conserve and increase the barbarism of the people. Various libraries
of value were destroyed by the incursions of the Danes. And not a few
bishops, and other ecclesiastical dignitaries, began to consider
learning as prejudicial to piety-and grammar and ungodliness were
thought akin. The effect of this upon the subordinate clergy was most
pernicious. In the tenth century, Oswald, Archbishop of Canterbury,
found the monks of his province so grossly ignorant, not only of
letters, but even of the canonical rules of their respective orders,
that he required to send to France for competent masters to give them
instruction.

At length came the Conqueror, William, and one battle gave England to
the Normans, which had cost the Romans, the Saxons, and the Danes so
much time and blood to acquire. The people were not only conquered, but
cowed and crushed. England was as easily and effectually subdued as was
Ireland, sometime after, by Henry II. But while the Conquest was for a
season fatal to liberty, it was from the first favourable to every
species of literature, art, and poetry. 'The influence,' says Campbell,
'of the Norman Conquest upon the language of England was like that of a
great inundation, which at first buries the face of the landscape under
its waters, but which, at last subsiding, leaves behind it the elements
of new beauty and fertility. Its first effect was to degrade the Anglo-
Saxon tongue to the exclusive use of the inferior orders, and by the
transference of estates ecclesiastical benefices, and civil dignities to
Norman possessors, to give the French language, which had begun to
prevail at court from the time of Edward the Confessor, a more complete
predominance among the higher classes of society. The native gentry of
England were either driven into exile, or depressed into a state of
dependence on their conqueror, which habituated them to speak his
language. On the other hand, we received from the Normans the first