try, during the early Middle Ages, was the literary and
educational center of all Europe. They came to England at a time when the
idea of nationality was dead, when culture had almost vanished, when
Englishmen lived apart in narrow isolation; and they brought with them law,
culture, the prestige of success, and above all the strong impulse to share
in the great world's work and to join in the moving currents of the world's
history. Small wonder, then, that the young Anglo-Saxons felt the
quickening of this new life and turned naturally to the cultured and
progressive Normans as their literary models.

II. LITERATURE OF THE NORMAN PERIOD

In the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh there is a beautifully illuminated
manuscript, written about 1330, which gives us an excellent picture of the
literature of the Norman period. In examining it we are to remember that
literature was in the hands of the clergy and nobles; that the common
people could not read, and had only a few songs and ballads for their
literary portion. We are to remember also that parchments were scarce and
very expensive, and that a single manuscript often contained all the
reading matter of a castle or a village. Hence this old manuscript is as
suggestive as a modern library. It contains over forty distinct works, the
great bulk of them being romances. There are metrical or verse romances of
French and Celtic and English heroes, like Roland, Arthur and Tristram, and
Bevis of Hampton. There are stories of Alexander, the Greek romance of
"Flores and Blanchefleur," and a collection of Oriental tales called "The
Seven Wise Masters." There are legends of the Virgin and the saints, a
paraphrase of Scripture, a treatise on the seven deadly sins, some Bible
history, a dispute among birds concerning women, a love song or two, a
vision of Purgatory, a vulgar story with a Gallic flavor, a chronicle of
English kings and Norman barons, and a political satire. There are a few
other works, similarly incongruous, crowded together in this typical
manuscript, which now gives mute testimony to the literary taste of the
times.

Obviously it is impossible to classify such a variety. We note simply that
it is mediaeval in spirit, and French in style and expression; and that sums
up the age. All the scholarly works of the period, like William of
Malmesbury's _History_, and Anselm's[46] _Cur Deus Homo_, and Roger Bacon's
_Opus Majus_, the beginning of modern experimental science,