literature is impossible.  Third, they brought to England the wealth of a new language and literature, and our English gradually absorbed both.  For three centuries after Hastings French was the language of the upper classes, of courts and schools and literature; yet so tenaciously did the common people cling to their own strong speech that in the end English absorbed almost the whole body of French words and became the language of the land.  It was the welding of Saxon and French into one speech that produced the wealth of our modern English.

Naturally such momentous changes in a nation were not brought about suddenly.  At first Normans and Saxons lived apart in the relation of masters and servants, with more or less contempt on one side and hatred on the other; but in an astonishingly short time these two races were drawn powerfully together, like two men of different dispositions who are often led into a steadfast friendship by the attraction of opposite qualities, each supplying what the other lacks.  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was continued for a century after Hastings, finds much to praise in the conquerors; on the other hand the Normans, even before the Conquest, had no great love for the French nation.  After conquering England they began to regard it as home and speedily developed a new sense of nationality.  Geoffrey’s popular History,[43] written less than a century after the Conquest, made conquerors and conquered alike proud of their country by its stories of heroes who, curiously enough, were neither Norman nor Saxon, but creations of the native Celts.  Thus does literature, whether in a battle song or a history, often play the chief role in the development of nationality.[44] Once the mutual distrust was overcome the two races gradually united, and out of this union of Saxons and Normans came the new English life and literature.

LITERARY IDEALS OF THE NORMANS.  The change in the life of the conquerors from Norsemen to Normans, from Vikings to Frenchmen, is shown most clearly in the literature which they brought with them to England.  The old Norse strength and grandeur, the magnificent sagas telling of the tragic struggles of men and gods, which still stir us profoundly,—­these have all disappeared.  In their place is a bright, varied, talkative literature, which runs to endless verses, and which makes a wonderful romance out of every subject it touches.  The theme may be religion or love or chivalry or history, the deeds of Alexander or the misdeeds of a monk; but the author’s purpose never varies.  He must tell a romantic story and amuse his audience; and the more wonders and impossibilities he relates, the more surely is he believed.  We are reminded, in reading, of the native Gauls, who would stop every traveler and compel him to tell a story ere he passed on.  There was more of the Gaul than of the Norseman in the conquerors, and far more of fancy than of thought or feeling in their literature.  If you would see this in concrete