s distance (and
under the circumstances I have mentioned even twenty miles were
considerable) undertake to write history--and they wrote it
accordingly.

If we take a survey of our own history, and examine it with any
attention, what an unsatisfactory picture does it present to
us! How dry, how superficial, how void of information! How
little is recorded besides battles, plagues, and religious
foundations! That this should be the case, before the Conquest, is
not surprizing. Our empire was but forming itself, or re-collecting
its divided members into one mass, which, from the desertion of the
Romans, had split into petty kingdoms. The invasions of nations as
barbarous as ourselves, interfered with every plan of policy and
order that might have been formed to settle the emerging state; and
swarms of foreign monks were turned loose upon us with their new
faith and mysteries, to bewilder and confound the plain good sense
of our ancestors. It was too much to have Danes, Saxons, and Popes,
to combat at once! Our language suffered as much as our government;
and not having acquired much from our Roman masters, was miserably
disfigured by the subsequent invaders. The unconquered parts of the
island retained some purity and some precision. The Welsh and Erse
tongues wanted not harmony: but never did exist a more barbarous
jargon than the dialect, still venerated by antiquaries, and called
Saxon. It was so uncouth, so inflexible to all composition, that the
monks, retaining the idiom, were reduced to write in what they took
or meant for Latin.

The Norman tyranny succeeded, and gave this Babel of savage sounds a
wrench towards their own language. Such a mixture necessarily
required ages to bring it to some standard: and, consequently,
whatever compositions were formed during its progress, were sure of
growing obsolete. However, the authors of those days were not likely
to make these obvious reflections; and indeed seem to have aimed at
no one perfection. From the Conquest to the reign of Henry the
Eighth it is difficult to discover any one beauty in our writers,
but their simplicity. They told their tale, like story-tellers;
that is, they related without art or ornament; and they related
whatever they heard. No councils of princes, no motives of conduct,
no remoter springs of action, did they investigate or learn. We have
even little light into the characters of the actors. A king or an
archbishop of Canterbury are the only p