language is unintelligible without labour. For this there is not room,
even if otherwise it were desirable that such should divide the volume.
We must leave Anglo-Saxon behind us. In Early English, I shall give a few
valuable lyrics, but they shall not be so far removed from our present
speech but that, with a reasonable amount of assistance, the nature and
degree of which I shall set forth, they shall not only present themselves
to the reader's understanding, but commend themselves to his imagination
and judgment.




CHAPTER I.

SACRED LYRICS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.


In the midst of wars and rumours of wars, the strife of king and barons,
and persistent efforts to subdue neighbouring countries, the mere
effervescence of the life of the nation, let us think for a moment of
that to which the poems I am about to present bear good witness--the true
life of the people, growing quietly, slowly, unperceived--the leaven hid
in the meal. For what is the true life of a nation? That, I answer, in
its modes of thought, its manners and habits, which favours the growth
within the individual of that kingdom of heaven for the sake only of
which the kingdoms of earth exist. The true life of the people, as
distinguished from the nation, is simply the growth in its individuals of
those eternal principles of truth, in proportion to whose power in them
they take rank in the kingdom of heaven, the only kingdom that can
endure, all others being but as the mimicries of children playing at