who, during the
decline of the Empire, codified the rules of Latin speech; generation
after generation passed, and down almost to our own days every schoolboy
began his career on the lines laid down in the works of Donatus and
Priscian.

We must, however, guard ourselves against a mistake into which it would
be easy to fall. It is true that in the early mediaeval days education
was based on the study of the Latin language; and it was only through
literature that the language could be learnt. The study of classical
literature as we understand it was, however, far removed from the ideals
of this time. The most authoritative teachers never neglected to warn
their pupils against the moral dangers which arose from the study of
heathen writers; Ovid and Cicero were only admitted under protest, and
they were merely the stepping-stone to the study of Augustine and
Prudentius.

On this common basis--the Bible, the Church, and the Latin
language--was then established the education of Western Europe, and the
form it then assumed it retained for over a thousand years, almost
without change. By this a common cast was given to the intellect, and
the nations were disciplined by common spiritual teaching. It was
extraordinarily effective. It kept down, and in many countries almost
destroyed, the vigorous and aspiring local and national life which, in
every country, was striving after self-expression. In our own country
this effect was most conspicuous. The English, illiterate though they
might be, were not without the promise of a great future. In the remains
of the Saxon poems we can see the beginnings of what under happier
circumstances might have grown into a great national literature. Its
origins were deep seated in the life of the people. It proved itself
quickly able to absorb the new teaching of the Gospel, and, as the
Christian Epics show, here was the basis on which might have been built
a national interpretation of Christianity. All that was required was the
adoption of English as the language of the Church and the School. The
beginning was made when Alfred, during the few years which he secured
from the Danish inroads, began his great work of founding an English
literature in which the teaching of the Church and the works of
antiquity were included. The attempt was ruined for the time by the
renewal of the Danish inroads, permanently by the Norman Conquest. For
William brought with him not only his French knights, but als