helm's singing sacred songs on the bridge. Each hour of the king's day had its peculiar task; there was the same order in the division of his revenue and in the arrangement of his court. But, active and busy as he was, his temper remained simple and kindly.

Neither the wars nor the legislation of Elfred was destined to leave such lasting traces upon England as the impulse he gave to its literature. His end indeed even in this was practical rather than literary. What he aimed at was simply the education of his people. As yet Wessex was the most ignorant of the English kingdoms. 'When I began to reign,' said Ælfred, 'I cannot remember one south of Thames who couid explain his service-book in English.' To remedy this ignorance Ælfred desired that at least every free-born youth who possessed the means should abide at his book till he can well understand English writing.'"J. R. Green.

THE LATER OLD ENGLISH PROSE. "The impulse Elfred gave soon fell away, but it was revived under King Eadgar, when Ethelwald, Bishop of Winchester, made it his constant work to keep up English schools and to translate Latin works into English, and when Archbishop Dunstan took up the same pursuits with eagerness. Ethelwald's school sent out from it a scholar and abbot named ELFRIC. He takes rank as the first large translator of the Bible, turning into English the first seven books and part of Job. We owe to him a series of Homilies; and his Colloquy, afterwards edited by another Elfric, may be called the first English-Latin dictionary. But this revival had no sooner begun to take root than the Northmen came again in force upon the land and conquered it. During the long interweaving of Danes and English together under Danish kings from 1013 to 1042, no English literature arose. It was not till the quiet reign of Edward the Confessor that it again began to live. But no sooner was it born than the Norman invasion repressed, but did not quench, its life.

THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE.-One great monument, however, of old English prose lasts beyond the Conquest. It is the English Chronicle, and in it the literature is continuous from Alfred to Stephen. At first it was nothing but a record of

the births and deaths of bishops and kings, and was probably a West Saxon Chronicle. Elfred edited it from various sources, added largely to it from Bæda, and raised it to the dignity of a national history. After his reign, and that of his son Eadward, 901-925, it becomes scanty, but songs and odes are inserted in it. In the reign of Ethelred and during the Danish kings, its fulness returns, and, growing by additions from various quarters, it continues to be the great contemporary authority in English history till 1154, when it' abruptly closes with the death of Stephen. It is the first history of any Teutonic people in their own language; it is the earliest and the most venerable monument of English prose.' In it old English poetry sang its last song, in its death old English prose dies. It is not till the reign of John that English poetry in any extended form appears again in the Brut of Layamon. It is not till the reign of Edward the Third that original English prose again begins."

'Taking the Chronicle as a whole, I know not where else to find a series of annals so barren of all human interest, and for all purposes of real history so worthless."-Geo. P. Marsh.

35

PERIOD II.

FROM HE CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF CHAUCER,

1066-1400.

LESSON 6.

Brief Historical Sketch.-At the time of the Norman Conquest, the Anglo-Saxons and their literature were languishing. The Conquest did not cause, only hastened, the downfall of the Saxon Commonwealth. It infused new life into the exhausted race. Rescued it from sinking into utter barbarism. Feudalism introduced by William. King the feudal lord and source of all jurisdiction. Crown vassals, afterward called Barons, greater and lesser, held fiefs directly from the king. Thanes were feudatories of vassals. During the 12th and 13th centuries, the larger towns secure by charter the right of self-taxation, the control of their trade, and self-government; serfs the right to buy their freedom; and villeins the right to commute labor-service by the payment of money. Art of weaving woollen cloth introduced by the Flemings about 1110. Trial by jury begins, 1166. Partial conquest of Ireland by Strongbow, under Hen. II., 1170. Richard's Crusade, 1190-94. Loss of Normandy, 1204. John grants Magna Charta, 1215. First summons of burgesses to Parliament, 1265. The independence of Scotland from the overlordship of England, secured by Wallace and Bruce, recognized by Treaty of Northampton, 1328. With the battle of Cressy, 1346, Edward III. begins the Hundred Years' War for the recovery of the English possessions in France, acquired by the marriage of Hen. II., the first of the Plantagenet kings, with Eleanor of Acquitaine. This war and that with Scotland developed the spirit of English nationality. First use of gunpowder and of artillery at this battle of Cressy. Gunpowder makes war a profession, undermines feudalism, destroying military service, the tenure by which land under it was held, and advances civilization. Treaty of Bretigny, by which Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, Santoigne, and Calais came into the full possession of the English, and Edward's claim to the Crown of France and to Normandy was waived, 1360. Dress and diet of each class fixed by statute, 1363. Peasant's Revolt under Wat Tyler, 1381. Rich. II. invades Ireland, 1394

