facts, they behave
in the same manner. They perceive the importance both of ideas and of
those who wield them, and act accordingly; they negotiate with the Pope,
with St. Martin of Tours, even with God; they promise nothing for
nothing; however exalted the power with which they treat, what they
agree to must be bargains, Norman bargains.

The bull "Laudabiliter," by which the English Pope
Nicholas Breakspeare (Adrian IV.) gives Ireland to Henry II., is a
formal bargain; the king buys, the Pope sells; the price is minutely
discussed beforehand, and set down in the agreement.[148] But the most
remarkable view suggested to them by this practical turn of their mind
consisted in the value they chose to set, even at that distant time, on
"public opinion," if we may use the expression, and on literature as a
means of action.

This was a stroke of genius; William endeavoured, and his successors
imitated him, to do for the past what he was doing for the present: to
unify. For this, the new dynasty wanted the assistance of poets, and it
called upon them. William had persistently given himself out to be not
only the successor, but the rightful heir of Edward the Confessor, and
of the native kings. During several centuries the poets who wrote in the
French tongue, the Latin chroniclers, the English rhymers, as though
obedient to a word of command, blended all the origins together in their
books; French, Danes, Saxons, Britons, Trojans even, according to them,
formed one sole race; all these men had found in England a common
country, and their united glories were the general heritage of
posterity. With a persistency which lasted from century to century, they
displaced the national point of view, and ended by establishing, with
every one's assent, the theory that the constitution and unity of a
nation are a question not of blood but of place; consanguinity matters
little; the important point is to be compatriots. All the inhabitants of
the same country are one people: the Saxons of England and the French of
England are nothing but Englishmen.

All the heroes who shone in the British Isle are now indiscriminately
sung by the poets, who celebrate Brutus, Arthur, Hengist, Horsa, Cnut,
Edward, and William in impartial strains. They venerate in the same
manner all saints of whatever blood who have won heaven by the practice
of virtue on English ground. Here again the king, continuing the wise
policy of his ancestors, sets the example.