246 CHAUCER. 



Swinken would I for m}^ 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 com- 

 patriot 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 dovibt either of the kind or amount of influence 

 which the NoiTnans must have brought with them into 

 England. I am not going to attempt a definition of the 

 Anglo-Saxon element in English literature, for generaliza- 

 tions are aj)t to be as dangerous as they are tempting. 

 But as a painter may draw a cloud so that we recognize 

 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 ph^'siogTiomy 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 com- 

 munities, where tradition has a chance 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 



