Wace

“ And then a few weeks after his first sight of the valley came the two customers, the stress and excitement of their offer, and the narrow escape of the crystal from sale, as I have already told.
Now, while the thing was Mr. Cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a forbidden garden. But Mr. Wace has, for a young scientific investigator, a particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. ”

“ Cave, and the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal and report what he saw, while Mr. Wace (who as a science student had learnt the trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his report. When the crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and the electric light turned on. Mr. Wace asked questions, and suggested observations to clear up difficult points. Nothing, indeed, could have been less visionary and more matter-of-fact. ”

“ Mr Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius; so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr Wace learned that the midnight sky was a darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little smaller. ”

“ The folk of that country tell that should a man stare upon the wave in its anger, so that his vesture and body be wetted of the spray, then, whatever be his strength, the water will draw him to itself, for it is mightier than he. ”

“ The narratives of the revolt quelled at Valdesdunes, and of the affairs of Arques, Mortemer, and Varaville, are among the most picturesque and graphic portions of Wace's chronicle, and derive much interest from their bearing upon local history and description.
The division into chapters, it may be proper to observe, is a liberty taken with the original by the translator; and his further liberties are those of omitting portions of the duke's early adventures, and of restoring, in one or two cases, the proper chronological arrangement, which Wace does not always observe. ”

“ The second part of the compound, wacer (whence our Waker) , is itself a very ancient stem, being found on the one hand in the Wacer (ingas) , among the early Saxon settlers, and on the other in the name Vacir, probably Frankish, on Roman pottery. ”

“ Our three most important Arthurian chroniclers, Geoffrey, Wace, and Layamon, were all men of marked individuality and ability; each lives for us with as distinct a personality as if we had far more than our very imperfect knowledge of the details of his life. Geoffrey, a clever combiner, a highly gifted narrator and scholar, born at a happy hour, gave the Arthurian legend a definite literary form, brought permanently together independent elements of tradition, and contributed enormously to the popularity of the cycle. ”

“ The lords of Courcy known to have held the office of seneschal were Robert, under the empress Matilda, and William, under Hen. II.; and there is no other authority than Wace's for its belonging to earlier members of the family. It is possible that one of the Courcys of Wace stands for Courceilles. In the Bayeux inquest, 'Gosellinus de Corcella feodum v mil. in Corcella et in Berneriis.' In the Red book is a similar entry, substituting Rogerus for Goscellinus. He appears among the jurors, and is there called Gangelinus. Roger de Corcelles is a landholder in Domesday, Introd. i. 401. ”

“ Sincerity and truth Wace ever aims at, but he embellishes his narrative with countless imaginative details. As a narrator he has the tendency to garrulity, which few mediaeval poets altogether escaped, but he is by no means without conversational charm, and in brief sentences abounding in colloquial turns, he leads us easily on with seldom flagging interest even through those pages where he is most inclined to be prolix. He is a systematic person with accurate mental habits, and is keenly alive to the limitations of his own knowledge. ”

“ One of those great men in the past, to whom I have referred, imagined the case of men having lived all their lives in a cave to which only broken beams of sunlight penetrated, and who had no idea of the splendid vision of the sun, and of the earth with all its beauties, which would burst upon their vision the moment they stepped outside their cave. ”

“ But the principal storehouse of the illustrations has been that noble and exquisite relic of antiquity, the tapestry of the cathedral of Bayeux. To this series of pictures the chronicle of Wace, (a prebend of that church, as already observed,) [Pg xxviii] would almost seem to have been intended as what, in modern times, would be called the letter press. The controversies long carried on, as to the age of this interesting piece of workmanship, and as to the identity of the Matilda to whom it may owe its origin, need not be reviewed here. ”

“ Wars and battles, the stern career of a Saxon leader, the life of the woods and fields attracted him far more than the refinements of a Norman court, and by emphasising the elements that were most congenial to himself he developed an entirely different picture from that presented by either Geoffrey or Wace. Writing with intense interest, he lives and moves and has his being among the events that he is narrating, and is far too deeply absorbed in his story to limit himself to the page that he has before him. ”

“ Thus we are taught that all die, both clerk and lay; and short would be the fame of any after death, if their history did not endure by being written in the book of the clerk.
The story of the Normans is long and hard to [Pg 4] put into romanz. If any one ask who it is that tells it and writes this history, let him know that I am Wace, of the isle of Jersey, which is in the western sea, appendant to the fief of Normandy. I was born in the island of Jersey, but was taken to Caen when young; and, being there taught, went afterwards to France, where I remained for a long time. ”

“ Either assumption implies that Enguerran's widow was then dead, or that she did not hold Aumale, or at least that she did not after her daughter's marriage. The charter printed in the Archæologia treats the widow as having succeeded to the possession, (whether from having dower in it, or as guardian of her daughter, does not appear) , and her daughter as following her. Of course the most likely solution of this difficulty, and of Wace's vague statement, is that he was ignorant of the facts; in which he is not singular; Ordericus Vitalis also is incorrect in his statements as to the family. ”

“ Passing wide and deep is this fair mere. From the hills and valleys round about sixty rivers fall therein, and making together one sweet water, pass swiftly by a single river to the sea. Sixty islands lie upon this water, the haunt and home of innumerable birds. ”

