1068 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
A wholly false idea has possessed many writers with regard to 
that portion of English literature which was produced prior to 
the Norman Conquest, and its connection with the main stream 
of English thought. Even such a critic as Professor Craik has 
permitted himself to write: ‘Of English literature, and the 
English language commonly so called, the language and literature 
of the Angles and Saxons before the twelfth century make no 
proper part. ” Much has been done by recent writers, like Morley 
and Stopford Brooke, to clear away the dense mists of ignorance 
concerning this matter. There was first an era of English, or, 
shall we say, Anglo-Saxon poetry, beginning in the older England 
east of the North Sea, and ending with the accession of Alfred ; 
and an era of early English prose, cmomencing in Wessex with 
the firm establishment of Alfred’s power, and continuing in a 
broken stream to the fusion of two languages and two nations in 
the English of the twelfth century. The first of these eras marks 
the overlordship of Northumbria ; the second, that of Wessex. 
The kingdom of Northumbria received its Christianity from 
Celtic missionaries ; its borders marched with those of the Britons 
of Strathclyde, the Scots of Argyle, and the Picts beyond the 
Forth ; and there is evidence of a certain amount of fusion 
between the two races. This blending of Celt and Saxon has 
most powerfully affected English literature in all its stages. It 
has been compared to the addition of leaven to the other bread- 
forming materials ; and its effect in the endowment of talent has 
been most potent and palpable. 
Of the Germanic tribes which achieved the conquest of Southern 
Britain, the Angles, in their ancient seats north of the Elbe, were 
most removed from the civilization of the age ; yet, in this race of 
savage warriors, the germs of poetry and of ietters were first 
exhibited. 
Of the Northumbrian poetry, the Rev. Stopford Brooke says 
“ With the exception of per ‘haps a few Welsh and Trish poems, 
it is the only vernacular poetry in Europe, outside of the classic 
tongues, which belongs to as early a time as the seventh or eighth 
centuries. The Welsh and Irish poems are few and problematical, 
and their range is limited ; but the English poems are numerous, 
well authenticated, and of a wide and varied range. In these 
two centuries our forefathers produced examples, and good 
examples for the time, of religious, narrative, elegiac, descriptive, 
and even, in some sort, of epic poetry. 
«“ And the ideal and sentimental elements of the earliest poetry 
have continued with natural changes to the present day. 
“ Here too, we can best discern, and here isolate most easily, 
those elements in English character, which, existing before the 
race was mixed, have been, not the cause of our poetry, but the 
cause why the poetry has been of so high an excellence,—that 
