Poetical works of the late F. Sayers ... To which have been prefixed the connected disquisitions on the rise and progress of English poetry, and on English metres, and also some biographic particulars of the author / supplied by W. Taylor, of Norwich.

Frank Sayers

Date:: 1830

Credit: Poetical works of the late F. Sayers ... To which have been prefixed the connected disquisitions on the rise and progress of English poetry, and on English metres, and also some biographic particulars of the author / supplied by W. Taylor, of Norwich. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$several poems in the Lathi tongue those which have hitherto been published have little to allure^ and are often disgusting from the absurd and fan¬ ciful species of versification which is introduced into them; but from this censure I would wish to except several passages in the Latin poetry of Alcuin^^ and more especially his pleasing and pa¬ thetic lines on quitting his monastery; this little poem cannot but be deemed a great literary curi¬ osity, when we reflect upon the general ignorance and barbarity of the age in which he lived. The settlement of the Danes in England, pro¬ duced but a slight eft'ect either upon the language 3 Some of the above-mentioned writers, as Boniface and Adeline, occas¬ ionally used rime in their Latin verses. The earliest specimens of modern Latin rimed verse with which we are acquainted, are to be found in the works of Pope Damasus, who is placed in the fourth century, and in the poem of St. Austin against the Donatists, composed about the same period. ]\Ir. Turner observes (in his learned dissertation in the xiv vol. of the Ar- chaeologia) that rime has been in some instances used by the Greek and Ro¬ man poets; he asserts that the word rhime (or rime) is derived to us from the Franco-Theotisc “ irrimen” “ congruere,” or possibly from the Saxon “ riman,” “to sing,” or “ gedrym,” melody. ^ It is scarcely necessary to say that this distinguished and accomplished Englishman was the pupil of Bede, the friend of Charlemagne, and the in¬ structor of France. Quid non Alcuino, facunda Lutetia, debes? Instaurare bonos ibi qui feliciter artes, Barbariemque procul solus depellere ccepit. From Camden's Britannia. The poem to which I have alluded above, was published in the works of Alcuin, by Du Chesne, (at Paris, 1617) and has been lately reprinted by Mr. Turner, though not so correctly as could be wished, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, vol. iv, p. 370.$