit herself to make use of English words in many parts of her work which would most probably be unintelligible to that prince, and most certainly would be so to the greatest part of his subjects? It is true that she sometimes explains them in Ro- XIII.