The Knight had three great pleasures — war, hunting, and cookery. He at first lived much apart from the mass of Englishmen; but the mighty struggle of the Thirteenth Century knit fast together the speakers of French and of English, the high and the low. One of the first tokens of this union is the Ballad on Lewes fight; it may have been written by some Londoner, who uses a few French words, such as might have been picked up in the great Earl Simon's tent. Six years earlier, the Reformed Government had thought it worth while to publish King Henry's adhesion to the new system, in English, as well as in French and Latin. In the reign of Henry's son, the work of amalgamation went on at full speed. From this time dates the revival of the glories of England's host, which has seldom since allowed thirty years to pass without some doughty deed of arms, achieved beyond our borders; for there were but few quarrels at home henceforward. Now it was that a number of warlike French romances were Englished, such as the Tristrem, the Havelok, the Horn, and, above all, the renowned Alexander.[1] Legends about King Arthur were most popular; the Round Table became a household word; and the adjective round grew to be so common, that it was in the end turned into a preposition, as we find in the Alexander. The word adventure, brought from
- ↑ Many French words must have been brought in, simply for the
sake of the rimes, literally translated; thus in the Floriz and
Blauncheflur of about 1290: —
‘þanne sede þe burgeis
þat was wel hende and curtais.’