and 1399. Four visitations of the Black Death, sweeping off 2,500,000 people, one half of the population of England, 1348-9, 1361-2, 1369, and 1375-6. Population of London in Chaucer's time about 35,000 (now 4,000,000). First royal proclamation in the English language, 1258. Pleadings in law-courts required to be in English by act of Parliament, 1362. Instruction in the schools was in English after 1349. The eight Crusades for the recovery of Jerusalem between 1095 and 1272.The Norman Conquest (1) stripped the native speech of grammatical inflections, (2) abolished a large number of its formative suffixes and prefixes, (3) destroyed its power of forming self-explaining compounds, (4) caused the loss of vast numbers of its words-from one third to one half of all it possessed, (5) brought in a multitude of French words and opened the door for the Latin (the two now forming three tenths of our vocabulary), added (6) prefixes and suffixes and (7) the comparison of adjectives by the use of adverbs, (8) generalized the use of s as a plural termination of nouns, (9) introduced the custom of indicating the possessive relation by a preposition, of, and (10) helped to bring in or to extend the use of to before the infinitive. In the admixture of races, humor, lightness, imagination, and sensibility to beauty were added to the plain and solid, but obtuse, Saxon mind.

read

LESSON 7.

GENERAL OUTLINE.- 66 'The invasion of Britain by the English made the island, its speech, and its literature English. The invasion of England by the Danes left the speech and literature still English. The Danes were of same stock and tongue as the people invaded, and were absorbed by them. The invasion of England by the Normans seemed likely to crush the English people, to root out their literature, and even to threaten their speech. But that which happened to the Danes happened to the Normans also, and for the same reason. They were originally of like blood with the English, and of like speech; and, though during their settlement in Normandy they had become French in manner and language, and their literature French, yet the old blood prevailed in the end. The Norman felt his kindred with the English tongue and spirit, became an Englishman, and left the French

tongue to speak and write in English. He, too, was absorbed, and into English literature and speech were taken some French elements he had brought with him. It was a process slower in literature than it was in the political history, but it began from the political struggle. Up to the time of Henry II. the Norman troubled himself but little about the English tongue. But when French foreigners came pouring into the land in the train of Henry and his sons, the Norman allied himself with the Englishman against these foreigners, and the English tongue began to rise into` importance. Its literature grew slowly, but as quickly as most of the literatures of Europe, and it never ceased to grow. There are English sermons of the same century, and now, early in the next century, at the central time of this struggle, after the death of Richard the First, the Brut of Layamon and the Ormulum come forth within ten years of each other to prove the continuity, the survival, and the victory of the English tongue. When the patriotic struggle closed in the reign of Edward I., English literature had risen again through the song, the sermon, and the poem, into importance, and was written by a people made up of Norman and Englishman welded into one by the fight against the foreigner. But, though the foreigner was driven out, his literature influenced and continued to influence the new English poetry. The poetry, we say, for in this revival the literature was only poetical. All prose, with the exception of a few sermons and some religious works from the French, was written in Latin.

RELIGIOUS POETRY AND STORY-TELLING POETRY.-These are the two main streams into which this poetical literature divides itself. The religious poetry is entirely English in spirit and a poetry of the people, from the Ormulum of Ormin, 1215, to the Vision of Piers the Plowman, in which poem the distinctly English poetry reached its truest expression in 1362. The storytelling poetry is English at its beginning but becomes more and more influenced by the romantic poetry of France, and in