History of English Literature Volume 1 (of 3)Taine, Hippolyte
History
History of English Literature Volume 1 (of 3)
Taine, Hippolyte
English literature -- History and criticism
careful in their dress." The former, still weighted by the German
phlegm, were gluttons and drunkards, now and then aroused by poetical
enthusiasm; the latter, made sprightlier by their transplantation and
their alloy, felt the cravings of the mind already making themselves
manifest. "You might see amongst them churches in every village, and
monasteries in the cities, towering on high, and built in a style
unknown before," first in Normandy, and later in England.[104] Taste had
come to them at once--that is, the desire to please the eye, and to
express a thought by outward representation, which was quite a new idea:
the circular arch was raised on one or on a cluster of columns; elegant
mouldings were placed about the windows; the rose window made its
appearance, simple, yet, like the flower which gives it its name "_rose
des buissons_"; and the Norman style unfolded itself, original yet
proportioned between the Gothic, whose richness it foreshadowed, and the
Romance, whose solidity it recalled.
With taste, just as natural and just as quickly, was developed the
spirit of inquiry. Nations are like children; with some the tongue is
readily loosened, and they comprehend at once; with others it is
loosened with difficulty, and they are slow of comprehension. The men we
are here speaking of had educated themselves nimbly, as Frenchmen do.
They were the first in France who unravelled the language, regulating it
and writing it so well, that to this day we understand their codes and
their poems. In a century and a half they were so far cultivated as to
find the Saxons "unlettered and rude."[105] That was the excuse they
made for banishing them from the abbeys and all valuable ecclesiastical
offices. And, in fact, this excuse was rational, for they instinctively
hated gross stupidity. Between the Conquest and the death of King John,
they established five hundred and fifty-seven schools in England. Henry
Beauclerk, son of the Conqueror, was trained in the sciences; so were
Henry II and his three sons; Richard, the eldest of these, was a poet.
Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, a subtle logician, ably
argued the Real Presence; Anselm, his successor, the first thinker of
the age, thought he had discovered a new proof of the existence of God,
and tried to make religion philosophical by adopting as his maxim,
"_Crede ut intelligas._" The notion was doubtless grand, especially in
the eleventh century; and they could not have gone more promptly to
work. Of course the science I speak of was but scholastic, and these
terrible folios slay more understandings than they confirm. But people
must begin as they can; and syllogism, even in Latin, even in theology,
is yet an exercise of the mind and a proof of the understanding. Among
the continental priests who settled in England, one established a
library; another, founder of a school, made the scholars perform the
play of Saint Catherine; a third wrote in polished Latin, "epigrams as
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