remains master; genius cannot find a place amidst revolt and bloodthirstiness, gluttony and brute force. Even in the little circle where he moves, his labour comes to nought. The model which he proposed to himself oppresses and enchains him in a cramping imitation; he aspires but to be a good copyist; he produces a gathering of centos which he calls Latin verses; he applies himself to the discovery of expressions, sanctioned by good models; he succeeds only in elaborating an emphatic, spoiled Latin, bristling with incongruities. In place of ideas, the most profound amongst them serve up the defunct doctrines of defunct authors. They compile religious manuals and philosophical manuals from the Fathers. Erigena, the most learned, goes to the extent of reproducing the old complicated dreams of Alexandrian metaphysics. How far these speculations and reminiscences soar above the barbarous crowd which howls and bustles in the plain below, no words can express. There was a certain king of Kent in the seventh century who could not write. Imagine bachelors of theology discussing before an audience of waggoners in Paris, not Parisian waggoners, but such as survive in Auvergne or in the Vosges. Among these clerks, who think like studious scholars in accordance with their favourite authors, and are doubly separated from the world as collegians and monks, Alfred alone, by his position as a layman and a practical man, descends in his Saxon translations and his Saxon verses to the common level; and we have seen that his effort, like that of Charlemagne, was fruitless. There was an impassable wall between the old learned literature and the present chaotic barbarism. Incapable, yet compelled, to fit into the ancient mould, they gave it a twist. Unable to reproduce ideas, they reproduced a metre. They tried to eclipse their rivals in versification by the refinement of their composition, and the prestige of a difficulty overcome. So, in our own colleges, the good scholars imitate the clever divisions and symmetries of Claudian rather than the ease and variety of Virgil. They put their feet in irons, and showed their smartness by running in shackles; they weighted themselves with rules of modern rhyme and rules of ancient metre; they added the necessity of beginning each verse with the same letter that began the last. A few, like Adhelm, wrote square acrostics, in which the first line, repeated at the end, was found also to the left and right of the piece. Thus made up of the first and last letters of each verse, it forms a border to the whole piece, and the morsel of verse is like a morsel of tapestry. Strange literary tricks, which changed the poet into an artisan! They bear witness to the contrariety which then impeded culture and nature, and spoiled at once the Latin form and the Saxon genius.

Beyond this barrier, which drew an impassable line between civilisation and barbarism, there was another, no less impassable, between the Latin and Saxon genius. The strong German imagination, in which glowing and obscure visions suddenly meet and violently clash, was

in contrast with the reasoning spirit, in which ideas gather and are developed in a regular order; so that if the barbarian, in his classical essays, retained any part of his primitive instincts, he succeeded only in producing a grotesque and frightful monster. One of them, this very Adhelm, a relative of King Ina, who sang on the town-bridge profane and sacred hymns alternately, too much imbued with Saxon poesy, simply to imitate the antique models, adorned his Latin prose and verse with all the English magnificence." You might compare him to a barbarian who seizes a flute from the skilled hands of a player of Augustus' court, in order to blow on it with inflated lungs, as if it were the bellowing horn of an aurochs. The sober speech of the Roman orators and senators becomes in his hands full of exaggerated and incoherent images; he heaps up his colours, and gives vent to the extraordinary and unintelligible nonsense of the later Skalds,-in short, he is a latinised Skald, dragging into his new tongue the ornaments of Scandinavian poetry, such as alliteration, by dint of which he congregates in one of his epistles fifteen consecutive words, all beginning with the same letter; and in order to make up his fifteen, he introduces ■ barbarous Græcism amongst the Latin words. Many times amongst the others, the writers of legends, you will meet with deformation of Latin, distorted by the outbreak of a too vivid imagination; it breaks out even in their scholastic and scientific writing. Alcuin, in the dialogues which he made for the son of Charlemagne, uses like formulas the little poetic and trite phrases which abound in the national poetry. What is winter? the exile of summer. What is spring? the painter of earth. What is the year? the world's chariot. What is the sun? the splendour of the universe, the beauty of the firmament, the grace of nature, the glory of the day, the distributor of hours. What is the sea? the road of the brave, the frontier of earth, the hostelry of the waves, the source of showers.' More, he ends his instructions with enigmas, in the spirit of the Skalds, such as we still find in the old manuscripts with the barbarian songs. It was the last feature of the national genius, which, when it labours to understand a matter, neglects dry, clear, consecutive deduction, to employ grotesque, remote, oft-repeated imagery, and replaces analysis by intuition.

VIII.

