VI. An Epistolary Dissertation upon the Life and Writings of Robert Wace, an Anglo-Norman Poet of the 12th Century. In a Letter to the Earl of Leicester, President of the Society of Antiquaries

Extract

It was under the reign of Henry the Second of England that there flourished a celebrated Anglo-Norman poet named Wace, whose works, at that time the delight of the monarch and his court, are at present to be esteemed as one of the most ancient monuments of French literature; but inasmuch as France owes these precious relics to a king of Great Britain, and as their author was born in a country which has continually remained since the Conquest under the power of the English, you will, doubtless, my Lord, peruse with some degree of satisfaction a memoir upon the life and writings of this Poet. The discussion will probably be seemed interesting, both upon account of its novelty, and from the circumstance of this writer being altogether unknown to the English Biographers; besides, most of those learned men who have written upon his works have been entirely mistaken, either in the series of them which they have given, or in the opinions which they have adopted relating to them.