During this period there was, to speak strictly, no English history. Though these Norman kings conquered Ireland, overawed Scotland, attained more power on the Continent than their liege lords the kings of France, dazzled Asia by their glory, and seemed in a fair way to build up a single great monarchy stretching from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees, they continued to speak French, to live in France, to fill the chief offices of state with Frenchmen, and to regard the people of England much as the people of England now regard the East Indians. The princes, the lords, and the prelates differed in race and in language from the artisans and farmers. The revenues of the rich were spent in Paris. No man of English extraction rose to eminence except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman. The language of Cynewulf and Alfred became a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed orthography, and was contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors.

The only writing of note that was done in England during this century and a half was, accordingly, not in English but in Latin. The first six Norman kings were strong men. They not only gave the chroniclers something to write about but they gave them substantial encouragement. Of them the best was a monk named William of Malmesbury, whose histories cover the period from 449 to 1142. He was followed by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in the reign of Stephen produced a book which he called the "History of the Kings of Britain." Though in form a sober history, it is really a masterpiece of fiction. Myth, legend, traditions, pedantry, the Welsh dreams of future triumph over the Saxon, memories of the crusades, and stories of Charlemagne were mingled in Geoffrey's book in such a fashion. that it became immensely popular with everybody except the other chroniclers, one of whom, William of Newburgh, characterized it as a tissue of impudent and shameless lies and complained that Geoffrey had made the little finger of Arthur stouter than the back of Alexander the Great. Out of his creation finally grew the legend of the Round Table, a fact of immense importance in the development not only of English literature but also of the English national spirit. Arthur was a hero in whom Celt, Saxon, Dane, and Norman could all feel a common pride and interest. But Geoffrey's service to English

literature does not stop here. He preserved, if he did not invent, the stories of "Lear " and " Cymbeline" and to him Milton owed certain important parts of "Comus." And he has had a large reward in the form of praise from the poets. Among his eulogists have been Chaucer, Spenser, Drayton, Dryden, and Wordsworth. Altogether he is the most important literary figure of the twelfth century in England. So popular did his work become, indeed, among his contemporaries that to confess ignorance of its stories was the mark of a clown. Its influence is attested by the fact that the British Museum alone has thirty-five and the Bodleian Library sixteen copies of it in mediæval manuscripts.

The fact, already alluded to, that throughout this period English ceased or nearly ceased to be written, was really a blessing in disguise. One can easily imagine what happened, if one will think for a moment of the difficulties which uneducated or half-educated people have even now with our very simple modern inflections. If the vulgar in this age of books and schools still persist in saying, "Me and him ain't got no show," and even high school principals are occasionally guilty of such solecisms as Give the book to John or I," it is no wonder that the complicated conjugations and declensions of Saxon, when abandoned to people who could neither read nor write, were soon lost. Every unessential element of the language, as a matter of fact, was swept away. It became the simplest of human dialects, and in becoming the simplest it acquired a power of appropriating new words which has made its vocabulary the largest and richest in the world. Saxon was pared down, so to speak, as a dentist pares down a damaged tooth in order to crown it with gold. The result is that modern English already has a hoard of words about six times as great as German, French, Italian, or Spanish, and the process still goes on. Like a whirlpool or a magnet, the English language continues to suck in philological rubbish and attract linguistic metal from the four quarters of the globe. The result was a language less musical indeed, as Macaulay finely says, than the languages of the South, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone.

From its position of subserviency the English language was

rescued by an event which historians have generally represented as a disaster. Richard the Lion-hearted was succeeded by John (1199– 1216), who was a trifler and a coward. He was driven from Normandy. Shut up with the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, the Norman nobles began to regard England as their country and the English as their countrymen. The two races found that they had common interests and common enemies. Both were alike disgusted by the tyranny and incapacity of John. The first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united exertions and framed for their common benefit. The student who wishes to obtain a vivid picture of these important transactions will read Mr. Rudyard Kipling's story, "The Treasure and the Law,” and the first, in chronological order, of Shakespeare's incomparable historical plays, “King John.”

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Under whose rule did the English first hear of the Normans' activity upon the Continent?

2. Where was Valhalla? Describe the life lived there.

3. Who were the characters in Norse mythology?

4. Considering the influence of the climate, why is it to be expected that the Normans should be bright, quick, and self-reliant, while the Angles and Saxons were heavy, solid, and unimaginative?

