CHAUCER. 223 



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 chanee to 

 take root, and where several generations are present to the 

 mind of each inhabitant, either by personal recollection or 

 transmitted 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 reinforcement or 

 defect, and that universal desire of the human mind to 

 have everything accounted for which makes the moon 

 responsible for the whimsies of the weathercock is cheaply 

 gratified. But as mankind in the aggregate is always 

 wiser than any single man, because its experience is derived 

 from a larger range of observation and experience, and 

 because the springs that feed it drain a wider region both 

 of time and space, there is commonly some greater or 

 smaller share of truth in all popular prejudices. The 

 meteorologists are beginning to agree with the old women 

 that the moon is an accessory before the fact in our 



