Gualteri Mapes. De nugis curialium distinctiones quinque

writing on St. Barnabas's Day (the 11th of June), the same day
on which the young king Henry died in 1182, evidently looking
back to that event as being some time past ; and in the sixth
chapter of the fifth Distinction he speaks in one place of the death
of king Henry II., which occurred in 1189, a little after which he
alludes to events which occurred when Richard I. and Philip of
France were in the Holy Land, and immediately afterwards speaks
of Henry II. as being alive ; so that the work is evidently a number
of scraps collected together and revised and augmented at different
times by its author. It appears that Mapes had become disgusted
with the intrigues and jealousies of the court; and that while in
this state of mind one of his friends named Geoffrey requested
him to write a poem, the subject of which was to be " The sayings
and doings which had not yet been committed to writing." Mapes,
in answer, proceeds to compile a work in prose, in which his object
seems to have been to show that it was impossible for any one in-
volved in the troubles of a court to apply himself to poetry with
success ; but as he proceeds he seems to have lost sight of his
primary object, and goes on stringing together stories and legends
which have no intimate connection with the general subject. In
the first book he begins by comparing the English court to the
infernal regions, drawing comparisons with the fabled labours of
Tantalus, Sisyphus, &c., after which he proceeds to relate some
legends and stories relating to the foUies and crimes of courts,
which are followed by monastic stories, a bitter lamentation over
the taking of Jerusalem, accounts of the origin of the different
orders of monks and of the Templars and Hospitallers, with some
severe reflections on their growing corruptions, and a long and
very violent attack on his especial enemies the Cistercians. Next