culture, there was no longer a
"king's English" or any literary standard. The sources of modern
standard English are to be found in the East Midland, spoken in
Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge, and neighboring shires. Here the
old Anglian had been corrupted by the Danish settlers, and rapidly
threw off its inflections when it became a spoken and no longer a
written language, after the Conquest. The West Saxon, clinging more
tenaciously to ancient forms, sunk into the position of a local
dialect; while the East Midland, spreading to London, Oxford, and
Cambridge, became the literary English in which Chaucer wrote.

The Normans brought in also new intellectual influences and new forms
of literature. They were a cosmopolitan people, and they connected
England with the continent. Lanfranc and Anselm, the first two Norman
archbishops of Canterbury, were learned and splendid prelates of a {14}
type quite unknown to the Anglo-Saxons. They introduced the scholastic
philosophy taught at the University of Paris, and the reformed
discipline of the Norman abbeys. They bound the English Church more
closely to Rome, and officered it with Normans. English bishops were
deprived of their sees for illiteracy, and French abbots were set over
monasteries of Saxon monks. Down to the middle of the 14th century the
learned literature of England was mostly in Latin, and the polite
literature in French. English did not at any time altogether cease to
be a written language, but the extant remains of the period from 1066
to 1200 are few and, with one exception, unimportant. After 1200
English came more and more into written use, but mainly in
translations, paraphrases, and imitations of French works. The native
genius was at school, and followed awkwardly the copy set by its master.

The Anglo-Saxon poetry, for example, had been rhythmical and
alliterative. It was commonly written in lines containing four
rhythmical accents and with three of the accented syllables
alliterating.

_R_este hine tha _r_um-heort; _r_eced hlifade
_G_eap and _g_old-fah, gaest inne swaef.

Rested him then the great-hearted; the hall towered
Roomy and gold-bright, the guest slept within.

This rude energetic verse the Saxon _scop_ had sung to his harp or
_glee-beam_, dwelling on the {15} emphatic syllables, passing swiftly
over the others which were of undetermined number and position in the
line. It was now displaced by the smooth metric