and Tinker's Select Translations; Pancoast and Spaeth's Early English Poems. Bede's History and the Chronicle in Bohn's Antiquarian Library.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. Green's Short History of the English People, ch. 1, or The Making of England and The Conquest of England; Gardiner's Student's History of England; Cheyney's Short History of England; Traill's Social England, vol. 1; Freeman's Old English History; Rhys's Celtic Britain.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION AND RESEARCH

1. Characteristics of the Ancient Celts. 2. Relate a story from the Mabinogion (Lanier's Boy's Mabinogion, or Everyman's Library). 3. Discuss Matthew Arnold's theory that English poetry gets from the Celts its "natural magic" (Celtic Literature, ch. vi). 4. Evidences in our language of the Roman occupation of Britain (Lounsbury, Emerson).

5. The three homes of the English race (see Freeman's English People in its Three Homes). 6. Locate on the map the original home of the English. 7. Character of the Teutons at the time of the conquest of Britain (Green's Making of England, Int. 16-20; ch. iv, 154-169; Taine, bk. 1, ch. i. 8. Love of music among the Saxons. 9. Describe the life of the scop as given in Widsith and Deor's Lament.

10. Give the story of Beowulf. 11. Collect passages in this and other poems illustrating the love of sea-adventure. 12. Study the Saxon use of vivid metaphors. 13. Compare the Saxon idea of Weird with the Greek and Roman idea of the Fates or Parcæ (see Brooke, 24, 206). 14. Why is the epic the natural poetic form used by primitive peoples? 15. Compare Longfellow's Hiawatha for characteristics of primitive poetry.

16. Effect of Christianity upon the war spirit of the Saxons (Taine, vol. I, ch. i, sec. vi, Brooke, 194-200). 17. Read Bede's account of Cædmon, bk. IV, ch. xxiv (C. and T.). 18. Compare Cadmon's poem with Paradise Lost, v, 657-672; 1. 34-74, 242-270, 740-746. 19. The little prose poem of the "sparrow" in Bede, bk. II, ch. xiii (C. and T.). 20. King Alfred's relation to the growth of literature.

CHAPTER II

THE TRANSITION PERIOD

1066-1360

By a single battle England was transformed. The shock of the Conquest caused a paralysis of the national life, from which, however, the nation recovered with greatly increased powers of growth, with vital functions strengthened. Saxon civilization was arrested in its progress but not destroyed. Traditions

The Battle of Hastings

were broken down, customs and habits of life were changed, language was reconstructed, and even the blood of the people, which had thus far been almost purely Teutonic, now became strongly colored by the finer blood of the south. It is interesting to imagine what England would be to-day had the country developed its national life independently, like Germany. There can be no doubt that, so far as literature is concerned, we ought never to regret the disaster that happened to the English people at Hastings in 1066.

in France

These Normans, or Northmen, who came to England with William the Conqueror, were a remarkable people. Originally, as their name indicates, they were dwellers in the The Normans north of Europe, the neighbors and kinsfolk of the Angles and Saxons in their first home. In the tenth century, led by the lure of adventure and plunder, they invaded France, secured the northern part of the kingdom as a permanent home, adopted the language of the French, and learned their arts and customs. In the space of about one

hundred years, these Northern barbarians produced the most vigorous and enlightened civilization in Europe. This new civilization, a combination of the enterprise of the North and the culture derived from Rome, was now brought to England. Again there was a process of race absorption and readjustment, and the struggle was prolonged and bitter; but in the end the Norman baron became an English lord.

Characteristics of the Normans

The Normans possessed qualities that were in strong contrast with the dominant traits of the English. They had a special genius for government and skill in political and military organization. Their first contribution to English civilization, therefore, was a strong centralized government, in place of the divided authority of rival chiefs. Thus the work of consolidation begun by Alfred was completed and a true sense of nationality was created. They had an energetic religious faith and a love of the fine arts, and this love of God and love of the beautiful found expression in the splendid cathedrals and monastic halls that sprang up rapidly in all parts of England. They were an imaginative, idealistic people, strongly creative in their instincts. Among them chivalry had its origin and main growth. Their language and literature represented the inherited refinement of the ancient world. Hitherto England had been isolated, standing outside the great currents of European culture, but with the advent of the Normans she came to a new and broader knowledge of "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." Above all, these Normans possessed an alert, flexible, and joyous temperament, quite unknown to the seriousminded Saxon, which brought to English literary expression a permanent element of inestimable value.

In brief, then, we may say that the Normans contributed to English progress a new government, a more effective religious life, a knowledge of European scholarship and culture, the ideals of chivalry, and a large linguistic and literary enrichment.

Confusion

of

Languages

The period of about three hundred years from the Conquest to Chaucer is a period of transition. At first all was confusion, a jangle of discordant elements that had to be brought into concord. Three languages were in use: French, the language of the nobility and the court; Latin, the language of scholars and the monasteries; and English in its various dialects, the speech of the great mass of the people. Though the English were conquered, they were not subdued, as is shown by the determined manner in which they clung to their native speech. The language survived the conflict of three centuries and emerged from its obscurity and degradation with a complete triumph over its foreign rival. It now lost its inflections, its grammatical gender, and much of its vocabulary. But it gained from the French a more flexible form and structure, and an enlargement of its vocabulary by the addition of nearly three words for every one of its own.

Out of this fusion of the two languages has come the finest instrument of literary expression known to the modern world. At times the French seemed likely to extinguish the English speech, for the Englishman, having become reconciled to a foreign master, naturally began to imitate his manners and to acquire his language. French became the language of fashion and high life. Robert of Gloucester, a chronicler of the time, mournfully complains: "I ween that in all the world there is no country that holds not to her own speech, save England alone." But the patriotic chronicler was over-anxious. At no time was the language wholly submerged by the destructive forces of the period. King Alfred called his people and language "Englise," and from Alfred's time to the present the language of England has been a continuous English language, passing through many changes and phases of development, but never losing its original and fundamental English character. No impassable chasm was opened by the Conquest, as some

A Continuous English Language

writers would have us believe, between the language of Cynewulf and of Chaucer. Cædmon and Milton saw the same heavenly visions and described them in essentially the same language, even though each would

have been unable to read the other's poems in the original.

During the first one hundred and fifty years after the Conquest little was produced that is of interest to the student of literature. The times were too troublous for art. The Saxon Chronicle was patriotically continued at Peterborough to the year 1154; the Homilies of Elfric were transcribed and imitated, that the common people might still have their religious instruction; and the memory of good King Alfred was kept green by a collection of Proverbs, attributed to his hand. But the glory of the native literature had disappeared forever, and the new-comers were yet content with the literature they had brought from the continent. One form of writing, however, was energetically cultivated during this barren period. In the monasteries were scholars of large attainments, many of whom had come from abroad. As if foreseeing the great future of the nation that was now in the making about them, these scholars, foreign and native alike, vied with one another in writing the history of their country. They wrote in Latin, and generally in the chronicle form. The "Venerable Bede" served them for both model and material. The value of this chronicle literature is in the fullness of details concerning contemporary affairs. One of these chroniclers, William of Mal

The Early
Chroniclers