of plan, of his thirteen books reflects the changes of design and the interruptions which the work underwent; there is some repetition, much confusion, and a distinct absence of architectonic art. These defects, however, do not diminish the prime merit of the work, which lies in its replacement of the jejune annals of the older type by a full and ample historical narrative, rich in detail, vivid in presentation, giving space to literary history and everyday life as well as to the affairs of church and state, and constituting as a whole the most faithful and living picture which has reached us of the European society of his age. Neither in the world nor of the world, this monk had a ripe knowledge of men and affairs, independence of judgment, a feeling for personality, and a sure touch in characterization. He had also a Latin style of his own, labored at times rather than affected, ready to show its skill in well-turned verse or in well-rounded speeches after the fashion of the classical historians, but direct and vigorous and not unworthy of the flexible and sonorous language which he had made his own. Latin, however, was an exclusive possession of the clergy,--and not of all of them, if we can argue from the examinations held by Eudes Rigaud,--and by the middle of the twelfth century the Norman baronage began to demand from the clerks an account of the Anglo-Norman past in a language which they too could understand. History in the vernacular develops in France earlier than elsewhere, and in France earliest in Normandy and in the English lands which shared the Norman speech and produced the oldest surviving example of such a work, the _Histoire des Engles_ of Gaimar, written between 1147 and 1151. The chief centre for the production of vernacular history was the court of that patron of ecclesiastical and secular learning, Henry II, and his Aquitanian queen, to one or both of whom are dedicated the histories of Wace and Benoît de Sainte-More. Wace, the most interesting of this group of writers, was a native of Jersey and a clerk of Caen who turned an honest penny by his compositions and won a canonry at Bayeux by the most important of them, his _Roman de Rou_. Beginning with Rollo, from whom it takes its name, this follows the course of Norman history to the victory of Henry I in 1106, in simple and agreeable French verse based upon the Latin chroniclers but incorporating something from popular tradition. Such a compilation adds little to our knowledge, but by the time of the Third Crusade we find a contemporary narrative in French verse prepared by a _jongleur_ of Évreux who accompanied Richard on the expedition. If we ignore the line, at best very faint, which in works of this sort separates history from romance and from works of edification, we must carry the Norman pioneers still further back, to the _Vie de Saint Alexis_ which we owe probably to a canon of Rouen in the eleventh century, and to the great national epic of mediæval