1 82 CHAUCER. 



with wives and children, with relations public and domestic, on 

 the common levels of life, and not mere creatures of imagina 

 tion, who dwell apart like stars from the vulgar cares and in 

 terests of men. If we compare Havelok with the least idealized 

 figures of Carlovingian or Arthurian romance, we shall have a 

 keen sense of this difference. Manhood has taken the place of 

 caste, and homeliness of exaggeration. Havelok says, 



Godwot, I will with thee gang 

 For to learn some good to get; 

 Swinken would I for my meat ; 

 It is no shame for to swinken. 



This Dane, we see, is of our own make and stature, a being 

 much nearer our kindly sympathies than his compatriot Ogier, 

 of whom we are told, 



Dix pies de lone avoit le chevalier. 



But however large or small share we may allow to the Danes 

 in changing the character of French poetry and supplanting the 

 Romance with the Fabliau, there can be little doubt either of 

 the kind or amount of influence which the Normans must have 

 brought with them into England. I am not going to attempt a 

 definition of the Anglo-Saxon element in English literature, for 

 generalisations are apt to be as dangerous as they are tempting. 

 But as a painter may draw a cloud so that we recognise its 

 general truth, though the boundaries of real clouds never remain 

 the same for two minutes together, so amid the changes of 

 feature and complexion brought about by commingling of race, 

 there still remains a certain cast of physiognomy which points 

 back to some one ancestor of marked and peculiar character. It 

 is toward this type that there is always a tendency to revert, to 

 borrow Mr. Darwin s phrase, and I think the general belief is 

 not without some adequate grounds which in France traces this 

 predominant type to the Kelt, and in England to the Saxon. In 

 old and stationary communities, where tradition has a chanc : 

 to take root, and where several generations are present to the 

 mind of each inhabitant, either by personal recollection or trans 

 mitted anecdote, everybody s peculiarities, whether of strength 

 or weakness, are explained and, as it were, justified upon some 

 theory of hereditary bias. Such and such qualities he got from 

 a grandfather on the spear or a great-uncle on the spindle side. 

 This gift came in a right line from So-and so ; that failing came 

 in by the dilution of the family blood with that of Such-a-one. 

 In this way a certain allowance is made for every aberration 

 from some assumed normal type, either in the way of reinforce- 



