Hallecks New English Literature | Page 7

foreigners, as the Teutons styled the natives.
Before the invasion of Britain, the Teutons inhabited the central part of
Europe as far south as the Rhine, a tract which in a large measure
coincides with modern Germany. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons were
different tribes of Teutons. These ancestors of the English dwelt in
Denmark and in the lands extending southward along the North Sea.
The Angles, an important Teutonic tribe, furnished the name for the
new home, which was called Angle-land, afterward shortened into
England. The language spoken by these tribes is generally called
Anglo-Saxon or Saxon.
The Training of the Race.--The climate is a potent factor in determining
the vigor and characteristics of a race. Nature reared the Teuton like a
wise but not indulgent parent. By every method known to her, she
endeavored to render him fit to colonize and sway the world. Summer
paid him but a brief visit. His companions were the frost, the fluttering
snowflake, the stinging hail. For music, instead of the soft notes of a
shepherd's pipe under blue Italian or Grecian skies, he listened to the
north wind whistling among the bare branches, or to the roar of an
angry northern sea upon the bleak coast.
The feeble could not withstand the rigor of such a climate, in the
absence of the comforts of civilization. Only the strongest in each
generation survived; and these transmitted to their children increasing
vigor. Warfare was incessant not only with nature but also with the
surrounding tribes. Nature kept the Teuton in such a school until he
seemed fit to colonize the world and to produce a literature that would

appeal to humanity in every age.
The Early Teutonic Religion.--In the early days on the continent, before
the Teuton had learned of Christianity, his religious beliefs received
their most pronounced coloring from the rigors of his northern climate,
from the Frost Giants, the personified forces of evil, with whom he
battled. The kindly, life-bringing spring and summer, which seemed to
him earth's redeeming divinity, were soon slain by the arrows that came
from the winter's quivers. Not even Thor, the wielder of the thunderbolt,
nor Woden, the All-Father, delayed the inevitable hour when the dusk
of winter came, when the voice of Baldur could no longer be heard
awaking earth to a new life. The approach of the "twilight of the gods,"
the _Götterdämmerung_, was a stern reality to the Teuton.
[Illustration: WODEN.]
Although instinct with gloomy fatalism, this religion taught bravery.
None but the brave were invited to Valhalla to become Woden's guest.
The brave man might perish, but even then he won victory; for he was
invited to sit with heroes at the table of the gods. "None but the brave
deserves the fair," is merely a modern softened rendering of the old
spirit.
The Christian religion, which was brought to the Teuton after he had
come to England, found him already cast in a semi-heroic mold. But
before he could proceed on his matchless career of world conquest,
before he could produce a Shakespeare and plant his flag in the
sunshine of every land, it was necessary for this new faith to develop in
him the belief that a man of high ideals, working in unison with the
divinity that shapes his end, may rise superior to fate and be given the
strength to overcome the powers of evil and to mold the world to his
will. The intensity of this faith, swaying an energetic race naturally
fitted to respond to the great moral forces of the universe, has enabled
the Anglo-Saxon to produce the world's greatest literature, to evolve
the best government for developing human capabilities, and to make
the whole world feel the effect of his ideals and force of character. At
the close of the nineteenth century, a French philosopher wrote a book
entitled _Anglo-Saxon Superiority, In What Does it Consist?_ His
answer was, "In self-reliance and in the happiness found in
surmounting the material and moral difficulties of life." A study of the
literature in which the ideals of the race are most artistically and

effectively embodied will lead to much the same conclusion.
The History of Anglo-Saxon England.--The first task of the
Anglo-Saxons after settling in England was to subdue the British, the
race that has given King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to
English literature. By 600 A.D., after a century and a half of struggle,
the Anglo-Saxons had probably occupied about half of England.
They did not build on the civilization that Rome had left when she
withdrew in 410, but destroyed the towns and lived in the country. The
typical Englishman still loves to dwell in a country home. The work of
Anglo-Saxon England consisted chiefly in tilling the soil and in
fighting.