The _Ancren Riwle_[91] has no oddities of this kind, and nothing particularly noticeable in its form, though its easy pleasant prose would have been wonderful at the time in any other European nation. Even French prose was only just beginning to take such form, and had not yet severed itself from poetic peculiarities to anything like the same extent. But then the unknown author of the _Ancren Riwle_ had certainly four or five, and perhaps more, centuries of good sound Saxon prose before him: while St Bernard (if he wrote French prose), and even Villehardouin, had little or nothing but Latin. I have called him unknown, and he neither names himself nor is authoritatively named by any one; while of the guesses respecting him, that which identifies him with Simon of Ghent is refuted by the language of the book, while that which assigns it to Bishop Poore has no foundation. But if we do not know who wrote the book, we know for whom it was written--to wit, for the three "anchoresses" or irregular nuns of a private convent or sisterhood at Tarrant Keynes in Dorsetshire. [Footnote 91: Ed. Morton, for the Camden Society. London, 1853. This edition is, I believe, not regarded as quite satisfactory by philology: it is amply adequate for literature.] Later this nunnery, which lasted till the dissolution, was taken under the Cistercian rule; but at first, and at the time of the book, it was free, the author advising the inmates, if anybody asked, to say that they were under "the rule of St James"--_i.e._, the famous definition, by that apostle, of pure religion and undefiled. The treatise, which describes itself, or is described in one of its MSS., as "one book to-dealed into eight books," is of some length, but singularly pleasing to read, and gives evidence of a very amiable and sensible spirit in its author, as well as of a pretty talent for writing easy prose. If he never rises to the more mystical and poetical beauties of mediaeval religion, so he never descends to its ferocities and its puerilities. The rule, the "lady-rule," he says, is the inward; the outward is only adopted in order to assist and help the inward: therefore it may and should vary according to the individual, while the inward cannot. The outward rule of the anchoresses of Tarrant Keynes was by no means rigorous. They were three in number; they had lay sisters (practically lady's-maids) as well as inferior servants. They are not to reduce themselves to bread-and-water fasting without special direction; they are not to be ostentatious in alms-giving; they may have a pet cat; haircloth and hedgehog-skins are not for them; and they are not to flog themselves with briars or leaded thongs. Ornaments are not to be worn; but a note says that this is not a positive command, all such things belonging merely to the external rule. Also they may wash just as often as it is necessary, or as they like!--an item which, absurd as is the popular notion of the dirt of