CHAPTER I.

WRITINGS OF ENGLISHMEN IN LATIN AND IN FRENCH.

1. The English Language before and after the Norman Conquest.-2. Writings in Latin and in French.-3. Chronicles.-4. William of Malmesbury.-5. Geoffrey of Monmouth.-6. Wace. - 7. A Group of Minor Chroniclers.-8. Ralph Higden.-9. Romances; Walter Map.-10. Other Romance-Writers.-11. Sawulf.-12. Hilarius. - 13. Miracle-Plays and Mysteries.-14. Writers on Science; Athelard of Bath.-15. Alexander Neckham. — 16. Roger Bacon.17. Writers on Law; Ralph Glanville; Henry of Bracton.-18. Religious Discussion; English Debate concerning Authority. 19. Nigel Wireker.— 20. Robert Grosseteste.-21. Richard de Bury.

1. DURING the four centuries from Cædmon to the Conquest the language of books written in English may be said to have been fixed. Among the First English themselves, mixtures of race and tribe from the Continent varied in different parts of the country, and in each place the constituents and the proportions of the mixture were shown by the form of speech. Provincial dialects were thus established. Then, as now, the spoken language of the country had its local differences, only more strongly marked than they now are; and the untaught multitude was careless about grammar; while the cultivated class, which produced books, maintained in them a standard of the language, being careful to preserve accuracy in use of inflection, discrimination of gender, and upon all other such points. Even the vocabulary of First English literature remained for those four centuries very uniform; so that, with a few traces of provincialism which may point towards the birthplace of a writer, and perhaps some looseness of grammar towards the close of the period, during the four centuries of First English literature, all English thought written in English may be said to have come down to us in one language as fixed as that which we now speak. But, during the three centuries from the Conquest to the time of Chaucer, there was continuous change. The language then

was in transition to the later form, in which, again, it became fixed. In race the Normans were another combination of the English elements. Even the part of France on which they had established themselves was Teutonized before they came to it; for it was that which had in Cæsar's time a population traceable to a Teutonic immigration, and to which there had come in the fifth century the Franks, - Teutons again. As far as concerned race only, there was quite as much of original kindred in the blood of those whom we call Normans and Saxons as between fellow-Englishmen now living in Yorkshire and in Hampshire. But the energetic Normans had been drawing, for the subsequent advantage of the world, their own separate lessons from the school of life. They had dropped in France their own language; their sons learnt speech of the mothers found in the new country, and, when they first came over to England as rulers, gave kings who spoke only French, ecclesiastics whom their kings could trust, French-speaking abbots at the head of the monasteries (which were the only conservators of knowledge and centres of education), and French-speaking knights in their castles, as centres of influence among the native rural population.

French was the language of the ruling class in Church and State. Latin was used in books habitually as the common language of the educated throughout Europe, the only language in which a scholar might hope to address, not merely the few among a single people, but the whole republic of letters. English remained the language of the people, and its predomi

nance was sure.

But there was no longer in the monasteries a cultivated class maintaining a standard of the language. The common people were not strict in care of genders and inflections. Those newcomers who sought to make themselves understood in English helped also to bring old niceties of inflection to decay. At the same time old words were modified, and some were dropped, when their places were completely taken by convenient new words that formed part of the large vocabulary wherewith our language was now being enriched. In large towns change was continuous and somewhat rapid; in country districts it was slow. Thus, while the provincial distinctions all remained, local

conditions, here advancing, there retarding, the new movement, caused increase of difference between the forms of speech current in England at one time.

2. In the years next following the Conquest the chief authors were ecclesiastics, and their language Latin. The books were usually chronicles and lives of saints; but there was representation also of the love of travel, and already a faint indication of the new spirit of free inquiry that was to break the bonds of ancient science. Not until the time of King John, who began his reign just a hundred and thirty-three years after the Conquest, did books in English begin to appear. During all that time, nearly all writing of mark had been in Latin; and those books which were not in Latin were in French. Indee for more than a hundred years after the reign of John, and quite down to the end of our period of Transitional English, the larger part of the literature written in England was in Latin and in French rather than in English. This huge mass of writings produced in England from the middle of the eleventh century to the middle of the fourteenth, but produced in some other language than that of England, cannot be regarded as English literature. We need not here concern ourselves with these writings, except so far as they illustrate the condition of English thought at that time, or as they stand for the origin of literary movements which revealed themselves, then and afterward, in literature that is English. Under this limitation let us glance rapidly over the Latin and French writings that were produced in England during the three centuries now under consideration.

3. Perhaps the most interesting and valuable portion of them are the Chronicles, which during all this period were written by ecclesiastics, and generally by monks.

The history-making Normans gave from the first much occupation for the pen of the good monk in his scriptorium. In that room he copied the desirable things that were not bought for the monastic library, works of the Fathers, writings in defence of orthodox belief; a good book on the right computation of Easter; a treatise on each of the seven steps of knowledge which led up to theology, namely, grammar, rhetoric, and

logic, forming the trivium of ethics, with arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, the quadrivium of physics. There would be need also of a fresher history than Orosius could furnish. The framer of such a history might begin with Adam, and cause any short sketch of the history of the world from the creation to be copied, or a larger history to be reduced in scale. As he proceeded towards his own time, he would give out now this, now that, accepted history of a particular period, to be copied literally, or condensed. But when he came down to a time within his own memory, or that of men about him, he began to tell his story for himself, and spoke from living knowledge; from this point, therefore, his chronicle became for aftertimes an independent record of great value. In days when the strong sought conquest, and lands often changed masters, the monasteries, with wide-spread possessions, had reason to keep themselves well informed in the history-making of the great lords of the soil. The chronicle, which faithfully preserved a record of events in the surrounding world during the years last past, would be one of the best read and most useful books in the monastic library. Monasteries were many, and the number also of the chroniclers was great. In England they were usually men whose hearts were with the people to whom they belonged. Not brilliant, like those chroniclers of France who gave their souls up to outside enjoyment of court glitter and the pomp of war, but sober and accurate recorders of such matter as concerned realities of life, they saw in England the home of a people, not the playground of a king.

4. Of all this great throng of chroniclers, the best are these three, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Wace, sometimes miscalled Robert Wace.

William of Malmesbury, who almost rose from the chronicler into the historian, was born probably about the year 1095; and of his parents one was English, and one Norman. He went as a boy into the monastery at Malmesbury; was known there as an enthusiast for books; sought, bought, and read them; and gave all the intervals between religious exercises to his active literary work. He was made librarian at Malmesbury, and would not be made abbot. His chief work,