Produced by Charles Franks, Bill Keir
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OUTLINES OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CHIEF WRITERS OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA, TO THE BOOKS THEY WROTE, AND TO THE TIMES IN WHICH THEY LIVED
BY
WILLIAM J. LONG
This is the wey to al good aventure.—CHAUCER
TO MY SISTER "MILLIE" IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF A LIFELONG SYMPATHY
[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
After the Chandos Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London, which is attributed to Richard Burbage or John Taylor. In the catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery the following description is given:
"The Chandos Shakespeare was the property of John Taylor,
the player, by whom or by Richard Burbage it was painted.
The picture was left by the former in his will to Sir
William Davenant. After his death it was bought by
Betterton, the actor, upon whose decease Mr. Keck of the
Temple purchased it for 40 guineas, from whom it was
inherited by Mr. Nicoll of Michenden House, Southgate,
Middlesex, whose only daughter married James, Marquess of
Caernarvon, afterwards Duke of Chandos, father to Ann
Eliza, Duchess of Buckingham."
The above is written on paper attached to the back of the canvas.
Its authenticity, however, has been doubted in some quarters.
Purchased at the Stowe Sale, September 1848, by the Earl of
Ellesmere, and presented by him to the nation, March 1856.
Dimensions: 22 in. by 16-3/4 in.
This reproduction of the portrait was made from a miniature copy on ivory by Caroline King Phillips.]
PREFACE
The last thing we find in making a book is to know what to put first.—Pascal
When an author has finished his history, after months or years of happy work, there comes a dismal hour when he must explain its purpose and apologize for its shortcomings.
The explanation in this case is very simple and goes back to a personal experience. When the author first studied the history of our literature there was put into his hands as a textbook a most dreary catalogue of dead authors, dead masterpieces, dead criticisms, dead ages; and a boy who knew chiefly that he was alive was supposed to become interested in this literary sepulchre or else have it said that there was something hopeless about him. Later he learned that the great writers of England and America were concerned with life alone, as the most familiar, the most mysterious, the most fascinating thing in the world, and that the only valuable or interesting feature of any work of literature is its vitality.
To introduce these writers not as dead worthies but as companionable men and women, and to present their living subject as a living thing, winsome as a smile on a human face,—such was the author's purpose in writing this book.
The apology is harder to frame, as anyone knows who has attempted to gather the writers of a thousand years into a single volume that shall have the three virtues of brevity, readableness and accuracy. That this record is brief in view of the immensity of the subject is plainly apparent. That it may prove pleasantly readable is a hope inspired chiefly by the fact that it was a pleasure to write it, and that pleasure is contagious. As for accuracy, every historian who fears God or regards man strives hard enough for that virtue; but after all his striving, remembering the difficulty of criticism and the perversity of names and dates that tend to error as the sparks fly upward, he must still trust heaven and send forth his work with something of Chaucer's feeling when he wrote:
O littel bookë, thou art so unconning,
How darst thou put thy-self in prees for drede?
Which may mean, to one who appreciates Chaucer's wisdom and humor, that having written a little book in what seemed to him an unskilled or "unconning" way, he hesitated to give it to the world for dread of the "prees" or crowd of critics who, even in that early day, were wont to look upon each new book as a camel that must be put through the needle's eye of their tender mercies.
In the selection and arrangement of his material the author has aimed to make a usable book that may appeal to pupils and teachers alike. Because history and literature are closely related (one being the record of man's deed, the other of his thought and feeling) there is a brief historical introduction to every literary period. There is also a review of the general literary tendencies of each age, of the fashions, humors and ideals that influenced writers in forming their style or selecting their subject. Then there is a biography of every important author, written not to offer another subject for hero-worship but to present the man exactly as he was; a review of his chief works, which is intended chiefly as a guide to the best reading; and a critical estimate or appreciation of his writings based partly upon first-hand impressions, partly upon the assumption that an author must deal honestly with life as he finds it and that the business of criticism is, as Emerson said, "not to legislate but to raise the dead." This detailed study of the greater writers of a period is followed by an examination of some of the minor writers and their memorable works. Finally, each chapter concludes with a concise summary of the period under consideration, a list of selections for reading and a bibliography of works that will be found most useful in acquiring a larger knowledge of the subject.
