Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/427

Rh NORMAN.] ENGLISH LITERATURE 407 assimilating and taming the Northmen ; and, in spite of physical isolation, would have participated, though probably lagging far behind the rest, in the general intellectual advance of the nations of Europe. The tissue of her civilization would have been, in preponderating measure, Teutonic, like that of Germany ; but it would have lacked the golden thread of the &quot; Holy Roman Empire,&quot; which brought an element of idealism and beauty into the plain texture of German life. For good or for evil, the process of national and also of intellectual development vas to be altered and quickened by the arrival of a knightly race of conquerors from across the channel. II. Anglo-Norman Period, 1066-1215. The llth cen tury is remarkably barren in great names and memories which captivate the imagination ; it was, however, an advance upon the 10th, which Baronius has described as the central and worst period of intellectual darkness. In England, for about 15U years after the Conquest, there was no unity of intellectual life ; in political life, however, the iron hand of the Conqueror compelled an external uniformity, by the universal exaction of homage to him self. The strength of the Norman monarchy, the absence of religious differences, and, after a time, the loss of Nor mandy, were causes working powerfully in aid of the con ciliation and interfusion of the different elements of the population. But at first it was as if three separate nations were encamped confusedly on British soil, the Normans, the English, and the Welsh. The clergy, as a fourth power, of all nationalities or of none, became, by its use of Latin as a common tongue, by preaching a common faith and teaching a common philosophy, and as representing the equality and charity which are among the essential features of Christianity, an ever present mediating influence tend ing to break down the partitions between the camps. The intellectual state and progress of each nation, down to and a little beyond the end of the 12th century, must now be briefly discussed. 1. Normans. In less than two centuries after the Northmen under Rollo had settled in Normandy, they had not only exchanged their Teutonic speech for the language of France, but made, with French as the medium of expression, remarkable literary progress. In this progress the Normans settled in England participated to the full. old. It is probable that the Turoldus, who, availing himself of earlier Frankish lays and chronicles, composed towards the end of the llth century the noble heroic poem called the Chanson de Roland, was an abbot of Peterborough, son of the clerk of the same name who was the Conqueror s preceptor. From the reign of Henry I., though the names of several writers are known, little of importance has come down to us. The treatise on politeness called Urbanus, attributed to Henry himself, is in all probability the com position of a later age. The works of the hapless satirist, Luc de la Barre, are not extant, and Evrard s translation (1130) of Cato s Disticha into French verse is not a note worthy performance. The reign of Stephen, though con fusion and civil war prevailed over a great part of England, witnessed an extraordinary outburst of literary activity, Of the- historians who shed a lustre on this reign we shall speak in a different connexion ; but it was also memorable for its French poets. Guichard of Beaulieu, a cell of St iru Alban s (1150), produced a poem in Alexandrines of somo merit, on the vices of the age; Geoffrey Gaimar (1140) wrote his lively Estoric des Engles (a chronicle of the Anglo-Saxon kings) ; and Benoit de Ste More, either in this reign or early in that of Henry II., produced a vast poem on the History of the War of Troy, which seems to have been the original exemplar on which the numerous &quot; Troy-books &quot; of later generations were mo Jelled. The family of Benoifc was of Norman extraction, but settled in England. Under Henry II., whose ceaseless and enlightened energy stimulated production wherever it was exerted, French poetry took an ever bolder sweep. Robert Wace, a native of Jersey and a clerk of Caen, composed Wace. about 1155 his famous Brut d Anyleterre, a history of the kings of Britain from Brutus to Cadwallader, founded on the Historia Britonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Again, when Henry had commissioned Benoit to write a metrical history of the dukes of Normandy, the quick-witted Wace anticipated his slower rival, and produced in 1160 the first part of the Roman de Rou, treating of the same subject. Thus far we have considered the Anglo-Norman poets chiefly as chroniclers ; we have now to regard them as romance writers. It is true that in their hands history slides into romance, and vice versa ; thus the Brut d Anyleterre may be regarded as historical in so far as it treats of the series cf British kings, mythical as that series itself may be, but as a romance in most of that portion of it which is devoted to the adventures of Arthur. We here enter upon a wide field ; the stores of Arthurian, Carlovingian, and general chivalrous romance suggest themselves to the mind ; a thousand interesting inquiries present themselves ; but the limits traced for us prescribe a treatment little more than allusive; that is, French romance can only be described in virtue of the stimulating and suggestive effect which it had on English writers. This effect was produced in a measure by great poems like the Alexandras (1200), by the original French romances on Charlemagne and his peers, and by that on the third crusade and the prowess of King Richard. But the Arthur romances relating to Arthur, doubtless on account of the romance, extent to which they really sprang from British soil, were those which most profoundly stirred the English mind. It is not difficult to trace the steps by which the legend grew. Gildas, writing in the 6th century, knows of Arthur s victory at Mount Badon, but does not name him. Nennius, whose date is uncertain, but who should probably be assigned to the 9th century, mentions the same victory as one of several which were gained by &quot; the magnanimous Arthur &quot; over the Saxon invader. Three centuries pass, and the story comes to us again, greatly amplified, in the British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth (1126). This history, Geoffrey assures us, was founded upon a book in the Breton language, brought over from Britanny by an archdeacon of Oxford. Ritson scouted the assertion as fictitious, yet it was probably true ; and the supposition of a Breton origin for his history is exactly what would best account for .the great development which we find the Arthur legend to have now attained, in comparison with the age of Nennius. For Britanny was the fruitful parent of numberless forms of imaginative fiction, a trait noticed by Chaucer : &quot; These olde gentil Bretons in tlieir daies, Of divers aventures maden laies : and what character would the Breton bards be more likely to embellish than that of the hero king, who, during and before the migration of their forefathers, had made such a gallant stand against the Saxon? Yet, though Geoffrey has so much to tell us of Arthur, he is silent about the Round Table. That splendid feature of the legend first appears in the Brut of Wace, and was probably derived from Breton poems or traditions to which Geoffrey had not access. Layamon reproduces it, with additional details, in his version of Wace. Other branches of Arthurian romance, especially those relating to Tristan and Perceval, became about this time widely popular; it is to this period also that the Chevalier du Lion of Chretien de Troyes belongs. Suddenly there is a great change. A