to his assistance Abbo of St. Fleury, of whom something has been said.[1]
In Dunstan's time Saxon men were still translating Scripture into their tongue—paraphrasing it rather, with a change of spirit. Such translations were needed in Anglo-Saxon England, as in Germany. But after the Conquest the introduction of Norman-French tended to lessen at least the consciousness of such a need. That language, as compared with Anglo-Saxon, came so much nearer to Latin as to reduce the chasm between the learned tongue and the vernacular. The Normans had (at least in speech) been Gallicized, and yet had kept many Norse traits. England likewise took on a Gallic veneering as Norman-French became the language of the Court and the new nobility. But the people continued to speak English. The degree of foreign influence upon their thought and manners may be gauged by the proportion of foreign idiom penetrating the English language; and the fact that English remained essentially and structurally English proves the same for England racially. In spite of the introduction of foreign elements, people and language endured and became more and more progressively English.
In the island before the Conquest, the round of studies had been the same as on the Continent; and that event brought no change. The studies might improve, but would have no novel source to draw upon. And in this period of racial turmoil and revolution, it was unlikely that the Anglo-Saxon temperament would present itself as clearly as aforetime in the Saxon poem of Beowulf or the personality of the Saxon Alfred, or in the Saxon Genesis and the writings of Cynewulf.[2] In a word, the eleventh century in England was specifically the period when the old traits were becoming obscure, and no distinct modifications had been evolved in correspondence with the new conditions. Consequently, for presentations of the intellectual genius of the English people, one has to wait until the next century, the time of John of Salisbury and other English minds. Even such will be found receiving their training and their knowledge in France and Italy. England
- ↑ Ante, Chapter XII. ii.
- ↑ Ante, Chapters VIII., IX.
