or Evesham, near Oxford. The energies of these men, and especially of the two last mentioned, were largely occupied in introducing into the English monasteries, that had become worldly and corrupt, the stricter rule of life which had already begun to prevail in Gaul and Flanders. They were educational and monastic reformers, and the tone of their work is consequently scholarly or theological. Elfric "is the voice of that great Church reform which is the most signal fact in the history of the latter half of the tenth century." His Homilies, or sermons (990– 994), are famous in the history of early English prose.

On the whole we observe that while poetry had held a large place in Northumbria during the era of her literary leadership, the energies of Wessex during this later period find their main outlet in prose. The historic prose of the Chronicle, broken occasionally by the chant of the war-song, text-books, sermons, or the lives of saints, such is the shape taken by the literary production of this time, until we read signs of an altered mood in the period which directly precedes that mighty change in the history of England, the Norman Conquest.

STUDY LIST

LITERATURE FROM EARLIEST TIMES TO NORMAN CONQUEST

1. CELTIC LITERATURE. Henry Morley gives specimens. of Celtic poetry in his English Writers, vol. i. chap. iii. Among these Llywarch's Lament for his son Gwenn (p. 217),

Lament for Cyndyllan (p. 218), and The Gododin of Aneurin (p. 223), may be particularly noted. The poem last named is also, with others, in Shorter English Poems, edited by H. Morley in Cassell's Library of English Literature. V. also Gaelic Poems, edited with translation in the same volume, and for Irish Celts, cf. Old Celtic Romances, by P. W. Joyce. Tennyson's Voyage of Maeldune, is founded on one of the stories in this collection.

Lady Charlotte Guest's edition of The Mabinogion is the most complete; The Boys' Mabinogion, by Sidney Lanier, will be found convenient with class.

W. F. Skene's The Four Ancient Books of Wales, two volumes, contains Cymric poems attributed to the bards of the sixth century.

(This

The

2. EARLY ENGLISH. Good examples of early English poetry will be found in Longfellow's Poets and Poetry of Europe. Note particularly The Exile's Complaint, The Grave, The Soul's Complaint against the Body, and The Ruined WallStone. There are also extracts from the longer poems. is a good collection for class of younger students.) Seafarer, The Fortunes of Man, opening of Cadmon's Creation, etc., will be found in Morley's English Writers, vol. ii. The Seafarer is also in Illustrations of English Religion, edited by Morley, in Cassell's Library of English Literature, and in the appendix to Early English Literature of Stopford A. Brooke. See also Conybeare's Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Literature. For Beowulf, The Deeds of Beowulf, John Earle, Clarendon Press (prose translation), and Beowulf, metrical line for line translation, by J. M. Garnett (Ginn & Co.). Professor John Lesslie Hall's translation (D. C. Heath & Co.), is both rhythmical and alliterative. For Cædmon, Thorpe's Metrical Paraphrase gives translation with text. William of Malmesbury's account of Aldhelm, and Cuthbert's Letter on the Death of Bede, are given in Morley's Library of English Literature, and interesting extracts from the prefaces of King Alfred will be found in Earle's Anglo-Saxon Literature.

3. CRITICISM AND HISTORY OF LITERATURE. Azarias' Development of English Literature-Old English Period, Ten Brink's Early English Literature. The Englishman and the Scandinavian, by Frederick Metcalfe, compares the Early English and Norse literatures. The History of Early English Literature, by Rev. Stopford A. Brooke. Translations of early poems in this book are especially concise and spirited.

4. HISTORY. Green's Making of England, Green's Conquest of England. On extent of admixture of English and Celt, a question much discussed, consult Matthew Arnold's Celtic Literature; Huxley's article on Some Fixed Points in British Ethnology, in Critiques and Addresses, p. 177; Isaac Taylor's Words and Places; Henry Morley's article on The Celtic Element in English Literature, in Clement Marot and Other Essays.

III. THE NORMAN CONQUEST

The conquest of England by the Normans in 1066 brought a new and powerful influence into English life and literature. The Normans, or Northmen, were originally a mixed horde of piratical adventurers from Scandinavia and Denmark, who had won a country for themselves in the north of France.* Enterprising, quick-witted, open to new ideas, this race of born rulers did more than seize upon some of the fairest lands of southern Europe; wherever it went it appropriated much that was best in the civilization of those it subdued. The fur-clad and half-savage Northmen, whose black, square-sailed ships crowded up the Seine after Rollo, were heathen freebooters. The Normans who conquered England a century and a half later were the most courtly, cultured, artloving, and capable race in Europe. In origin they

* V. Table of Races, note p. 12, supra.

were Teutonic, like the English; yet so completely had they adopted and, in some respects, improved the civilization of the Gaul and the Roman, that scarcely an outward trace of their origin remained. After establishing themselves in Normandy they had rapidly acquired the corrupt Latin of the region and transformed it into a literary language. "They found it a barbarous jargon, they fixed it in writing, and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, in romance.* They became Christians, and eagerly absorbed the learning which the Church had brought with it, encouraging such scholars as Lanfranc and Anselm to settle among them. They built splendid castles and cathedrals; they were foremost in instituting chivalry. Their poets, or trouvères, chanted long knightly songs of battle, love, and heroism-Chansons de Gestes,t as they are calledthat in style and spirit were not Scandinavian, but French and southern. Coming from the cruder heroism of the vanishing Teutonic age into this Norman world of the eleventh century, we feel that life has adorned itself with a new courtliness, gayety, and affluence. The northern hardness and repression have softened under the fructifying breath of a

*V. Macaulay's History of England, vol. i. pp. 21-22.

"Chansons de Gestes, songs of families, as the term literally means, are poems describing the history and achievements of the great men of France in early times. Geste has three senses-(1) The deeds (gesta) of a hero; (2) the poem illustrating those deeds; (3) the family of the hero, and the set of poems celebrating it."-Saintsbury's Primer of French Literature, p. 3.

warmer air, heavy with romance and the odors of the pleasure-loving South. From the somber shadows of an antique world, with the Titanic shapes of its hero-sagas, we approach the sunshine and the shifting colors, the movement and the blazonry, of the Romantic Middle Age. The Normans had become leaders in this new world, largely through that extraordinary adaptability, that readiness to receive and utilize fresh impressions which was characteristic of their race; but the followers of William the Conqueror were far from being pure Teutons, even in blood. In France the invading Northmen had intermarried with the native population, which was largely Celtic, and the two races mixed as the English and Celt did in parts of England.* "The indomitable vigor of the Scandinavian, joined to the buoyant vivacity of the Gaul, produced the ruling and conquering race of Europe." With William, ↑ too, was a motley following of adventurers from many parts of France, so that through the Conquest the Celtic blood, this time mixed with that of other races, mingled a second time with that of the English. But more important than the strain of Celtic blood that flowed in with the Norman, is the nature of the civilization the Norman carried with him. However closely he may have been bound by descent to the Teutonic North, the tone of the Norman civilization was essentially French and Roman. From the time when Harold fell among the heap of English dead at Hastings to the time when * V. supra, p. 17.

Freeman's Norman Conquest, vol. i. p. 170.