In its general plan this little volume is modeled on the author's more advanced English Literature and American Literature; but the material, the viewpoint, the presentation of individual writers,—all the details of the work are entirely new. Such a book is like a second journey through ample and beautiful regions filled with historic associations, a journey that one undertakes with new companions, with renewed pleasure and, it is to be hoped, with increased wisdom. It is hardly necessary to add that our subject has still its unvoiced charms, that it cannot be exhausted or even adequately presented in any number of histories. For literature deals with life; and life, with its endlessly surprising variety in unity, has happily some suggestion of infinity.
WILLIAM J. LONG
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT
CONTENTS
ENGLISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE
What is Literature? The Tree and the Book. Books of Knowledge and Books of
Power. The Art of Literature. A Definition and Some Objections.
CHAPTER II. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Tributaries of Early Literature. The Anglo-Saxon or Old-English Period.
Specimens of the Language. The Epic of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Songs. Types of
Earliest Poetry. Christian Literature of the Anglo-Saxon Period. The
Northumbrian School. Bede. Cædmon. Cynewulf. The West-Saxon School. Alfred
the Great. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
The Anglo-Norman or Early Middle-English Period. Specimens of the Language.
The Norman Conquest. Typical Norman Literature. Geoffrey of Monmouth. First
Appearance of the Legends of Arthur. Types of Middle-English Literature.
Metrical Romances. Some Old Songs. Summary of the Period. Selections for
Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF CHAUCER AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING
Specimens of the Language. History of the Period. Geoffrey Chaucer.
Contemporaries and Successors of Chaucer. Langland and his Piers
Plowman. Malory and his Morte d' Arthur. Caxton and the First
Printing Press. The King's English as the Language of England. Popular
Ballads. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN AGE
Historical Background. Literary Characteristics of the Period. Foreign
Influence. Outburst of Lyric Poetry. Lyrics of Love. Music and Poetry.
Edmund Spenser. The Rise of the Drama. The Religious Drama. Miracle Plays,
Moralities and Interludes. The Secular Drama. Pageants and Masques. Popular
Comedies. Classical and English Drama. Predecessors of Shakespeare.
Marlowe. Shakespeare. Elizabethan Dramatists after Shakespeare. Ben Jonson.
The Prose Writers. The Fashion of Euphuism. The Authorized Version of the
Scriptures. Francis Bacon. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.
CHAPTER V. THE PURITAN AGE AND THE RESTORATION
Historical Outline. Three Typical Writers. Milton. Bunyan. Dryden. Puritan
and Cavalier Poets. George Herbert. Butler's Hudibras. The Prose
Writers. Thomas Browne. Isaac Walton. Summary of the Period. Selections for
Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER VI. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
History of the Period. Eighteenth-Century Classicism. The Meaning of
Classicism in Literature. Alexander Pope. Swift. Addison. Steele. Johnson.
Boswell. Burke. Historical Writing in the Eighteenth Century. Gibbon.
The Revival of Romantic Poetry. Collins and Gray. Goldsmith. Burns. Minor
Poets of Romanticism. Cowper. Macpherson and the Ossian Poems. Chatterton.
Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. William Blake.
The Early English Novel. The Old Romance and the New Novel. Defoe.
Richardson. Fielding. Influence of the Early Novelists. Summary of the
Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER VII. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
Historical Outline. The French Revolution and English Literature.
Wordsworth. Coleridge. Southey. The Revolutionary Poets. Byron and Shelley.
Keats. The Minor Poets. Campbell, Moore, Keble, Hood, Felicia Hemans, Leigh
Hunt and Thomas Beddoes. The Fiction Writers. Walter Scott. Jane Austen.
The Critics and Essayists. Charles Lamb. De Quincey. Summary of the Period.
Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER VIII. THE VICTORIAN AGE
Historical Outline. The Victorian Poets. Tennyson. Browning. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. Matthew Arnold. The Pre-Raphaelites. Rossetti. Morris.
Swinburne. Minor Poets and Songs in Many Keys.
The Greater Victorian Novelists. Dickens. Thackeray. George Eliot. Other
Writers of Notable Novels. The Brontë Sisters. Mrs. Gaskell. Charles Reade.
Anthony Trollope. Blackmore. Kingsley. Later Victorian Novelists. Meredith.
Hardy. Stevenson.
