LECTURE III THE PLEASURES OF DEED THE CONFESSOR TO CŒUR DE LION (Delivered 1st and 3rd November 1884) 61. It was my endeavour, in the preceding lecture, to vindicate the thoughts and arts of our Saxon ancestors from whatever scorn might lie couched under the terms applied to them by Dean Stanley,-"fantastic," and "childish." To-day my task must be carried forward, first, in asserting the grace in fantasy, and the force in infancy, of the English mind, before the Conquest, against the allegations contained in the final passage of Dean Stanley's description of the first founded Westminster; a passage which accepts and asserts, more distinctly than any other equally brief statement I have met with, the to my mind extremely disputable theory, that the Norman invasion was in every respect & sanitary, moral, and intellectual blessing to England, and that the arrow which slew her Harold was indeed the Arrow of the Lord's deliverance: 2 "The Abbey itself," says Dean Stanley,-"the chief work of the Confessor's life,—was the portent of the mighty future. When Harold stood beside his sister Edith, on the day of the dedication, and signed his name with hers as witness to the Charter of the Abbey, he might have seen that he was sealing his own doom, and preparing for his own destruction. The solid pillars, the ponderous arches, the huge edifice, with triple tower and sculptured stones and storied windows, that arose in the place and in the midst of the humble wooden churches and wattled tenements of the Saxon period, might have warned the nobles who were present that the days of their rule were numbered, and that the avenging, civilizing, 1 [See above, p. 448.] stimulating hand of another and a mightier race was at work, which would change the whole face of their language, their manners, their Church, and their commonwealth. The Abbey, so far exceeding the demands of the dull and stagnant minds of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, was founded not only in faith, but in hope: in the hope that England had yet a glorious career to run; that the line of her sovereigns would not be broken, even when the race of Alfred had ceased to reign." 1 62. There must surely be some among my hearers who are startled, if not offended, at being told in the terms which I emphasized in this sentence, that the minds of our Saxon fathers were, although fantastic, dull, and, although childish, stagnant; that farther, in their fantastic stagnation, they were savage,-and in their innocent dulness, criminal; so that the future character and fortune of the race depended on the critical advent of the didactic and disciplinarian Norman baron, at once to polish them, stimulate, and chastise. 2 63. Before I venture to say a word in distinct arrest of this judgment, I will give you a chart, as clear as the facts observed in the two previous lectures allow, of the state and prospects of the Saxons, when this violent benediction of conquest happened to them: and especially I would rescue, in the measure that justice bids, the memory even of their Pagan religion from the general scorn in which I used Carlyle's description of the idol of ancient Prussia as universally exponent of the temper of Northern devotion. That Triglaph, or Triglyph Idol, (derivation of Triglaph wholly unknown to me I use Triglyph only for my own handiest epithet,) last set up, on what is now St. Mary's hill in Brandenburg, in 1023, belonged indeed to a people wonderfully like the Saxons,-geographically their close neighbours,-in habits of life, and aspect of native land, scarcely distinguishable from them,-in Carlyle's words, a "strong-boned, iracund, herdsman and fisher people, highly averse to be interfered with, in their religion especially," and inhabiting "a moory flat country, full of lakes and [Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, pp. 29-30.] woods, but with plenty also of alluvial mud, grassy, frugi. ferous, apt for the plough "-in all things like the Saxons, except, as I read the matter, in that "aversion to be interfered with" which you modern English think an especially Saxon character in you, but which is, on the contrary, you will find on examination, by no means Saxon; but only Wendisch, Czech, Serbic, Sclavic, other hard names I could easily find for it among the tribes of that "vehemently heathen" old Preussen-resolutely worshipful of "places of oak trees, of wooden or stone idols, of Bangputtis, Patkullos, and I know not what diabolic dumb blocks." Your English dislike to be interfered with" is in absolute fellowship with these, but only gathers itself in its places of Stalks, or chimneys, instead of oak trees, round its idols of iron, instead of wood, diabolically vocal now; strident, and sibilant, instead of dumb. 2 66 64. Far other than these, their neighbour Saxons, Jutes and Angles!