scanius, the sonne of AEneas the Troian, begotten of his wife
Creusa, and borne in Troie, before the citie was destroied." Chronicles,
1807, 6 vols. fol. book ii. chap. 1. In France at the Renaissance,
Ronsard chose for his hero Francus the Trojan, "because," as he says,
"he had an extreme desire to honour the house of France."

CHAPTER II.

_LITERATURE IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE UNDER THE NORMAN AND ANGEVIN KINGS._

I.

What previous invaders of the island had been unable to accomplish, the
French of William of Normandy were finally to realise. By the rapidity
and thoroughness of their conquest, by securing to themselves the
assistance of those who knew how to use a pen, by their continental
wars, they were to bring about the fusion of all the races in one, and
teach them, whether they intended it or not, what a mother country was.

They taught them something else besides, and the results of the Conquest
were not less remarkable from a literary than from a political point of
view. A new language and new ideas were introduced by them into England,
and a strange phenomenon occurred, one almost unique in history. For
about two or three hundred years, the French language remained
superimposed upon the English; the upper layer slowly infiltrated the
lower, was absorbed, and disappeared in transforming it. But this was
the work of centuries. "And then comes, lo!" writes an English
chronicler more than two hundred years after Hastings, "England into
Normandy's hand; and the Normans could speak no language but their own,
and they spoke French here as they did at home, and taught it to their
children: so that the high men of this land, who are come of their
race, keep all to that speech which they have taken from them." People
of a lower sort, "low men," stick to their English; all those who do not
know French are men of no account. "I ween that in all the world there
is no country that holds not to her own speech, save England
alone."[153]

The diffusion of the French tongue was such that it seemed at one time
as if a disappearance of English were possible. All over the great
island people were found speaking French, and they were always the most
powerful, the strongest, richest, or most knowing in the land, whose
favour it was well to gain, and whose example it was well to imitate.
Men who spoke only English remained all their lives, as Robert of
Gloucester tells us, men of "little," of nothing. In order to become