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.

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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. 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 Mecenas 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 their 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

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a version of his poems suited to the taste of modern times.

The chronology of the History is very defective. During the Saxon period, it is based on the reigns of the kings of Wessex, with reference to which the series of events in the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy is calculated, and the whole is adapted rather unsatisfactorily to the reckoning of the Saxon Chronicle. This cumbrous system occasions great confusion, His subsequent chronological references are scanty and erroneous. Some of the errors are pointed out in the notes, and the dates have been generally rectified from the Saxon Chronicle, and, when that fails, from later authorities. The subject is fully discussed in the Preface to the "Monumenta Historica Britannica," and the introductory remarks on the chronology of the medieval historians prefixed to that work.

The Acts of King Stephen," now first translated into English, forms an appropriate sequel to Henry of Huntingdon's History. Nothing is known of the anonymous author of this valuable fragment; for such it is, time and neglect having so injured the only MS. copy extant, that several portions of the narrative are obliterated, and the concluding pages entirely lost. The work, however, bears

internal evidence of having been written by an author contemporaneous with the events related, an eye-witness of many of them, and not only present at the councils where affairs of state were debated, but privy to the king's most secret designs and springs of action. As he also appears to have been an ecclesiastic, it has been conjectured that he was the king's confessor. The ancient MS. referred to, preserved in the library of the duke-bishop of Laon, was brought to the notice of Duchesne, who printed it in his collection of the Norman Historians, published at Paris in the year 1619: it has been lately republished by the Historical Society of London, under the careful editorship of Dr. Sewell, from whose improved text the present translation has been made.

Singularly enough, "The Acts of Stephen" do not contain a single date, but, as far as can be ascertained (a variety of events being related which have found no place in any

other history), the order of time is duly preserved. The movements of Stephen, who was in incessant action throughout his stormy reign, are described with a minuteness which shows that the author was present at the scenes he depicts. Many of them lay in the west of England, and in South Wales, where the Earl of Gloucester, the chief supporter of the cause of the empress, had great possessions, and much influence in right of his wife, and of his mother, who was daughter of a prince of that country. But the enterprises of other individual actors in those turbulent times fill a large portion of the author's pages, and these episodes form a very interesting part of the narrative. They enable us to realize the state of society, when every defensible position was occupied by a strong castle, there being no safety outside the walls, and when every man's hand was against his neighbour. In these scenes, the high-born baron, and the ruffianly freebooter, alike living by fraud and violence, are prominent figures, while licentious, men-at-arms, and Flemish and Norman mercenaries, whose wages were rapine, follow in their train; and groups of affrighted and plundered citizens, and impoverished ecclesiastics, lend it horrors. Indeed, as Dr. Sewell remarks, the whole narrative "is one stirring series of events of personal and individual interest, and, in this respect, it partakes much more of the character of a romance than of a history. We are transported at once into the camp of Stephen and his barons; we are present at his councils; we are hurried forward in the night march; we lurk in the ambuscade; we take part in the storming of castles and cities. Now we stand in the wild morasses of the isle of Ely; at another time we reconnoitre the fortifications of Bristol; from the hard-fought field of Lincoln we are carried to the walls of Oxford; from the dungeon of the captive king we hasten to witness the escape of the empress, during all the severities of a December night."

History presented in this attractive garb, leaves on the mind a far more durable impression than is made by the generalizations of modern writers, too many of whom appear to have been very superficially acquainted with the authorities whence they profess to derive their infor

mation, while most of them have written under some particular bias, political or religious, which has given a colouring to their statements, if it has not led to a perversion of facts. Truth must be sought at the fountain head, and happily for those who desire to form an independent judgment on the earlier periods of our national history, the contemporaneous chronicles which not long since were confined to the libraries of the opulent, and sealed up in the obscurity of a dead language, are now brought within the reach, and opened to the perusal of the general reader.

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In the present volume, the transactions of King Stephen's reign will be found recorded by two different authors. They should be read in connection with William of Malmesbury's "Modern History," which embraces the same period. 'Taken together," as Dr. Sewell observes, "they constitute a valuable body of history. They reciprocally develope the politics of contending parties; they serve as guides whereby to arrive at the probable springs of action; they supply mutual defects of information, they may serve to correct mutual errors. In comparing Henry of Huntingdon's eighth Book with the "Acts of King Stephen," we have the advantage of considering the history of the times from opposite points of view, Huntingdon being warmly attached to the family of Henry I., while our anonymous author was a partisan of Stephen. But it is satisfactory to find how little their personal feeling was allowed to influence their statements of facts, or their estimates of character. Huntingdon does full justice to the bravery of Stephen, particularly at the battle of Lincoln, of which he has given so spirited a description; while he seldom takes an opportunity of charging the king with those repeated breaches of faith, which were the worst stain on his character, and which the anonymous author freely admits, with the palliation that he was influenced by evil counsels. Both very much agree in their observations on the arrest of the bishops, which, though it might be justified by political expediency, was one of Stephen's most tyrannical acts. But, while Huntingdon remarks that this prepared the way for his eventual ruin, which it probably

did, by alienating the powerful clergy from his cause, the anonymous author considers that he expiated his crime by the restoration of the bishops' confiscated property, and a penance which was probably unknown to the other historian. It may be observed, in passing, that neither has done justice to the noblest character of the age, Robert, earl of Gloucester, the natural son of Henry I. They have not failed to describe his military achievements, which were not unrivalled at such a period; to appreciate his higher merits of disinterestedness, firmness, and moderation, we must have recourse to the pages of his admirable biographer, William of Malmesbury.

Notwithstanding this general agreement of our two authors, there is one part of their narrative in which they are found at entire variance; and as it brings to notice a trait of some importance towards forming an estimate of Stephen's character, and is also connected with the early career of one of the greatest and wisest of our English kings, the subject may be worth a few concluding remarks. Perhaps no part of Huntingdon's History does him more credit, both in point of style, and as a clear and succinct narrative of events, than his account of the expedition in which Henry, duke of Normandy, embarked, to enforce his rights to the English crown. The historian represents the young prince as having hazarded a landing with a small body of troops, depending upon the justice of his cause, and the attachment of a large part of the suffering nation; and that, impatient of delay, he shortly afterwards took Malmesbury Castle by storm. He then, we are told, offered battle to Stephen, who had hastened to its relief; but the king drawing off his army, the duke threw succours into Wallingford Castle, and then having laid siege to the neighbouring castle of Crawmarsh, again offered battle to Stephen under its walls, though his forces were far inferior to the royal army. The history relates that the barons, on both sides, interfered to stop the further effusion of blood, and a truce was agreed upon, which, after some further successes of the Duke of Normandy, led to a treaty of peace, by which his right of succession to the throne was solemnly guaranteed.

Such is Henry of Huntingdon's account of the campaign