-tribes between whom the distinctions are of no moment whatsoever, except that an English boy or girl may with grace remember that "Old England," exactly and strictly so called, was the small district in the extreme south of Denmark, totally with its islands estimable at sixty miles square of dead flat land. Directly south of it, the definitely so-called Saxons held the western shore of Holstein, with the estuary of the Elbe, and the sea-mark isle, Heligoland. But since the principal temple of Saxon worship was close to Leipsic,* we may include under our general term, Saxons, the inhabitants of the whole level district of North Germany, from the Gulf of Flensburg to the Hartz; and, eastward, all the country watered by the Elbe as far as Saxon Switzerland. 65. Of the character of this race I will not here speak at any length: only note of it this essential point, that 1 * Turner, vol. i. p. 223. [Friedrich, Book ii. ch. ii. (vol. i. pp. 50, 49 (ed. 1869).] 2 [Ibid., p. 51.] their religion was at once more practical and more imaginative than that of the Norwegian peninsula; the Norse religion being the conception rather of natural than moral powers, but the Saxon, primarily of moral, as the lords of natural-their central divine image, Irminsul,* holding the standard of peace in her right hand, a balance in her left.1 Such a religion may degenerate into mere slaughter and rapine; but it has the making in it of the noblest men. More practical at all events, whether for good or evil, in this trust in a future reward for courage and purity, than the mere Scandinavian awe of existing Earth and Cloud, the Saxon religion was also more imaginative, in its nearer conception of human feeling in divine creatures. And when this wide hope and high reverence had distinct objects of worship and prayer, offered to them by Christianity, the Saxons easily became pure, passionate, and thoughtful Christians; while the Normans, to the last, had the greatest difficulty in apprehending the Christian teaching of the Franks, and still deny the power of Christianity, even when they have become inveterate in its form. Quite the deepest-thoughted creatures of the then animate world, it seems to me, these Saxon ploughmen of the sand or the sea, with their worshipped deity of Beauty and Justice, a red rose on her banner, for best of gifts, and in her right hand, instead of a sword, a balance, for due doom, without wrath,-of retribution in her left. Far other than the Wends, though stubborn enough, they too, in battle rank,-seven times rising from defeat against Charlemagne, and unsubdued but by death-yet, by no means in that John Bull's manner of yours, "averse to be interfered with," in their opinions, or their religion. Eagerly docile on the contrary-joyfully reverent-instantly and 1 Properly plural "Images"-Irminsul and Irminsula. [Sharon Turner, History of England, vol. i. (Anglo-Saxons), 1839: "The right hand held a banner, in which a red rose was conspicuous; its left presented a balance."] gratefully acceptant of whatever better insight or oversight a stranger could bring them, of the things of God or man. 66. And let me here ask you especially to take account of that origin of the true bearing of the Flag of England, the Red Rose. Her own madness defiled afterwards alike the white and red, into images of the paleness, or the crimson, of death; but the Saxon Rose was the symbol of heavenly beauty and peace. I told you in my first lecture' that one swift require ment in our school would be to produce a beautiful map of England, including old Northumberland, giving the whole country, in its real geography, between the Frith of Forth and Straits of Dover, and with only six sites of habitation given, besides those of Edinburgh and London,—namely, those of Canterbury and Winchester, York and Lancaster. Holy Island and Melrose; the latter instead of Iona, because, as we have seen, the influence of St. Columba expires with the advance of Christianity, while that of Cuthbert of Melrose connects itself with the most sacred feelings of the entire Northumbrian kingdom, and Scottish border, down to the days of Scott-wreathing also into its circle many of the legends of Arthur. 2 67. Will you forgive my connecting the personal memory of having once had a wild rose gathered for me, in the glen of Thomas the Rhymer, by the daughter of one of the few remaining Catholic houses of Scotland, with the pleasure I have in reading to you this following true account of the origin of the name of St. Cuthbert's birthplace; [The passage was, however, not included in the text, having been an impromptu addition. The report in the Pall Mall Gazette gives it as follows: "Another department of historical study, by the way, was considerably simplified by Mr. Ruskin, in some informal remarks, after the conclusion of his written lecture. Map-making is only tiresome when you trouble yourself about railways leading from one unimportant place to another; but in drawing the map of England and Scotland, for instance, you should put in London, and Edinburgh, and Lancaster and York and Winchester and nothing else."] 2 [See above, p. 439.] [On July 3, 1867, with Miss Mary Kerr (daughter of Lord Henry Kerr, see Vol. XIX. p. xxix.). Compare Præterita, iii. § 83.] |