(_f_) _The Alliterative Poems._ In a unique manuscript, now preserved in the British Museum, are found four remarkably fine poems in the West Midland dialect: _Pearl_, _Cleannesse_, _Patience_, and _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_. There is no indication of the authorship, but judging from the similarity of the style it is considered likely that they are by the same poet. The date is about 1300. The first three poems are religious in theme, and of them _Pearl_ is undoubtedly the best. This poem, half allegorical in nature, tells of a vision in which the poet seeks his precious pearl that has slipped away from him. In his quest he spies his pearl, which seems to be the symbol of a dead maiden, and obtains a glimpse of the Eternal Jerusalem. The poem, which contains long discussions between the poet and the pearl, has some passages of real, moving beauty, and there is a sweet melancholy inflection in some of the verses that is rare indeed among the fumbling poetasters of the time. The meter is extraordinarily complicated: heavily alliterated twelve-lined stanzas, with intricate rhymes arranged on a triple basis (see p. 149). _Cleannesse_ and _Patience_, more didactic in theme, are of less interest and beauty, but they have an exultation and stern energy that make them conspicuous among the poems of the period. They are composed in a kind of alliterative blank verse. _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_ is one of the most captivating of the romances. Its meter also is freely alliterated and built into irregular rhyming stanzas which sometimes run into twenty lines. =3. The Metrical Romances.= The great number of the romances that now appear in our literature can be classified according to subject. (_a_) The romances dealing with early English history and its heroes were very numerous. Of these the lively _Horn_ and _Havelock the Dane_ and the popular _Guy of Warwick_ and _Bevis of Hampton_ were among the best. Even contemporary history was sometimes drawn upon, as in the well-known _Richard Cœur-de-Lion_. (_b_) Allied to the last group are the immense number of Arthurian romances, which are closely related and often of high merit. _Sir Tristrem_, one of the earliest, is by no means one of the worst; to it we may add the famous _Arthur and Merlin_, _Ywain and Gawain_, the _Morte d’Arthure_, and _Sir Gawain and the Green Knight_. (_c_) There was also a large number of classical themes, such as the exploits of Alexander the Great and the siege of Troy. _King Alisaunder_ is very long, but of more than average merit. Further examples are _Sir Orpheo_ and _The Destruction of Troy_. (_d_) The group dealing with the feats of Charlemagne is smaller, and the quality is lower. _Rauf Coilyear_, an alliterative romance, is probably the best of them, and to it we may add _Sir Ferumbras_.