iquando Haymonem." AElfric's preface for his "Sermones
Catholici." In the preface of his sermons on the lives of Saints, AElfric
states that he intends not to translate any more, "ne forte despectui
habeantur margarite Christi."

[123] "The Blickling Homilies," Sermon XI.

[124] "Sermones Catholici", pp. 12-13.

[125] _Ibid._ pp. 304-5. See also, in the sermon on St. John the
Baptist, a curious satire on wicked talkative women, pp. 476-7.

[126] Sermon for the 25th of August, on the martyrdom of St.
Bartholomew, pp. 454 ff. The portrait of the saint is as minutely drawn:
"he has fair and curling locks, is white of body, and has deep eyes and
moderate nose," &c.

[127] Skeat, "AElfric's Lives of Saints," 1881.

[128] "The Blickling Homilies," Sermons X. and XI.

[129] _Ibid._, Sermon XVII.

BOOK II.

_THE FRENCH INVASION._

CHAPTER I.

_BATTLE._

I.

Germanic England gave itself a king for the last time at the death of
Edward the Confessor. Harold, son of Godwin, was elected to succeed him.
A momentous crisis, the greatest in English history, was drawing near.

An awful problem had to be solved. Divided, helpless, uncertain, England
could no longer remain what she had been for six hundred years. She
stood vacillating, drawn by contrary attractions to opposite centres,
half-way between the North, that had last populated the land, and the
South, that had taught and christianised the nation. On both sides fresh
invaders threaten her; which will be the winner? Should the North
triumph, England will be bound for centuries to the Germanic nations,
whose growth will be tardy, and whose literary development will be slow,
so slow indeed that men still alive to-day may have seen with their own
eyes the great poet of the race, Goethe, who died in 1832. Should the
South carry the day, the growth will be speedy and the preparation
rapid. Like France, Italy, and Spain, England will have at the
Renaissance a complete literature of her own, and be able to produce a
Shakespeare, as Italy produced an Ariosto, Spain a Cervantes, and France
a Montaigne, a Ronsard and a Rabelais.

The problem was solved in the autumn of 1066. On the morrow of Harold's
election, the armies of the North and South assembled, and the last of
the invasions began.

The Scandinavians took the sea again. They were led by Harold Hardrada,
son of Sigurd, a true romance hero, who had fought in many wars, and
once defended by his swor