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ENGLISH LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

THE BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH PROSE.

The Venerable Bede-Ecclesiastical History of the English NationThe First Prose Book Written in English-The School at YorkAlcuin-John Scotus Erigena-King Alfred-His Schools-His Literary Labors-The History of Orosius-Ohthere and WulfstanBoethius's Consolations of Philosophy-Gregory's Pastoral Instructions-The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle-The Decline of Learning-The Latin Histories of Nennius and Gildas-Ethelwold's Rule of a Monastic Life-Dunstan on the Monastic Rule-Ælfric the Grammarian -The Life of Edward the Confessor-The Meagreness of Anglo-Saxon Prose Literature.

THE story of English prose during the first seven hundred years of our literature may be briefly told. Early prose was not like early poetry, the spontaneous outburst of feeling and of pent-up passions from hearts overcharged with emotion; but it was the work of scholars and the result of study, and was, for the most part, known only in the schools and monasteries and to the men of leisure and learning who frequented them. To understand the causes of the slow growth of literature during the Middle Ages, one needs but to glance at the state of universal ignorance which prevailed at that time. The civilization which had characterized the Roman world had been crushed almost completely out of Europe, and the barbarians whose mission it was to found new States upon the ruins of the ancient empire had neither time nor

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