Robert de Brunne, the name by which Robert Manning, or Mannyng, is usually designated from his birthplace Bourn, in Lincolnshire, which is 6 miles from the Gilbertine monastery of Sempringham that he entered in 1288. He died about 1338. His chief work is his “Handlyng Synne” (1303), a free and amplified translation into English verse of William of Wadington’s “Manuel des Pechiez,” with such judicious omissions and excellent additions as made his version much more entertaining than the original. It is one of our best landmarks in the transition from early to later Middle English. He also made a new version in octosyllabic rhyme of Wace’s “Brut d’Angleterre,” and added to it a translation of the French rhyming chronicle of Peter Langtoft.

  Has scarcely more poetry than Robert of Gloucester…. Yet it should be remembered, that even such a writer as Robert de Brunne, uncouth and unpleasing as he naturally seems, and chiefly employed in turning the theology of his age into rhyme, contributed to form a style, to teach expression, and to polish his native tongue. In the infancy of language and composition, nothing is wanted but writers: at that period even the most artless have their use.

  The style of Robert de Brunne is less marked by Saxonisms than that of Robert of Gloucester; and though he can scarcely be said to come nearer the character of a true poet than his predecessor, he is certainly a smoother versifier, and evinces more facility in rhyming.

  Ritson (Bibliographia Poetica, p. 33) is very wroth with Warton for describing De Brunne as having “scarcely more poetry than Robert of Gloucester;”—“which only proves,” Ritson says, “his want of taste or judgment.” It may be admitted that De Brunne’s chronicle exhibits the language in a considerably more advanced state than that of Gloucester, and also that he appears to have more natural fluency than his predecessor; his work also possesses greater interest from his occasionally speaking in his own person, and from his more frequent expansion and improvement of his French original by new matter; but for poetry, it would probably require a “taste or judgment” equal to Ritson’s own to detect much of it.

  The style of de Brunne is superior to that of Robert of Gloucester in ease, though we can hardly say, grace of expression. His literary merits are slender.

  Robert was a pious ecclesiastic, yet any propensity to asceticism was far from him. He was ever ready to grant an innocent amusement to others as well as to himself, and especially to the poor. His was an unassuming, genial spirit, with a light touch of humour; he was a friend of music and good stories. He did not ascend to the higher regions of thought, and mystical contemplation was quite foreign to him; but his eye scanned the world around him with all the greater interest; and his view, if not particularly sharp, was very clear. Robert was curious and even inquisitive; but his curiosity had the background of a warm sympathy for the lot of his fellow-men. Like his namesake of Gloucester, he was the friend and advocate of the poor. High position and birth did not blind him to the faults and vices behind their glitter.

  It was in 1303 that Robert of Brunne (known also as Robert Manning) began to compile the “Handlyng Synne,” the work which, more clearly than any former one, foreshadowed the road that English literature was to tread from that time forward…. There are so many foreign words, that we should set the writer fifty years later than his true date had he not himself written it down. In this book we catch our first glimpse of many a word and idiom that were afterwards to live for ever in the English Bible and Prayer-book, works still in the womb of Time…. Robert of Brunne, the Patriarch of the New English, fairly well foreshadowed the proportion of outlandish gear that was to be the common rule in our land after his time. He has six French words out of fifty; a little later Mandeville and Chaucer were to have eight French words of fifty; this is the proportion in Shakespere’s comic parts; and it is also the proportion in the every-day talk of our own time, as may be seen in the dialogues of Miss Yonge’s and Mr. Trollope’s works.

  Manning is remarkable as being the first to use the modern English order of words.

  Robert was doubtless one of the most important links in the chain immediately preceding Chaucer, but he cannot be called the “patriarch” of modern literary English with any more justice than Wycliffe, or the authors of “Havelok” and “King Horn,” or the poets of the “Cædmon School.”

  In the “Handlyng Synne” the reader may still breathe the same atmosphere that inspired the “Dialogues” of Gregory the Great; but he will also detect the presence of an element that prepares him for the transition to the style of Gower’s “Confessio Amantis;” from which point he may travel by easy stages to the plots of the Elizabethan dramatists.

  This is not, as might be supposed, a dry book. Mannyng dearly loved a tale, and the more bizarre it was, the better. He distributes his censures broadcast, but the worst offenders, from his point of view, are the women, who, he pleasantly observes, do no wrong except all day.