Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/476

462 "Scalacronica," of Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, who was a native of the north of England, being taken prisoner by the Scots. He has left us in his "Cronicall" many particulars of the times of Wallace. Andrew Wyntown, the author of the "Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland," was living in the long reign of David II., and his rhymed chronicle reaches from the beginning of the world, in the fashion of those times, to the year 1424. He was canon of the priory of St. Andrew.



The portion of his chronicle from the beginning of the reign of David II. to the end of Robert II., is supposed to be by another hand. John Fordun's  "Scotichronicon" is a regular chronicle of Scotland to the year 1385. This work was continued by Walter Bower, abbot of St. Columkil in the fifteenth century.

Besides these the monastic registers of Mailros, ending in 1270; of Margan, ending 1232; of Burton, ending 1262; and Waverley, ending 1291, afford evidence of the history of Scotland and England, and of the literary talent of the two countries at this time.

But it is to the poets of this era that we must look for the chief genius, and the evidences of the progress of literature in the nation. It is a singular fact, that while the Roman Church had continued the use of the Latin language during the Middle Ages, it had neglected, or rather discouraged, the reading of the great Roman and Greek writers, so that the Greek and Roman classical literature became, as it were, extinct. The great classical authors which were not destroyed, lay buried in the dust of abbeys and monasteries. So completely was Greek literature and the Greek forgotten, that, as we before stated, we find Bacon declaring that there were not above four men in England who understood Greek, or could pass the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid—the familiar pons asinorum, or bridge of asses. So utterly were the clergy unacquainted with Greek that, on finding