ENGLISH LITERATURE.

INTRODUCTION.

1. THE literature of a people tells its life. History records its deeds; but literature brings to us, yet warm with their first heat, the appetites and passions, the keen intellectual debate, the higher promptings of the soul, whose blended energies produced the substance of the record. We see some part of a man's outward life, and guess his character, but do not know it as we should if we heard also the debate within, loud under outward silence, and could be spectators of each conflict for which lists are set within the soul. Such witnesses we are, through English literature, of the life of the English-speaking race. Let us not begin the study with a dull belief that it is but a bewilderment of names, dates, and short summaries of conventional opinion, which must be learned by rote. As soon as we can feel that we belong to a free people with a noble past, let us begin to learn through what endeavors and to what end it is free. Liberty as an abstraction is not worth a song. It is precious only for that which it enables us to be and do. Let us bring our hearts, then, to the study which we here begin, and seek through it accord with that true soul of our country by which we may be encouraged to maintain in our own day the best work of our forefathers.

The literature of England has for its most distinctive mark the religious sense of duty. It represents a people striving through successive generations to find out the right, and do it, to root out the wrong, and labor ever onward for the love of God. If this be really the strong spirit of her people, to show

that it is so is to tell how England won, and how alone the English race can expect to keep, the foremost place among the nations.

2. One of the first facts for the student of English literature to make note of is the identity and the continuity of that literature, under all changes in its outward form, from a time near the middle of the seventh century down to the present. Some have taught that English literature begins in the fourteenth century, with Chaucer and his associates; and that the literature that was in England before that time, being called by such names as Anglo-Saxon and Semi-Saxon, was quite another matter, was a literature so different from the English as to be almost an alien literature. This is a twofold mistake, historical and literary. For at least seven hundred years before Chaucer the people of England called themselves the English people, just as they have done during the five hundred years since Chaucer; and during all those centuries they have uniformly called their language and their literature English likewise. For twelve hundred years the people and the speech of England have preserved themselves; they have gone steadily forward in their normal development; neither has lost its identity. Moreover, English literature before Chaucer, not only had this long existence of seven hundred years, but it was abundant in many forms of prose and poetry. When Chaucer came, instead of supposing himself to be at the beginning of a literature, he thought himself at the end of one; and in his poems he asks forbearance of his readers, on the plea that all the harvest of poetry had then been reaped by his predecessors, and that he could only go through the field, and glean among their leavings.

3. We need, also, early in our studies, to fix upon some clear and useful system for the division of English literature into periods. Of course, all such divisions are arbitrary; some of them are likewise fanciful and confusing: yet, if we can discover one that is without the faults last mentioned, we shall find these advantages in it:

(1) It will break up a very large subject into manageable portions.

(2) It will help us to see the successive influences that have been at work in the formation of English literature.

(3) It will help us to see the relations between the literary history of each period and its general history as presented in politics, social life, religion, science, and art.

(4) It will help us to connect the traits of each author with those of his own period, and to see their mutual relations.

A very reasonable system for the division of English literature into periods is one which identifies its several great epochs with the several great epochs of the language in which it is written. Thus, during the twelve centuries in which the English language has existed, there have been at least four great epochs in its development. During the first epoch, extending from 670 to the Norman Conquest in 1066, the language may be described as First English, or Anglo-Saxon. During the second epoch, extending from the Norman Conquest to the middle of the fourteenth century, when Chaucer's career began, the language may be described as Transitional English. During the third epoch, extending from the middle of the fourteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth century, near the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the language may be described as Early Modern English. During the fourth epoch, extending from the middle of the sixteenth century to the present, the language may be described as Modern English.

In the following treatise, therefore, we shall break up the twelve centuries of English literature into four great periods corresponding to these four great stages in the development of the English language.

I. Period of First English, or Anglo-Saxon, 670-1066. II. Period of Transitional English, 1066–1350. III. Period of Early Modern English, 1350-1550. IV. Period of Modern English, 1550 to the present.

Of these four periods, the first two can be conveniently dealt with in bulk, each by itself; but, for the last two periods, the literature is so immense, and the transitions in literary spirit

and form are so rapid, that each needs to be broken up into smaller and subordinate divisions. It is a great help to clearness of apprehension on the part of the student, as well as to fixedness of recollection, if these smaller and subordinate divisions of English literary history can be made to correspond to those simple and natural divisions of English history in general, with which all readers are familiar, namely, divisions into centuries and half-centuries. Accordingly, in this work, beginning with 1350,- at the threshold of our Period of Early Modern English, we have arranged English writers and their works in groupings of half-centuries, as "The First Half of the Eighteenth Century," "The Second Half of the Eighteenth Century," and so forth. The only exception to this practice is in the case of the fifteenth century, of which the entire literary record is so meagre, that it does not need to be divided into halves. Thus the student will be accustomed, from the outset, to associate his knowledge of the literary history of England with his knowledge of its general, social, political, or military history in the same spaces of time, and thereby to see more truly how all these several expressions of the national life of England were swayed at every point by the same influences, how each remains as a witness and a clew to the character of all the others, and how, at last, all need to be studied together, if he would deeply know the history whose meaning he is trying

to master.