acterize the best in all English verse, is easily most interesting; of the prose, certain passages in the Chronicle. All this early literature is clean, serious, full of vigor; lacking, it is true, in grace and humor, indeed rather somber, it seems to us, yet revealing a people by nature brave, fairminded, religious, lovers of song, lovers of battle, a splendidly endowed people who improved rapidly under the sway of Christianity and Roman culture. In after centuries England came under many influences. Other races blended with the English. The language changed, customs changed; yet the essential traits of character which have made the English a great people and their literature a great literature are easily discernible in the literature of this earliest period. That is why the few time-worn manuscripts which have come down to us through a thousand years and more, constitute a priceless treasure,priceless not because of their literary merit but because of what they tell us of the English as they were originally in their new island home. CHAPTER XXI NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD: 1066-1340 (From the Conquest to the birth of Chaucer) Race England, during the Anglo-Saxon period, was the home of three peoples: the Britons, the English, and the Danes. The Danes, however, soon blended with the English and we lose sight of them. The Britons, driven westward, remained a separate people, though toward the end of the period, the barriers between them and the English weakened considerably. During the Norman-English period, the island was the home of three peoples: the Britons, found principally in Wales, the Norman-French, and the English. The Welsh Britons remained pretty much in the background. We could disregard them altogether, were it not that they contributed not a little, indirectly, to English literature. We are mainly concerned, however, with the conquered English and the conquering Normans. These Normans were a wonderful people, keen, energetic, progressive, with a great genius for organizing and The Normans systematizing, yet fond of gaiety and splendor, and by nature cheerful and humor-loving. Their barons soon appropriated nearly all of the land and built massive castles to hold it. Grand cathedrals were built too; and hundreds of new monasteries sprang up, for the Normans were Christians. During all this period the church possessed, through its able Norman bishops and abbots, great political power. As in the earlier days of the preceding period, each monastery was in some measure a school, and towards the close of the period schools not immediately connected with the church were taking shape at Cambridge and Oxford. When contrasted with this brilliant people, the stolid, mentally slow English seem at first glance decidedly inferior, and so they were regarded by their The English conquerors, who for a long time kept them in a pitiable state; yet their sterling, if not brilliant, qualities which were prominent in Beowulf of old and in wise King Alfred, gradually wrought a wonder. Little by little the abler among them climbed upward and took rank with the best in church and state. Gradually, through causes which we cannot mention here, the two peoples came closer and closer together and finally fused into one, a stronger people than England had ever before known, yet with the fine, manly traits of the Anglo-Saxons still dominating. England, during this period, was the home of several languages. The earlier kings and their barons spoke French, and French became the accepted The languages language of the realm. All classes save the lowest employed it-were forced to if they would get on and up in the world. It was the language of business. Children spoke it in the schools. The minstrels who went from castle to castle sang it. Those who wrote for the pleasure of their fellow men, both Norman writers and English, employed it. But Latin was prominent too. It was the language of the Church and of learning, the book language employed by monks and scholars when they wrote, and not uncommonly when they conversed. The Englishman who would become educated must have a knowledge of it. Beneath French and Latin lay English, long despised and ridiculed by the upper classes and bidding fair to disappear altogether; yet behold a second wonder. About the time this period closes, English is again the accepted language of the realm. Some Anglo-Saxon words have disappeared, many have changed slightly, but the great bulk of old words remains. This new English is permeated, it is true, with French words, and Latin words have crept in too; yet the native speech is supremely triumphant. French disappeared. Latin as a book language lingered for a century or two, was employed somewhat by learned men even as late as Shakespeare's day, yet eventually it also slipped away. The three groups of literature The literature of this period falls into three groups: the Latin, the French, and the English. Latin, it should be remembered, was the book language of monks, scholars, and statesmen, English as well as Norman. It is, someone has said, the language Macaulay would have used had he lived at the court of Henry II. In this Latin group are many religious works, most of them in prose; but more conspicuous are histories or chronicles, some recording the doings of this monastery or that, others dealing with all England and going back to legendary days. These chronicles are of great interest to the historian, but they are not English, not in the native tongue; so they, and all other works in Latin, may be disregarded. Norman-French literature is of greater importance, for during this period France gained a literary prominence in Western Europe similar to that which England enjoyed in Normanthe eighth century. Her greatest works were French in verse. Among them were scores upon literature scores of extremely long poems recounting the deeds of such long-ago heroes as the French King Charlemagne, the Welsh King Arthur, and Alexander the Great. Of the hundred and more such romances which have come down to us, the best is the earliest, the Song of Roland, though the most popular throughout the Middle Ages were those which dealt with the half-mythical King Arthur and his Round Table knights. Besides these hero romances there were long, metrical chronicles, some of them based on the Latin chronicles. A third important group is made up of songs and ballads of love and adventure such as the minstrels sang everywhere throughout Europe. But this great volume of French literature is not English, though some of it was written in England and by men of English birth. It deserves mention solely because a considerable part of it was absorbed by English literature, much as the French language was absorbed, especially such of it as dealt with English heroes and English history. It provided models and furnished subject matter for contemporary and later writers. For centuries it was the literature which English men and women read and listened to; it not only furnished entertainment but supplied new ideas and ideals, changing the minds of Englishmen as the Norman castles and monasteries and cathedrals changed the appearance of the English country. The literature of the period which was written in English is but a tiny stream compared with the In the English broad rivers of Latin and French. For a century and a half following the Conquest it is hardly discernible. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was con tongue |