nner of
men and women were these ancestors, what in peace and in war were their
customs, what their family and social relations, their food and drink,
their dress, their systems of law and government, their religion and
morals, what were their art instincts, what were their ideals.

This is essential material for the construction of history in its
complete sense. And this evidence, when subjected to judicious
criticism, is trustworthy; for the ancient story-teller and poet
reflects the customs and ideas and ideals of his own time, even though
the combination of agencies and the preternatural proportions of the
actors and their deeds belong to the imagination. The historian must
know how to supplement and to give life and interest to the colorless
succession of dates, names, and events of the chronicler, by means of
these imaginative yet truth-bearing creations of the poet.

Remnants of ancient poetry and legend have again an immediate value in
proportion as they exhibit a free play of fine imagination; that is,
according as they possess the power of stirring to response the
aesthetic feeling of subsequent ages,--as they possess the true poetic
quality. This gift of imagination varies greatly among races as among
individuals, and the earliest manifestations of it frequently throw a
clear light upon apparently eccentric tendencies developed in a
literature in later times.

For these reasons, added to a natural family pride in them, the early
literary monuments of the Anglo-Saxons should be cherished by us as
among the most valued possessions of the race.

The first Teutonic language to be reduced to writing was the
Moeso-Gothic. Considerable portions of a translation of the Bible into
that language, made by Bishop Ulfilas in the fourth century, still
remain. But this cannot be called the beginning of a literature; for
there is no trace of original creative impulse. The Gothic movement,
too, seems to have ceased immediately after its beginning. It is
elsewhere that we must seek for the rise of a real Teutonic literature.
We shall not find it till after the lapse of several centuries; and we
find it not among the tribes that remained in the fatherland, nor with
those that had broken into and conquered parts of the Roman empire, only
to be absorbed and to blend with other races into Romanic nations. The
proud distinction belongs to the Low German tribes that had created an
England in Britain.

The conquest of Britain b