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HOW DUNSTAN WON HIS SAINTSHIP.

about 845, and lived there, under the patronage of Charles the Bald, for thirty years. He should be well remembered for two things: he was a learned layman, and a well-read Greek scholar, both characters being very rare in those benighted days. His chief works are a treatise on Predestination, in which he argues that God has fore-ordained only rewards for the good, and that man has brought evil on himself by the exercise of his own perverted will; a treatise on the Eucharist, denying the doctrine of transubstantiation; and-more remarkable than either-a book On the Division of Nature, which embraces a wide range of scientific knowledge, and is copiously enriched with extracts from Greek and Latin writers.

The bold, fearless nature of the man, and the familiar tone of the Frankish court life, are well illustrated by an anecdote told of Erigena. One day the king and he sat on opposite sides of the table, with the courtiers ranged around. The scholar-through forgetfulness or ignorance-transgressed some of the rules of etiquette, so as to offend the fastidious taste of those who sat by, upon which, the king asked him what was the difference between a Scot* and a sot. "Just the breadth of the table," said Erigena; and it is more than likely that the royal witling ventured on no more puns, for that day at least, at the scholar's expense. Erigena is said to have died in France some time previous to the year 877.

DUNSTAN. One of the foremost Saxons of his day, though more noted for his learning than for his writings, was Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Born in 925, near Glastonbury in Somersetshire, and educated there in the Irish school, he became a monk at an early age. His advances in learning were surprisingly rapid, in spite of the convulsive fits to which he was subject, and under the influence of which he thought that he was hunted by devils. Arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music were his favourite studies. While living at Winchester, he was persuaded by his uncle the Bishop to crush down his early love for a girl of great beauty, and to devote himself with might and main to the austerities of a monkish life. Be

A Scot then meant a native of Ireland.

DECAY OF SAXON LITERATURE.

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side the church wall he built a cell, into which he shut himself with his tools of carpentry and smith-work, his paints and brushes for the illumination of manuscripts. Seldom venturing from this

retreat, he soon won a reputation for wonderful sanctity and alliance with supernatural beings. King Edmund made him Abbot of Glastonbury; and with Edred also-the next king-he was in high favour. Banished by Edwy to Ghent, he was by Edgar recalled to become Archbishop of Canterbury. Thenceforward he was first man in the English realm, able not merely to rebuke the king, but even to bestow the crown at his pleasure. He died in 988.

His works are nearly all theological, the best known being the Benedictine Rule, modified for English monks, and having its Latin interlined with a Saxon translation. He wrote also a Commentary or Set of Lectures on the Rule; which were probably read by him in the various schools with which he was connected.

The latter days of the Anglo-Saxon literature were feeble compared with the vigour of its youth. Even in the day of Alfred, when it may be said to have reached its prime, decay was at work, and the ravages of the Danes completed the blight of its promise. Those were days when many kings made their mark at the foot of charters, for want of skill to write their names. Alfred could find no tutors able to teach the higher branches of education; and he was forced to state publicly, in his preface to "Gregory's Pastorale," that he knew no men south of the Thames, and few south of the Humber, who could follow the sense of the public prayers, or construe a Latin sentence into English. Yet that an AngloSaxon literature-however scanty-did flourish, is no slight wonder, for during those ages clouds of thickest darkness hung over all Europe with a seemingly impenetrable gloom.

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THE Norman Conquest wrought great changes on both the learning and the literature of England. Saxon scholarship had been growing rustier every day since the great Alfred died; and those Saxon prelates who held sees at the time of the Conquest were far behind the age as men of letters. William therefore displaced many of them, to make room for polished scholars from the Continentsuch as Lanfranc and Anselm, who held the see of Canterbury in succession. The Conqueror, moreover, founded many fine abbeys and convents, within whose quiet cells learned men could think and write in safe and honoured leisure. Schools sprang up on every side. The great seminaries at Oxford and Cambridge-already distinguished as schools—were elevated to the rank of universities, destined to be formidable rivals of the older institutions at Paris and Bologna. Latin being the professional language of churchmen, by whom in those days nearly all learning was monopolized, we find a vast number of Latin works written during the centuries which immediately followed the Norman Conquest.

