And in the same good swinging metre he goes on describing the land, praising its gifts, and telling its story in a downright fashion which is very agreeable to right tastes. Like almost everybody else, he drew upon Geoffrey of Monmouth for his early history: but from at least the time of the Conqueror (he is strongly prejudiced in the matter of Harold) he represents, if not what we should call solid historical knowledge, at any rate direct, and for the time tolerably fresh, historical tradition, while as he approaches his own time he becomes positively historical, and, as in the case of the Oxford town-and-gown row of 1263, the first Barons' Wars, the death of the Earl-Marshal, and such things, is a vigorous as well as a tolerably authoritative chronicler. In the history of English prosody he, too, is of great importance, being another landmark in the process of consolidating accent and quantity, alliteration and rhyme. His swinging verses still have the older tendency to a trochaic rather than the later to an anapaestic rhythm; but they are, so to speak, on the move, and approaching the later form. He is still rather prone to group his rhymes instead of keeping the couplets separate: but as he is not translating from _chanson de geste_ form, he does not, as Robert of Brunne sometimes does, fall into complete _laisses_. I have counted as many as twenty continuous rhymes in Manning, and there may be more: but there is nothing of that extent in the earlier Robert. [Sidenote: _Romances._] Verse history, however, must always be an awkward and unnatural form at the best. The end of the thirteenth century had something better to show in the appearance of romance proper and of epic. When the study of any department of old literature begins, there is a natural and almost invariable tendency to regard it as older than it really is; and when, at the end of the last century, the English verse romances began to be read, this tendency prevailed at least as much as usual. Later investigation, besides showing that, almost without exception, they are adaptations of French originals, has, partly as a consequence of this, shown that scarcely any that we have are earlier than the extreme end of the thirteenth century. Among these few that are, however, three of exceptional interest (perhaps the best three except _Gawaine and the Green Knight_ and _Sir Launfal_) may probably be classed--to wit, _Horn_, _Havelok_, and the famous _Sir Tristram_. As to the last and best known of these, which from its inclusion among Sir Walter Scott's works has received attention denied to the rest, it may or may not be the work of Thomas the Rhymer. But whether it is or not, it can by no possibility be later than the first quarter of the fourteenth century, while the most cautious critics pronounce both _Havelok the Dane_ and _King Horn_ to be older than 1300.[99]