Victorian Essayists and Historians. Typical Writers. Macaulay. Carlyle. Ruskin. Variety of Victorian Literature. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
AMERICAN LITERATURE
CHAPTER I. THE PIONEERS AND NATION-BUILDERS
Unique Quality of Early American Literature. Two Views of the Pioneers. The
Colonial Period. Annalists and Historians. Bradford and Byrd. Puritan and
Cavalier Influences. Colonial Poetry. Wiggles-worth. Anne Bradstreet.
Godfrey. Nature and Human Nature in Colonial Records. The Indian in
Literature. Religious Writers. Cotton Mather and Edwards.
The Revolutionary Period. Party Literature. Benjamin Franklin.
Revolutionary Poetry. The Hartford Wits. Trumbull's M'Fingal.
Freneau. Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution. Citizen Literature. James
Otis and Patrick Henry. Hamilton and Jefferson. Miscellaneous Writers.
Thomas Paine. Crèvecoeur. Woolman. Beginning of American Fiction. Charles
Brockden Brown. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE OF THE NEW NATION
Historical Background. Literary Environment. The National Spirit in Prose
and Verse. The Knickerbocker School. Halleck, Drake, Willis and Paulding.
Southern Writers. Simms, Kennedy, Wilde and Wirt. Various New England
Writers. First Literature of the West. Major Writers of the Period. Irving.
Bryant. Cooper. Poe. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.
CHAPTER III. THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT
Political History. Social and Intellectual Changes. Brook Farm and Other
Reform Societies. The Transcendental Movement. Literary Characteristics of
the Period. The Elder Poets. Longfellow. Whittier. Lowell. Holmes, Lanier.
Whitman. The Greater Prose Writers. Emerson. Hawthorne. Some Minor Poets.
Timrod, Hayne, Ryan, Stoddard and Bayard Taylor. Secondary Writers of
Fiction. Mrs. Stowe, Dana, Herman Melville, Cooke, Eggleston and Winthrop.
Juvenile Literature. Louisa M. Alcott. Trowbridge. Miscellaneous Prose.
Thoreau. The Historians. Motley, Prescott and Parkman. Summary of the
Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER IV. THE ALL-AMERICA PERIOD
The New Spirit of Nationality. Contemporary History. The Short Story and
its Development. Bret Harte. The Local-Color Story and Some Typical
Writers. The Novel since 1876. Realism in Recent Fiction. Howells. Mark
Twain. Various Types of Realism. Dialect Stories. Joel Chandler Harris.
Recent Romances. Historical Novels. Poetry since 1876. Stedman and Aldrich.
The New Spirit in Poetry. Joaquin Miller. Dialect Poems. The Poetry of
Common Life. Carleton and Riley. Other Typical Poets. Miscellaneous Prose.
The Nature Writers. History and Biography. John Fiske. Literary History and
Reminiscence. Bibliography.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
William Shakespeare
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain
Cædmon Cross at Whitby Abbey
Domesday Book
The Norman Stair, Canterbury Cathedral
Chaucer
Pilgrims setting out from the "Tabard"
A Street in Caerleon on Usk
The Almonry, Westminster
Michael Drayton
Edmund Spenser
Raleigh's Birthplace, Budleigh Salterton
The Library, Stratford Grammar School, attended by Shakespeare
Anne Hathaway's Cottage
The Main Room, Anne Hathaway's Cottage
Cawdor Castle, Scotland, associated with Macbeth
Francis Beaumont
John Fletcher
Ben Jonson
Sir Philip Sidney
Francis Bacon
John Milton
Cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire
Ludlow Castle
John Bunyan
Bunyan Meetinghouse, Southwark
John Dryden
George Herbert
Sir Thomas Browne
Isaac Walton
Old Fishing House, on River Dove, used by Walton
Alexander Pope
Twickenham Parish Church, where Pope was buried
Jonathan Swift
Trinity College, Dublin
Joseph Addison
Magdalen College, Oxford
Sir Richard Steele
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Dr. Johnson's House (Bolt Court, Fleet St.)
