Excerpt from Descriptive Catalogue of Materials Relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland, to the End of the Reign of Henry VII, Vol. 2: From A. D. 1066 to A. D. 1200 I do not say that this is the whole account of the matter, or that any one period of history can be separated from another by such large and sweeping generalizations. It is enough for me to point out for the present that these broader distinctions existed. They may be clearly traced in the literature of the periods here noticed, and they have their origin in the history and condition of the nation. The anglo-saxon was isolated from the Continent it was the inevitable tendency of that isola tion to shut him up in a narrow round of ideas and still narrower sympathies, to make him perfectly satisfied with his present condition, or rather with that state of degeneracy into which he was insensibly sinking deeper and deeper from age to age. His literature is the exact counterpart of that moral and intellectual condition. To force him out of those habits was the inevitable. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.