Page:The Mediaeval Mind Vol 1.djvu/351

CH. XIII settling down and shaking together. As for Germany, it was surely German then, and not a medley of Saxon, Dane, and Norman-French. The people were talking in their German tongues. German song and German epos were already heard in forms which were not to be cast aside, but retained and developed; of course the influence of the French poetry was not yet. The Germans were still living their own sturdy and half-barbarous life. Those who loved knowledge had turned with earnest purpose to the Latin culture; they were studying Latin and logic, and, as we have said, translating it into their German tongue or temperament. But the lessons were not fully mastered—not yet transformed into German mediaeval intellectual capacity. And in this respect, at least, the German will become more entirely his Germanic mediaeval self in another century, when he has more faculty of using the store of foreign knowledge in combination with his strongly felt and honestly considered Christianity.