Page:The Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon.djvu/23

 already shown, and as is also apparent in the Preface to his "Letter to Walter:" "I shall relate nothing," he says, "that has not been told before, except what is within my own knowledge"—in which expression he evidently includes the testimony of other credible persons—"the only evidence," he adds, "which can be deemed authentic." He appears, on the whole, to have faithfully adhered to this sound principle, but his great fault being amplification, it occasionally leads him to exaggeration in details, which the careful reader will easily distinguish from the fabrication of facts. There are very few instances in which any serious doubts of his veracity can be entertained, and in these it is fair to suppose that he has been misled by the authorities on which he relied.

A fervid imagination, and a diffuse style of composition, naturally betrayed our historian into these occasional errors. Such was his poetical temperament, which, as we have already learnt, he cultivated from his earliest years, that even his own vivid prose sometimes failed of giving expression to his feelings, and he vents them in verse. In an age when it might have been little expected, the court of Henry Beauclerc was the resort of the learned; our author dedicated his first historical work to that patron of letters; William of Malmesbury found a Mecænas in the king's natural son, the Earl of Gloucester, and his two accomplished queens, Matilda and Alice, successively, extended their favour to men of genius. Geoffrey Gaimar and his brother, minnesingers of Normandy, flocked to their presence to celebrate their praises and partake of their bounty. Nor were there wanting scholars who paid theh homage to the Latin Muse, and made their offerings at the royal shrine. In most instances, alliteration and rhyme disfigure the metres, and fanciful conceits and quaint antithesis mark the wide departure of the versifiers of those times from the classical models they professed to follow. Henry of Huntingdon, though not entirely free from these faults, was one of the few composers of Latin verse, in that or preceding centuries, who rose above the common level. He occasionally writes with a freedom and elegance, a pathos and poetic feeling, which have lightened the task of making