"But who shall teach my harp to gain A sound of the romantic strain, Whose Anglo-Norman tones whilere Could win the royal Henry's ear,-- Famed Beauclerc called, for that he loved, The minstrel, and his lay approved?" Minstrels and minstrelsy were especially favored. Beauclerc--the most accomplished monarch of his day, so far as letters were concerned, became by fellowship of feeling and taste, the patron of all the caste. The court-fed minions, like the lizard whose color depends on the species of grass or plant of which it eats, became of course completely Norman in their feelings. Indeed the greater number were Normans by birth and education, lured to the English court by the ever ready bait of patronage; and those that were not, seeing that these met with favor, imitated them in style and every thing else. The '_Anglo_' might with propriety have been dropped in Sir Walter's verse just quoted.[10] [Footnote 10: It is a melancholy sight to see so exalted a class of human beings, whether from necessity or not, forever debasing themselves into servile dependency. Even Dante, whose lament that he had to climb another's stair would seem the outbreak of an independent spirit, could humble himself before a Guido.] That the six kings following the conqueror were, with an exception, completely Norman in their habits and predilections, we may easily discover in the history of English law, traced back to its foundation among the very roots of the feudal system. It was against Norman innovation that the independent Barons of the thirteenth century arose, and held John Lackland in duress until his name was affixed to Magna Charta--a paper purporting to restore affairs to the state in which Edward the Saxon left them. It was this same fondness for French men and French rules that forced from Henry III a signature to the same paper,--John having evaded his on plea of compulsion. But, although extremely opposed to those principles of freedom which Hengist and his followers had brought from the woods of Germany, and which ages after marked England as a great and prosperous nation, Norman ideas and sentiments were a southern sun to the growth of poetry and other literature.