not for the purpose of a history of English Literature proper,
the contemporary French and Latin writing has to be taken side by side
with it.

[Sidenote: _Early Middle English Literature._]

It is not surprising that, although the Latin literary production of
the time, especially in history, was at least equal to that of any
other European country, and though it is at least probable that some
of the greatest achievements of literature, French in language, are
English in nationality, the vernacular should for long have been a
little scanty and a little undistinguished in its yield. Periods of
moulting, of putting on new skins, and the like, are never periods of
extreme physical vigour. And besides, this Anglo-Saxon itself had (as
has been said) been distinctly on the wane as a literary language for
more than a century, while (as has not yet been said) it had never
been very fertile in varieties of profane literature. This infertility
is not surprising. Except at rare periods literature without literary
competition and comparison is impossible; and the Anglo-Saxons had
absolutely no modern literature to compare and compete with. If any
existed, their own was far ahead of it. On the other hand, though the
supposed ignorance of Latin and even Greek in the "dark" ages has long
been known to be a figment of ignorance itself, circumstances
connected with, though not confined to, the concentration of learning
and teaching in the clergy brought about a disproportionate attention
to theology. The result was that the completest Anglo-Saxon library of
which we can form any well-based conception would have contained about
ten cases of religious to one of non-religious books, and would have
held in that eleventh but little poetry, and hardly any prose with an
object other than information or practical use.

[Sidenote: _Scantiness of its constituents._]

It could not be expected that the slowly changing language should at
once change its habits in this respect. And so, as the century
immediately before the Conquest had seen little but chronicles and
homilies, leechdoms and laws, that which came immediately afterwards
gave at first no very different products, except that the laws were
wanting, for obvious reasons. Nay, the first, the largest, and almost
the sole work of _belles lettres_ during the first three-fourths of
our period, the _Brut_ of Layamon, is a work of _belles lettres_
without knowing it, and imagines itself to be