James Boswell
Edmund Burke
Edward Gibbon
Thomas Gray
Stoke Poges Churchyard, showing Part of the Church and Gray's Tomb
Oliver Goldsmith
"The Cheshire Cheese," London, showing Dr. Johnson's Favorite Seat
Canonbury Tower (London)
Robert Burns
"Ellisland," the Burns Farm, Dumfries
The Village of Tarbolton, near which Burns Lived
Auld Alloway Kirk
Burns's Mausoleum
William Cowper
Daniel Defoe
Cupola House
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth's Desk in Hawkshead School
St. Oswald's Church, Grasmere
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somersetshire
Robert Southey
Greta Hall, in the Lake Region
Lord Byron
Newstead Abbey and Byron Oak
The Castle of Chillon
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
Leigh Hunt
Walter Scott
Abbotsford
The Great Window, Melrose Abbey
Scott's Tomb in Dryburgh Abbey
Mrs. Hannah More
Charles Lamb
East India House, London
Mary Lamb
The Lamb Building, Inner Temple, London
Thomas De Quincey
Dove Cottage, Grasmere
Tennyson's Birthplace, Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire
Alfred Tennyson
Summerhouse at Farringford
Robert Browning
Mrs. Browning's Tomb, at Florence
The Palazzo Rezzonico, Browning's Home in Venice
Piazza of San Lorenzo, Florence
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Matthew Arnold
The Manor House of William Morris
William Morris
Charles Dickens
Gadshill Place, near Rochester
Dickens's Birthplace, Landport, Portsea
Yard of Reindeer Inn, Danbury
The Gatehouse at Rochester, near Dickens's Home
William Makepeace Thackeray
Charterhouse School
George Eliot
Griff House, George Eliot's Early Home in Warwickshire
Charlotte Brontë
Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell
Richard Doddridge Blackmore
Robert Louis Stevenson
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Carlyle
Carlyle's House, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
Arch Home, Ecclefechan
John Ruskin
Entrance to "Westover," Home of William Byrd
Plymouth in 1662. Bradford's House on Right
William Byrd
New Amsterdam (New York) in 1663
Cotton Mather
Jonathan Edwards
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin's Shop
Philip Freneau
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
Monticello, the Home of Jefferson in Virginia
Charles Brockden Brown
William Gilmore Simms
John Pendleton Kennedy
Washington Irving
"Sunnyside," Home of Irving
Rip Van Winkle
Old Dutch Church, Sleepy Hollow
William Cullen Bryant
Bryant's Home, at Cummington
James Fenimore Cooper
Otsego Hall, Home of Cooper
Cooper's Cave
Edgar Allan Poe
West Range, University of Virginia
The Building of the Southern Literary Messenger
"The Man" (Abraham Lincoln)
Birthplace of Longfellow at Falmouth (now Portland) Maine
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Taproom, Wayside Inn, Sudbury
Longfellow's Library in Craigie House, Cambridge
John Greenleaf Whittier
Oak Knoll, Whittier's Home, Danvers, Massachusetts
Street in Old Marblehead
James Russell Lowell
Lowell's House, Cambridge, in Winter
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old Colonial Doorway
Sidney Lanier
The Village of McGaheysville, Virginia
Whitman's Birthplace, West Hills, Long Island
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson's Home, Concord
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Old Customhouse, Boston
"The House of the Seven Gables," Salem (built in 1669)
Hawthorne's Birthplace, Salem, Massachusetts
Henry Timrod
Paul Hamilton Hayne
Harriet Beecher Stowe
John Esten Cooke
Louisa M Alcott
Henry D Thoreau
Francis Parkman
Bret Harte
George W. Cable
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
William Dean Howells
Mark Twain
Joel Chandler Harris
Edmund Clarence Stedman
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Joaquin Miller
John Fiske
Edward Everett Hale
OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE
(Not a Lesson, but an Invitation)
I sleep, yet I love to be wakened, and love to see
The fresh young faces bending over me;
And the faces of them that are old, I love them too,
For these, as well, in the days of their youth I knew.
"Song of the Well"
WHAT IS LITERATURE? In an old English book, written before Columbus dreamed of a westward journey to find the East, is the story of a traveler who set out to search the world for wisdom. Through Palestine and India he passed, traveling by sea or land through many seasons, till he came to a wonderful island where he saw a man plowing in the fields. And the wonder was, that the man was calling familiar words to his oxen, "such wordes as men speken to bestes in his owne lond." Startled by the sound of his mother tongue he turned back on his course "in gret mervayle, for he knewe not how it myghte be." But if he had passed on a little, says the old record, "he would have founden his contree and his owne knouleche."
Facing a new study of literature our impulse is to search in strange places for a definition; but though we compass a world of books, we must return at last, like the worthy man of Mandeville's Travels, to our own knowledge. Since childhood we have been familiar with this noble subject of literature. We have entered into the heritage of the ancient Greeks, who thought that Homer was a good teacher for the nursery; we have made acquaintance with Psalm and Prophecy and Parable, with the knightly tales of Malory, with the fairy stories of Grimm or Andersen, with the poetry of Shakespeare, with the novels of Scott or Dickens,—in short, with some of the best books that the world has ever produced. We know, therefore, what literature is, and that it is an excellent thing which ministers to the joy of living; but when we are asked to define the subject, we are in the position of St. Augustine, who said of time, "If you ask me what time is, I know not; but if you ask me not, then I know." For literature is like happiness, or love, or life itself, in that it can be understood or appreciated but can never be exactly described. It has certain describable qualities, however, and the best place to discover these is our own bookcase.
[Sidenote: THE TREE AND THE BOOK]
Here on a shelf are a Dictionary, a History of America, a text on Chemistry, which we read or study for information; on a higher shelf are As You Like It, Hiawatha, Lorna Doone, The Oregon Trail, and other works to which we go for pleasure when the day's work is done. In one sense all these and all other books are literature; for the root meaning of the word is "letters," and a letter means a character inscribed or rubbed upon a prepared surface. A series of letters intelligently arranged forms a book, and for the root meaning of "book" you must go to a tree; because the Latin word for book, liber, means the inner layer of bark that covers a tree bole, and "book" or "boc" is the old English name for the beech, on whose silvery surface our ancestors carved their first runic letters.
So also when we turn the "leaves" of a book, our mind goes back over a long trail: through rattling printing-shop, and peaceful monk's cell, and gloomy cave with walls covered with picture writing, till the trail ends beside a shadowy forest, where primitive man takes a smooth leaf and inscribes his thought upon it by means of a pointed stick. A tree is the Adam of all books, and everything that the hand of man has written upon the tree or its products or its substitutes is literature. But that is too broad a definition; we must limit it by excluding what does not here concern us.
[Sidenote: BOOKS OF KNOWLEDGE AND OF POWER]
Our first exclusion is of that immense class of writings—books of science, history, philosophy, and the rest—to which we go for information. These aim to preserve or to systematize the discoveries of men; they appeal chiefly to the intellect and they are known as the literature of knowledge. There remains another large class of writings, sometimes called the literature of power, consisting of poems, plays, essays, stories of every kind, to which we go treasure-hunting for happiness or counsel, for noble thoughts or fine feelings, for rest of body or exercise of spirit,—for almost everything, in fine, except information. As Chaucer said, long ago, such writings are:
For pleasaunce high, and for noon other end.
They aim to give us pleasure; they appeal chiefly to our imagination and our emotions; they awaken in us a feeling of sympathy or admiration for whatever is beautiful in nature or society or the soul of man.
[Sidenote: THE ART OF LITERATURE]
The author who would attempt books of such high purpose must be careful of both the matter and the manner of his writing, must give one thought to what he shall say and another thought to how he shall say it. He selects the best or most melodious words, the finest figures, and aims to make his story or poem beautiful in itself, as a painter strives to reflect a face or a landscape in a beautiful way. Any photographer can in a few minutes reproduce a human face, but only an artist can by care and labor bring forth a beautiful portrait. So any historian can write the facts of the Battle of Gettysburg; but only a Lincoln can in noble words reveal the beauty and immortal meaning of that mighty conflict.
To all such written works, which quicken our sense of the beautiful, and which are as a Jacob's ladder on which we mount for higher views of nature or humanity, we confidently give the name "literature," meaning the art of literature in distinction from the mere craft of writing.
[Sidenote: THE PASSING AND THE PERMANENT]
Such a definition, though it cuts out the greater part of human records, is still too broad for our purpose, and again we must limit it by a process of exclusion. For to study almost any period of English letters is to discover that it produced hundreds of books which served the purpose of literature, if only for a season, by affording pleasure to readers. No sooner were they written than Time began to winnow them over and over, giving them to all the winds of opinion, one generation after another, till the hosts of ephemeral works were swept aside, and only a remnant was left in the hands of the winnower. To this remnant, books of abiding interest, on which the years have no effect save to mellow or flavor them, we give the name of great or enduring literature; and with these chiefly we deal in our present study.
[Sidenote: THE QUALITY OF GREATNESS]
To the inevitable question, What are the marks of great literature? no positive answer can be returned. As a tree is judged by its fruits, so is literature judged not by theory but by the effect which it produces on human life; and the judgment is first personal, then general. If a book has power to awaken in you a lively sense of pleasure or a profound emotion of sympathy; if it quickens your love of beauty or truth or goodness; if it moves you to generous thought or noble action, then that book is, for you and for the time, a great book. If after ten or fifty years it still has power to quicken you, then for you at least it is a great book forever. And if it affects many other men and women as it affects you, and if it lives with power from one generation to another, gladdening the children as it gladdened the fathers, then surely it is great literature, without further qualification or need of definition. From this viewpoint the greatest poem in the world—greatest in that it abides in most human hearts as a loved and honored guest—is not a mighty Iliad or Paradise Lost or Divine Comedy; it is a familiar little poem of a dozen lines, beginning "The Lord is my Shepherd."
It is obvious that great literature, which appeals to all classes of men and to all times, cannot go far afield for rare subjects, or follow new inventions, or concern itself with fashions that are here to-day and gone to-morrow. Its only subjects are nature and human nature; it deals with common experiences of joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, that all men understand; it cherishes the unchanging ideals of love, faith, duty, freedom, reverence, courtesy, which were old to the men who kept their flocks on the plains of Shinar, and which will be young as the morning to our children's children.
Such ideals tend to ennoble a writer, and therefore are great books characterized by lofty thought, by fine feeling and, as a rule, by a beautiful simplicity of expression. They have another quality, hard to define but easy to understand, a quality which leaves upon us the impression of eternal youth, as if they had been dipped in the fountain which Ponce de Leon sought for in vain through the New World. If a great book could speak, it would use the words of the Cobzar (poet) in his "Last Song":
The merry Spring, he is my brother,
And when he comes this way
Each year again, he always asks me:
"Art thou not yet grown gray?"
But I. I keep my youth forever,
Even as the Spring his May.
A DEFINITION. Literature, then, if one must formulate a definition, is the written record of man's best thought and feeling, and English literature is the part of that record which belongs to the English people. In its broadest sense literature includes all writing, but as we commonly define the term it excludes works which aim at instruction, and includes only the works which aim to give pleasure, and which are artistic in that they reflect nature or human life in a way to arouse our sense of beauty. In a still narrower sense, when we study the history of literature we deal chiefly with the great, the enduring books, which may have been written in an elder or a latter day, but which have in them the magic of all time.
One may easily challenge such a definition, which, like most others, is far from faultless. It is difficult, for example, to draw the line sharply between instructive and pleasure-giving works; for many an instructive book of history gives us pleasure, and there may be more instruction on important matters in a pleasurable poem than in a treatise on ethics. Again, there are historians who allege that English literature must include not simply the works of Britain but everything written in the English language. There are other objections; but to straighten them all out is to be long in starting, and there is a pleasant journey ahead of us. Chaucer had literature in mind when he wrote:
Through me men goon into that blisful place
Of hertës hele and dedly woundës cure;
Through me men goon unto the wells of grace,
Ther grene and lusty May shal ever endure:
This is the wey to al good aventure.
CHAPTER II
BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Then the warrior, battle-tried, touched the sounding glee-wood:
Straight awoke the harp's sweet note; straight a song uprose,
Sooth and sad its music. Then from hero's lips there fell
A wonder-tale, well told.
Beowulf, line 2017 (a free rendering)
In its beginnings English literature is like a river, which proceeds not from a single wellhead but from many springs, each sending forth its rivulet of sweet or bitter water. As there is a place where the river assumes a character of its own, distinct from all its tributaries, so in English literature there is a time when it becomes national rather than tribal, and English rather than Saxon or Celtic or Norman. That time was in the fifteenth century, when the poems of Chaucer and the printing press of Caxton exalted the Midland above all other dialects and established it as the literary language of England.
[Sidenote: TRIBUTARIES OF LITERATURE]
Before that time, if you study the records of Britain, you meet several different tribes and races of men: the native Celt, the law-giving Roman, the colonizing Saxon, the sea-roving Dane, the feudal baron of Normandy, each with his own language and literature reflecting the traditions of his own people. Here in these old records is a strange medley of folk heroes, Arthur and Beowulf, Cnut and Brutus, Finn and Cuchulain, Roland and Robin Hood. Older than the tales of such folk-heroes are ancient riddles, charms, invocations to earth and sky:
Hal wes thu, Folde, fira moder!
