names of those illustrious persons whose patronage her talents deserved. In the course, however, of my remarks upon her works, I shall endeavour to find out who were her Mecænases.
The first poems of Mary are a collection of Lays in French verse, forming various histories and gallant adventures of our valiant knights, and, according to the usage of those times, they are generally remarkable for some singular, and often marvellous catastrophe. These Lays are in the British Museum amongst the Harleian MSS. No. 978. They constitute the largest, and at the same time most ancient specimen of Anglo-Norman poetry of this kind that has been handed down to us.
The romances of chivalry amongst the old Welsh and Armoric Britons appear to have furnished Mary with the subjects of these various lays; not that the manuscripts of those people were continually before her when me composed them; but, as she herself has told us, depending upon an excellent memory, she sometimes committed them to verse after hearing them recited only, and at others me composed them from what she had read in the Welsh and Armoric MSS.
Plufurs en ai oi conter,
Nes voil lasser ne oblier, &c.[1]
Plufurs le me unt conte et dit
Et jeo l'ai trové en escrit, &c.[2]
Our authoress has informed us that she hesitated a long time before she devoted herself to this species of literature; that oftentimes she began to translate some Latin story into the Romance language, but perceived it necessary to desist, from the circumstance, that the same ground had already been trodden by so many writers. She therefore abandoned her design, and confined herself to the sub-