Such was this race, the last born of the sister races, Saxon, Latin,

1 William of Malmesbury's expression.

1 Primitus (pantorum procerum prætorumque pio potissimum paternoque præsertim privilegio) panegyricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promuigantes, stridula vocum symphonia ac melodia cantile, næque carmine modulatori hyn.nizemus.

and Greek, who, in the decay of the other two, brings to the world a new civilisation, with a new character and genius. Inferior to these

in many respects, it surpasses them in not a few. Amidst the woods and fens and snows, under a sad, inclement sky, gross instincts have gained the day. The German has not acquired gay humour, unreserved facility, the idea of harmonious beauty; his great legmatio body continues fierce and coarse, greedy and brutal; his rude and unpliable mind is still inclined to savagery, and restive under culture. Dull and congealed, his ideas cannot expand with facility and freedom, with a natural sequence and an instinctive regularity. But this spirit, void of the sentiment of the beautiful, is all the more apt for the sentiment of the true. The deep and incisive impression which he receives from contact with objects, and which as yet he can only express by a cry, will afterwards liberate him from the Latin rhetoric, and will vent itself on things rather than on words. Moreover, under the constraint of climate and solitude, by the habit of resistance and effort, his ideal is changed. Human and moral instincts have gained the empire over him; and amongst them, the need of independence, the disposition for serious and strict manners, the inclination for devotion and veneration, the worship of heroism. Here are the foundations and the elements of a civilisation, slower but sounder, less careful of what is agreeable and elegant, more based on justice and truth.1 Hitherto at least the race is intact, intact in its primitive rudeness; the Roman cultivation could neither develop nor deform it. If Christianity took root, it was owing to natural affinities, but it produced no change in the native genius. Now approaches a new conquest, which is to bring this time men, as well as ideas. The Saxons, meanwhile, after the wont of German races, vigorous and fertile, have within the past six centuries multiplied enormously. They were now about two millions, and the Norman army numbered sixty thousand. In vain these Normans become transformed, gallicised; by their origin, and substantially in themselves they are still the relatives of those whom they conquered. In vain they imported their manners and their poesy, and introduced into the language a third part of its words; this language continues altogether

1 In Iceland, the country of the fiercest sea-kings, crimes are unknown; prisons have been turned to other uses; fines are the only punishment.

2 See Pictorial History, i. 249. Following Doomsday Book, Mr. Turner reckons at three hundred thousand the heads of families mentioned. If each family consisted of five persons, that would make one million five hundred thousand people. He adds five hundred thousand for the four northern counties, for London and several large towns, for the monks and provincial clergy not enumerated. . . . We must accept these figures with caution. Still they agree with those of Macintosh, George Chalmers, and several others. Many facts show that the Saxon population was very numerous, and quite out of proportion to the Norman population.

...

Though the grammar changed,

German in element and in substance. it changed integrally, by an internal action, in the same sense as its continental cognates. At the end of three hundred years the con querors themselves were conquered; their speech became English; and owing to frequent intermarriage, the English blood ended by gaining the predominance over the Norman blood in their veins. The race finally remains Saxon. If the old poetic genius disappears after the Conquest, it is as a river disappears, and flows for a while underground. In five centuries it will emerge once more.

1 Warton, Histry of English Poetry, 1840, 3 vols., preface.

CHAPTER IL

The Normans.

I. The protection and character of Feudalism.

II. The Norman invasion; character of the Normans-Contrast with the Saxona -The Normans are French-How they became so- -Their taste and architecture Their spirit of inquiry and their literature-Chivalry and amusements-Their tactics and their success.

III. Bent of the French genius-Two principal characteristics; clear and consecutive ideas-Psychological form of French genius-Prosaic histories; lack of colour and passion, ease and discursiveness-Natural logic and clearness, soberness, grace and delicacy, refinement and cynicism-Order and charm―The nature of the beauty and of the ideas which the French have introduced.

IV. The Normans in England-Their position and their tyranny-They implant their literature and language-They forget the same-Learn English by degrees-Gradually English becomes gallicised.

V. They translate French works into English-Opinion of Sir John Mandeville -Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert de Brunne-They imitate in English the French literature-Moral manuals, chansons, fabliaux, Gestes -Brightness, frivolity, and futility of this French literature-Barbarity and ignorance of the feudal civilisation-Geste of Richard Cœur de Lion, and voyages of Sir John Mandeville-Poorness of the literature introduced and implanted in England-Why it has not endured on the Continent or in England.

VI. The Saxons in England-Endurance of the Saxon nation, and formation of the English constitution-Endurance of the Saxon character, and formation of the English character.

VII.-IX. Comparison of the ideal hero in France and England-Fabliaux of Reynard, and ballads of Robin Hood-How the Saxon character makes way for and supports political liberty-Comparison of the condition of the Commons in France and England-Theory of the English constitution, by Sir Jolin Fortescue-How the Saxon constitution makes way for and supports political liberty-Situation of the Church, and precursors of the Reformation in England-Piers Plowman and Wycliffe-How the Saxon character and the situation of the Norman Church make way for religious reform-Incompleteness and importance of the national literature-Why it has not endured.

A

I.

CENTURY and a half had passed on the Continent since, amid the universal decay and dissolution, a new society had been formed, and new men had risen up. Brave men had at length made a