A History of English Literature | Page 8

practical affairs; second, a
somewhat fantastic but sincere and delicate sensitiveness to beauty.
Into impetuous action they were easily hurried; but their momentary
ardor easily cooled into fatalistic despondency. To the mysterious
charm of Nature--of hills and forests and pleasant breezes; to the
loveliness and grace of meadow-flowers or of a young man or a girl; to
the varied sheen of rich colors--to all attractive objects of sight and
sound and motion their fancy responded keenly and joyfully; but they
preferred chiefly to weave these things into stories and verse of
supernatural romance or vague suggestiveness; for substantial work of
solider structure either in life or in literature they possessed
comparatively little faculty. Here is a description (exceptionally
beautiful, to be sure) from the story 'Kilhwch and Olwen':
'The maid was clothed in a robe of flame-colored silk, and about her
neck was a collar of ruddy gold, on which were precious emeralds and
rubies. More yellow was her head than the flowers of the broom, and

her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her
hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst
the spray of the meadow fountain. The eye of the trained hawk, the
glance of the three-mewed falcon, was not brighter than hers. Her
bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, her cheeks
were redder than the reddest roses. Who beheld her was filled with her
love. Pour white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod. And therefore
was she called Olwen.'
This charming fancifulness and delicacy of feeling is apparently the
great contribution of the Britons to English literature; from it may
perhaps be descended the fairy scenes of Shakspere and possibly to
some extent the lyrical music of Tennyson.
THE ROMAN OCCUPATION. Of the Roman conquest and
occupation of Britain (England and Wales) we need only make brief
mention, since it produced virtually no effect on English literature. The
fact should not be forgotten that for over three hundred years, from the
first century A. D. to the beginning of the fifth, the island was a Roman
province, with Latin as the language of the ruling class of Roman
immigrants, who introduced Roman civilization and later on
Christianity, to the Britons of the towns and plains. But the interest of
the Romans in the island was centered on other things than writing, and
the great bulk of the Britons themselves seem to have been only
superficially affected by the Roman supremacy. At the end of the
Roman rule, as at its beginning, they appear divided into mutually
jealous tribes, still largely barbarous and primitive.
The Anglo-Saxons. Meanwhile across the North Sea the three
Germanic tribes which were destined to form the main element in the
English race were multiplying and unconsciously preparing to swarm
to their new home. The Angles, Saxons, and Jutes occupied territories
in the region which includes parts of the present Holland, of Germany
about the mouth of the Elbe, and of Denmark. They were barbarians,
living partly from piratical expeditions against the northern and eastern
coasts of Europe, partly from their flocks and herds, and partly from a
rude sort of agriculture. At home they seem to have sheltered

themselves chiefly in unsubstantial wooden villages, easily destroyed
and easily abandoned; For the able-bodied freemen among them the
chief occupation, as a matter of course, was war. Strength, courage, and
loyalty to king and comrades were the chief virtues that they admired;
ferocity and cruelty, especially to other peoples, were necessarily
among their prominent traits when their blood was up; though among
themselves there was no doubt plenty of rough and ready
companionable good-humor. Their bleak country, where the foggy and
unhealthy marshes of the coast gave way further inland to vast and
somber forests, developed in them during their long inactive winters a
sluggish and gloomy mood, in which, however, the alternating spirit of
aggressive enterprise was never quenched. In religion they had reached
a moderately advanced state of heathenism, worshipping especially, it
seems, Woden, a 'furious' god as well as a wise and crafty one; the
warrior Tiu; and the strong-armed Thunor (the Scandinavian Thor); but
together with these some milder deities like the goddess of spring,
Éostre, from whom our Easter is named. For the people on whom they
fell these barbarians were a pitiless and terrible scourge; yet they
possessed in undeveloped form the intelligence, the energy, the
strength--most of the qualities of head and heart and body--which were
to make of them one of the great world-races.
THE ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST AND SETTLEMENT. The
process by which Britain became England was a part of the long agony
which transformed the Roman Empire into modern Europe. In the
fourth century A. D. the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes began