The state of literature in England was by no means parallel to what we find on the continent. Our best age was precisely the worst in France; it was the age of the Heptarchy—that of Theodore, Bede, Aldhelm, Cædmon, and Alcuin; to whom, if Ireland will permit us, we may desire to add Scotus, who came a little afterwards, but whose residence in this island at any time appears an unauthenticated tale. But we know how Alfred speaks of the ignorance of the clergy in his own age. Nor was this much better afterwards. Even the eleventh century, especially before the Conquest, is a very blank period in the literary annals of England. No one can have a conception how wretchedly scanty is the list 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 mediæval 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 not gainsay this position; being aware, as I have observed both in this and in another work, that the mere ignorance of these ages, striking as it is in comparison with earlier and later times, has been sometimes exaggerated; and that Europeans, and especially Christians, could not fall back into the absolute barbarism of the Esquimaux. But what a man of profound and accurate learning puts forward with limitations, sometimes expressed, and always present to his own mind, a heady and shallow retailer takes up, and exaggerates in conformity with his own prejudices.
The Letters on the Dark Ages relate principally to the theological attainments of the clergy during that period, which the author assumes, rather singularly, to extend from A.D. 800 to 1200; thus excluding midnight from his definition of darkness, and replacing it by the break of day. And in many respects, especially as to the knowledge of the vulgate Scriptures possessed by the better-informed clergy, he obtains no very difficult victory over those who have imbibed extravagant notions, both as to the ignorance of the Sacred Writings in those times and the desire to keep them away from the people. This latter prejudice is obviously derived from a confusion of the subsequent period, the centuries preceding the Reformation, with those which we have immediately before us. But as the word dark is commonly used, either in reference to the body of the laity or to the general extent of liberal studies in the church, and as it involves a comparison with prior or subsequent ages, it cannot be improper in such a sense, even if the manuscripts of the Bible should have been as common in monasteries as Dr. Maitland supposes; and yet his proofs seem much too doubtful to sustain that hypothesis.
There is a tendency to set aside the verdict of the most approved writers, which gives too much of a polemical character, too much of the tone of an advocate who fights every point, rather than of a calm arbitrator, to the Letters on the Dark Ages. For it is not Henry, or Jortin, or Robertson, who are our usual testimonies, but their immediate masters, Muratori, and Fleury, and Tiraboschi, and Brucker and the Benedictine authors of the Literary History of France, and many others in France, Italy, and Germany. The latest who has gone over this rather barren ground, and not inferior to any in well-applied learning, in candour or good sense, is M. Ampère, in his Histoire Littéraire de la France avant le douzième siècle (3 vols. Paris, 1840). No one will accuse this intelligent writer of unduly depreciating the ages which he thus brings before us; and by the perusal of his volumes, to which Heeren and Eichhorn may be added for Germany, we may obtain a clear and correct outline, which, considering the shortness of life compared with the importance of exact knowledge on such a subject, will suffice for the great majority of readers. I by no means, however, would exclude the Letters on the Dark Ages, as a spirited pleading for those who have often been condemned unheard.
I shall conclude by remarking that one is a little tempted to inquire why so much anxiety is felt by the advocates of the mediæval church to rescue her from the charge of ignorance. For this ignorance she was not, generally speaking, to be blamed. It was no crime of the clergy that the Huns burned their churches, or the Normans pillaged their monasteries. It was not by their means that the Saracens shut up the supply of papyrus, and that sheep-skins bore a great price. Europe was altogether decayed in intellectual character, partly in consequence of the barbarian incursions, partly of other sinister influences acting long before. We certainly owe to the church every spark of learning which then glimmered, and which she preserved through that darkness to re-kindle the light of a happier age—Σπέρμα πυρὸς σώζουσα. Meantime, what better apology than this ignorance can be made by Protestants, and I presume Dr. Maitland is not among those who abjure the name, for the corruption, the superstition, the tendency to usurpation, which they at least must impute to the church of the dark ages? Not that in these respects it was worse than in a less obscure period; for the reverse is true; but the fabric of popery was raised upon its foundations before the eleventh century, though not displayed in its full proportions till afterwards. And there was so much of lying legend, so much of fraud in the acquisition of property, that ecclesiastical historians have not been loth to acknowledge the general ignorance as a sort of excuse. [1848.]
The account of domestic architecture given in the text is very superficial; but the subject still remains, comparatively with other portions of mediæval antiquity, but imperfectly treated. The best sketch that has hitherto been given is in an article with this title in the Glossary of Ancient Architecture (which should be read in an edition not earlier than that of 1845), from the pen of Mr. Twopeny, whose attention has long been directed to the subject. "There is ample evidence yet remaining of the domestic architecture in this country during the twelfth century. The ordinary manor-houses, and even houses of greater consideration, appear to have been generally built in the form of a parallelogram, two stories high,[] the lower story vaulted, with no internal communication between the two, the upper story approached by a flight of steps on the outside; and in that story was sometimes the only fireplace in the whole building. It is more than probable that this was the usual style of houses in the preceding century." Instances of houses partly remaining are then given. We may add to those mentioned by Mr. Twopeny one, perhaps older than any, and better preserved than some, in his list. At Southampton is a Norman house, perhaps built in the first part of the twelfth century. It is nearly a square, the outer walls tolerably perfect; the principal rooms appear to have been on the first (or upper) floor; it has in this also a fireplace and chimney, and four windows placed so as to indicate a division into two apartments; but there are no lights below, nor any appearance of an interior staircase. The sides are about forty feet in length. Another house of the same age is near to it, but much worse preserved.[c]
The parallelogram house, seldom containing more than four rooms, with no access frequently to the upper which the family occupied, except on the outside, was gradually replaced by one on a different type:—the entrance was on the ground, the staircase within; a kitchen and other offices, originally detached, were usually connected with the hall by a passage running through the house; one or more apartments on the lower floor extended beyond the hall; there was seldom or never a third floor over the entire house, but detached turrets for sleeping-rooms rose at some of the angles. This was the typical form which lasted, as we know, to the age of Elizabeth, or even later. The superior houses of this class were sometimes quadrangular, that is, including a court-yard, but seldom, perhaps, with more than one side allotted to the main dwelling; offices, stables, or mere walls filled the other three.
Many dwellings erected in the fourteenth century may be found in England; but neither of that nor the next age are there more than a very few, which are still, in their chief rooms, inhabited by gentry. But houses, which by their marks of decoration, or by external proof, are ascertained to have been formerly occupied by good families, though now in the occupation of small farmers, and built apparently from the reign of the second to that of the fourth Edward, are common in many counties. They generally bear the name of court, hall, or grange; sometimes only the surname of some ancient occupant, and very frequently have been the residence of the lord of the manor.