GOVERNOR ISAAC SHELBY.
In other respects he radically differed from Norsemen of the Wolf Larsen type. In his relations with his family and friends he was delicate, generous, and kind; the tenderest of sons, the kindest brother, the most devoted and loyal of friends: a lover of literature, music, and the finer pleasures of social life. Strangest of all, he was reverent and devout. He respected the forms of the Church, and every night, even in the rude environment of the camp, he knelt beside his soldier's couch and repeated the Lord's Prayer. But the soubriquet fastened upon him both by resentful enemies and admiring friends recalls his fictitious counterpart—Wolf Larsen. Whenever the name of the Federal commander came up for discussion during our great Civil War—whether in Confederate camp or by Kentucky firesides, or by the campfires of his own loyal division—he was invariably known, by reason of his huge figure, his big bovine head, his flaming black eyes, his fierce, tumultuous energies, his headlong courage and gigantic strength, by the soubriquet "Bull"—BULL NELSON—a sea-trained soldier with a bellowing soubriquet prefixed to an honored racial name—a mid-century Kentuckian, who in mediæval battle might have swung the battle-axe of Front-de-Bœuf.
There were many others—Kentuckians of an ideal Anglo-Norman type—who would have brought to M. Du Chaillu the strongest confirmation of his philosophic views had he visited us during the cyclonic "sixties," or in that halcyon interlude "before the war."
[V]
Returning now to the discussion of the masterly paper read by M. Du Chaillu at the British Association,[4] we may consider certain aspects of the question more in detail; conceding at the same time full credit to the ability of the disputants who dissented from the views expressed by the foreign savant. M. Du Chaillu was peculiarly fortunate in his critics. If his theory should survive the searching and trenchant criticisms of such men, his scholarship would command respect even if they should decline to accept his conclusions in full.
A loyal Briton does not lightly abandon what he conceives to be established or traditional views. This trait does not imply defect of philosophic insight or want of wide research. It denotes simply the influence of prepossession, opinionated habit, and conscious power. Nor is this influence unusual. Scholars differ even as "doctors" disagree. Dr. George Craik, whose name is familiar to every scholar of the English race, was liberal enough to concede, a quarter of a century before the advent of Du Chaillu as a Scandinavian protagonist, that the English language might have more of a Scandinavian than of a purely Germanic character; or, in other words, "more nearly resembled the Danish or Swedish than the modern German." The invading bands, he adds, by whom the dialect was originally brought over into Britain in the Fifth and Sixth centuries, were in all probability drawn in great part from the Scandinavian countries. At a still later date, too, this English population was directly and largely recruited from Denmark and the regions around the Baltic. Eastern and Northern England, from the middle of the Ninth Century, "was as much Danish as English." In the Eleventh Century the sovereign was a Dane.
M. Du Chaillu's theory rests upon other and perhaps stronger grounds, but these concessions from a thoughtful scholar at least will carry weight. The continuous existence of Scandinavian influence in England is suggestive of the circumstance that the Danish conquest of England preceded the Norman conquest by "exactly half a century." An Englishman (Odericus Vitalis), writing almost contemporaneously with the Norman conquest, describes his countrymen as having been found by the Normans "a rustic and almost illiterate people" (agrestes et pene illiteratos). And yet, says Dr. Craik, the dawn of the revival of letters in England may properly be dated from a point about fifty years antecedent to the Norman conquest. To what, then, must be ascribed this scholastic renascence? Very clearly to the intimate relations established between England and Normandy by Edward the Confessor. But there is no trace of the new literature (that of the Arabic school which was prevalent in Europe) having found its way to England "before the Norman conquest swept into the benighted old kingdom, carrying the torch of learning in its train." The name of Lanfranc alone gives splendor to that civilization which his genius created for the English race. He not only lighted the torch of learning, but he strengthened the reins of power. He restrained the lawless impetuosity of William the Conqueror; he imposed iron conditions upon the accession of William Rufus; he checked the atrocities, and finally broke the power, of Odo of Bayeux. His work was well done, and its effects are visible to this day. He was the real power behind the throne. It is not easy, says an eminent English writer, to trace through the length of centuries "the measureless and invisible benefits which the life of one scholar bequeaths to the world." But such was the life, the work, the bequest of this Norman scholar, who died honored and beloved even by the rude, sullen, and implacable race which had been subjugated by the Norman kings. But Dr. Craik, with all his liberality and learning, is not disposed to accept the theory of a great migration or settlement preceding, or accompanying or following, the Norman conquest in the Eleventh Century. To be sure, this theory was not elaborately or effectively presented until of late years; but Dr. Craik, writing as far back as the opening of our "War between the States," seems to contradict this theory by anticipation—"In point of fact, the Normans never transferred themselves in a body, or generally, to England. It was never thus taken possession of by the Normans. It was never colonized by these foreigners, or occupied by them in any other than a military sense. It received a foreign government, but not at all a new population." Yet even Dr. Craik seems to appreciate the lesson of "names." He thinks it remarkable, for instance, that though we find a good many names of natives of Gaul in connection with the last age of Roman literature, scarcely a British name has been preserved. Even in Juvenal's days the pleaders of Britain were trained by the eloquent scholars of Gaul. The significance of a name in determining family origin is a common assumption of our familiar speech. "That is a Virginian name," we say; and if we find many Virginian names in a given locality we naturally infer that the town, or the county, or the locality, large or small, was originally settled by Virginians. In one of our old Bluegrass counties two of these settlements were made in pioneer times, about two miles apart. One is known as "Jersey Ridge," the other as "Tuckahoe." If in both localities we find an English stock with Anglo-Norman names we should naturally assume a common derivation from the Anglo-Norman branch of the great British race.