Page:The Sources of Standard English.djvu/75

46 Long had these been in Danish thraldom; they were now, as the old English ballad of the day says, loosed by Edward's son. Northumberland, under her Danish kings, was still holding out against the Southern Over&shy;lord. At length, in 954, the last of these kings dropped out of history; and Eadred, the son of Edward and the grandson of Alfred, became the one King of all Eng&shy;land, swaying the land from the FrithFirth [sic] of Forth to the English Channel.

Wessex, it is easy to see, was to our island much what Piedmont long afterwards became to Italy, and Brandenburg to Germany. It is not wonderful then that in the Tenth Century the literature of Wessex was looked upon as the best of models, and took the place of the Northumbrian literature of Bede's time. Good English prose-writers must have formed themselves upon King Alfred; English ‘shapers’ or ‘makers’ must have imitated the lofty lay, which tells how Alfred's grandsons smote Celt and Norseman alike on the great day of Brunanburgh. The Court of Winches&shy;ter must in those days have been to England, what Paris has nearly always been to France: no such pat&shy;tern of elegance could elsewhere have been found. For all that, were I to be given my choice as to what buried specimen of English writing should be brought to light, I should ask for a sample of the Rutland peasantry's common talk, about the year that Eadred was calling himself Kaiser of all Britain. Such a