At this time what is called the Scholastic Philosophy, founded on Aristotle's method of argument, grew to a most extravagant degree of favour. Hence imaginative writing of all kinds suffered a great blight. It was only in the ballads of the people that fancy found utterance at all.

John of Salisbury, who, going to Paris in 1136, spent several years in attending the lectures of the best masters there, wrote a book called Metalogicus, exposing the absurd and childish

INTRODUCTION OF THE NORMAN ROMANCE.

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wrangling which then bore the dignified name of Logic. Such questions as the following were seriously discussed in learned assemblies : “If a man buy a cloak, does he also buy the hood?” and, "If a hog be carried to market with a rope tied round its neck and held at the other end by a man, is the animal carried to market by the man or by the rope?" John of Salisbury's chief work was called Polycraticon, a pleasant and learned treatise upon the "Frivolities of Courtiers, and the Footsteps of Philosophers." This accomplished monk died in 1182, being then Bishop of Chartres.

The great feature in the literary history of this time was the introduction into England of the Norman Romance. With Chivalry, from which it was inseparable, and from whose stirring life it took all its colours, the Romance rose and fell.

From the corrupted Latin a group of dialects arose, called the Roman or Romance tongues; which, owing to slight intermixture with the barbarous languages, assumed somewhat different forms in Italy, France, and Spain. In France two dialects of the Romance language were spoken, distinguished in name by the peculiar words used for our "yes"—oc, (hoc), and oyl, oy, or oui (probably illud). The language of oc was spoken in the south, and the language of oyl in the north of France. The Langue d'Oc, otherwise known as the Provençal which was sung by the famous Troubadours, blazed out a brief day of glory, was then trampled down with all its lovely garlands of song by Montfort and his crusaders, and now exists merely as the rude patois of the province that bears its name. The Langue d'Oyl, growing into the modern French, has influenced our literature in more ways than one. The lays, sung by the trouvères of northern France in praise of knights and knighthood, were the delight of the Norman soldiers who fought at Hastings; and when these soldiers had settled as conquerors on the English soil, what was more natural than that they should still love the old Norman lays, and that a new generation of poets should learn in the Normanized island to sing in Norman too?

It is no wonder that the list of Saxon writers, during the time when the nation lay stunned by the Conqueror's sword, should be

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PRINCIPAL LATIN WRITERS.

short. The Saxons were then slaves; and slaves never have any literature worth speaking of. Some romances and chronicles, echoes of the lays sung by their Norman masters, were all that remained to show that the Saxon tongue was living. Yet living it was, with a wealth of life pent up in its hidden root, which was destined at no very distant day to clothe the shorn stem with the brightest honours of leafage and bloom.

LATIN WRITERS.

Let us first glance at the Latin writers of the Norman times. As has been already said, Latin was the language of churchmen, the most honoured class in the nation; and therefore the amount of Latin writing, both in prose and verse, was very great. Sermons were often preached in Latin.

JOSEPH OF EXETER.-Josephus Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, was the leading Latin poet of this day. His chief works were two epic poems-one on the Trojan War, remarkable for its pure and harmonious Latin; the other, now almost altogether lost, called Antiocheis, a story of the third Crusade. Walter Mapes, or Map, Archdeacon of Oxford, also wrote Latin verses, but of quite a different stamp. A drinking-song in rhyming Latin is a wellknown part of his satirical work, called the Confession of Golias, which was directed chiefly against the Church and the clergy.

The chief use of Latin at this time was in the compilation of the Chronicles or historical records. We owe much to the patient monks, whose pens traced weary page after page of these old books. There is, indeed, nothing like fine writing in any of these chronicles; and in many of them fiction mixes inextricably with true history like tares in the wheat-field. Yet much good sound truth has been extracted from the old chronicles; and from such legends as Arthur, Lear, and Cymbeline some of the finest blossoms of our literature have sprung.

INGULPHUS.-A history of the Abbey of Croyland, or Crowland, in Lincolnshire, extending from 664 to 1091, is said to have been written by Ingulphus, who was abbot there for thirty-four years (1075-1109). But it is doubtful whether or not this was really the

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