seen what a martial Saxon abbot declared to the Conqueror, while he mourned over his pacific country-ment This was the time when it was held a shame among Englishmen to appear English. It became proverbial to describe a Saxon who ambitioned some distinguished rank, that he would be a gentleman if he could but talk French. »

Fertile in novelties as was this amazing revolution, the most peculiar was the change of the language. The style and power and authority was Norman; it interpreted the laws, and it was even to torment the rising generation of England; children learned the strange idiom by construing their Latin into French, and thus by learning two foreign languages together, wholly unlearned their own. Not only were they taught to speak French, but the French character was adopted in place of their own alphabet. It was a flagrant instance of the Conqueror's design to annihilate the national language, that finding a College at Oxford with an establishment founded by Alfred to maintain divines who were to instruct people in their own vulgar tongue,» William declared that the annual expense should never after be allowed out of the King's exchequer (1)

The Norman prince on his first arrival could have entertained no scheme of changing the language, for he attempted to acquire it. The secretary of the Conqueror has recorded that when the monarch seemed inclined to adopt the customs of his new subjects, which his moderate measures at first indicated, the Norman prince had tried his patience and his ear to babble the obdurate idiom, till he abhorred the sound of the Saxon tongue. If because the Conqueror could not learn the Saxon language he decided wholly to abolish it, this would seem nothing more than a fantastic tyranny; but in truth, the language of the conquered is usually held in contempt by the conquerors for other reasons besides offending the delicacy of the ear. The Normans could not endure the Saxons' untunable consonants, as it had occurred even to the unlettered Saxons themselves; for barbarians as their hordes were when

(') Speed, 440.

"

to the world, a couple of fine chateaux, which I could not, however, translate as has been done by the English term castles." Well might a romancer so richly remunerated proImise his royal patron to finish the Book of Brut, the never-ending theme to the ear of a British monarch, who, indeed was anxious to possess such an authentic state paper. Who this Rusticien de Pise was, one cannot be certain; but he was one of the numerous brood, who, stimulated by « largesses» and fair chateaux, delighted to celebrate the chivalry of the British court, to them a perpetual fountain of honour and preferment. We may now smile at the Count de Tressan's querulous nationality, who is indignant that the writers of the French romances of the Round Table show a marked affectation of dwelling on everything that can contribute to the glory of the throne and court of England, preferring a fabulous Arthur to a true Charlemagne, and English knights to French paladins (1). When Tressan wrote, this striking circumstance had not received its true elucidation; the hand of these writers had not only flowed with their gratitude,, or some noble patron at the English court, for they were English natives or English subjects, long concealed from posterity as Englishmen, by writing in French. It had then escaped the notice of our literary antiquaries at home and abroad, that these Englishmen could have composed in no other language. How imperfect is the catalogue of early English poets by Ritson! for it is since his day that this important fact in our own literary history has been acknowledged by the French themselves, who at length have distinguished between Norman and AngloNorman poets. Mr. Guizot was enabled by the French government to indulge his literary patriotism, by sending a skilful collector to England to search in our libraries for Norman writings; and we are told, that none but Anglo-Norman writers have been found, that is, Englishmen writing on English affairs, and so English that they have not always avoided an unguarded expression of their dislike of foreigners, and even of Normans !

(See his Preface to the prose romance of La Fleur des Batailles."

It is worthy of observation, that even those Norman writers who came young into England soon took the colour of the soil, and what rather surprises us, considering the fashion of the court at that period, studied the original national language, translated our Saxon writings, and often mingled in their French verse phrases and terms which to this day we recognise as English. Of this we have an interesting evidence in an Anglo-Norman poetess, but recently known by the name of Marie de France: "> yet had she not written this single verse accidentally,

we should from her subjects, and her perfect knowledge of the vernacular idiom of the English, have placed this Sappho of the thirteenth century among the women of England. This poetess tells us, that she had turned into her French rhymed verse the Esopian Fables, which one of our kings had translated into English from the Latin. This royal author could have been no other than Alfred, to whom such a collection has been ascribed. We learn from herself the occasion of her version. Her task was performed for a great personage, who read neither Latin nor English; it was done for love of the renowned Earl William Longsword:

-Cunte Willaume,

Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume.

