lish-the English of Chaucer and of Shakespeare-is evolved out of the union. Not only a new tongue, do these conquerors bring with them, but madrigals and ballads and rhyming histories; they have great contempt for the stolid, lazy-going Latin records of the Saxon Chroniclers; they love a song better. the very face of the armies at Hastings, their great minstrel Taillefer had lifted up his voice to chant the glories of Roland, about which all the histories of the time will tell you.

In

It was a new civilization (not altogether Christian) out-topping the old. These Normans knew more of war-knew more of courts -knew more of affairs. They loved money and they loved conquest. To love one in those days, was to love the other. King William swept the monasteries clean of those ignorant priests who had dozed there, from the time of Alfred, and put in Norman Monks with nicely clipped hair, who could construe Latin after latest Norman rules. He new parcelled the lands, and gave estates to those who could hold and manage them. It was as if a new, sharp eager man of business had on a sudden come to the handling of some old sleepily conducted counting-room; he cuts off the useless heads;

he squares the books; he stops waste; pity or tenderness have no hearing in his shop.

I mentioned not far back an old Saxon Chronicle, which all down the years, from shortly after Beda's day, had been kept alive— sometimes under the hands of one monastery, sometimes of another; here is what its Saxon Scribe of the eleventh century says of this newcome and conquering Norman King: It is good Saxon history, and in good Saxon style:

"King William was a very wise man, and very rich, more worshipful and strong than any of his foregangers. He was mild to good men who loved God; and stark beyond all bounds to those who withsaid his will. He had Earls in his bonds who had done against his will; Bishops he set off their bishoprics; Abbots off their abbotries, and thanes in prison. By his cunning he was so thoroughly acquainted with England, that there is not a hide of land of which he did not know, both who had it, and what was its worth. He planted a great preserve for deer, and he laid down laws therewith, that whoever should slay hart or hind should be blinded. He forbade the harts and also the boars to be killed. As greatly did he love the tall deer as if he were their father. He took from his subjects many marks of gold, and many hundred pounds of silver; and that he took —some by right, and some by mickle might for

very little need. He had fallen into avarice; and greediness he loved withal. Among other things is not to be forgotten the good peace that he made in this land; so that a man who had any confidence in himself might go over his realm, with his bosom full of gold, unhurt. Nor durst any man slay another man had he done ever so great evil to the other. Brytland (Wales)

was in his power, and he therein wrought castles, and completely ruled over that race of men. Certainly in his time men had great

rich men moaned, and the poor men murmured; but he was so hard that he recked not the hatred of them all. For it was need they should follow the King's will, if they wished to live, or to have lands or goods. Alas, that any man should be so moody, and should so puff up himself, and think himself above all other men! May Almighty God show mercy to his soul, and grant him forgiveness of his sins."

There are other contemporary Anglo-Saxon annalists, and there are the rhyming chroniclers of Norman blood, who put a better color upon the qualities of King William; but I think there is no one of them, who even in moments of rhetorical exaltation, thinks of putting William's sense of justice, or his kindness of heart, before his greed or his self-love.

HAROLD THE SAXON

THE late Lord Lytton (Bulwer) gave to this period and to the closing years of Harold one of the most elaborate of his Historic Studies. He availed himself shrewdly of all the most picturesque aspects (and they were very many) in the career of Harold, and found startling historic facts enough to supply to the full his passion for exaggerated melodrama. There are brilliant passages in his book,1 and a great wealth of archæologic material; he shows us the remnants of old Roman villas-the crude homeliness of Saxon house surroundings-the assemblage of old Palace Councils. Danish battle-axes, and long-bearded Saxon thanes, and fiery-headed Welshmen contrast with the polished and insidious Normans. Nor is there lacking a heavy and much over-weighted quota of love-making and misfortune, and joy and death. Tennyson has taken the same subject, using the same skeleton of story for his play

1

Harold: the Last of the Saxon Kings; first published in 1848 and dedicated to the Hon. C. T. D'Eyncourt, M.P., whose valuable library-says BULWERsupplied much of the material needed for the prosecution of the work.

of Harold. It would seem that he has depended on the romance of Bulwer for his archæology; and indeed the book is dedicated to the younger Lord Lytton (better known in the literary world as "Owen Meredith"). As a working play, it is counted, like all of Tennyson's a failure; but there are passages of exceeding beauty.

He pictures the King Harold-the hero that he is but with a veil of true Saxon gloom lowering over him: he tells the story of his brother Tostig's jealous wrath,-always in arms against Harold: he tells of the hasty oath, which the king in young days had sworn to William in Normandy, never to claim England's throne: and this oath hangs like a cloud over the current of Harold's story. The grief, and noble devotion of poor Edith, the betrothed bride of the king, whom he is compelled by a devilish diplomacy to discard-is woven like a golden thread into the woof of the tale: and Aldwyth, the queen, whom Harold did not and can never love, is set off against Edith-in Tennyson's own unmatchable way in the last scenes of the tragedy.

We are in the camp at Hastings: the battle waits; a vision of Norman saints, on whose bones Harold had sworn that dreadful oath,