Anglo-Saxonism

“ Anglo-Saxonism is a very good thing; simplicity and common sense are very good things too. May not{421} berefellarius, the dirty raggamuffin with tattered clothes, be good monkish Latin for bare-fell (i.e. bare-skin) , or rather bare-fellow? the most natural metamorphosis imaginable. Bere is the old orthoepy of bare; and every one knows that in London (east) a fellow naturally becomes a fellar.
P.S.—Excuse my French-English.
Philarète Chasles, Mazarinæus.
Paris, Palais de I'Institut.
"To know ourselves diseased," &c. (Vol. viii., p. 219.) .—
"To know ourselves diseased is half our cure." ”

“ He does not make himself invisible. It becomes known that he will see you at a certain hour. You arrive a few minutes before that hour. The building is spacious, and its Gallic aspect is intensified by the pure Anglo- Saxonism of its terrific inhabitants. In a large outer office you are presented to the various brains of the Expeditionary Force, all members of the General Staff—famous names among them, celebrities, specialists, illustrious with long renown. They walk in and out, and they sit smoking and chatting, as if none of them was anybody in particular. ”

“ Yet it is none the less true that our whole civilisation is even now the carrying out and completion of the Greek and Roman culture in new fields and with fresh intellects. We owe little here to the Anglo-Saxon; we owe everything to the great stream of western culture, which began in Egypt and Assyria, permeated Greece and the Archipelago, spread to Italy and the Roman empire, and, finally, now embraces the whole European and American world. The Teutonic intellect and the Teutonic character have largely modified the spirit of the Mediterranean civilisation ”

“ I do not deny that it would have pleased me a little to falsify the history, for the Anglo-Saxons are a race of idealists, as is shown in all their dealing, international and commercial; and truth they have always found a little ugly. ”

“ Thus the Anglo-Saxons, before the great exodus from Denmark and North Germany, appear as a race of fierce, cruel, and barbaric pagans, delighting in the sea, in slaughter, and in drink. They dwelt in little isolated communities, bound together internally by ties of blood, and uniting occasionally with others only for purposes of rapine. ”

“ We need only refer to the extracts we have already given in the body of our history, from the Welsh bards, to prove this. The literature in no country was ever built upon so original a foundation as that of the Anglo-Saxons. Their language at an early period was enriched by the Danish: their habits resembled those of the sea-kings. Long before the Norman conquest, they had melted into one; the sea-horses, and the road of the swans, were to them familiar images; there was a sublimity about the ocean, and the storm, and the giant headlands, which they felt and understood ”

“ The Anglo-Saxons, when they settled in Eastern and Southern Britain, were a horde of barbarous heathen pirates. They massacred or enslaved the civilised or half-civilised Celtic inhabitants with savage ruthlessness. They burnt or destroyed the monuments of Roman occupation. ”

“ Anglo-Saxon lads, peacefully sleeping in the harbor of a Latin nation, had been treacherously blown up, and at the sight of that which was thicker than water in the hold of the Maine, the Anglo-Saxons of the world got still closer together. ”

“ The truth is, that among all those who have achieved great prominence in the English-speaking world, the Anglo-Saxon type is conspicuous by its absence. Nine times in ten, when a man boasts of “Anglo-Saxon” pluck, enterprise, ability, and progress, he himself is not of that type of man, and nine-tenths of the incidents he cites were brought about through the pluck, enterprise, ability and progress which came from mixed blood. ”

“ The eager Anglo-Saxons turned their attention to other fields of acquisition, and plunged further and further into the depths of space, some even trying, in the pride of their power and their thirst for science, to seek God on His throne in those unknown regions. ”

“ The Norman Conquest gave the death-blow to our old native literature, in the sense that the use of the literary Anglo-Saxon in its first integrity, as at once a learned language and a spoken language, did not extend beyond the generation that witnessed that great dynastic change. In this strict sense we might point to the close of the Worcester Chronicle in 1079 as the termination of Anglo-Saxon literature. ”

“ But few of the civilized nations of Europe possess works which will bear comparison with those produced by our early Saxon writers; nor has any other of the Gothic tribes, from350 which our old Germanic language sprung, a literature of so old a date, that in any way approaches to the perfection attained by the early Anglo-Saxons. ”

“ The farther the human mind strays from the ever-living God as a spirit, the nearer it approximates to the beasts; and as the mental controls the physical, so ignorance and brutality are depicted upon the countenance.
As the African by his fall has lost those qualities [Pg 86] that adorn the visage of man, so the Anglo-Saxon, by his rise in the scale of humanity, has improved his features, enlarged his brain, and brightened in intellect.
Let us see how far history will bear us out in this assertion. We all acknowledge the Anglo-Saxon to be the highest type of civilization. ”

“ It is, Sir, a great race from which we came, or rather two great races, for I must protest that the way men speak of us as Anglo-Saxons is very imperfect and inadequate. We are not Anglo-Saxon simply, but Anglo-Celtic in origin. ”

“ Our poetry and our ordinary language is tinged with heathen ideas even in modern times.
Still more interesting, however, are those relics of yet earlier social states, which we find amongst the Anglo-Saxons themselves. The production of fire by rubbing together two sticks is a common practice amongst all savages ”

“ The relics of the Anglo-Saxon period that have been discovered in these districts present also some distinctive features. It is certain from the customs that prevailed, some of which have survived, from the remains found, from the old place-names, and from the variations in the shape of the skulls discovered, that the people of the Saxon kingdoms of England could not have been people of one race. ”

“ The destruction of beauty in the name of science, the destruction of happiness in the name of progress, the destruction of reverence in the name of religion, these are the Pharisaic crimes of all the white races; but there is something in the Anglo-Saxon impiety crueller still: that it also destroys, as no other race does, for its mere vainglorious pleasure. The Anglo-Saxon alone has in our day exterminated, root and branch, whole tribes of mankind. He alone has depopulated continents, species after species, of their wonderful animal life, and is still yearly destroying ”