“ But the light of the Divine glory and grace is never thus obscured from us. It is perpetually shining, and we can enjoy its blessed influence at every moment. God is the Father of Lights—the Father of Light of all kinds; and all grace and truth are perpetually proceeding from Him. ”

“ Ordinary ways of action are suspended, and we become subject to the most unexpected and most incalculable influences. We are beginning to see it ourselves in the present war. We are forced to resort to public measures which all confess to be absolutely unprecedented; and the whole world, old and new, is immersed in dangers and disorders never before dreamed of. ”

“ But if the Cross of Christ is to be the centre of our lives, we must strive to live in all things, and not only in such great crises as those of war and the battlefield, in the spirit which brought our Lord to His Cross—the spirit of absolute obedience in all things to the righteous will of God. ”

“ You believe in God, and in all that the Name of God stands for—righteousness, truth, goodness of all kinds: believe also in Christ, and let His love, His mercy, His purity, His absolute self-sacrifice, add His own peculiar grace to all your words and deeds, and then you may cherish the confident hope that where He is there you will be also. ”

“ Here lies the only hope for ourselves, the only hope for our people at large, for our nation and empire. Let us henceforth join with a new earnestness in the prayer of the Collect: “Graft in our hearts the love of Thy Name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of Thy great mercy keep us in the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” ”

“ Why should so many young and precious lives be sacrificed? Why should so many homes be darkened, and so many hearts all but broken, in this present time? It is the present suffering and the present time that are uppermost in our thoughts. ”

“ We must look, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. In some degree, though not to the same extent, we may apply a similar consideration to the sufferings of nations, and of the world as a whole, in a great war. ”

“ How is it that humble and feeble creatures like ourselves can thus call the God of heaven and earth our own, and speak to Him, and tell Him, in this earnest language, that we cannot do without Him? Where, above all, can we find Him and approach Him? ”

“ Whether they will or not, great masses of people and great nations cannot do without a Government; and when they have established one, that Government must necessarily act in many critical emergencies without waiting to consult the people whom it governs. A nation and its King, with his Ministers, constitute as much one body, to use St. Paul’s image, as the various elements and limbs of the human body and its brain. ”

“ After all, in presence of the mysteries of death, and of the condition of those we have lost, what prayer can be more comforting than one which simply commends to our Father’s gracious hands, through our Saviour’s merits and grace, the beloved soul after which we yearn? That is a Prayer for the Dead which may be offered without scruple and without cessation, and in which we may find, day by day, and in every moment of sorrow and distress, our refuge and our consolation. ”

“ If the National Mission is to fulfil its object, it must impress that spirit of supreme devotion to the will of God, as revealed in Christ, upon the nation as a whole, and the Cross must become the symbol of our national, no less than of our individual, life. ”

“ We should behold before us a mass of nations rising against one another, blinded—as we see in Germany that nations can be blinded—by passion and pride, and fighting wildly, almost like men in the dark, and we might well feel helpless before such a chaos. ”

“ Much people were slain on either side, so that the field was strewn with the dead, and crimson with the blood of dying men. There perished the brave and comely youth Arthur had nourished and gathered from so many and far lands. There also the knights of his Table Round, whose praise was bruited about the whole world. There, too, was Mordred slain in the press, together with the greater part of his folk, and in the selfsame day were destroyed the flower of Arthur's host, the best and hardiest of his men. So the chronicle speaks sooth, Arthur himself was wounded in his body to the death. ”

“ War is justifiable for the same reason that it is lawful to put men to death for great crimes, like murder and treason. The conscience of mankind at large, the conscience of Christian States at large, has uniformly wielded the sword of justice in avenging and averting, by the punishment of death, such crimes of violence and treachery as destroy the very frame of Society. ”

“ Do not let us suppose that there is any other object whatever in God’s dispensations. The manifestation of God in Christ, and the bringing of all human souls, all human life, into harmony with it, into the full enjoyment of it, and consequently into perfect obedience to His will—this is the end of all the struggles, of all the wars, of all the sufferings of mankind, mysterious as they are, and utterly baffling to our feeble apprehension. ”

“ When we see such wrong judgment possible among the ablest and most powerful men in Europe, in a matter which involves the sacrifice of tens of thousands of lives, the desolation of thousands of homes, and the devastation of some of the fairest countries in Europe, have we not need to cry to God, with the most intense earnestness, that He will grant to us, and to all who act for us and with us, the help of His Spirit to give us a right judgment in all things? ”

“ There has never been an occasion in our own lives, and there have been few occasions in the world’s history, on which we have had more reason for unbounded thankfulness for the blessed message of Christmas. We are celebrating this Festival to-day in a sadder and darker world than any of us can remember, amid scenes of bloodshed and desolation, of which an adequate description can only be found in the lurid pictures of the Book of Revelation, with war and hatred all around us instead of peace and good will, and with death and destruction raging over a great part both of Europe and of Asia. ”

“ Everything, we are told, must yield to the demands of a nation which believes that a certain supremacy in the world is necessary for it. The consequence is that the air has to be cleared by this awful outburst of national thunder and lightning. But let us apply the danger and the lesson to ourselves. What is our own ideal as a nation and as an empire? Perhaps we too have been in danger of being fascinated too much by that vision of empire. It is a legitimate ideal when applied to right purposes, and subject to the right control ”