t
of literary names from Alfred to the Conquest, who does not look to Mr.
Turner's History of the Anglo-Saxons, or to Mr. Wright's Biographia
Literaria.

There could be no general truth respecting the past, as it appeared to
me, more notorious, or more incapable of being denied with any
plausibility, than the characteristic ignorance of Europe during those
centuries which we commonly style the Dark Ages. A powerful stream,
however, of what, as to the majority at least, I must call prejudice,
has been directed of late years in an opposite direction. The mediaeval
period, in manners, in arts, in literature, and especially in religion,
has been regarded with unwonted partiality; and this favourable temper
has been extended to those ages which had lain most frequently under the
ban of historical and literary censure.

A considerable impression has been made on the predisposed by the
Letters on the Dark Ages, which we owe to Dr. Maitland. Nor is this by
any means surprising; both because the predisposed are soon convinced,
and because the Letters are written with great ability, accurate
learning, a spirited and lively pen, and consequently with a success in
skirmishing warfare which many readily mistake for the gain of a pitched
battle. Dr. Maitland is endowed with another quality, far more rare in
historical controversy, especially of the ecclesiastical kind: I believe
him to be of scrupulous integrity, minutely exact in all that he
asserts; and indeed the wrath and asperity, which sometimes appear
rather more than enough, are only called out by what he conceives to be
wilful or slovenly misrepresentation. Had I, therefore, the leisure and
means of following Dr. Maitland through his quotations, I should
probably abstain from doing so from the reliance I should place on his
testimony, both in regard to his power of discerning truth and his
desire to express it. But I have no call for any examination, could I
institute it; since the result of my own reflections is that every thing
which Dr. M. asserts as matter of fact--I do not say suggests in all his
language--may be perfectly true, without affecting the great proposition
that the dark ages, those from the sixth to the eleventh, were ages of
ignorance. Nor does he, as far as I collect, attempt to deny this
evident truth; it is merely his object to prove that they were less
ignorant, less dark, and in all points of view less worthy of
condemnation than many suppose. I do n