in vogue among the common people of the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man. Human nature is the same in all reasonable creatures; and whatever falls in with it, will meet with admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions.

"I know nothing which more shows the essential and inherent perfection of simplicity of thought, above that which I call the Gothic manner in writing, than this; the first pleases all kinds of palates, and the latter only such as have formed to themselves a wrong artificial taste upon little fanciful authors and writers of epigram. Homer, Virgil, or Milton, so far as the language of their poems is understood, will please a reader of plain common-sense, who would neither relish nor comprehend an epigram of Martial, or a poem of Cowley: so, on the contrary, an ordinary song or ballad that is the delight of the common people, cannot fail to please all such readers as are not unqualified for the entertainment by their affectation or ignorance; and the reason is plain, because the same paintings of nature which recommend it to the most ordinary reader, will appear beautiful to the most refined."

CHAPTER XI.

CONCLUSION

IT will not require many words with which to conclude this survey of the literary history of England during the early Middle Ages. The reader has been made acquainted with practically all extant writings of the period which have any literary significance, and he is in a position to judge of the character and scope of the native production-so far as these can be determined from the documents now available as evidence. This last restrictive clause needs emphasis here again, for it cannot have escaped notice how often the statement has been made in the preceding pages, concerning all sorts of Middle English poems from Gawain and the Green Knight back to the Ormulum and Layamon's Brut, that they exist in unique manuscripts, or not at all in their original forms. And this fact should be constantly kept in mind, not only because it serves to make more tolerant our critical judgment of particular works, but also because it evidently throws light on the station of the persons to whom in general such works made appeal. "Books written in English,"

as Mr. Pollard has pointed out, "had to fight their way into a field already occupied, and it is clear that until the fourteenth century they failed to obtain any real popularity among well-to-do people. Of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae there are thirty-five manuscripts in the British Museum alone, and nearly a third of these date from the twelfth century. Of English works, on the other hand, written before 1360, perhaps the

majority survive only in a single copy, which in no single case bears any trace of the fine writing found in manuscripts for wealthy book-buyers. At a later date there is no lack of manuscripts of Langland, the Wycliffite Bible, and Chaucer, some of them most beautifully written and decorated. The inference is obvious that in the earlier period English books appealed to a very small and by no means wealthy class of readers, and the development of our literature was retarded for lack of encouragement; while of the books written some at least which we would gladly have inherited, perished utterly, partly, no doubt, because so few copies were made in the first instance." Plainly, to estimate aright the value of early Middle English writings, one must understand their authors' special mission, the province committed to their control, the extent of their delegated authority. One must recognise the fact that in general they wrote with intent simply to instruct the ignorant and humble, that they rarely aimed at originality in either substance or form, that their works were for the most part disregarded by the learned and the polite.

These latter, the learned and the polite, though they wrote almost exclusively in what we now regard as foreign tongues, undoubtedly reflect best the enduring sentiments and spirit of the Middle Ages. We cannot, therefore, in justice, fail to consider their compositions carefully, if we would reconstruct the intellectual and artistic life of that period-a most important period, it should be remembered, when the foundations of modern English institutions were being laid, and when the literary tendencies of later times were taking root in established custom. Only when we shall drop from the records of our history these centuries of foreign control, when we shall refuse to employ the foreign words that then replenished and enriched our vocabulary, can we justifiably neglect the chief records of our literature during the same epoch. Far from ignoring the writings of men of the time because from a variety of causes Latin and French were the chosen instruments of English thought, we are in duty bound to

examine these with increasing pains in the effort to appreciate adequately the circumstances under which our composite race developed more varied and more refined modes of expression, together with a broader outlook, greater catholicity of temper, and a less parochial spirit in the domain of literary art.

For the contrast is great between the types of literature favoured in England before and after the Conquest. To regard the writers of the fourteenth century and later as the lineal descendants of Anglo-Saxon precursors is fundamentally false. Chaucer did not exhibit the spirit of early times reawakened after a slumber of centuries, but was the product of conditions secured by Norman and Angevin rule. English literature did not go through a tunnel on a long underground journey, as some conceive, to emerge at the end of it, the same in essentials of style. The whole nation had been immensely modified by the events of the intervening period, and literature, its voice, had helped to effect the change. So blended is English blood that no attainable knowledge of ethnic facts will ever provide a safe basis for inclusive generalisation concerning the contribution of the diverse racial currents to the majestic river of English literature. But thorough study alone is required to ascertain the source of its tributaries, the historical causes that affected at different times its general appearance and course. The profound change in the literary predilection of Englishmen during the Middle Ages was due to the continuous influx of foreign ideas which our ancestors were powerless, even if anxious, to withstand.

The Middle Ages have been sadly misrepresented. Ecstatic romanticists and ecclesiologists on the one hand, and scornful classicists and dissenters on the other, have variously deluded the public concerning the characteristics of the epoch. Both parties have based their judgments on incomplete or inaccurate knowledge of the actual conditions of medieval life. The former have forgotten that "all that glitters is not gold"; the latter, that people in glass houses should not throw stones." The Middle Ages were ages of reality as well as romance, of scepticism as well

men.

as faith, of cynicism as well as idealistic devotion, of rollicking "sunburnt mirth" as well as gorgeous pomp and pageantry. They were ages, moreover, when keen acumen, subtle wit, liberal learning, large knowledge of the world, untiring industry, and practical administrative power were possessed by a host of representative But after all is said which "mesure," sanity, and historical truth require, the fact remains that the Middle Ages allure the imaginative with a peculiar, abiding charm. They constitute the most genuinely poetic era that Europe has known, and in literature as well as in architecture much was then achieved which surpasses in beauty anything else of its kind. It is true that the names of very few distinguished writers in the vernacular can be mentioned; but no one will deny that many poetic themes which then originated may be counted "among the posterities" of literature; and it is not a question easily answered, whether that age is more valuable to the world, more significant in the history of civilisation, which discovers and displays the ore of the imagination, or that which takes what is placed in its hands and perfects its form. At all events, the Middle Ages, when poetic material of the finest quality was laid bare, even though not altogether separated from common dross and dirt, are perhaps more instructive to the historian of letters than any subsequent period, because they were a time of new planting and fresh burgeoning, of eager forecasting and glad experiment, of struggling endeavour to realise and embody the high visions of great nations in the vigour of their youth.

And the words of a Lapland song
Are haunting my memory still:

A boy's will is the wind's will,

And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.

One is constantly reminded in reading medieval English literature of the story of the Grail-hero Perceval. Though a child of noble lineage, he was reared as a rustic, apart from his fellows, in a woodland retreat. Inevitably rough, untutored, and ignorant