Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/53

Minot from the abrupt termination of the series at 1352. Since the series of stirring events by no means ceased then, it is likely that Minot either died or produced songs which have been lost. The absence of any development of style in the series makes it probable that he was not very young at the outset (1333).

Minot neither founded nor belonged to a school. In metrical form he presents, in various combinations, the accentual, alliterative verse of the west and north; and the syllabic, rhymed verse of the east and south; rhyme and some degree of alliteration being constant features. His most frequent measure is the popular six-line strophe (ii.v. ix. x. xi.), while the remaining five songs have each a distinct stanza of more artificial structure, or the rhymed couplet. The alliterative measure seems therefore to have grown upon him. He tends also to multiply the alliterating words without need, at times using double alliteration in the same line (e.g. x. 1). He also uses the refrain (ii.), and is fond of repeating the last words of a stanza in the opening of the next (i. vi. vii.) While thus profuse in metrical ornament, Minot cannot, however, be said to show any further care for literary art. He writes in impetuous haste, but without true lyric inspiration; and his energy often confuses his narrative instead of driving it home. But while Minot has no great literary value, and gives almost no new information, he embodies in a most vivid way the militant England of his day. He has but one subject, the triumph of England and the English king over French and Scots. The class divisions among Englishmen are for him wholly merged in the unity of England; himself probably of Norman origin, his habitual language is the strongest and homeliest Saxon. His verse is throughout inspired by savage triumph in the national successes. He has no elegiac or tender note. If he alludes to Bannockburn (ii. 1) it is in order to proclaim the vengeance of Halidon Hill. His account of the capitulation of Calais ignores the intervention of the queen (viii. 57 f.) Even the brilliant pageantry of fourteenth century warfare is only casually reproduced (vii. 46). He does not approach his Scottish rival, Barbour, either in humanity or in poetic power.

Minot's poems exist only in a manuscript in the Cotton Library of the British Museum (Galba, E. ix. fol. 52 foll.), written by a single hand in the early years of the fifteenth century. The scribe was unquestionably northern, but the evidence of the rhymes shows that the originals contained both northern and midland forms (e.g. pres. part. in -and; plur. pres. in -in, vii. 135).

The following is a list of Minot's extant poems. None of them has a title; but all (except iv.) are headed by a couplet in which the subject is announced: 1. ‘Lithes and I sall tell ʒow tyll | þe bataile of Halidon Hyll.’ 2. ‘Now for to tell ʒow will I turn | Of þe batayl of Banocburn.’ In reality, however a continuation of 1. 3. ‘How Edward þe king come in Braband | And toke homage of all þe land.’ 4. The first invasion of France, 1339. 5. ‘Lithes and þe batail I sal bigyn | Of Inglisch men and Normandes in þe Swyn.’ 6. ‘Herkins how King Edward lay | With his men bifor Tournay.’ 7. ‘How Edward at Hogges unto land wan | And rade thurgh France or ever he blan.’ The battle of Crécy. 8. ‘How Edward als þe romance sais | Held his sege bifor Calais.’ 9. ‘Sir David had of his men grete loss | With Sir Edward at þe Nevil Cross.’ 10. ‘How King Edward and his menʒe | Met with þe Spaniardes in þe see.’ 11. ‘How gentill Sir Edward with his grete engines | Wan with his wight men þe castell of Gynes.’

Hall is inclined to attribute to Minot also the ‘Hymn to Jesus Christ and the Virgin’ (Early English Text Society, No. 26, p. 75) on grounds of style and language.

Minot's poems, discovered by Tyrwhitt, were first printed by Ritson, under the title, ‘Poems on Interesting Events in the Reign of King Edward III, written in the year by Laurence Minot,’ 1795 and 1825. They were reissued by T. Wright in ‘Political Poems,’ i. 58 sq. (1859). Two good recent editions exist: ‘Laurence Minot's Lieder,’ von Wilhelm Scholle (Quellen und Forschungen, No. 52), 1884, with a valuable study of the grammar and metre; and ‘The Poems of Laurence Minot,’ by Joseph Hall, with admirable introduction and illustrative notes (Clarendon Press, 1887). Mätzner (Sprachproben) has also printed i-iv.; Wülcker, ‘Altenglisches Lesebuch,’ ii. and ix.; Morris and Skeat, ‘Specimens,’ iii. iv. and part of vii.

[Scholle's and Hall's Introductions and the Poems themselves; Ten Brink's Englische Litteraturgeschichte, i. 404 f.; Bierbaum's Ueber Laurence Minot und seine Lieder, 1876; Brandl's Mittelenglische Literatur in Paul's Grundriss der german. Philologie, p. 648.]  MINSHEU, JOHN (fl. 1617), lexicographer, lived chiefly in London, and made his living as a teacher of languages. He was poor, was married, and had children. Often, as may be gathered from his works, his lexicographical works were at a standstill for want of money, but generous friends, such as Sir Henry Spelman, helped him, and he managed to carry out his expensive undertakings. To finish his Spanish dictionary he