Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/429

Rh TRANSITION.] ENGLISH LITERATURE 409 The labours of the clergy and monks during all this period were applied with unwearying diligence and signal success to the building up of a Latin literature. In the list of chroniclers occur the well-known names of Florence of Worcester, William of Malinesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon. Many histories of particular monasteries were written, and have recently to a large extent been made accessible, through the labours of editors employed under the superintendence of the Master of the Rolls. St Anselrn, archbishop of Canterbury in the reigns of William II. and Henry L, employed his great metaphysical and dialectical powers in the endeavour to establish a harmony between reason and faith. The scholastic philosophy, technically speaking, began with Peter Lombard and his Book of Sentences (1151) ; from the university of Paris it spread all over Europe ; and in the next period it will be seen that several of the most eminent schoolmen were natives of the British Isles. The works of our countryman, John of Salisbury, who studied and resided much at Paris about the middle of the century, throw a curious light on the tenets and mutual relations of the scholastic sects. III. Amalgamation of Races. Commencements of English Literature, 1215-1350. The course of events in this period, as bearing upon literature, may be thus described. The fortunate loss of Normandy in 1204- brought the ruling classes and the commonalty of England closer together, put an end to the transmarine nationality and domicile of the former, and gave a common political interest, in relation to the outside world, to all the dwellers on English soil. Thus two out of the four nations, which we spoke of in the last section as encamped side by side on British territory, were soon in a fair way of being fused into one. The third the W r elsh losing in 1292 its political independence, lost also with it the pretension, and almost the desire, to main tain a separate literature. Still, however, in spite of com mon interests, and the ever-growing multiplicity of the ties of blood between the two, Norman and Englishman continued each to speak his own language. Layamon, about 1205, and Ormin, fifteen or twenty years later, write for the English-speaking majority which understands little or no French ; from French their language is just as alien as the Flemish of the present day. The first great step towards that blending of tongues which was to crown the blending of families already commenced was taken when the English writers and translators of the 13th century (the terms are almost synonymous), began to admit freely into their writings an unlimited number of those generally intelligible French words of which the stock was, through closer intercourse between the governors and the governed, perpetually on the increase. Of this practice Kobert of Gloucester and Kobert Manning are conspicuous examples. In spite of this approximation, we shall find that strenuous efforts were made, by or on behalf of the upper classes, to retain French as the common literary language, and keep English in the position of a popular dialect, useful for the common purposes of life, but not vivified by genius or polished by contact with refined lips. Of this effort Kobert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln, may be considered the centre. It broke down, however, against the force of circumstances. First, as fast as good French books were produced, Englishmen translated them, and the translations probably found ten readers for one who could enjoy the originals ; secondly, the wars between England and France which broke out in 1338, and in which the English-speaking archers the back-bone of the stout yeomanry, now, alas ! no more, which then covered the land won the chief share of glory, must have greatly tended to discredit among Englishmen of all classes the tongue of their enemies. Trevisa says that the popular rage for speaking French which had existed before the &quot;grete deth &quot; (the plague of 1348), was since then &quot; somdele chaunged.&quot; Though he naturally refers to a date still fresh in every one s memory, the change could have had nothing to do with the plague ; it was probably, as conjectured above, the effect of the French war. By the middle of the 14th century the industry of the translators had produced a great body of English composi tions, coloured everywhere by French thought, and studded with French words, the preaching of the friars had for a hundred years been working in the same direction, i.e., to break down the partition not only between the races but between the tongues ; the war suddenly gave to English an enormous advantage over its rival in respect of popularity ; it need not therefore surprise us to find, as we shall find in the next period, a great native writer choosing English for the instrument of his thought, and founding English literature upon an imperishable basis. In the last section we saw that Latin, the language of the clerical community, was holding its ground vigorously and successfully against the different forms of vernacular speech current in England. While these last remained in a rude and unsettled condition, it was inevitable that Latin should enjoy this superiority. But the French language was ever growing in importance ; its grammatical forms were by this time toleiably settled, and its modes of derivation fixed ; it was a spoken tongue, and the Latin was not. Hence, about the date of Magua Charta (1215), French begins to appear in our public instruments, Latin having been the documentary language since the Conquest ; about 1270 it begins to supersede Latin as the language of private correspondence. Latin thenceforward was less and less used as the language of poetry, the vehicle of satire, or the voice of piety ; French took its place. The theologian, the philosopher, and the annalist alone remained faithful to Latin, the third more out of habit perhaps, and because he had inherited the great works of the past, the histories of Beda, Florence, &c., than because his work could not have been competently performed in French. To this period belong the important chronicle of Matthew Paris, who died in 1259, that of Nicholas Trivet, Mtthe and the Polychronicon (or at any rate the earlier portion of it) of Kanulf Higden. Great developments of the scholastic theology were made in this period, chiefly by the new orders of friars founded about its commencement, the children of St Francis and St Dominic. Two of the most celebrated of the Franciscan writers, Duns Scotus and William of Occam, were natives of the British isles; they were respectively the chiefs of the realists and nominalists, the parties representing among the school men Phtonic and Aristotelian theories. Kobert Holcot, a distinguished Dominican writer and a nominalist, was carried off by the plague of 1348. Philosophy now for the first time, in the person of Roger Koger Bacon, devotes herself systematically to the study Bacon, of nature and its laws. This great man, the chief part of whose long life was spent in the Franciscan friary at Oxford, died in 1292. The main plan of his principal work, the Opus Majus, was in the words of Dr Whewell &quot; to urge the necessity of a reform in the mode of philosophizing, to set forth the reasons why knowledge had not made a greater progress, to draw back attention to sources of knowledge which had been unwisely neglected, to discover other sources which were yet wholly unknown, and to animate men to the undertaking by a prospect of the vast advantages which it offered.&quot; But the subsidiary aids which physical science requires were wanting to him, and in that rude age could only be obtained with extreme VIII. - 52
 * difficulty. Mathematical instruments were terribly expeu-
 * sive : tables were scarcely to be had ; books were both