Hail to thee, Earth, thou mother of men!
With these pagan spells are found the historical writings of the Venerable Bede, the devout hymns of Cædmon, Welsh legends, Irish and Scottish fairy stories, Scandinavian myths, Hebrew and Christian traditions, romances from distant Italy which had traveled far before the Italians welcomed them. All these and more, whether originating on British soil or brought in by missionaries or invaders, held each to its own course for a time, then met and mingled in the swelling stream which became English literature.
[Illustration: STONEHENGE, ON SALISBURY PLAIN
Probably the ruins of a temple of the native Britons]
To trace all these tributaries to their obscure and lonely sources would require the labor of a lifetime. We shall here examine only the two main branches of our early literature, to the end that we may better appreciate the vigor and variety of modern English. The first is the Anglo-Saxon, which came into England in the middle of the fifth century with the colonizing Angles, Jutes and Saxons from the shores of the North Sea and the Baltic; the second is the Norman-French, which arrived six centuries later at the time of the Norman invasion. Except in their emphasis on personal courage, there is a marked contrast between these two branches, the former being stern and somber, the latter gay and fanciful. In Anglo-Saxon poetry we meet a strong man who cherishes his own ideals of honor, in Norman-French poetry a youth eagerly interested in romantic tales gathered from all the world. One represents life as a profound mystery, the other as a happy adventure.
* * * * *
ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD (450-1050)
SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. Our English speech has changed so much in the course of centuries that it is now impossible to read our earliest records without special study; but that Anglo-Saxon is our own and not a foreign tongue may appear from the following examples. The first is a stanza from "Widsith," the chant of a wandering gleeman or minstrel; and for comparison we place beside it Andrew Lang's modern version. Nobody knows how old "Widsith" is; it may have been sung to the accompaniment of a harp that was broken fourteen hundred years ago. The second, much easier to read, is from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was prepared by King Alfred from an older record in the ninth century:
Swa scrithende
gesceapum hweorfath,
Gleomen gumena
geond grunda fela;
Thearfe secgath,
thonc-word sprecath,
Simle, suth oththe north
sumne gemetath,
Gydda gleawne
geofam unhneawne.
So wandering on
the world about,
Gleemen do roam
through many lands;
They say their needs,
they speak their thanks,
Sure, south or north
someone to meet,
Of songs to judge
and gifts not grudge.
Her Hengest and Aesc, his sunu, gefuhton wid Bryttas on thaere
stowe the is gecweden Creccanford, and thaer ofslogon feower
thusenda wera. And tha Bryttas tha forleton Cent-lond, and mid
myclum ege flugon to Lundenbyrig.
At this time Hengist and Esk, his son, fought with the Britons at the place that is called Crayford, and there slew four thousand men. And the Britons then forsook Kentland, and with much fear fled to London town.
BEOWULF. The old epic poem, called after its hero Beowulf, is more than myth or legend, more even than history; it is a picture of a life and a world that once had real existence. Of that vanished life, that world of ancient Englishmen, only a few material fragments remain: a bit of linked armor, a rusted sword with runic inscriptions, the oaken ribs of a war galley buried with the Viking who had sailed it on stormy seas, and who was entombed in it because he loved it. All these are silent witnesses; they have no speech or language. But this old poem is a living voice, speaking with truth and sincerity of the daily habit of the fathers of modern England, of their adventures by sea or land, their stern courage and grave courtesy, their ideals of manly honor, their thoughts of life and death.
Let us hear, then, the story of Beowulf, picturing in our imagination the story-teller and his audience. The scene opens in a great hall, where a fire blazes on the hearth and flashes upon polished shields against the timbered walls. Down the long room stretches a table where men are feasting or passing a beaker from hand to hand, and anon crying Hal! hal! in answer to song or in greeting to a guest. At the head of the hall sits the chief with his chosen ealdormen. At a sign from the chief a gleeman rises and strikes a single clear note from his harp. Silence falls on the benches; the story begins:
Hail! we of the Spear Danes in days of old
Have heard the glory of warriors sung;
Have cheered the deeds that our chieftains wrought,
And the brave Scyld's triumph o'er his foes.
