after Alfred's own death), the most important events of history, chiefly
that of England. Most of the entries in the 'Chronicle' are bare and brief,
but sometimes, especially in the accounts of Alfred's own splendid
exploits, a writer is roused to spirited narrative, occasionally in verse;
and in the tenth century two great battles against invading Northmen, at
Brunanburh and Maldon, produced the only important extant pieces of
Anglo-Saxon poetry which certainly belong to the West Saxon period.

For literature, indeed, the West-Saxon period has very little permanent
significance. Plenty of its other writing remains in the shape of religious
prose--sermons, lives and legends of saints, biblical paraphrases, and
similar work in which the monastic and priestly spirit took delight, but
which is generally dull with the dulness of medieval commonplace
didacticism and fantastic symbolism. The country, too, was still distracted
with wars. Within fifty years after Alfred's death, to be sure, his
descendants had won back the whole of England from 'Danish' rule (though
the 'Danes,' then constituting half the population of the north and east,
have remained to the present day a large element in the English race). But
near the end of the tenth century new swarms of 'Danes' reappeared from the
Baltic lands, once more slaughtering and devastating, until at last in the
eleventh century the 'Danish' though Christian Canute ruled for twenty
years over all England. In such a time there could be little intellectual
or literary life. But the decline of the Anglo-Saxon literature speaks also
partly of stagnation in the race itself. The people, though still sturdy,
seem to have become somewhat dull from inbreeding and to have required an
infusion of altogether different blood from without. This necessary
renovation was to be violently forced upon them, for in 1066 Duke William
of Normandy landed at Pevensey with his army of adventurers and his
ill-founded claim to the crown, and before him at Hastings fell the gallant
Harold and his nobles. By the fortune of this single fight, followed only