THE ENGLISH CHARACTER

The English take it for granted that they have national characteristics which distinguish them from their neighbours; some due to their blood, others to their geographical position, others again to the impact of historical forces on the British Isles. All are contributions to the English character, a mixture of intangibles, which has had a tremendous influence on the destiny of the world/ It was a greatest asset of a small people, places by the Providence on a tiny island, from which they managed to found a huge Empire and impress their civilization upon five continents. What then is that character made of?

An amalgam of Races and Cultures

The English have been concisely defined as “a stream of Germans bottled up on a small island, with a few ingredients of native Celt, Roman and Norman French to make the cork pop,” with the result that the mixture not unnaturally spurted to the other ends of the world and in time flowed over one fourth of the habitable world. The definition serves its purpose, for the population is predominantly Anglo-Saxon, but not purely Nordic, as the invaders of course took wives among the earlier dark-haired inhabitants. The Englishman, therefore, is a more civilized German owing to the infusion of some Celtic or Latin blood. Of the blond, blue-eyed German he has the solid qualities: industry, domestic taste, fearlessness, tenacity, and sometimes the ruthlessness and acquisitive instinct; but he has also bee endowed, from other sources, with creative imagination and a sense of proportion, not to mention his most precious gift: humour. Was it mere coincidence that Shakespeare, the most universal of English poets, was born in the very heart of England, at the cross-roads where races and cultures met and mixed?

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VOCABULARY	\|	British Humour

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