5. Who were the founders of the chivalric ideal in Europe?

6. Where is Robin Hood's place in history?

7. For what are we indebted to Geoffrey of Monmouth?

8. How do you account for the existence of the following pairs of words: "Calf" and "veal"; " swine" and "pork”; “sheep” and “mutton ”?

9. Under whose reign did the English lose Normandy?

10. Up until the Thirteenth Century, how many language currents had joined on English soil to form our present language?

Suggested Readings.—In addition to the novels, stories, and plays indicated in the text, "The Cambridge History of English Literature” and Chambers's "Encyclopædia of English Literature" should always be within reach of the pupil. Marsh's "Lectures on the English Language' " and Welsh's " Development of the English Language and Literature" are also good books to have around.

CHAPTER V

THE ENGLISH (1216-1400)

"Another will say that English wanteth grammar. Nay, truly, it hath that praise that it wants not grammar, for grammar it might have, but needs it not, being so easie in itself, and so void of those cumbersome differences of cases, genders, moods, and tenses, which I think was a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse, that a man should be put to school to learn his mother tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly the conceit of the minde, which is the need of speech, that it hath equally with any other tongue in the world."

-Sir Philip Sidney.

WITH the signing of the Charter at Runnymede (1216) really begins the history of the English nation. During the century that followed the English people began to show those peculiarities which they have ever since retained. Then first appeared the outlines of the English constitution, the House of Commons, and the common law. Then it was that the courage of English sailors first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then were founded the most ancient of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Then, too, appeared the first faint dawn of modern English literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England.

Even before John was expelled from the Continent, that is to say, about 1200, there was in the land a priest named Layamon. "He was son," he tells us, " of Leovenath; may the Lord be gracious to him! He dwelt at Earnley, a noble church on the banks of Severn (good it seemed to him!) near Radstone, where he read books. It came in mind to him that he would tell the noble deeds of England." So he travelled up and down in the land, and in his travels he found Bede's history and a translation which a Frenchman named Wace had made of the book of Geoffrey of Monmouth. "Layamon laid down these books and turned the leaves; he beheld them lovingly (may the Lord be merciful to him!). Pen he took in hand and wrote a book-skin." What he wrote on his book-skin was a poem of 32,000 lines, which he called "Brut," after a Trojan who, according to the imaginative Geoffrey, after the Trojan war had settled in Britain as Æneas settled in Italy. The real hero of the "Brut," however,

like the real hero of Geoffrey's Chronicle, is Arthur. But Layamon is not to be regarded as a mere translator. His Arthur is more generous, knightly, and sympathetic than Geoffrey's. He is courteous; he loves law and order; he defends Christianity. Layamon also uses some material not found in Geoffrey, including the stories of Merlin and Lancelot, which originated in France. As history his book is worthless, as poetry fair, as a monument of English priceless. It is surprisingly free from Norman words, containing in all less than 100 of them. In versification it is a compromise between the old and the new; its general scheme is the same alliterative measure as that of Beowulf, but in places this is modified by rhyme. The really interesting thing about Layamon is, however, that with his poem begins the history of modern English literature; in his " Brut " we see as a shallow and narrow brook the beginnings of the stream that grew wide in Chaucer's day, in Shakespeare's broadened into a mighty river, and that has not in any generation since become wholly dry.

The Arthurian legends which Layamon thus collected and introduced into English had their origin in Wales. Arthur's name is so extensively preserved in the place-names of Wales that one writer declares that only the devil is more often mentioned in local association than Arthur. Old English literature does not mention him. About 800 a Welshman named Nennius, in a book called the "Historia Brittonum," says that, some time after the death of Hengist, Arthur fought against the English in twelve battles. In "Kulwch and Olwen," an early and charming Welsh poem, he appears, however, as a fairy king. Indeed, the whole poem breathes the very spirit of fairy-land. Olwen, the heroine, had a skin whiter than the foam. of the wave; fairer were her hands than the blossoms of the woodanemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain; and four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod. The men in the poem were even more wonderful. One of them, Sol, could stand all day on one foot; another, Gwevel, when he was sad would let one of his lips drop below his waist, while he turned up the other like a cap over his head; a third, Clust, though buried seven cubits beneath the earth, could hear the ant fifty miles off rise from her bed in the morning, while Kai, the seneschal of Tennyson's " Idylls," could hold his breath