720 POETEY 



No ancient historian has attempted to analyze the character of the 

 English nation. It is made up of British, Anglo-Saxon, Scandinavian, 

 and Norman elements, each of which has been fused in the organic 

 whole without entirely losing its individual existence. How much 

 influence the British element has exercised on our whole character 

 may be doubted; if we are to judge from language, very little, for 

 the number of Celtic words we use may be easily reckoned. Nor do I 

 think that Matthew Arnold is anything but fanciful when he ascribes 

 certain features in the style of English poetry to the Celtic strain in 

 our blood, though of course I should be the last to deny the influence 

 of the Celtic genius as one of the sources of mediaeval English Ko- 

 mance. The love of constitutional liberty, which is so dominant a 

 feature in the English character, may fairly be ascribed to our Ger- 

 man ancestry; but the somewhat sluggish and stationary temper of 

 the Saxons must, after they were once insularized, have sunk into 

 torpor and decay, if it had not been quickened by the life and move- 

 ment of the adventurous Scandinavian immigrants; on the other 

 hand, the directing genius of the Normans runs in unbroken con- 

 tinuity through the entire history of the English nation. 



If we turn our inquiry from race to language, we find the same 

 principle of simplicity in the elements prevailing in German and 

 French as compared with English. I quoted in my last lecture Klop- 

 stock's description of the purity of the German language, the struc- 

 ture of Avhich he boasts to have remained unchanged since the days 

 of Arminius. Erench, on the contrary, exhibits the growth of fresh 

 organic forms out of the structural decay of Latin, and reflects in its 

 history a regular process of transformation and development. Eng- 

 lish derives its vocabulary both from Erench and German, showing 

 a curious drama of give and take between the two opposing elements. 

 Physically, the dominant character of the German in our language 

 is indicated by the imposition of the Saxon mode of accentuation on 

 immigrant words. Thus the words Saturn, beauty, fortune, nature, 

 in which the accent is now thrown back according to the Saxon 

 principle, on to the first syllable, were in the time of Chaucer and 

 his contemporaries accentuated, according to the French principle, 

 on what would have been the penultimate syllable of the Latin word 

 Saturn, beautce, fortime, nature. But, by way of compensation, the 

 superior power of the French, in all matters relating to art and 

 culture, manifests itself in the disappearance of the Saxon alliterative 

 verse before the invasion of French metres determined by accent and 

 rhyme. 



Passing from the elements of character in themselves to the war 

 of the elements in action, we may observe, in the sphere of politics, 

 how very differently each of the throe nations has proceeded in its at- 

 tempt to reconcile the conflicting principles of which its life is com- 