“ Anyone who departs from the beaten track, and attempts to obtain some new information from archæological and other research bearing on the circumstances of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, will find many difficulties in his way, and that much time is required to make even small progress. Here and there, however, by the comparison of customs, old laws, the ancient names of places, and other archæological circumstances, with those of a similar kind in Scandinavia or Germany, some advance may be made. ”

“ The unifying force to-day is the Anglo-Saxon, who to the genius of the Roman for conquest and government, and to the genius of the Greek for letters and art, has added the genius of the Phœnician for commerce and the genius of the Hebrew for religion. Here we touch the secret of his ascendancy. The Anglo-Saxon civilization is Christian. His [Pg 14] language is becoming the universal language. His institutions are becoming the universal institutions. His ships carry the passengers and produce of the world. His capital dominates commerce. London is the clearing-house of the world. ”

“ Whatever there is in the English character of persistence, obstinacy, patience, industry, sobriety, love of freedom, we are accustomed to attribute to our Anglo-Saxon descent. In religion, arts, learning, literature, culture, we owe little or nothing to the Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ Thousands of flourishing communities exist in the United States, nurseries of splendid Americans, where the new generation is being brought up with traditions and customs and mental habits very different from those of Anglo-Saxons. From Scandinavians to Italians, elements of continental European origin are not giving up their culture for Anglo-Saxon culture. ”

“ On the whole, then, Anglo-Saxon poetry exhibits the limitations of a culturally early age, but it manifests also a degree of power which gives to Anglo-Saxon literature unquestionable superiority over that of any other European country of the same period. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon is less pliable than the Romans, a less indulgent master to conquered men; with more plastic power to organize and mould, he has a less comprehensive imagination, limits himself to a smaller number of forms, and so hews off and casts away what suits him not. ”

“ Still we have before us the stirring times of Offa the Terrible; Egbert and Ethelwulf followed by the stormy sea-kings, whose invasions were more merciless than those of the Saxons; for the history of this period is like an ocean studded with islands, some of which lie near together, others wide apart; and many which, from the distance, seem to have a barren and forbidding look, are, on a nearer approach, found rich in ancient remains; and though now silent and desolate, we discover in what is left behind traces of the once mighty inhabitants, that ages ago have passed away. ”

“ When the Saxons once turned their attention to letters, none of the barbarous nations excelled them—the progress made during the reign of Alfred, we again repeat, is marvellous.
Nothing can be more primitive than our Anglo-Saxon poetry. Every line bears the stamp of originality. The praise of brave warriors is ever the subject. ”

“ These Anglo-Saxons have no time to live, let life itself drop lost out of their grasping hands because they are sires and mothers fending for their homes, begetters of nations, piling wealth on wealth, ruling the sea, taming the wilderness, filling the continents with their endless, meaningless clamor for more and more. ”

“ WITH the origin of any nation its early institutions must necessarily have been closely connected. Some of the most interesting traces of Anglo-Saxon life may he followed as far back as the time of the settlement. The changes which time has brought about in the early institutions that came into England with our tribal forefathers make it difficult to form an accurate estimate of them from the knowledge we have of the organization that prevailed during the later part of the Old English period. ”

“ And, independently of all foreign culture, mysticism, deeply rooted in humanity, grew freely on Anglo-Saxon soil; not always with quiet grace, as in the Cambridge school under the husbandry of learning, but with twisted roots, gnarled trunks, and oddly-forked branches, bent and torn by those political and theological storms which swept so wildly over the whole country. ”

“ The labours of Anglo-Saxons were fraught with more enduring results. Through their abilities and zeal, their faculty of organization and capacity of submitting to authority, through their consequent harmony with Rome and the support given them by the Frankish monarchy, these Anglo-Saxons converted many German tribes, established permanent churches among them, reorganized the heterogeneous Christianity which they found in certain German lands, and were a moving factor in the reform of the Frankish Church. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon spirit suffers, it has been observed, from confinement within any but wooden walls, and the European degenerates rapidly, as do his bull-dogs, his game-cocks, and other pugnacious animals, in the hot, enervating, and unhealthy climates of the East. ”

“ We must remember that in past ages the Anglo-Saxon stood in the market-place in Rome chained and in slavery, that blue eyes and flaxen hair marked the savage, and dark complexion and black eyes the civilised man. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxons, moreover, were less under the influence of the old Roman institutions. Among modern nations, they are the people who, so to speak, have lived most upon their own resources, and given birth to their own civilization. This character is discernible in their whole history, and even in their literature. {29} The Greek and Latin classics have produced but little effect upon them; primitive and national customs have maintained their sway in England, and received an almost unmixed development. ”

“ Those who have known them can only regret that a strong, picturesque, and admirable type of Anglo-Saxon has disappeared forever from the ranks of our great family, unpainted by a single master-hand of contemporary date. ”

“ The Greek knew his venality, but looked down on the barbarian nevertheless. Anglo-Saxon failure in the plastic and musical arts is notorious, but does not deter most Anglo-Saxons from believing that they are the elect in quality, and from buttressing this conviction with the evidences of present industrial, economic, and political achievements—and perhaps past literary ones. ”

“ We are now a mixed race, almost equally Celtic and Teutonic by descent; we speak a purely Teutonic language, with a large admixture of Latin roots in its vocabulary; we live under Teutonic institutions; we enjoy the fruits of a Græco-Roman civilisation; and we possess a Christian Church, handed down to us directly through Roman sources from a Hebrew original. To the extent so indicated, and to that extent only, we may still be justly styled an Anglo-Saxon people. ”