་་

"the

Who would calculate the largesse Count William, this puissant Longsword, cast into the lap of this living muse when she offered all this melodious wisdom; whose beautiful simplicity a child might comprehend, but whose moral and politic truths would throw even the Norman Longsword into a state of rational musing? Her «Lais, short but wild Breton tales, which our poetess dedicated to her sovereign, our Henry the Third, are evidence that Marie could also skilfully touch the heart and amuse the fancy.

VOL. I.

49

In her poems, Marie has translated many French terms into pure English, and abounds with allusions to English places and towns whose names have not changed since the thirteenth century. Her local allusions, and her familiar knowledge of the vernacular idiom of the English people, prove that « Marie, " though by the accident of birth she may be claimed by France, yet by her early and permanent residence, and by the constant subjects of her writings, her « Breton Tales, and her « Fables » from the English, by her habits and her sympathies, was an Englishwoman.

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At this extraordinary period when England was a foreign Kingdom, the English people found some solitary friendsand these were the rustic monk and the itinerant minstrel, for they were Saxons, but subjects too mean and remote for the Norman, occupied in rooting out their lords to plant his own for ever in the Saxon soil.

The monks, who lived rusticated in their scattered monasteries, sojourners in the midst of their conquered land, often felt their Saxon blood tingle in their veins. Not only did the filial love of their country deepen their sympathies, but a more personal indignation rankled in their secret bosoms, at the foreign intruders, French or Italian,-the tyrannical bishop and the voluptuous abbot. There were indeed monks, and some have been our chroniclers, base-born, humiliated, and living in fear, who in their leiger-books, when they alluded to their new masters, called them the conquerors, » noticed the year when some " conqueror » came in, and recorded what the conquerors » had enacted. All these querors» designated the foreigners, who were the heads of their houses. But there were other truer Saxons. Inspired equally by their public and their private feeling, these were the first who, throwing aside both Latin and French, addressed the people in the only language intelligible to them. The patriotic monks decided that the people should be reminded that they were Saxons, and they continued their history in their own language.

"

".con

This precious relic has come down to us-The Saxon Chro

nicle ('); but which in fact is a collection of Chronicles made by different persons. These Saxon annalists had been eyewitnesses of the transactions they recorded, and this singular detail of incidents as they occurred, withrout comment, is a phenomenon in the history of mankind, like that of the history of the Jews contained in the Old Testament, and, like that, as its learned editor has observed, a regular chronological panorama of a people described in rapid succession by different writers through many ages in their own « Vernacular Language. The mutations in the language of this ancient chronicle are as remarkable as the fortunes of the nation in its progress from rudeness to refinement; nor less observable are the entries in this great political register from the year one of Christ till 1154, when it abruptly terminates. The meagreness of the earlier recorders contrasts with the more impressive detail of later enlarged and thoughtful minds. When we come to William of Normandy, we have a character of that monarch by one who knew him personally, having lived at his court. It is not only a masterly delineation, but a skilful and steady dissection. The earlier Saxon chronicler has recorded a defeat and retreat which Cæsar suffered in his first invasion, which would be difficult to discover in the commentaries of Cæsar.

The true language of the people lingered on their lips, and it seemed to bestow a shadowy independence to a population in bondage. The remoter the locality, the more obdurate was the Saxon; and these indwellers were latterly distinguished as Uplandish by the inhabitants of cities. For about two centuries « the Uplandish held no social connexion; separated not only by distance, but by their isolated dialects and peculiar customs, these natives of the soil shrank into

() Miss Gurney who has been honourably hailed as the Elstob of her age,» privately printed her own close version of the «Saxon Chronicle» from the printed text 1810. Happy lady! who when sickness had made her its prisoner, opened the Saxon Chronicle; and she learned that she might teach the learned.

The Rev. Dr. Ingram, principal of Trinity College, Oxon, has since published his translation accompanied by the original, a collation of the manuscripts, and notes critical and explanatory. 1823. 4to. A volume not less valuable than curious.