Then because there are Scyldings present, and because brave men revere their ancestors, the gleeman tells a beautiful legend of how King Scyld came and went: how he arrived as a little child, in a war-galley that no man sailed, asleep amid jewels and weapons; and how, when his life ended at the call of Wyrd or Fate, they placed him against the mast of a ship, with treasures heaped around him and a golden banner above his head, gave ship and cargo to the winds, and sent their chief nobly back to the deep whence he came.
So with picturesque words the gleeman thrills his hearers with a vivid picture of a Viking's sea-burial. It thrills us now, when the Vikings are no more, and when no other picture can be drawn by an eyewitness of that splendid pagan rite.
[Sidenote: THE STORY OF HEOROT]
One of Scyld's descendants was King Hrothgar (Roger) who built the hall Heorot, where the king and his men used to gather nightly to feast, and to listen to the songs of scop or gleeman. [Footnote: Like Agamemnon and the Greek chieftains, every Saxon leader had his gleeman or minstrel, and had also his own poet, his scop or "shaper," whose duty it was to shape a glorious deed into more glorious verse. So did our pagan ancestors build their monuments out of songs that should live in the hearts of men when granite or earth mound had crumbled away.] "There was joy of heroes," but in one night the joy was changed to mourning. Out on the lonely fens dwelt the jotun (giant or monster) Grendel, who heard the sound of men's mirth and quickly made an end of it. One night, as the thanes slept in the hall, he burst in the door and carried off thirty warriors to devour them in his lair under the sea. Another and another horrible raid followed, till Heorot was deserted and the fear of Grendel reigned among the Spear Danes. There were brave men among them, but of what use was courage when their weapons were powerless against the monster? "Their swords would not bite on his body."
For twelve years this terror continued; then the rumor of Grendel reached the land of the Geats, where Beowulf lived at the court of his uncle, King Hygelac. No sooner did Beowulf hear of a dragon to be slain, of a friendly king "in need of a man," than he selected fourteen companions and launched his war-galley in search of adventure.
[Sidenote: THE SAILING OF BEOWULF]
At this point the old epic becomes a remarkable portrayal of daily life. In its picturesque lines we see the galley set sail, foam flying from her prow; we catch the first sight of the southern headlands, approach land, hear the challenge of the "warder of the cliffs" and Beowulf's courteous answer. We follow the march to Heorot in war-gear, spears flashing, swords and byrnies clanking, and witness the exchange of greetings between Hrothgar and the young hero. Again is the feast spread in Heorot; once more is heard the song of gleemen, the joyous sound of warriors in comradeship. There is also a significant picture of Hrothgar's wife, "mindful of courtesies," honoring her guests by passing the mead-cup with her own hands. She is received by these stern men with profound respect.
When the feast draws to an end the fear of Grendel returns. Hrothgar warns his guests that no weapon can harm the monster, that it is death to sleep in the hall; then the Spear Danes retire, leaving Beowulf and his companions to keep watch and ward. With the careless confidence of brave men, forthwith they all fall asleep:
Forth from the fens, from the misty moorlands,
Grendel came gliding—God's wrath he bore—
Came under clouds until he saw clearly,
Glittering with gold plates, the mead-hall of men.
Down fell the door, though hardened with fire-bands,
Open it sprang at the stroke of his paw.
Swollen with rage burst in the bale-bringer,
Flamed in his eyes a fierce light, likest fire.
[Sidenote: THE FIGHT WITH GRENDEL]
Throwing himself upon the nearest sleeper Grendel crushes and swallows him; then he stretches out a paw towards Beowulf, only to find it "seized in such a grip as the fiend had never felt before." A desperate conflict begins, and a mighty uproar,—crashing of benches, shoutings of men, the "war-song" of Grendel, who is trying to break the grip of his foe. As the monster struggles toward the door, dragging the hero with him, a wide wound opens on his shoulder; the sinews snap, and with a mighty wrench Beowulf tears off the whole limb. While Grendel rushes howling across the fens, Beowulf hangs the grisly arm with its iron claws, "the whole grapple of Grendel," over the door where all may see it.
Once more there is joy in Heorot, songs, speeches, the liberal giving of gifts. Thinking all danger past, the Danes sleep in the hall; but at midnight comes the mother of Grendel, raging to avenge her son. Seizing the king's bravest companion she carries him away, and he is never seen again.
Here is another adventure for Beowulf. To old Hrothgar, lamenting
his lost earl, the hero says simply: