MACMILLAN'S STANDARD LIBRARY
ENGLISH LITERATURE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
BY
STOPFORD A. BROOKE, M.A.
WITH CHAPTERS ON
ENGLISH LITERATURE (1832-1892) AND
ON AMERICAN LITERATURE
BY
GEORGE R. CARPENTER
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
CbmUOHT, 1896,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
COPYRIGHT 1900,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Revised edition printed August, igoa Reprinted September,
1900; March, igoi ; March, 1909; February, 1903; October, 1904;
February, May, 1906.
NorfaooB $reB8
J. 8. Cnihing ft Co. Berwick ft Smith
Norwood HUB. U.S.A.
Annex
H3
PREFATORY NOTE
AT the request of the publishers and with the con-
sent of Mr. Stopford Brooke, Chapters IX-XII have
been added by Mr. George R. Carpenter of Columbia
University. It is appropriate at this time to recall to the
public the history of this remarkable little volume, which
has, in a way, become an English classic. It was first
issued by Macmillan and Company, in 1876, under the
title of A Primer of English Literature, and won the
warm approbation of Matthew Arnold, whose essay,
" A Guide to English Literature " (Mixed Essays, pages
135-153), is a critical estimate of Mr. Brooke's method
and results. In 1896 the volume was revised and in
part rewritten by the author, and appeared under the
title of English Literature. The present additions con-
tinue the history of English Literature through the
period ending with the deaths of Tennyson and Brown-
ing, and include a brief sketch of American Literature.
THE PUBLISHERS.
MARCH, 1900.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
FACE
ENGLISH LITERATURE BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST,
670-1066 i
CHAPTER II
FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER'S DEATH, 1066-1400 . 32
CHAPTER III
FROM CHAUCER'S DEATH TO ELIZABETH, 1400-1558 . , 72
CHAPTER IV
THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH, 1558-1603 .... 98
CHAPTER V
FROM ELIZABETH'S DEATH TO THE RESTORATION, 1603-
1660 150
CHAPTER VI
FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE DEATH OF POPE AND
SWIFT, 1660-1745 170
vii
V111 CONTENTS
CHAPTER VII
PACK
PROSE LITERATURE FROM THE DEATH OF POPE AND SWIFT
TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FROM THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION TO THE DEATH OF SCOTT, 1745-1832 . 196
CHAPTER VIII
POETRY FROM 1730-1832 213
CHAPTER IX
PROSE LITERATURE FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT TO THE
DEATH OF GEORGE ELIOT, 1832-1881 .... 250
CHAPTER X
POETRY FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT TO THE DEATHS OF
TENNYSON AND BROWNING, 1832-1892 .... 276
CHAPTER XI
PROSE LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES . . .281
CHAPTER XII
POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 309
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 323
INDEX ....,....*. 343
ENGLISH LITERATURE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
WRITERS BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 670-1066
i. The History of English Literature is the story
of what great English men and women thought and felt,
and then wrote down in good prose and beautiful poetry
in the English language. The story is a long one. It
begins in England about the year 670; it had its un-
written beginnings still earlier on the Continent, in the
old Angle- Land; it was still going on in the year which
closes this book, 1832 ; nor has our literature lost any of
its creative force in the years which have followed 1832.
Into this little book then is to be briefly put the story of
nearly 1200 years of the thoughts, feelings, and imagina-
tion of a great people. Every English man and woman
has good reason to be proud of the work done by their
forefathers in prose and poetry. Every one who can
write a good book or a good song may say to himself,
" I belong to a noble company, which has been teaching
B I
2 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and delighting the world for more than 1000 years."
And that is a fact in which those who write and those
who read English literature ought to feel a noble pride.
2. The English and the Welsh. This literature is
written in English, the tongue of our fathers. They
lived, while this island of ours was still called Britain, in
North and South Denmark, in Hanover and Friesland
Jutes, Angles, and Saxons. Their common tongue and
name were English; but, either because they were
pressed from the inland, perhaps by Attila, or for pure
love of adventure, they took to the sea, and, landing at
various parts of Britain at various times, drove back,
after 150 years of hard fighting, the Britons, whom they
called Welsh, to the land now called Wales, to Strath-
clyde, and to Cornwall. It is well for those who study
English literature to remember that in these places
the Britons remained as a distinct race with a distinct
literature of their own, because the stories and the poetry
of the Britons crept afterwards into English literature
and had a great influence upon it. Moreover, in the
later days of the Conquest, a great number of the Welsh
were amalgamated with the English. The whole tale of
King Arthur, of which English poetry and even English
prose is so full, was a British tale. Some then of the
imaginative work of the conquered afterwards took cap-
tive their fierce conquerors.
3. The English Tongue. The earliest form of our
English tongue is very different from modern English in
form, pronunciation, and appearance ; but still the Ian-
guage written in the year 700 is the same as that in
which the prose of the Bible is written, just as much as
the tree planted a hundred years ago is the same tree
to-day. It is this sameness of language, as well as the
sameness of national spirit, which makes our literature
one literature for 1200 years.
4. Of English Literature written in this tongue we
have no extant prose until the time of King ^Elfred.
Men like Baeda and Ealdhelm wrote their prose in
Latin. But we have, in a few manuscripts, a great deal
of poetry written in English, chiefly before the days
of ^Elfred. There is (i) the MS. under the name of
Cadmon's Paraphrase, a collection of religious poems
by various writers, now in the Bodleian. There is (2)
the MS. of Beowulf and of the last three books of
Judith. There is (3) the Exeter Book, a miscellaneous
collection of poems, left by Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, to
his cathedral church in the year 1071. There is (4) the
Vercelli Book, discovered at Vercelli in the year 1822, in
which, along with homilies, there is a collection of six
poems. A few leaflets complete the list of the MSS.
containing poems earlier than ^Elfred. All together they
constitute a vernacular poetry which consists of more
than twenty thousand lines.
5. The metre of the poems is essentially the same, un-
like any modern metre, without rhyme, and without any
fixed number of syllables. Its essential elements were
accent and alliteration. Every verse is divided into two
half-verses by a pause, and has four accented syllables,
4 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
while the number of unaccented syllables is indifferent.
These half-verses are linked together by alliteration. The
two accented syllables of the first half, and one of the
accented syllables in the second half, begin with the same
consonant, or with vowels which were generally different
one from another. This is the formal rule. But to give
a greater freedom there is often only one alliterative
letter in the first half-verse. Here is an example of the
usual form :
And </eaw-</rtas : on <ege weor'Se'S
Winde geondsawen.
And the (few-downfall : at the c/ay-break is
Winnowed by the wind.
This metre was continually varied, and was capable,
chiefly by the addition of unaccented syllables, of many
harmonious changes. The length of the lines depended
on the nature of the things described, or on the rise and
fall of the singer's emotion ; the emphatic words in which
the chief thought lay were accented and alliterated, and
probably received an additional force by the beat of the
hand upon the harp. All the poetry was sung, and the
poet could alter, as he sang, the movement of the verse.
But, however the metre was varied, it was not varied
arbitrarily. It followed clear rules, and all its develop-
ments were built on the simple original type of four
accents and three alliterated syllables. This was the
vehicle, interspersed with some rare instances in which
rhymes were employed, in which all English poetry was
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST $
sung and written till the French system of rhymes, metres,
and accents was transferred to the English tongue ; and
it continued, alongside of the French system, to be used,
sometimes much and sometimes little, until the sixteenth
century. Nor, though its use was finished then, was its
influence lost. Its habits, especially alliteration, have
entered into all English poetry.
6. The Characters of this Poetry. (i) It is marked
by parallelism. It frequently repeats the same statement
or thought in different ways. But this is not so common
as it is, for example, in Hebrew poetry. (2) It uses
the ordinary metaphorical phrases of Teutonic poetry,
such as the whale 1 s-road for the sea, but uses them with
greater moderation or with less inventiveness than the
Icelandic poets. Elaborate similes are not found in the
earlier poetry, but later poets, Cynewulf especially, invent
them, not frequently, but well. (3) A great variety of
compound words, chiefly adjectives, also characterise it,
by the use of which the poet strove to express with
brevity a number of qualities belonging to his subject.
When Tennyson used such adjectives as hollow-vaulted,
dainty-woeful, he was returning to the custom of his
ancient predecessors. (4) At times the poetry is con-
cise and direct, but this is chiefly found in those parts
of the poems which have some relation to heathen
times. For the most part, save when the subject is
war or sea-voyaging, the poetry is diffuse, and wearies
by a constant repetition. But we owe a great deal of
this repetition to the introduction of extempore matter
6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
by the bards as they sung. There is not much of it in
poems which have been carefully edited, as many were
in the time of Alfred. Nor do I think that the original
lays which the bards expanded were more diffuse than
the early Icelandic lays. (5) It is the earliest extant
body of poetry in any modern language. It began to
be written in England towards the close of the seventh
century, and all its best work was done before the close
of the eighth. (6) Its width of range is very remarkable.
The epic is represented in it by Beowulf. Judith is an
heroic saga. The earlier Genesis is a paraphrase with
original episodes. The later Genesis is an epic fragment
with dramatic conversations, and in other poems there
are traces of what might have formed a basis for a
dramatic literature. The Exodus is an heroic narrative,
freely invented on the Biblical story. The Christ of
Cynewulf is a threefold poem, conceived like a trilogy,
in the honour of Christ, the Hero. Narrative poetry is
represented by Cynewulf s poems of the life of Saint
GutSlac, of the martyrdom of Saint Juliana, by the Elcnc
and the Andreas. There is one pure lyric, and there
are sacred hymns of joy among Cynewulfs poems which
have all the quality of lyrics. There are five elegiac
poems. There are a number of Riddles, some of
which are poems of pure natural description. There
are didactic, gnomic, and allegorical poems. Almost
every form of poetry is represented. (7) It is the
only early poetry which has poems wholly dedicated to
descriptions of nature. Of such descriptions there is no
trace in the Icelandic poetry. For anything resembling
them we must look forward to the nineteenth century.
(8) Many of the poems are extraordinarily modern in
feeling. The hymns of Cynewulf might have been writ-
ten by Crashaw. The sentiment of the Wanderer and the
Ruin might belong to this century. The Seafarer has
the same note of feeling for the sea which prevails in
the sea-poetry of Swinburne and Tennyson. (9) There
is no trace of any Norse influence or religion on early
English poetry. Old Saxon poetry influenced the later
English verse, but may itself have been derived from
England. The poetry of natural description owes much
to the Celtic influence which was largely present in
Northumbria, but otherwise there is no Celtic note in
early English poetry. There is a classic note. Virgil
and other Latin poets were read by those whom Baeda
taught, and the ancient models had their wonted power.
The unexpected strain of culture, so remarkable in this
poetry, must, I think, be due to this influence. (10)
The greater part of this poetry was written in Nor-
thumbria, and before the coming of the Danes. This has
been questioned, but it seems not wisely. The only
examples of any importance outside of this statement
are the war-lyrics in the Chronicle and that portion
of the Csedmonic poems which it is now believed was
translated from an Old Saxon original, probably in the
time of JElfred.
7. The First English Poems. Our forefathers, while
as yet they were heathen and lived on the Continent,
8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
made poems, and of this poetry we may possess a few
remains. The earliest is The Song of the Traveller
Widsith, the far-goer but it has been filled up by
later insertions. It is not much more than a catalogue
of the folk and the places whither the minstrel said he
went with the Goths, but when he expands concerning
himself, he shows so pleasant a pride in his art that
he wins our sympathy. Dear's Complaint is another
of these poems. Its form is that of a true lyric. The
writer is a bard at the court of the Heodenings, from
whom his rival takes his place and goods. He writes
this complaint to comfort his heart. Weland, Beado-
hild, Theodric knew care and sorrow. " That they
overwent, this also may I." This is the refrain of all
the verses of our first, and, I may say, our only early
English lyric. The Fight at Finsburg is an epic frag-
ment. It tells, and with all the fire of war, of the
attack on Fin's palace in Friesland, and another part
of the same story is to be found in Beowulf. It is
plain there was a full Fin-saga, portions of which were
sung at feasts. This completes, with those parts of
Beowulf which we may refer to heathen traditionary
songs, the list of the English poetry which we may
possibly say belonged to the older England over seas.
There are two fragments of a romance of Waldhere
of the date or place of which we know nothing. In
the so-called Rune Songf which, as we have it, is not
old there is one verse at least which alludes to the
times of the heroic sagas. But the poems where we
1 EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST $
find most traces of early English paganism are the
so-called Charms.
8. Beowulf is our old English epic, and it recounts
the great deeds and death of Beowulf. It may have
arisen before the English conquest of Britain in the
shape of short songs about the hero, and we can trace,
perhaps, three different centres for the story. The
scenery is laid among the Danes in Seeland and among
the Geats in South Sweden, on the coast of the North
Sea and the Kattegat. There is not a word about our
England in the poem. Coming to England in the form
of short poems, it was wrought together into a complete
tale of two parts, the first of which we may again divide
into two ; and was afterwards edited, with a few Chris-
tian applications, and probably by a Northumbrian poet,
in the eighth century. In this form we possess it.
The story is of Hrothgar, one of the kingly race of
Jutland, who builds his hall, Heorot, near the sea, on
the edge of the moorland. A monster called Grendel,
half-human, half-fiend, dwells in a sea-cave, near the
moor over which he wanders by night, and hating the
festive noise, carries off thirty of the thegns of Hrothgar
and devours them. He then haunts the hall at night,
and after twelve years of this distress, Beowulf, thegn of
Hygelac, sails from Sweden to bring help to Hrothgar,
and at night, when Grendel breaks into the hall, wrestles
with him, tears away his arm, and the fiend flies away
to die. The second division of the first part of the
poem begins with the vengeance taken by Grendel's
IO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
mother. She slays ^Eschere, a trusty thegn of Hroth-
gar. Then Beowulf descends into her sea-cave and
slays her also ; feasts in triumph with Hrothgar, and
returns to his own land. The second part of the poem
opens fifty years later. Beowulf is now king ; his land
is happy under his rule. But his fate is at hand. A
fire-drake, who guards a treasure, is robbed and comes
from his den to harry and burn the country. The gray-
haired king goes forth to fight his last fight, slays the
dragon, but dies of its fiery breath, and the poem closes
with the tale of his burial, burned on a lofty pyre on
the top of Hronesnses.
Its social interest lies in what it tells us of the man-
ners and customs of our forefathers before they came
to England. Their mode of life in peace and war is
described ; their ships, their towns, the scenery in which
they lived, their feasts, amusements we have the ac-
count of a whole day from morning to night the close
union between the chieftain and his war-brothers ; their
women and the reverence given them ; the way in which
they faced death, in which they sang, in which they gave
gifts and rewards. The story is told with Homeric direct-
ness and simplicity, but not with Homeric rapidity. A
deep fatalism broods over it. " Wyrd (the fate-goddess)
goes ever as it must," Beowulf says, when he thinks he
may be torn to pieces by Grendel. " It shall be," he
cries when he goes to fight the dragon, " for us in the
fight as Wyrd shall foresee." But a daring spirit fills
the fatalism. " Let him who can," he says, " gain honour
/ EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST II
ere he die." " Let us have fame or death." Out of the
fatalism naturally grew the dignity and much of the
pathos of the poem. It is most poetical in the vivid
character-drawing of men and women, and especially
in the character of the hero, both in his youth and in
his age ; in the fateful pathos of the old man's last
fight for his country against certain death, in the noble
scene of the burial, in the versing of the grave and
courteous interchange of human feeling between the
personages. Moreover, the descriptions of the sea and
the voyage, and of the savage places of the cliffs and
the moor, are instinct with the spirit which is still alive
among our poetry, and which makes dreadful and lonely
wildernesses seem dwelt in as if the places needed a
king by monstrous beings. In the creation of Gren-
del and his mother, the savage stalkers of the moor,
that half-natural, half-supernatural world began, which,
when men grew gentler and the country more cultivated,
became so beautiful as fairyland. Here is the descrip-
tion of the dwelling-place of Grendel :
There the land is hid in gloom,
Where they ward; wolf-haunted slopes, windy headlands
o'er the sea.
Fearful is the marish-path, where the mountain torrent
'Neath the Nesses' mist, nither makes its way.
Under earth the flood is, not afar from here it lies;
But the measure of a mile, where the mere is set.
Over it, outreaching, hang the ice-nipt trees :
Held by roots the holt is fast, and o'er-helms the water.
12 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
There an evil wonder, every night, a man may see
In the flood a fire !
Not unhaunted is the place !
Thence the welter of the waves is upwhirled on high,
Wan towards the clouds, when the wind is stirring
Wicked weather up; till the lift is waxing dark,
And the welkin weeping !
The whole poem, Pagan as it is, is English to its very root.
It is sacred to us, our Genesis, the book of our origins.
9. Christianity and English Poetry. When we came
to Britain we were great warriors and great sea pirates
" sea wolves," as a Roman poet calls us ; and all our
poetry down to the present day is full of war, and still
more of the sea. No nation has ever written so much
sea-poetry. But we were more than mere warriors. We
were a home-loving people when we got settled either in
Sleswick or in England, and all our literature from the
first writings to the last is full of domestic love, the dear-
ness of home, and the ties of kinsfolk. We were a re-
ligious people, even as heathen, still more so when we
became Christian, and our poetry is as much of religion
as of war. But with Christianity a new spirit entered
into English poetry. The war spirit did not decay, but
into the song steals a softer element. The fatalism is
modified by the faith that the fate is the will of a good
God. The sorrow is not less, but it is relieved by an on-
look of joy. The triumph over enemies is not less, but
even more exulting, for it is the triumph of God over His
foes that is sung by Caedmon and Cynewulf. Nor is the
EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 13
imaginative delight in legends and in the supernatural
less. But it is now found in the legends of the saints, in
the miracles and visions of angels that Baeda tells of the
Christian heroes, in fantastic allegories of spiritual things,
like the poems of the Phoenix and the Whale. The love
of nature lasted, but it dwells now rather on gentle than
on savage scenery. The human sorrow for the hardness
of life is more tender, and when the poems speak of the
love of home, it is with an added grace. One little bit
still lives for us out of the older world.
Dear the welcomed one
To his Frisian wife, when his Floater's drawn on shore,
When his keel comes back, and her man returns to home ;
Hers, her own food-giver. And she prays him in,
Washes then his weedy coat, and new weeds puts on him !
O lythe it is on land to him whom his love constrains.
If that was the soft note of home in a Pagan time, it
was softer still when Christianity had mellowed manners.
Yet, with all this, the ancient faith still influences the
Christian song. Christ is not only the Saviour, but the
Hero who goes forth against the dragon. His overthrow
of the fiends is described in much the same terms as that
of Beowulf's wrestling with Grendel. " Bitterly grim,
gripped them in his wrath." The death of Christ, at
which the universe trembles and weeps, was mixed up
afterwards with the story of the death of Balder. The
old poetry penetrated the new, but the spirit of the new
transformed that of the old. -w arfJ
14 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
10. Caedmon. The poem of Beowulf has the grave
Teutonic power, but it is not, as a whole, native to our
soil. It is not the first true English poem. That is the
work of CAEDMON, and it was done in Northumbria. The
story of it, as told by Bseda, proves that the making of
songs was common at the time. Caedmon was a servant
to the monastery of Hild, an abbess of royal blood, at
Whitby in Yorkshire. He was somewhat aged when the
gift of song came to him, and he knew nothing of the
art of verse, so that at the feasts when for the sake of
mirth all sang in turn he left the table. One evening,
having done so and gone to the stables, for he had the care
of the cattle that night, he fell asleep, and One came to
him in vision and said, " Caedmon, sing me some song."
And he answered, " I cannot sing ; for this cause I left
the feast and came hither." Then said the other, " How-
ever, you shall sing." " What shall I sing ? " he replied.
"Sing the beginning of created things," answered the
other. Whereupon he began to sing verses to the praise
of God, and, awaking, remembered what he had sung,
and added more in verse worthy of God. In the morn-
ing he came to the town-reeve, and told him of the gift
he had received, and, being brought to Hild, was ordered
to tell his dream before learned men, that they might
give judgment whence his verses came. And when they
had heard, they all said that heavenly grace had been
conferred on him by our Lord. This story ought to be
loved by us, for it tells of the beginning in England of
the wonderful life of English Poetry. Nor should we
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 1 5
fail to reverence the place where it began. Above the
small and land-locked harbour of Whitby rises and juts
out towards the sea the dark cliff where Hild's monastery
stood, looking out over the German Ocean. It is a wild,
wind-swept upland, above the furious sea ; and standing
there we feel that it is a fitting birthplace for the poetry
of the sea-ruling nation. Nor is the verse of the first
poet without the stormy note of the sea-scenery among
which it was written, nor without the love of the stars and
the high moorlands that Caedmon saw from Whitby Head.
Caedmon's poems were done before 680, in which year
he died. Baeda tells us that he sang the story of Genesis
and Exodus, many other tales in the Sacred Scriptures,
and the story of Christ and the Apostles and of Heaven
and Hell to come. "Others after him tried to make
religious poems, but none could compare with him for he
learnt the art of song not from men, but, divinely aided,
received that gift." It is plain then that he was the
founder of a school. It is equally plain, it seems, from
this passage, that at Baeda's death the later school of
religious poets, of whom Cynewulf was the chief, had not
begun to write. Csedmon's poems, then, were widely
known. Baeda quotes their first verses. They were
copied from monastery to monastery. ^Elfred got them
from the north, and no doubt gave them to the great
schools at Winchester. They were however lost. Only
their fame survived.
n. The Junian Caedmon. Archbishop Ussher, hunt-
ing for books for Trinity College, Dublin, found an Old
16 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
English MS. which Francis Dujon (Junius) printed in
Amsterdam about 1650, and published as the work of
Csedmon, because its contents agreed with Baeda's de-
scription of Csedmon's poems and of his first hymn.
Junius was a friend of Milton, and Milton was one of the
first to hear what the earliest English poet was supposed
to have written on the Fall of the Angels and the Fall of
Man. Since then critics have wrought their will upon
this MS. Some say that Csedmon did not write a line of
it ; others allow him some share in it. It pleases us to
think, and the judgment is possible, that the more
archaic portion of the first poem in the MS. the Genesis
which describes the Fall of the Angels and the Crea-
tion, the Flood, and perhaps the battle of Abraham with
the kings of the East is by Csedmon himself. In the
midst of the Genesis there is however a second descrip-
tion of the Fall of the Angels and an elaborate account of
the council in Hell, and of the temptation in the Garden.
This is held to be an after-insertion, made perhaps in the
time of Alfred. It differs in feeling, in subtlety, and in
manner of verse from the rest. A conjecture was made
that it was a translation of a part of an Old Saxon poem,
and this seems to be borne out by the discovery in 1894
of a fragment of Old Saxon poetry in which there are
lines similar to those of this separated portion of the
Genesis. The next poem in the MS. is the Exodus. It
is certainly not by Csedmon. It is not a paraphrase ; it
is a triumphal poem of war, boldly invented, on the pas-
sage of the Red Sea. The Daniel, the third poem
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST I/
MS., is so dull that it is no matter who wrote it or when
it was written. The second part of the MS. is in a differ-
ent handwriting from the first, and is a series of Psalm-
like poems on the Fall of the Angels, the Harrowing of
Hell, the Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, the Judg-
ment Day, and the Temptation. They are a kind of
Paradise Regained.
12. The interest of these poems is not found in any
paraphrase of the Scriptures, but in those parts of them
which are the invention of the poets, in the drawing of
the characters, in the passages instinct with the genius of
our race, and with the individuality of the writers. The
account of the creation in the older Genesis has the
grandeur of a nature-myth. The description of the flood
is full of the experience of one who had known the sea in
storm. The battle of Abraham is a fine clash of war, and
might be the description of the repulse by some Nor-
thumbrian king of the northern tribes. The ruin of the
angels and the peace of Heaven, set in contrast, have the
same kind of proud pathos as Milton's work on the same
subject. The later Genesis is even more Teutonic than
the first. Satan's fierce cry of wrath and freedom against
God from his bed of chains in Hell is out of the heart of
heathendom. The northern rage of war and the northern
tie of war-brotherhood speak in all he says, in all that his
thegns reply. The pleasure of the northern imagination
in swiftness and joy is just as marked as its pleasure in
dark pride and in revenge. The burst of exulting ven-
geance when the thegn of Satan succeeds in the tempta'
1 8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP
tion is magnificent. His master, he cries, will lie softly
and be blithe of heart in the dusky fire, now that his
revenge is gained. There is true dramatic power in the
dialogue between Eve and the fiend, and so much subtlety
of thought that it cannot belong to Csedmon's time. It is
characteristic of Teutonic manners that the motives of
the woman for eating the fruit are all good, and the pas-
sionate and tender conscientiousness of the love and
repentance of Adam and Eve is equally characteristic of
the gentler and more religious side of the Teutonic
nature. "Dark and true and tender is the North."
The Exodus is remarkable for its descriptions of war
and a marching host, and especially for the elaborate
painting of the breaking up of the sea, which was prob-
ably done by one who had himself battled with a whirling
gale on the German Ocean. On the whole, we have in
the two parts of the Genesis, and in the Exodus, in the
midst of spaces of dulness, original and imaginative
pieces of poetry well worthy of the beginnings of English
song.
13. English in the South. While Csedmon was still
alive, Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his sub-
deacon Hadrian set up a celebrated school of learning at
Canterbury, which flourished for a short time and then
decayed. One of Theodore's scholars was EALDHELM.
A young man when Csedmon died in 680, his name is
connected with English poetry. As Abbot of Malmes-
bury and Bishop of Sherborne he spread the learning of
Canterbury over the south of England, and sent his in-
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 19
fluence into Northumbria, where his Riddles were imi-
tated by Cynewulf. But our chief interest in him is that
he was himself an English poet. It is said that he had
not his equal in the making and singing of English verse.
One of his songs was popular in the twelfth century.
^Elfred had some in his possession, and a pretty story
tells that when the traders came into the towns, Eald-
helm used, like a gleeman, to stand on the bridge or the
public way and sing songs to them in the English tongue,
that he might lure them by the sweetness of his speech
to hear the word of God.
14. English Poetry in the North after Caedmon
"Judith." We have seen that English poetry began
with religion in the poems of Csedmon, and the greater
part of the written poetry which followed him is also
religious. One of the best of these pieces is the Judith.
Originally composed in twelve books, we only possess
the three last which tell of the banquet of Holofernes,
his slaughter, and the attack of the Jews on the Assyrian
camp. It is a poem made after Baeda's death, full of
the flame and joy of war. Nor is the drawing of the
person and character of Judith unworthy of a race which
has always honoured women. She stands forth clear,
a Jewish Velleda. To call the poem, however, as some
have done, the finest of the Old English poems, is to
say a great deal too much. We may date, about the
same time, in the eighth century, a fine fragment on the
Harrowing of Hell, some poems on Christian legends,
perhaps the allegorical poems of the WJiale and the
2O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Panther, and some lyrical translations of the Psalms in
the Kentish and West Saxon dialects.
15. There are five Elegies in the Exeter Book, which
from their excellence deserve to be isolated from the
rest of the minor poems. The first of these has been
called the Ruin. It is the mourning of a traveller over
a desolated city, and certain phrases in it seem to show
that the city was Bath, utterly overthrown by Ceawlin
in 577. If so, the date of the poem may be between
676 when Osric founded a monastery among the ruins,
and 781 when Offa rebuilt the town. The second, the
Wanderer, expands the mourning " motive " of the Ruin
over the desolation of the whole world of man. It may
have been originally a heathen poem, edited afterwards
with a Christian Prologue and Epilogue. Of all the Old
English poems it is the most of an artistic whole, and a
noble piece of work it is. In its grave and fateful verse
an exile bewails his own lost happiness and the sorrow-
ful fates of men. The third, the Seafarer, apparently
a dialogue between an old and a young sailor about the
dangers and the fascination of the sea, breathes the
spirit which filled the heart of our forefathers while they
sang and sailed, and is extraordinarily modern in note.
The blank-verse manner of Tennyson is in it, and the
spirit of it is strangely re-echoed in the Sailor Boy.
The same may be said of the two other elegies the
Wife's Complaint and the Husband's Message, They
are not of so fine a quality as the Wanderer or the
Seafarer, but they both have love-passion, otherwise
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 21
unrepresented in Old English poetry. To these must be
added the dramatic monologue, formerly regarded as
the First Riddle. As recently interpreted, it should
be known as Wulf and Eadwacer.
1 6. Cynewulf was the greatest of the northern singers,
and wrote, most people think, during the latter half of
the eighth century. His name is known to us, and he
is the only one of these poets of whose personality and
life we have some clear image, and whose work is so
wide in range and so varying in quality that it may be
divided into periods. He has signed his name in its
runic letters to four of his poems. The riddling com-
mentary he linked on to the runes gives some account
of his life, and the poems are throughout as personal
as Milton's. He was often a wandering singer, but
seems to have had, in his youth, a fixed place at the
court of some northern noble a wild and gay young
man, a rider, a singer at the feasts, fond of sports and
war, indifferent to religion, sensitive to love and beauty,
and at home with all classes of men. It must have been
during this time that he wrote the greater number of
the Riddles. They prove that he had a poet's sympathy
with the life of man and nature. They are written by
one who knew the sea and its dangers, the iron coasts
and storms of Northumbria, who knew and had taken
part in war, who knew the forest-land, the scattered
villages and their daily life ; who loved the wild animals
and the birds, and who, strange to say at this early time,
wrote about nature with an observant and loving eye
22 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and in a way we do not meet again in English poetry
for many centuries. The poem on the Hurricane is
an artistic whole, and may not be unjustly compared
with Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. There is scarcely
a trace of Christianity in these early poems. Trouble
then fell on Cynewulf, and with it repentance for his
"sinful life," and he tells in the Dream of the Rood
of how comfort was brought to him at last. He then
turned to write religious poems, and to this part of his
life we may allot thejutiana, and perhaps the first part
of the Gi&lac. He then wrote, and with a far higher
art, the Crist, a long, almost an epical, poem of the
Incarnation, the Descent into Hell, the Ascension, and
the Last Judgment, a noble and continuous effort, full
of triumphant verse. He had now reached full peace
of mind, and as much mastery over his art as was pos-
sible at that early time. He may then have composed,
from a poem now given to Lactantius, the allegorical
poem of the Phoenix, in which there is a famous passage
describing the sinless land; the second part of the
Guftlac, as fine as the first is poor; and still later on
in life, and with a free recurrence to the war-poetry
of heathendom, the Elene and the Andreas, the first,
the finding of the True Cross by the Empress Helena,
and remarkable for its battle-fervour ; the second equally
remarkable for its imaginative treatment of the voyage
of St. Andrew for the conversion of the Marmedonians.
Then, before he died, and to leave his last message
to his folk, he wrote, using perhaps part of an older
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 2$
poem, the Dream of the Holy Rood, and showed that
even in his old age his imagination and his versing were
as vivid as in his youth.
17. Poetry during and after Alfred's Reign. When
Alfred set up learning afresh in the south, it had perished
in Northumbria. But no great poetry arose in the south.
There was alliterative versing, but it had neither imagina-
tion, originality, nor music. The English alliterative ver-
sion of the Metro, of Boethius may be Alfred's own ; if
so, he was plainly not a poet. The second part of the
Genesis may belong to this time, but it is asserted now
to be a translation. I do not believe that the last poems
in the Csedmonic MS. are of this time, but of the Nor-
thumbrian School. It was a time, however, of collections
of the poetry of the past. Nearly all the Old English
poetry, as we have it, is in the West-Saxon Dialect.
Alfred had a Handbook, into which, tradition says, he
copied some English songs. It is extremely likely that
the poems in the Exeter Book were brought together in
Alfred's time. In that book itself there are gnomic and
didactic poems, as, for example, the Fates of Men and
the Gifts of Men, which are collections of short verses
belonging to various times, and some of them are very
old. At a later period than ^Elfred's reign, these gnomic
verses took the form of dialogues, partly in prose and
partly in verse, and we have two incomplete specimens
of this in the Solomon and Saturnus, in which a Judaic
legend is curiously mingled with Teutonic forms of
thought To the same period may be allotted the
24 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Menologium, a poetical calendar, the best portions of
which seem borrowed from the past. The rest of the
verse up to the Conquest is chiefly made up of allitera-
tive sermons and the war songs.
1 8. The War-poetry was probably always as plentiful
as the religious, but was not likely to be written down
by the monks. When, however, ^Elfred developed the
Chronicle into a national history, the writers seized on
popular songs, and inserted them in the Chronicle. In
that way we have at least one fine war-poem handed
down to us The Song of Brunanburh, 937. It de-
scribes the fight of King vEthelstan with Anlaf the Dane
and the Scots under Constantine. Another war-poem is
the Fight at Afaldon, the story of the death of Byrhtnoth,
an East Saxon Ealdorman, in battle with a band of Vik-
ings. They are the fitting source, in their simplicity and
patriotism, of such war-songs as the Battle of the Baltic
and the Siege of Lucknow. Of the two the Fight at
Maldon is the finer, the most human and varied, but the
Song of Brunanburh is lyrical as the latter is not. They
are two different types of poetry. Both of them have
some Norse feeling, and we may link with them from this
point of view the Rhyme Song, which recalls the motive
and spirit of the earlier Ruin, but which, having rhymes
along with alliteration, resembles the Scandinavian form
called Runhenda, and has induced critics to attribute it
to the influence of the warrior and scald, Egil Skala-
grimsson, who twice visited King ^Ethelstan. Two frag-
mentary odes, among some other short poems, inserted
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 2$
in the Chronicle, one on the deliverance of the five cities
from the Danes by King Eadmund, 942 ; and another
on the coronation of King Eadgar, are the last records
of a war-poetry which naturally decayed when the Eng-
lish were trodden down by the Normans. When Taille-
fer rode into battle at Hastings, singing songs of Roland
and Charlemagne, he sang more than the triumph of the
Norman over the English ; he sang the victory for a time
of French Romance over Old English poetry.
19. Old English Prose. It is pleasant to think that
we may not unfairly make English prose begin with
B.EDA. He was born about 673, and was like Csedmon,
a Northumbrian. After 683, he spent his life at Jarrow,
" in the same monastery," he says, " and while attentive
to the rule of mine order, and the service of the Church,
my constant pleasure lay in learning, or teaching, or
writing." He enjoyed that pleasure for many years, for
his quiet life was long, and his toil unceasing. Forty-
five works prove his industry; and their fame over the
whole of learned Europe proves their value. His learn-
ing was as various as it was great. All that the world
then knew of theology, science, music, rhetoric, medi-
cine, arithmetic, astronomy, and physics was brought
together by him ; his Ecclesiastical History is our best
authority for Early England ; accuracy and delightful-
ness are at one in it. It reveals his charming character ;
and indeed, his life was as gentle, and himself as loved,
as his work was great. His books were written in Latin,
and with these we have nothing to do, but he strove to
26 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
make English prose a literary language, for his last work
was a Translation of the Gospel of St. John, as almost
his last words were in English verse. In the story of his
death told by his disciple Cuthbert is the first record
of English prose writing. When the last day came, the
dying man called his scholars to him that he might
dictate more of his translation. " There is still a chap-
ter wanting," said the scribe, "and it is hard for thee
to question thyself longer." "It is easily done," said
Bseda, " take thy pen and write swiftly." Through the
day they wrote, and when evening fell, " There is yet one
sentence unwritten, dear master," said the youth. " Write
it quickly," said the master. "It is finished now."
"Thou sayest true," was the reply, "all is finished now."
He sang the " Glory to God " and died. It is to that
scene that English prose looks back as its sacred source,
as it is in the greatness and variety of Bseda's Latin work
that English scholarship strikes its key-note.
When Bseda died, Northumbria was the centre of
European literature. Wilfrid of York had founded libra-
ries and monasteries, but the true beginner of all the
Northumbrian learning was Benedict Biscop, who col-
lected two brother libraries at Wearmouth and Jarrow,
and whose scholars were Ceolfrid and Bseda. Six hun-
dred scholars gathered round Bseda, and he handed on
all his learning to his pupil Ecgberht, who as Archbishop
of York established the famous library, and founded the
great school, or, as it may be called, the University of
York. To this place, for more than sixty years, all
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 2/
Europe sent pupils to win the honey of learning. Al-
cuin, Ecgberht's pupil, finally took with him to the court
of Charles the Great, in 792, all the knowledge which
Baeda had won and the School of York had expanded.
Through Alcuin then, whom we may call Charles's Min-
ister of Education, England was the source of the new
education which slowly spread over the vast sphere of
the Frankish Empire. This was done just at the right
moment, for Alcuin had scarce left the English shores
for the last time when the Danes descended on Nor-
thumbria, and blotted out the whole of its literature and
learning.
20. Alfred Though the long battle with the in-
vaders was lost in the north, it was gained for a time by
Alfred the Great in Wessex ; and with Alfred's literary
work, learning changed its seat from the north to the
south. Alfred's writings and translations, being in Eng-
lish and not in Latin, make him, since Bseda's work is
lost, the true father of English prose. As Whitby is the
cradle of English poetry, so is Winchester of English
prose. At Winchester the king took the English tongue
and made it the tongue in which history, philosophy,
law, and religion spoke to the English people. No work
was ever done more eagerly or more practically. He
brought scholars from different parts of the world. He
set up schools in his monasteries " where every free-born
youth, who has the means, shall attend to his book till
he can read English writing perfectly." He presided
over a school in his own court. He made himself a
28 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
master of a literary English style, and he did this that
he might teach his people. He translated the popular
manuals of the time into English, but he edited them
with large additions of his own, needful as he thought,
for English use. He gave his nation moral philosophy
in Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy ; a universal his-
tory, with geographical chapters of his own, "of the
highest literary and philological value as specimens of his
natural prose," in his translation of Orosius ; an ecclesi-
astical history of England in Bseda's History, giving to
some details a West-Saxon form ; and a religious hand-
book, with a preface of his own, in the Pastoral Rule of
Pope Gregory. He induced Bishop Werferth to translate
into English the Dialogues of Gregory, a book which had
a far-reaching influence on mediaeval literature and the-
ology. We do not quite know whether he worked him-
self at the English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but at
least it was in his reign that this chronicle rose out of
meagre lists into a full narrative of events. To him,
then, we English look back as the fountain of English
prose literature.
21. The Later Old English Prose. The impulse he
gave soon died away, but it was revived under King Ead-
gar the Peaceful, whose seventeen years of government
(958-75) were the most prosperous and glorious of the
West-Saxon Empire. Under him and his predecessors,
yEthelwold, Bishop of Winchester, founded and kept up
English schools, and, working together with Archbishop
Dunstan and Oswald of Worcester, recreated monastic
1 EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 29
life, classic learning, and the education of the clergy.
Their labours were the origin of the famous Blickling
Homilies, 971. About twenty years after, ^Elfric, called
" Grammaticus " from his Englished Latin Grammar,
began to write. He turned into English the Pentateuch,
Joshua, and part of Job. The rest of his numerous
works are some of the best models we possess of the
literary English of the beginning of the eleventh century.
The two collections of Homilies we owe to him, and
his Lives of the Saints, are written in a classic prose,
and his Glossary and Colloquy, afterwards edited by
^Elfric Bata, served for a kind of English- Latin text-
book. His prose in his later life was somewhat spoiled
by his over- mastering fancy for alliteration, but he is
always a clear and forcible writer of English. But this
revival had no sooner begun to take root than the North-
men came again in force upon the land and conquered it.
We have in Wulfstan's (Archbishop of York, 1002-23)
Address to the English, a terrible picture, written in im-
passioned prose, of the demoralisation caused by the in-
roads of the Danes. During the fresh interweaving of
Danes and English together under Danish kings from
1013 to 1042, no English literature arose, but Latin prose
intruded more and more on English writing. It was
towards the reign of Edward the Confessor that English
writing again began to live. But no sooner was it born
than the Norman invasion repressed, but did not quench
its life.
22. The English Chronicle. One great monument,
3O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
however, of Old English prose lasts beyond the Conquest.
It is the English Chronicle, and in it our literature is
continuous from ./Elfred to Stephen. At first it was
nothing but a record of the births and deaths of bishops
and kings, and was probably a West-Saxon Chronicle.
Among these short notices there is, however, one tragic
story, of Cynewulf and Cyneheard, under the date 755
but the true date is 784 so rude in style, and so cir-
cumstantial, that it is probably contemporary with the
events themselves. If so, it is the oldest piece of histori-
cal prose in any Teutonic tongue. More than a hundred
years later Alfred took up the Chronicle, caused it to
be edited from various sources, added largely to it from
Baeda, and raised it to the dignity of a national his-
tory. The narrative of Alfred's wars with the Danes,
written, it is likely, by himself at the end of his reign,
enables us to estimate the great weight ^Elfred himself
had in literature. "Compared with this passage," says
Professor Earle, " every other piece of prose, not in these
Chronicles merely, but throughout the whole range of ex-
tant Saxon literature, must assume a secondary rank."
After Alfred's reign, and that of his son Eadward, 901-25,
the Chronicle becomes scanty, but songs and odes are in-
serted in it. In the reign of ^Ethelred and during the
Danish kings its fulness returns, and growing by additions
from various quarters, it continues to be our great contem-
porary authority in English history till 1154, when it
abruptly closes with the death of Stephen. " It is the first
history of any Teutonic people in their own language ; it
I EARLY WRITERS TO THE CONQUEST 3 1
is the earliest and most venerable monument of English
prose." In it Old English poetry sang its last extant
song, in its death Old English prose dies. It is not till
the reign of John that English poetry, in any form but
that of short poems, appears again in the Brut of Laya-
mon. It is not till the reign of Henry III. that original
English prose begins again in the Ancren Riwle (the
Rule of Anchoresses), in the Wooing of our Lord, and in
the charming homily entitled the Sawlcs Wardc.
32 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER H
FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER'S DEATH, IO66-I4OO
23. General Outline. The invasion of Britain by the
English made the island, its speech, and its literature,
English. The invasion of England by the Danes left our
speech and literature still English. The Danes were of
our stock and tongue, and we absorbed them. The in-
vasion of England by the Normans seemed likely to crush
the English people, to root out their literature, and even
to threaten their speech. But that which happened to
the Danes happened to the Normans also, and for the
same reason. They were originally of like blood to the
English, and of like speech ; and though during their
settlement in Normandy they had become French in
manner and language, and their literature French, yet
the old blood prevailed in the end. The Norman felt
his kindred with the English tongue and spirit, became
an Englishman, and left the French tongue that he might
speak and write in English. We absorbed the Normans,
and we took into our literature and speech the French
elements they had brought with them. It was a process
slower in literature than it was in the political history,
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 33
but it began from the political struggle. Up to the time
of Henry II. the Norman troubled himself but little about
the English tongue. But when French foreigners came
pouring into the land in the train of Henry and his sons
the Norman allied himself with the Englishman against
these foreigners, and the English tongue began to rise into
importance. Its literature grew slowly, but as quickly
as most of the literatures of Europe. Moreover it never
quite ceased. We are carried on to the year 1154 by the
prose of the English Chronicle. There are traces in the
Norman Chroniclers of the use they made of lost Eng-
lish war-songs. There are Old English homilies which
we may date from 1120. The so-called Moral Ode, an
English rhyming poem, was compiled about the year 1 170.
It made almost a school ; it gave rise to some impassioned
poems to the Virgin, and it is found in a volume of hom-
ilies of the same date. In the reign of Henry II., the
old Southern- English Gospels of King ^Ethelred's time
were modernised after 200 years or less of use. The
Sayings of sElfred, written in English for the English,
were composed about the year 1200. About the same
date the Old English Charters of Bury St. Edmunds were
translated into the dialect of the shire, and now, early in
the thirteenth century, at the central time of the strife
between English and foreign elements, after the death of
Richard I., the Brut of Layamon and the Orrmulum
come forth within ten years of each other to prove the
continuity, the survival, and the victory of the English
tongue. When the patriotic struggle closed in the reign
34 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
of Edward I., English literature had again risen, through
the song, the religious poems, the alliterative romance
and homily, the lives of saints and the translations of
French romances, into importance, and was written by a
people made up of Norman and Englishman welded into
one by the fight against the French foreigner. But
though the foreigner was driven out, his literature influ-
enced, and continued to influence, the new English
poetry, for in this revival our literature was chiefly poet-
ical. Prose, with but few exceptions, was still written
in Latin.
24. Religious and Story-telling Poetry are the two
main streams into which this poetical literature divides
itself. The religious poetry is for the most part English
in spirit, and a poetry of the people, from the Orrmu-
lum, about 1215, to Piers Plowman, in which poem the
distinctly English poetry reached its truest expression in
1362. The story-telling poetry may be called English at
its beginning in the Brut of Layamon, but becomes more
and more influenced by the romantic poetry of France,
and in the end grows in Chaucer's hands into a poetry
of the court and of fine allegory, a literary in contrast
with a popular poetry. But Chaucer, at first thus influ-
enced by French and then by Italian subjects, becomes
at last entirely English in feeling and in subjects, and the
Canterbury Tales are the best example of English story-
telling we possess. The struggle then of England against
the foreigner to become and remain England finds its
parallel in the struggle of English poetry against the
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 35
influence of foreign poetry to become and remain English.
Both struggles were long and varied, but in both Eng-
land was triumphant. She became a nation, and she won
a national literature. It is the course of this struggle
we have now to trace along the two lines already laid
down the poetry of religion and the poetry of story-
telling; but to do so we must begin in both instances
with the Norman Conquest.
25. The Religious Poetry. The religious revival of
the eleventh century was strongly felt in Normandy, and
both the knights and Churchmen who came to England
with William the Conqueror and during his son's reign,
were founders of abbeys, from which, as centres of learn-
ing and charity, the country was civilised. Where Lan-
franc and Anselm lived, religion or scholastic learning
was not likely to go to sleep. A frequent communica-
tion was kept up with French scholarship through the
University of Paris. Schools and libraries multiplied.
The Latin learning of England steadily developed. Its
scholars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries wrote
not only on theology, but on many various subjects;
and some of their books influenced the whole of Euro-
pean thought. In Henry I.'s reign the religion of
England was further quickened by missionary monks
sent by Bernard of Clairvaux. London was stirred to
rebuild St. Paul's, and abbeys rose in all the well-
watered valleys of the north. Thus the English citi-
zens of London and the English peasants in the country
received a new religious life from the foreign noble and
36 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the foreign monk, and both were drawn together through
a common worship. When this took place a desire arose
for religious handbooks in the English tongue. Orrmin's
Orrmulum may be taken as a type of these. We may
date it, though not precisely, at 1215, the date of the
Great Charter. It is English; its sources are u^Elfric
and Bseda; its Danish writer loves his native dialect;
not five French words are to be found in it. It is a
metrical version of the Gospel of each day with the
addition of a sermon in verse. " This book is named
Orrmulum for that Orrm it wrought." It marks the
rise of English religious literature, and its religion is
simple and rustic. Orrm's ideal monk is " a very pure
man, and altogether without property, except that he
shall be found in simple meat and clothes." He will
have "a hard and stiff and rough and heavy life to
lead. All his heart and desire ought to be aye toward
heaven, and to serve his Master well." This was Eng-
lish religion in the country at this date. It was con-
tinued in English prose writing by the Ancren Riwk
the Rule of the Anchoresses written about 1220. The
original MS. was probably in the Dorsetshire dialect.
The Genesis and then the Exodus, biblical poems of
about 1250, were made by the pious writers to make
Christian men as glad as birds at the dawning for the
story of salvation. A Northumbrian Psalter of 1250
is only one example out of many devotional pieces,
homilies, metrical creeds, hymns to the Virgin (mostly
imitated from the French), which, with the metrical
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 3/
Lives of the Saints (a large volume, the lives translated
from Latin or French prose into English verse), carry
the religious poetry up to 1300. Among these the
most important are the lives of three saints, Marherete,
Juliane, and Katerine, and the homily on Hali Meiden-
had (Holy Maidenhood) all in alliterative verse, written
in southern England, and beginning a new and vital
class of poetry, the poetry of impassioned love to
Christ and the Virgin.
26. Literature and the Friars. There was little
religion in the towns, but this was soon changed. In
1 22 1 the Mendicant Friars came to England, and they
chose the towns for their work. The first Friars who
learnt English that they might preach to the people
were foreigners, and spoke French. Many English
Friars studied in Paris, and came back to England,
able to talk to Norman noble and English peasant.
Their influence, exercised both on Norman and Eng-
lish, was thus a mediatory and uniting one, and Normans
as well as English now began to write religious works in
English. The people, of course, had to be served with
stories, and in the early years of the fourteenth century
a number of Christian legends of the childhood of Jesus,
of the Virgin, the Apostles and Saints, and of miracles,
chiefly drawn from the French, were put into varying
poetic forms ; and, recited everywhere, added a large
number of materials to the imagination of England. A
legend-cycle was thus formed, and this cycle was chiefly
made by writers in the south of England. In 1303
38 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Robert Mannyng of Brunne, in Lincolnshire, freely
translated, to please plain people, a French work, the
Manual of Sins (written thirty years earlier by William
of Waddington), under the title of Handlyng Synne.
William of Shoreham translated the whole of the Psalter
into English prose about 1327, and wrote poems which
might be called treatises in rhyme. The Cursor Mundi,
written about 1320, in Northumbria, and thought " the
best book of all " by men of that time, was a metrical
recast of the history of the Old and New Testament,
interspersed, as was the Handlyng Synne, with legends
of saints. This book started a whole series of verse-
homilies tagged with tales, which created in northern
England a legend-cycle similar to that created in the
south. Some scattered Sermons, and in 1340 the
Ayenbite of Inwyt (the Sting of Conscience), translated
from the French, mark how English prose was rising
through religion. About the same year Richard Rolle,
the Hermit of Hampole, wrote in Latin and in Nor-
thumbrian English for the "unlearned," a poem called
the Pricke of Conscience. This poem is the last dis-
tinctly religious poem of any importance before the
Vision of Piers Plowman, unless we are led to except
those written by the author of The Grene Knight. At
its date, 1340, the religious influence of the Friars was
swiftly decaying. In Piers Plowman their influence for
good is gone. In that poem, which brings religious
poetry, in the death of its author, up to 1400, the re-
ligious literature of England strikes the last note of
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 39
the old religious impulse and the boldest music of the
new. The Friar is slain, the Puritan survives.
27. History and the Story-telling Poetry. The
Normans brought an historical taste with them to
England, and created a valuable historical literature.
It was written in Latin, and we have nothing to do
with it till English story-telling grew out of it about
the time of the Great Charter. But it was in itself
of such importance that a few things must be said
concerning it.
(i) The men who wrote it were called CHRONICLERS.
At first they were only annalists that is, they jotted
down the events of year after year without any attempt
to bind them together into a connected whole. Of these,
the most important, and indeed they were something
more than mere annalists, were Ordericus Vitalis, and
his predecessors, Florence of Worcester and Simeon of
Durham. But afterwards, from the time of Henry I.,
another class of men arose, who wrote, not in scattered
monasteries, but at the Court. Living at the centre of
political life, their histories were written in a philosophic
spirit, and wove into a whole the growth of law and
national life and the story of affairs abroad. They are
our great authorities for the history of these times. They
begin with William of Malmesbury, whose book ends in
1142, and die out after Matthew Paris, 1235-73. His-
torical prose in England is only represented after the
death of Henry III. by a few dry Latin annalists till it
rose again in modern English prose in 1513, when Sir
4O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAt.
Thomas More's Life of Edward V. and Usurpation of
Richard HI. is said to have been written.
(2) A distinct English feeling soon sprang up among
these Norman historians. English patriotism was far
from having died among the English themselves. The
Sayings of /Elf red were written in English by the English.
These and some ballads, as well as the early English
war-songs, interested the Norman historians and were
collected by them. William of Malmesbury, who was
born of English and Norman parents, has sympathies
with both peoples, and his history marks how both were
becoming one nation. The same welding together of
the conquered and the conquerors is seen in Henry of
Huntingdon and others, till we come to Matthew Paris,
whose view of history is entirely that of an Englishman.
When he wrote, Norman noble and English yeoman,
Norman abbot and English priest, were, and are in his
pages, one in blood and one in interests.
28. English Story-telling grew out of this historical
literature. There was a Welsh priest at the court of
Henry I., called GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, who, inspired
by the Genius of romance, composed in Latin twelve
short books (1132-35), which he playfully called History.
He had been given, he said, an ancient Welsh book to
translate which told in verse the history of Britain from
the days when Brut, the great-grandson of ./Eneas, landed
on its shores, through the whole history of King Arthur
down to Cadwallo, a Welsh king who died in 689. The
real historians were angry at the fiction, and declared
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 41
that throughout the whole of it " he had lied saucily and
shamelessly." It was indeed only a clever putting to-
gether and invention of a number of Welsh and other
legends, but it was the beginning of story-telling after the
Conquest. Every one who read it was delighted with it ;
it made, as we should say, a sensation, and as much on
the Continent as in England. Geoffrey may be said to
have created the heroic figure of Arthur, which had been
only sketched in the compilation which passes under the
name of Nennius. In it the Welsh invaded English liter-
ature, and their tales have never since ceased to live in
it. They charm us as much in Tennyson's Idylls of the
Jftngas they charmed us in the days of Henry I. But the
stories Geoffrey of Monmouth told were in Latin prose.
They were put first into French verse by Geoffrey Gaimar
for the wife of his patron, Ralph FitzGilbert, a northern
baron. They got afterwards to France and, added to
from Breton legends, were made into a poem and decked
out with the ornaments of French romance. In that
form they came back to England as the work of Wace, a
Norman of Caen, the writer also of the Roman de Rou,
who called his poem the Geste des Bretons (afterwards
the JBrut), and completed it in 1155, shortly after the
accession of Henry II. Spread far and wide in France,
it led to an immense development there and elsewhere
of the Legend of Arthur and his Knights.
29. Layamon's "Brut." In this French form the
story drifted through England, and at last falling into the
hands of an English priest in Worcestershire, he resolved
42 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
to tell it in alliterative English verse to his countrymen,
and so doing became the writer of our first important
English poem after the Conquest. We may roughly say
that its date is 1205, ten years or so before the Orrmu-
lum was written, ten years before the Great Charter. It
is plain that its composition, though it told a Welsh story,
was looked on as a patriotic work by the writer. "There
was a priest in the land," he writes of himself, "whose
name was Layamon ; he was son of Leovenath : May
the Lord be gracious unto him ! He dwelt at Earnley,
a noble church on the bank of Severn, near Radstone,
where he read books. It came in mind to him and in
his chiefest thought that he would tell the noble needs
of England, what the men were named, and whence they
came, who first had English land." And it was truly of
great importance. The poem opened to the imagination
of the English people an immense, though a fabled, past
for the history of the island they dwelt in, and made a
common bond of interest between Norman and English-
man. It linked also the Welsh to the English and the
Norman. Written on the borders of Wales, it introduces
a number of Briton legends of which Wace knew nothing,
and of English stories also down to the days of ^Ethel-
stan. It enlarged Arthur before the eyes of men, and
even Teutonic sagas enter into the story. In the realm
of poetry all nations meet and are reconciled. Though
a great deal of it is rendered from the French, there are
not fifty French words in its 30,000 lines. The old Eng-
lish alliterative metre is kept up with a few rare rhymes.
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 43
In battle, in pathetic story, in romantic adventure, in in-
vention, in the sympathy of sea and storm with heroic
deeds, he is a greater and more original poet than those
who followed him, till we come to Chaucer. He touches
with one hand the ancient England before the Conquest,
he touches with another the romantic poetry after it. In-
deed, what Csedmon was to early English poetry, Layamon
is to English poetry after the Conquest. He is the first
of the new singers.
30. Story-telling becomes entirely French in Form.
After an interval the desire for story-telling increased in
England, and France satisfied the desire. The French
tales were carried over our land by the travelling mer-
chant and friar, by the gleemen and singers who trans-
lated them, or sung translations of them, not only to the
castle and the farm, but to the village and the town.
Floriz and Blancheflur and the Romance of Sir Tristrem
were versified before 1300, and many other romantic
tales. The lay of Havelok the Dane was perhaps adapted
from the French towards the close of the thirteenth cen-
tury, and so was the song of King Horn. Their English
origin is also maintained, and at least both rest on Teutonic
tradition. The first took form in northern England, and
shares in the rough vigour of the north. The second is a
southern tale, and has been entirely transformed by the
romantic spirit. English in rhythm, it is thoroughly
French in feeling. The romances of King Alexander and
of Richard Coeur de Lion, and of Arthour and Merlin,
while romantic in form, preserve an English sentiment
44 ENGLISH LITERATURE
CHAP.
and originality which make us remember that, when they
were written, Edward I. was making Norman and English
into one people. About 1300 the story- telling verged
into historical poems, and Robert of Gloucester wrote
his Rhyming Chronicle,hom Brutus to Edward I. As the
dates grow nearer to 1300, the amount of French words
increases, and the French romantic manner of story- telling.
In the Romance of Alexander, to take one example as a
type of all, the natural landscape, the conventional intro-
ductions to the parts, the gorgeous descriptions of pomps,
and armour, and cities, the magic wonders, the manners,
and feasts, and battles of chivalry, especially the love
affairs and feelings, are all steeped in the colours of
French romantic poetry. Now this romance was origi-
nally adapted by a Frenchman about the year 1200. It
took therefore nearly a century before the French
romantic manner of poetry could be naturalised in
English ; and it was naturalised, curious to say, at the
very time when England as a nation had lost its French
attachments and become entirely English.
31. Cycles of Romance. At this time, then, the
French romance of a hundred years earlier was made
English in England. There were four great romantic
stories. The first was that of King Arthur, and Geoffrey
of Monmouth began it in England about 1132. Before
1150 it was taken up in Normandy, sent therefrom into
France, and independent invention soon began to play
upon it. Of these inventors the first was Crestien of
Troyes, but we owe to Robert de Boron, a knight of the
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 45
Vosges country, the first poem on the Graal, the Holy
Dish with which Christ celebrated the Last Supper, and
which in the hands of Joseph of Arimathea received
his blood. The origin of the legend may be traced to
Celtic stories, and this may partly account for its
swift development in the west of England. Two more
romances on the subject, Le Grand St. Graal and La
Queste del St. Graal, in which Galahad appears, are
attributed to Walter Map, a friend of Henry II., and
they were certainly written in England in that king's
reign. It is due to the Anglo-Normans and the Normans
that this Graal-story, in which the Arthur legends were
bound up with the highest doctrine of the Church, took
its great development, not only in France but in Ger-
many. Alongside of the Arthurian Saga arose the
Tristan story, and, at first independent, it was afterwards
linked on to the tale of Arthur. These two together,
along with stories invented concerning all the Knights of
the Round Table, and chiefly Launcelot and Gawaine,
were worked over in a multitude of romantic tales, most
of which became popular in England, and were sung and
made into English verse from the thirteenth to the
sixteenth century.
The second romantic story was that of Charlemagne
and his twelve peers. Begun in France with the Song of
Roland, a huge tale of Charlemagne was forged about
1 1 10 in the name of Archbishop Turpin. In this,
Charlemagne's wars were bound up with oriental legend,
with the Holy Sepulchre, with every kind of story. A
46 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
great number of Carlovingian romances followed. This
cycle, however, owing perhaps to the alienation of the
Anglo-Normans in England from the French, was not
much developed in England at the beginning of our
romance-writing. The most popular of the Carlovingian
poems was the poem of Otinel in the reign of Edward
II. ; but the most beautiful was Amis et Amiloun, the
English version of which so wholly leaves out its con-
nexion with Charlemagne that it has been supposed to be
an original Anglo-Norman-English poem. The Roland,
the Charlemagne and Roland, a Siege of Milan, Sir
Ferumbras and the humorous Rauf Coilyear almost
exhaust the English poems of this cycle.
The third Romantic story is that of the Life of
Alexander, derived from a Latin version (fourth century)
of the Greek story made in Alexandria under the name
of Callisthenes. Its romantic wonders, fictions, and
magic, largely added to from the Arabian books about
Eskander, were doubled by the imagination and coloured
with all the romance of chivalry in the eleventh or twelfth
century ; and the story became so common in England
that " every wight that hath discrecioune," says Chaucer,
had heard of Alexander's fortune. No doubt it was sung
all over England, but we have only a few poems concern-
ing it in English, the last of which, a free translation of
a French original, The Buik of the most noble and vail-
zeand Conquerour, belongs to the fourth decade of the
fifteenth century.
The fourth romantic story, first in date, but last in im-
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 4/
portance in England, was that of the Siege of Troy. Two
Latin pieces, bearing the names of Dares Phrygius and
of Dictys Cretensis, composed about the story of Troy
in the decline of Latin literature, were worked over by
Benoit de Sainte More, with fabulous and romantic in-
ventions of his own, in the Roman de Troie, about 1160.
Guido della Colonne, of Messina, took them up about
1270, and with additions woven into them from the
Theban and Argonautic stories, made a great Latin story
out of them which Lydgate used. Virgil supplied mate-
rials for a romance of sEneas; Statius for a Roman de
Thebes. During the crusades Byzantine and oriental
stories entered into French romance, and especially into
this Cycle of Troy. The Gesf Historiale (XIV. Cent.)
of the Destruction of Troy, first introduced the story of
Troilus (invented by Benoit) to readers of English verse.
This cycle does not seem to have much entered into our
literature till Chaucer's time, but it attracted both Chau-
cer and Lydgate.
These were the four great Romantic cycles which were
used by English poets. But the desire for romances
was not satisfied with these. A few collected round Old
English traditions or history. There was a poem about
Wade, the father of Weland, to which Chaucer alludes.
It has long been lost, but a small fragment of it has lately
been discovered. I have already mentioned the stories
of Horn and Havelok. The romances of Guy of War-
wick and of Bcvis of Hampton, though both translated
from the French, take us back to the time of ^Ethelstan
48 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and Eadgar, but are as unhistorical as the tales of Troy
and Alexander. A number of other romances from vari-
ous sources belong to the time of the Edwards, and were
all derived from the French. Short tales also sprang up,
taken from the fabliaux, from the Roman de Renart,
from the French lais, some satirical, some of love, some
in the form of "debates." Compilations of tales were
made. The Sevyn Sages was worked from the oriental
stock of the Book of the Seven Wise Men ; and the Gesta
Romanorum, a book of stories which began to be used
in England in the reign of Edward I., supplied the mate-
rial for tales in England as well as all over Europe. The
country was therefore swarming with tales, chiefly French,
and its poetic imagination with the fancies, the fables,
the love, and the ornaments of French romance, trans-
lated and imitated in English, and written in the metres
of France and in rhyme.
32. Alliterative English Poems, 1350. In the midst
of all this French imitation, something national begins
to gleam, and it comes from the west, from the lands on
the edge of Wales and Cumbria. This is the recovery
of the Old English metre, that fine, elastic, marching,
epic, alliterative metre which Layamon used, and which
takes us back to Cynewulf. The things written now in
this national metre are still romantic and French in sub-
ject, feeling, and manners ; but their Teutonic metre
slides a fresh, even a vigorous originality, into the con-
ventional phrasing of the romantic poetry. This reaction
from a French to an English type began in the middle
XI FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 49
of the fourteenth century, and runs parallel with the gen-
eral victory of the English language over the French in
the time of Edward III. At least twelve important
poems are written in this alliterative metre, the last of
which in this century was Langland's Vision. Among
these, but not altogether alliterative, are the poems of a
northern, perhaps a Lancashire poet. These are Sir
Gawayne and the Grene Knight ; Pearl ; and Clean-
ness and Patience (Clannesse and Pacience). This poet,
who probably had finished his poems just as Chaucer and
Langland began to write, stands quite apart from his fel-
lows in excellence, and, indeed, along with Langland and
only below Chaucer. Though Sir Gawayne is romantic,
it escapes at many points from the French spirit. It is
more original, it is more imaginative, it is far more in-
tense in feeling, than the ordinary romances. It de-
scribes natural scenery at first hand, and the scenery is
that of the poet's own country. It is moral in aim, it is
composed into an organic whole. It is full of new inven-
tions. In the Pearl, our earliest In Memoriam, there is
an extraordinary personal passion of grief and of religious
exultation pervading a lovely symbolism, which is quite
unique. The same strong personality, mixed with a
more distinctly moral purpose, fills the writer's two other
poems, and brings him as a religious poet into range
with Langland on the one hand, and with Cynewulf
on the other. No one can crudely mix him up with
France. He is as English, at the last, as Langland or
Chaucer.
B
5O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
33. English Lyrics. In the midst of all this story-
telling, like prophecies of what should afterwards be so
lovely in our poetry, rose, no one can tell how, some
lyric poems, country idylls, love songs, and, later on,
some war-songs. The English ballad, sung from town
to town by wandering gleemen, had never altogether
died. A number of rude ballads collected round the
legendary Robin Hood, and the kind of poetic litera-
ture which sang of the outlaw and the forest, and after-
wards so fully of the wild border life, gradually took
form. About 1280 a beautiful little idyll called the
Owl and the Nightingale was written, probably in Dor-
setshire, in which the rival birds submit their quarrel for
precedence to the possible writer of the poem, Nicholas
of Guildford. About 1300 we meet with a few lyric
poems, full of charm. They sing of spring-time with its
blossoms, of the woods ringing with the thrush and night-
ingale, of the flowers and the seemly sun, of country
work, of the woes and joys of love, and many other
delightful things. They are tinged with the colour of
French romance, but they have an English background.
This lyrical movement began with hymns to the Virgin
and Christ, touched with the sentiments of Latin and
Norman-French amorous poetry. These changed into
frank love-poems in the hands of the wandering stu-
dents. Many arose on the Welsh marches, and were
tinged with Celtic feeling. Some are no doubt literary
renderings of English folk-songs, such as "Sumer is
ycumen in," "Blow, northerne wind," and are full of
n FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER $1
love of women and love of nature. After these, a new
type of religious lyrics blossomed, in which, as in all
future English poetry, the love of nature was mingled
with the love of God and the longing of the soul for
perfect beauty. Satirical lyrics also arose, and the pro-
verbial poetry of France gave an impulse to collections
like the Proverbs of Hendyng. Most of these were of
the time of Henry III. and Edward I. Political ballads
now began, in Edward I.'s reign, to be frequently written
in English, but the only dateable ballads of importance
are that on the battle of Lewes, 1264, and the ten war
lyrics of Laurence Minot, who, in 1352, sang the great
deeds and battles of Edward III.
34. The King's English. After the Conquest, French
or Latin was the language of the literary class. The Eng-
lish tongue, spoken only by the people, fell back from the
standard West-Saxon English of the Chronicle into that
broken state of anarchy in which each part of the country
has its own dialect, and each writer uses the dialect of
his own dwelling-place. All the poems then of which we
have spoken were written in dialects of English, not in a
fixed English common to all writers. During the prev-
alence of French, and the continued translation of
French poems, English had been invaded by French
words, and though it had become, in Edward III.'s
reign, the national tongue, it had been transformed as a
language. The old inflections had mostly disappeared.
French endings and prefixes were used, till even so early
as the end of Edward I.'s reign, in Robert of Brunne's
52 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
work, a third of his nouns, adverbs, and verbs, are
French. His work was still however in a dialect the
East-Midland dialect. This dialect grew into the lan-
guage of literature, the standard English. In Robert of
Brunne, it was most literary and most French, but we
must remember that the same dialect belonged to the
two centres of learning, Oxford and Cambridge, and that
London, on this side the Thames was contained in the
same Anglian boundaries. This conquering dialect, when
it became the standard English, did not prevent the
Vision concerning Piers Plowman and Wyclif s transla-
tion of the Bible from being written in a dialect, but it
became the English in which all future English literature
was to be written. It was fixed into clear form by
Chaucer. It was the language talked at the court and
in the court society to which that poet belonged. It was
the King's English, and the fact that it was the tongue
of the best and most cultivated society, as well as the
great excellence of the works written in it by Chaucer,
made it at once the tongue of literature.
35. Religious Literature in Langland and Wyclif.
We have traced the work of " transition English," as it
has been called, along the lines of popular religion and
story-telling. The first of these, in the realm of poetry,
reaches its goal in the work of William Langland ; in the
realm of prose it reaches its goal in Wyclif. In both
these writers, the work differs from any that went before
it, by its popular power, and by the depth of its re-
ligious feeling. It is plain that it represented a society
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 53
much more strongly moved by religion than that of
the beginning of the fourteenth century. In Wyclif, the
voice comes from the university and it went all over the
land in the body of preachers whom, like Wesley, he sent
forth. In Langland's Vision we have a voice from the
centre of the people themselves; his poem is written
in old alliterative English verse, and in the Old English
manner. The very ploughboy could understand it. It
became the book of those who desired social and Church
reform. It was as eagerly listened to by the free labourers
and fugitive serfs who collected round John Ball and Wat
Tyler. It embodied a puritan reaction against the Friars
who had fallen away from the religious revival they had
so nobly instituted. The strongest cry of this regenerated
religion was for truth as against hypocrisy, for purity in
State and Church and private life, for honest labour, and
against ill-gotten wealth and its tyrannical persecution.
There was also a great movement at this time against the
class system of the Middle Ages. This was made a re-
ligious movement when the equality of all men before
God was maintained, and a social movement when it pro-
tested against the oppression of the poor and on behalf
of their misery. The French wars had increased this
misery. Heavy taxation and severe laws ground down the
peasantry. The "Black Death " deepened the wretched-
ness into panic. In 1349, 1362, and 1369 it swept over
England. Grass grew in the towns ; whole villages were
left uninhabited; a wild terror fell upon the people,
which was added to by a fierce tempest in 1362 that to
54 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
men's minds told of the wrath of God. In their panic
then, as well as in their pain, they fled to religion.
36. Piers Plowman. All these elements are to be
found fully represented in the Vision of William concern-
ing Piers Plowman, followed by that concerning Dowel,
Dobet, and Dobest. Its author, WILLIAM LANGLAND,
though we are not certain of his surname, was born, about
1332, at Cleobury Mortimer, in Shropshire. His Vision
begins with a description of his sleeping on the Malvera
Hills, and the first text of it was probably written in the
country in 1362. At the accession of Richard II., 1377,
he was in London. The great popularity of his poem
made him in that year, and again about the year 1398,
send forth two more texts of his poem. In these texts
he made so many additions to the first text that he nearly
doubled the length of the original poem. In 1399, he
wrote his last poem, Richard the Redeless, and then died,
probably in 1400, and we may hope in the quiet of the
West country.
37. His Vision. He paints his portrait as he was
when he lived in Cornhill, a tall, gaunt figure, whom men
called Long Will ; clothed in the black robes in which he
sang for a few pence at the funerals of the rich ; hating
to take his cap off his shaven head to bow to the lords
and ladies that rode by in silver and furs as he stalked
in observant moodiness along the Strand. It is this
figure which in indignant sorrow walks through the
whole poem. The dream of the " field full of folk,"
with which it begins, brings together nearly as many
n FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 55
typical characters as the Tales of Chaucer do. In the
first part, the truth sought for is righteous dealing in
Church, and Law, and State. After the Prologue of the
" field full of folk " and in it the Tower of Truth and the
Dungeon where the Father of Falsehood lives, the Vision
treats of Holy Church who tells the dreamer of Truth.
Where is Falsehood ? he asks. She bids him turn, and
he sees Falsehood and Lady Meed, and learns that
they are to be married. Theology interferes and all the
parties go to London before the King. Lady Meed,
arraigned on Falsehood's flight, is advised by the King
to marry Conscience, but Conscience indignantly pro-
claims her faults, and prophesies that one day Reason
will judge the world. On this the King sends for Reason,
who, deciding a question against Wrong and in spite of
Meed (or bribery), is begged by the King to remain
with him. This fills four divisions or "Passus." The
fifth Passus contains the confession of the Seven Deadly
Sins, and is full of vivid pictures of friars, robbers, nuns,
of village life, of London alehouses, of all the vices of the
time. It ends with the search for Truth being taken up
by all the penitents, and then for the first time Piers
Plowman appears and describes the way. He sets all
who come to him to hard work, and it is here that the
passages occur in which the labouring poor and their evils
are dwelt upon. The seventh Passus introduces the bull
of pardon sent by Truth (God the Father) to Piers. A
Priest declares it is not valid, and the discussion between
him and Piers is so hot that the Dreamer awakes and
56 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
ends with a fine outburst on the wretchedness of a trust
in indulgences and the nobleness of a righteous life.
This is the first part of the poem.
In the second part the truth sought for is that of
righteous life, to Do Well, to Do Better, to Do Best, the
three titles of a new vision and a new pilgrimage. In a
series of dreams and a highly-wrought allegory, Do Well,
Do Bet, and Do Best are finally identified with Jesus
Christ, who now appears as Love in the dress of Piers
Plowman. Do Well is full of curious and important
passages. Do Bet points out Christ as the Saviour of the
World, describes His death, resurrection, and victory over
Death and . Sin. And the dreamer awakes in a transport
of joy, with the Easter chimes pealing in his ears. But
as Langland looked round on the world, the victory did
not seem real, and the stern dreamer passed out of
triumph into the dark sorrow in which he lived. He
dreams again in Do Best, and sees, as Christ leaves the
earth, the reign of Antichrist. Evils attack the Church
and mankind. Envy, Pride, and Sloth, helped by the
Friars, besiege Conscience. Conscience cries on Contri-
tion to help him, but Contrition is asleep, and Conscience,
all but despairing, grasps his pilgrim staff and sets out to
wander over the world, praying for luck and health, " till
he have Piers the Plowman," till he find the Saviour.
And then the dreamer wakes for the last time, weeping
bitterly. This is the poem which displays to us that side
of English society which Chaucer had not touched, and
which wrought so strongly in men's minds that its moral
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 57
influence was almost as widely spread as Wyclifs in the
revolt which had now begun against Latin Christianity.
Its fame was so great, that it produced imitators. About
1394, another alliterative poem was set forth by an
unknown author, with the title of Pierce the Ploughman's
Crede ; and the Plowman's Tale, wrongly attributed to
Chaucer, is another witness to the popularity of Langland.
38. Wyclif . At the same time as the Vision was
being read all over England, JOHN WYCLIF, about 1378,
determined to give a full translation of the Bible to the
English people in their own tongue. He himself trans-
lated the New Testament. His assistant, Nicholas of
Hereford, finished the Old Testament as far as Baruch,
and Wyclif completed it. Some time after, John Purvey,
under Wyclif, revised the whole, corrected its errors,
did away with its Latinisms, and made it a book of
sterling English a book which had naturally a great
power to fix and preserve words in our language. But
Wyclif did much more than this for our tongue. He
made it the popular language of religious thought
and feeling. In 1381 he was in full battle with the
Church on the doctrine of transubstantiation, and was
condemned to silence. He replied by appealing to the
whole of England in the speech of the people. He sent
forth tract after tract, sermon after sermon, couched not
in the dry, philosophic style of the schoolmen, but in
short, sharp, stinging sentences, full of the homely words
used in his own Bible, denying one by one almost all the
doctrines, and denouncing the practices, of the Church of
58 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAK
Rome. He was our first Protestant. It was a new
literary vein to open, the vein of the pamphleteer. With
his work then, and with Langland's, we bring up to the
year 1400 the English prose and poetry pertaining to
religion, the course of which we have been tracing since
the Conquest.
39. Story-telling is the other line on which we have
placed our literature, and it is now represented by JOHN
GOWER. He belongs to a school older than Chaucer,
inasmuch as he is scarcely touched by the Italian, but
chiefly by the French influence. However, he had read
Petrarca. Fifty Balades prove with what clumsy ease he
could write in the French tongue about the affairs of love.
As he grew older he grew graver, and partly as the
religious and social reformer, and partly as the story-
teller, he fills up the literary space between the spirit
of Langland and Chaucer. In the church of St. Sav-
iour, at Southwark, his head is still seen resting on his
three great works, the Speculum Meditantis, the Vox
Clamantis, the Confessio Amantis, 1393. It marks the
unsettled state of our literary language, that each of
these was written in a different tongue, the first in
French, the second in Latin, the third in English. The
first of these has been lost, but has lately been dis-
covered at Cambridge. The second is a dream which
passes into a sermon, cataloguing all the vices of the
time, and is suggested by the peasant rising of 1381.
The third, his English work, is a dialogue between a
lover and his confessor a priest of Venus, and in its
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 59
course, and with an imitation of Jean de Meung's part of
the Roman de la Rose, all the passions and studies which
may hinder love are dwelt upon, partly in allegory, and
their operation illustrated by apposite stories, borrowed
from the Gesta Romanorum and from the Romances.
But the book is in reality a better and larger collection
of tales than was ever made before in English. The
telling of the tales is wearisome, and the smoothness of
the verse makes them more wearisome. But Gower was
a careful writer of English ; and in his satire of evils,
and in his grave reproof of the follies of Richard II.,
he rises into his best strain. The king himself, even
though reproved, was a patron of the poet. It was as
Gower was rowing on the Thames that the royal barge
drew near, and he was called to the king's side. " Book
some new thing," said the king, " in the way you are used,
into which book I myself may often look ; " and the re-
quest was the origin of the Confession of a Lover. He
ended by writing The Tripartite Chronicle. It is with
pleasure that we turn from the learned man of talent
to Geoffrey Chaucer to the genius who called Gower,
with perhaps some of the irony of an artist, " the moral
Gower."
40. Chaucer's French Period. GEOFFREY CHAUCER
was the son of John Chaucer, a vintner, of Thames
Street, London, and was born in 1340 or a year or two
earlier. He lived almost all his life in London, in the
centre of its work and society. When he was sixteen he
became page to the wife of Lionel, Duke of Clarence,
6O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and continued at the court till he joined the army in
France in 1359. He was taken prisoner, but ransomed
before the treaty of Bretigny, in 1360. We then know
nothing of his life for seven years ; but from items in the
Exchequer Rolls, we find that he was again connected
with the court, from 1366 to 1372. He was made a
valet of the king's chamber, and in 1368 an "esquire
of less degree." It was during this time that he began
to write. We seem to have evidence that he composed
in his wild youthful days a number of love poems, none
of which have survived, but which gave him some fame
as a poet. It is said that the A, B t C, a prayer to the
Virgin, is the first of his extant poems, but some are in-
clined to put it later. The translation of the Roman de
la Rose which we possess is, with the exception of the
first 1 705 lines, denied to be his, but it is certain that he
did make a translation of the French poem ; and there
are a few who think that Chaucer's translation was made
about 1380, and that it is completely lost. It is com-
monly said that he wrote the Complcynt unto Pite, a
tender and lovely little poem, before 1369. This was
followed by the Boke of the Duchesse, in 1369, a pathetic
allegory of the death of Blanche of Castile, whose hus-
band, John of Gaunt, was Chaucer's patron. These,
being written under the influence of French poetry, are
classed under the name of Chaucer's first period. There
are lines in them which seem to speak of a luckless love
affair, and in this broken love it has been supposed we
find some key to Chaucer's early life. However that
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 6l
may be, he was married to Philippa Chaucer at some
period between 1366 and 1374. Of the children of
this marriage we only know certainly of one, Lewis,
for whom he made his treatise on the Astrolabe.
4 1 . Chaucer's Italian Period. Chaucer's second poetic
period may be called the period of Italian influence, from
1372 to 1384. During these years he went for the king
on four, perhaps five, diplomatic missions. Two of these
were to Italy the first to Genoa, Pisa, and Florence,
1372-3; the second to Lombardy, 1378-9. At that
time the great Italian literature which inspired then,
and still inspires, European literature, had reached an
astonishing excellence, and it opened to Chaucer a
new world of art. His many quotations from Dante
show that he had read the Divina Commedia, and we
may well think that he then first learnt the full power
and range of poetry. He read the Sonnets of Petrarca,
and he learnt what is meant by " form " in poetry ; but
Petrarca never had the same power over him which
Dante possessed. He read the tales and poems of
Boccaccio, who made Italian prose, and in them he first
saw how to tell a story exquisitely. Petrarca and Boc-
caccio he may even have met, for they died in 1374 and
1375, and Petrarca was in 1373 at Arqua, close to Padua,
and employed on the Latin version of the story of Gri-
silde, the version which Chaucer translated in the Clerk's
tale. But Dante he could not see, for he had died at
Ravenna in 1321. When he came back from these
journeys he was a new man. He threw aside the roman-
62 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP
tic poetry much in vogue, and perhaps laughed at it then
in his gay and kindly manner in the Rime of Sir Thopas,
one of the Canterbury Tales. His chief work of this
time bears witness to the influence of Italy. It was
Troilus and Criseyde, 1380-3, a translation, with many
changes and additions, of the Filostrato of Boccaccio.
The additions (and he nearly doubled the poem) are
stamped with his own peculiar tenderness, vividness, and
simplicity. His changes from the original are all tow-
ards the side of purity, good taste, and piety. We
meet the further influence of Boccaccio in the birth of
some of the Canterbury Tales, and of Petrarca in the
Tales themselves. To this time is now referred the Lyf
of Seint Cecyle, afterwards made the Second Nun's tale ;
and the passionate religious fervour and repentance of
this poem has seemed to point to a period of penitence
in his life for his early sensuousness. It did not last
long, and he now wrote the Story of Grisilde, the Clerk's
tale ; the Story of Constance, the Man of Law's tale ;
the Monk's tale ; the Compleynt of Mars ; the Com-
pleynt to his Lady; Anelida and Arcyte; Troilus and
Criseyde; the Lines to Adam Scrivener; To Rose-
mounde ; The Parlement of Foules ; Boece, a prose ver-
sion of the De Consolatione ; the Hous of Fame, and
the Legende of Good Women. In these two last poems
we may trace, not only an Italian, but a classical period
in the work of Chaucer. This is the record of the work
of the years between 1373 and 1384 ; and almost all
these poems are either influenced by Dante or adapted
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 63
from Petrarca and Boccaccio. In the passion with which
Chaucer describes the ruined love of Troilus or Anelida,
some have traced the lingering sorrow of his early love
affair. But if this be true, it was now passing away, for
in the creation of Pandarus in the Troilus, and in the
delightful fun of that enchanting poem the Parlement
of Foules, a new Chaucer appears, the humorous poet
of some of the Canterbury Tales. The noble art of the
Parlement, as well as that of the Troilus, lifts Chaucer
already on to that eminence apart where sit the great
poets of the world. Nothing like this had appeared
before in England. Nothing like it appeared again till
Spenser. In the active business life he led during the
period his poetry was likely to win a closer grasp on
human life, for he was not only employed on service
abroad, but also at home. In 1374 he was Comptroller
of the Wool Customs, in 1382 of the Petty Customs,
and in 1386 Knight of the Shire for Kent.
42. Chaucer's English Period. It is in the next
period, from 1384 to 1390, that he left behind (except
in the borrowing of his subjects) Italian influence as he
had left French, and became entirely himself, entirely
English. The comparative poverty in which he now
lived, and the loss of his offices in 1386, for in John of
Gaunt's absence court favour was withdrawn from him,
and the death of his wife in 1387, may have given him
more time for study and the retired life of a poet. His
appointment as Clerk of the Works in 1389 brought him
again into contact with men. He superintended the
64 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
repairs and building at the Palace of Westminster, the
Tower, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, till July, 1391,
when he was superseded, and lived on pensions allotted
to him by Richard II. and by Henry IV., after he had
sent Henry in 1399 his Compleint to his Purse. Before
1390, however, he had added to his great work its most
English tales ; those of the Miller, the Reeve, the Cook,
the Wife of Bath, the Merchant, the Friar, the Nun's
Priest, the Pardoner, and perhaps the Sompnour. The
Prologue was probably written in 1388. In these, in
their humour, in their vividness of portraiture, in their
ease of narration, and in the variety of their characters,
Chaucer shines supreme. A few smaller poems belong
to this time, such as the Former Age ; Fortune ; Truth ;
Gentilesse ; and the Lak of Steadfastnesse.
During the last ten years of his life, which may be
called the period of his decay, he wrote some small
poems, and along with the Compleynt of Venus, and a
prose treatise on the Astrolabe, three more Canterbury
tales, the Canon's-yeoman's, Manciple's, and Parson's.
The last was written the year of his death, 1400. Having
done this work he died in a house under the shadow
of the Abbey of Westminster. Within the walls of the
Abbey Church, the first of the poets who lies there,
that " sacred and happy spirit " sleeps.
43. Chaucer's Character. Born of the tradesman class,
Chaucer was in every sense of the word one of our finest
gentlemen : tender, graceful in thought, glad of heart,
humorous, and satirical without unkindness ; sensitive to
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 65
every change of feeling in himself and others, and there-
fore full of sympathy ; brave in misfortune, even to mirth,
and doing well and with careful honesty all he undertook.
His first and great delight was in human nature, and he
makes us love the noble characters in his poems, and feel
with kindliness towards the baser and ruder sort. He
never sneers, for he had a wide charity, and we can
always smile in his pages at the follies and forgive the
sins of men. He had a quiet and true religion, much
like that we conceive Shakespeare to have had ; nor was
he without a high philosophic strain. Both were kept in
order by his imagination and his humour. He had a
true and chivalrous regard for women of his own class,
and his wife and he ought to have been very happy if
they had fulfilled the ideal he had of marriage. He lived
in aristocratic society, and yet he thought him the great-
est gentleman who was the most courteous and the most
virtuous. He lived frankly among men, and as we have
seen, saw many different types of men, and in his own
time filled many parts as a man of the world and of busi-
ness. Yet, with all this active and observant life, he was
commonly very quiet and kept much to himself. " Flee
from the press and dwell with steadfastness " is the first
line of his last ballad, and it embodies, with the rest of
that personal poem, the serious part of his life. The
Host in the Tales japes at him for his lonely, abstracted
air. "Thou lookest as thou wouldest find a hare, And
ever on the ground I see thee stare." Being a good
scholar, he read morning and night alone, and he says
F
66 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
that after his (office) work he would go home and sit at
another book as dumb as a stone, till his look was dazed.
While at study and when he was making of songs and
ditties, "nothing else that God had made " had any in-
terest for him. There was but one thing that roused him
then, and that too he liked to enjoy alone. It was the
beauty of the morning and the fields, the woods, and
streams, and flowers, and the singing of the little birds.
This made his heart full of revel and solace, and when
spring came after winter, he rose with the lark and cried
"Farewell, my book and my devotion." He was a keen
observer of the nature he cared for, especially of colour.
He loved the streams and the birds and soft grassy
places and green trees, and all sweet, ordered gardens,
and flowers. He could spend the whole day, he says, in
gazing alone on the daisy, and though what he says is
symbolic, yet we may trace through the phrase that
lonely delight in natural scenery which is so special a
mark of our later poets. He lived thus a double life, in
and out of the world, but never a gloomy one. For he
was fond of mirth and good-living, and when he grew
towards age, was portly of waist, no poppet to embrace.
But he kept to the end his elfish countenance, the shy,
delicate, half-mischievous face which looked on men
from its gray hair and forked beard, and was set off by
his dark-coloured dress and hood. A knife and ink-horn
hung on his dress ; we see a rosary in his hand ; and
when he was alone he walked swiftly.
44. The Canterbury Tales. Of his work it is not
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 6?
easy to speak briefly, because of its great variety. Enough
has been said of it, with the exception of his most com-
plete creation, the Canterbury Tales. It will be seen
from the dates given above that they were not written at
one time. They are not, and cannot be looked on as a
whole. Many were written independently, and then fitted
into the framework of the Prologue. Many, which he
intended to write in order to complete his scheme, were
never written. But we may say that the full idea of his
work took shape about 1385, after he had finished The
Legende of Good Women, and that the whole existing
body of the Tales was completed, with the exception of
the last three already mentioned, before the close of
1390. At intervals, from time to time, he added a tale ;
in fact, the whole was done much in the same way as
Tennyson has written his Idylls of the King. The manner
in which he knitted them together was very simple, and
likely to please the English people. The holiday ex-
cursions of the time were the pilgrimages, and the most
famous and the pleasantest pilgrimage to go, especially
for Londoners, was the three or four days' journey to see
the shrine of St. Thomas at Canterbury. Persons of all
ranks in life met and travelled together, starting from a
London inn. Chaucer had probably made the pilgrimage
to Canterbury in the spring of 1385 or 1387, and was led
by this experience to the framework in which he set his
pictures of life. He grouped around the jovial host of
the Tabard Inn men and women of every class of society
in England, set them on horseback to ride to Canterbury
68 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and home again, intending to make each of them tell
tales. No one could hit off a character better, and in
his Prologue, and in the prologues to the several Tales,
a great part of the new, vigorous English society which
had grown up since Edward I. is painted with astonishing
vividness. " I see all the pilgrims in the Canterbury
Tales" says Dryden, "their humours, their features, and
the very dress, as distinctly as if I had supped with them
at the Tabard in Southwark." The Tales themselves
take in the whole range of the poetry and the life of the
Middle Ages ; the legend of the saint, the romance of the
knight, the wonderful fables of the traveller, the coarse
tale of common life, the love story, the allegory, the
animal-fable, and the satirical lay. And they are pure
tales. He is not in any sense a dramatic writer ; he is
our greatest story-teller in verse. All the best tales are
told easily, sincerely, with great grace, and yet with so
much homeliness, that a child would understand them.
Sometimes his humour is broad, sometimes sly, some-
times gay, but it is also exquisite and affectionate. His
pathos does not go into the far depths of sorrow and pain,
but it is always natural. He can bring tears into our eyes,
and he can make us smile or be sad as he pleases.
His eye for colour was superb and distinctive. He
had a very fine ear for the music of verse, and the tale
and the verse go together like voice and music. Indeed,
so softly flowing and bright are they, that to read them
is like listening in a meadow full of sunshine to a clear
stream rippling over its bed of pebbles. The English in
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER 69
which they are written is almost the English of our
time; and it is literary English. Chaucer made our
tongue into a true means of poetry. He did more, he
welded together the French and English elements in
our language and made them into one English tool for
the use of literature, and all our prose writers and poets
derive their tongue from the language of the Canterbury
Tales. They give him honour for this, but still more for
that he was so fine an artist. Poetry is an art, and the
artist in poetry is one who writes for pure and noble
pleasure the thing he writes, and who desires to give to
others the same or a similar pleasure by his poems
which he had in writing them. The things he most
cares about are that the form in which he puts his
thoughts or feelings may be perfectly fitting to the sub-
jects : and that subject, matter, and form should be as
beautiful as possible but for these he cares very
greatly ; and in this Chaucer stands apart from the other
poets of his time. Gower wrote with a set object, and
nothing can be less beautiful than the form in which he
puts his tales. The author of Piers Plowman wrote with
the object of reform in social and ecclesiastical affairs,
and his form is uncouth and harsh. Chaucer wrote be-
cause he was full of emotion and joy in his own thoughts,
and thought that others would weep and be glad with
him, and the only time he ever moralises is in the tales of
the Canon's Yeoman and the Manciple, written in his de-
cay. He has, then, the best right to the poet's name. He
is, within his own range, the clearest of English artists.
7O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Finally, his position in the history of English poetry
and towards his own time resembles that of Dante, whom
he loved so well, in the history and poetry of Italy.
Dante embodied all the past elements of the Middle
Ages in his work, and he began the literature, the
thoughts, and the power of a new age. He was the
Evening Star of the Mediaeval day and the Morning
Star of the Renaissance. Chaucer also represented med-
iaevalism though in a much more incomplete way than
Dante, but he had, so far as poetry in England is con-
cerned, more of the Renaissance spirit than Dante. He
is more humanistic than even Spenser. England needed
to live more than a century to get up to the level of
Chaucer. Lastly, both Dante and he made their own
country's tongue the tongue of noble literature.
45. The Travels of Sir John Maundevile belong to
this place which treats of story-telling. Whatever other
English prose arose in the fourteenth century was theo-
logical or scientific. John of Trevisa had, among other
English translations, turned into English prose, 1387,
the Polychronicon of Ranulf Higden. Various other
prose treatises, beginning with those of Richard Rolle,
had appeared. Chaucer himself translated two of his
tales, that of the Parson, and that of Melibceus, from
the French into an involved prose ; and wrote in the
same rude vehicle, his Boece, and his book on the
Astrolabe. We have already noticed the prose of Wyc-
lif. But Maundevile 1 s Travels is a story-book. Maun-
devile himself, the quaint and pleasant knight, is as
II FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER /I
much an invention as Robinson Crusoe, and the travels
as much an imposture as Geoffrey's History of the Kings
of Britain. But they had a similar charm, and when
made up originally by Jean de Bourgogne, a physician
who died at Liege in 1372, were received with delight
and belief by the world, and nowhere with greater
pleasure than in England, where they were translated
into English prose by an anonymous writer of the late
fourteenth or more probably fifteenth century. The
prose is garrulous and facile, gliding with a pleasure
in itself from legend to travellers' tales, from dreams
to facts, from St. Albans to Jerusalem, from Cairo to
Cathay. The book became a model of prose, and may
even be called an early classic.
,72 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER III
FROM CHAUCER'S DEATH 1400, TO ELIZABETH, 1558
46. The Fifteenth Century Poetry. The last poems
of Chaucer and Langland bring our story up to 1400.
The hundred years that followed are the most barren
in our literature. The influence of Chaucer lasted, and
of the poems attributed to him, but now rejected by
scholars, some certainly belong to the first half of this
century. There are fifty poems, making up 17,000 lines,
which have been wrongly attributed to Chaucer, and
though some of them were contemporary with him, a
number are by imitators of his in the fifteenth century.
Some of these have a great charm. The Cuckoo and
the Nightingale is a pleasant thing. The Complaint of
the Black Knight is by Lydgate. The Court of Love
and Chaucer's Dream are good but late imitations of
the master. The Flower and the Leaf is by a woman
whose name we should like to know, for the poem is
lovely. " Moder of God and Virgin undefouled" is by
Hoccleve, and was long attributed to Chaucer. The
triple Roundel, Merciks Beaute, is given by Professor
Skeat to Chaucer, and at least is worthy of the poet ;
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 73
and the Amorous Compleint and a Ballade of Com-
pleynt, may possibly be also his. There was then a
considerable school of imitators, who followed the style,
who had some of the imaginative spirit, but who failed
in the music and the art of Chaucer.
47. Thomas Hoccleve and John Lyjgate. Two of
these imitators stand out from the rest by the extent
of their work. Hoccleve, a London man, was a monot-
onous versifier of the reigns of the three Henries, but
he loved Chaucer well. In the MS. of his longest
poem, the Governail of Princes, written before 1413,
he caused to be drawn, with fond idolatry, the portrait
of his "master dear and father reverent," who had
enlumined all the land with his books. He had a
style of his own. Sometimes, in his playful imitations
of Chaucer's Balades, and in his devotional poetry,
such as his Moder of God, he reached excellence ; but
his didactic and controversial aims finally overwhelmed
his poetry.
48. John Lydgate was a more worthy follower of
Chaucer. A monk of Bury, and thirty years of age
when Chaucer died, he yet wrote nothing of much
importance till the reign of Henry V. He was a gay
and pleasant person, though a long-winded poet, and
he seems to have lived even in his old age, when he
recalls himself as a boy "weeping for naught, anon
after glad," the fresh and natural life of one who en-
joyed everything ; but, like many gay persons, he had
a vein of melancholy, and some of his best work, at
74 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAf.
least in the poet Gray's opinion, belongs to the realms
of pathetic and moral poetry. But there was scarcely
any literary work he could not do. He rhymed history,
ballads, and legends, till the monastery was delighted.
He made pageants for Henry VI., masques and May-
games for aldermen, mummeries for the Lord Mayor,
and satirical ballads on the follies of the day. It is
impossible here to mention the tenth part of his mul-
tifarious works, many of which are as yet unpublished.
They are a strange mixture of the poet striving to be
religious, and of the monk carried away by his passions
and his gaiety. He may have been educated at Oxford,
and perhaps travelled in France and Italy; he knew
the literature of his time, and he even dabbled in the
sciences. He was as much a lover of nature as Chau-
cer, but cannot make us feel the beauty of nature in
the same way. It is his story-telling which links him
closest to his master. His three chief poems are, first,
The Troye Book, which is adapted from Guide's His-
toria Trojana ; secondly, the Storie of Thebes, which
is introduced as an additional Canterbury Tale, and is
worked up from French romances on this subject.
The third is the Falles of Princes, 1424-5, at which
he worked till he was sixty years of age. It is a free
translation of a French version of Boccaccio's De Cas-
ibus Virorum et Feminarum Illustrium. It tells the
tragic fates of great men and women from the time
of Adam to the capture of King John of France at
Poitiers. The plan is picturesque; the sorrowful dead
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 75
appear before Boccaccio, pensive in his library, and
each tells of his downfall. This is Lydgate's most im-
portant, but by no means his best, poem ; and it had
its influence on the future, for in the Mirror for Mag-
istrates, at least eight Elizabethan poets united at differ-
ent times to supplement his Falles of Princes.
A few minor poets do no more now than keep poetry
alive. Another version of the Troy Story in Henry VI. 's
time ; Hugh de Campeden's Sidrac, Thomas Chestre's
Lay of Sir Launfal, and the translation of the Earl of
Toulouse, prove that romances were still taken from the
French. William Lichfield's Complaint between God and
Man, and William Nassington's Mirrour of Life, carry
on the religious, and the Tournament of Tottenham the
satirical, poetry. John Capgrave's translation of the Life
of St. Catherine is less known than his Chronicle of
England dedicated to Edward IV. He, with John Hard-
ing, a soldier of Agincourt, whose rhyming Chronicle
belongs to Edward IV.'s reign, continue the historical
poetry. A number of obscure versifiers, Thomas Norton,
and George Ripley who wrote on alchemy, and Dame
Juliana Berners' book on Hunting, bring us to the reign
of Henry VII., when Skelton first began to write. Mean-
while poetry, which had decayed in England, was
flourishing in Scotland.
49. Ballads, lays, fragments of romances, had been
sung in England from the earliest times, and popular
tales and jokes took form in short lyric pieces, to be ac-
companied with music and dancing. In fact, the ballad
76 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
went over the whole land among the people. The trader,
the apprentices, and poor of the cities, the peasantry, had
their own songs. They tended to collect themselves
round some legendary name like Robin Hood, or some
historical character made legendary, like Randolf, Earl
of Chester. In the fourteenth century, Sloth, in Piers
Plowman, does not know his paternoster, but he does
know the rhymes of these heroes. Robin Hood was then
well known in 1370. A crowd of minstrels sang them
through city and village. The very friar sang them, " and
made his English swete upon his tonge." The Tale of
Gamelyn is a piece of minstrel poetry, of the forest type,
and drew to it, as we know, the attention of Chaucer.
Chaucer and Langland mention the French ballads which
were sung in London, and these were freely translated.
The popular song, " When Adam dalf and Eve span,"
was a type of a class of socialistic ballads. The Battle of
Otterbourne and The Hunting of the Cheviot were no
doubt composed in the fourteenth century, but were not
published till now. Two collections of Robin Hood bal-
lads and The Nut Brown Maid, printed about the begin-
ning of the sixteenth century, show that a fresh interest
had then awakened in this outlaw literature to which we
owe so much. It was not, however, till much later that
any large collection of ballads was made ; and few, in the
form we possess them, can be dated farther back than
the reign of Elizabeth.
50. Prose Literature. Four men continued English
prose into the fifteenth century. The religious war be-
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH //
tween the Lollards and the Church raged during the reigns
of Henry V. and Henry VI., and in the time of the
latter REGINALD PECOCK took it out of Latin into homely
English. He fought the Lollards with their own weapons,
with public sermons in English, and with tracts in Eng-
lish ; and after 1449, when Bishop of Chichester, published
his works, The Represser of overmuch Blaming of the
Clergy and The Book of Faith. They pleased neither
party. The Lollards disliked them because they defended
the customs and doctrines of the Church. Churchmen
burnt them because they agreed with the " Bible-men,"
that the Bible was the only rule of faith. Both abjured
them because they said that doctrines were to be proved
from the Bible by reason. Pecock is the first of all the
Church theologians who wrote in English, and his books
are good examples of our early prose.
SIR JOHN FORTESCUE'S book on the Difference between
Absolute and Limited Monarchy, in Edward IV.'s reign,
is less fine an example of the prose of English politics
than SIR THOMAS MALORY'S Morte Darthur is of the
prose of chivalry. This book, arranged and modelled
into a labyrinthine story from French and contemporary
English materials, is the work of a man of genius, and
was ended in the ninth year of Edward IV., fifteen years
before Caxton had finished printing it. Its prose, in its
joyous simplicity, may well have charmed CAXTON, who
printed it with all the care of one who " loved the noble
acts of chivalry." Caxton's own work added to the
prose of England. Born of Kentish parents, he went to
78 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAV.
the Low Countries in 1440, and learned his trade. The
first book said to have been printed in this country was
The Game and Playe of the Chesse, 1474. The first book
that bears the inscription, " Imprynted by me, William
Caxton, at Westmynstre," is The Dictes and Sayings of
Philosophers. But the first English book Caxton made,
and finished at Cologne in 1471, was his translation of
the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, and in this book,
and in his translation of Reynard the Fox from the Dutch,
in his translation of the Golden Legend, and his re-
editing of Trevisa's Chronicle, in which he " changed the
rude and old English," he kept, by the fixing power of
the press, the Midland English, which Chaucer had es-
tablished as the tongue of literature, from further degrada-
tion. Forty years later Tyndale's New Testament fixed
it more firmly, and the Elizabethan writers kept it in its
purity.
51. The Foundations of the Elizabethan Literature.
The first of these may be found in Caxton's work. John
Shirley, a gentleman of good family, and Chaucer's con-
temporary, who died, a very old man, in 1449, deserves
mention as a transcriber and preserver of the works of
Chaucer and Lydgate, but Caxton fulfilled the task Shir-
ley had begun. He printed Chaucer and Lydgate and
Gower with zealous care. He printed the Chronicle of
the Brut ; he secured for us the Morte Darthur. He
had a tradesman's interest in publishing the romances,
for they were the reading of the day; but he could
scarcely have done better for the interests of the coming
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH /9
literature. These books nourished the imagination of
England, and supplied poet after poet with fine subjects
for work, or fine frames for their subjects. He had not
a tradesman's, but a loving literary, interest in printing the
old English poets ; and in sending them out from his
press Caxton kept up the continuity of English poetry.
The poets after him at once began on the models of
Chaucer and Gower and Lydgate ; and the books them-
selves being more widely read, not only made poets but
a public that loved poetry. The imprinting of old Eng-
lish poetry was one of the sources in this century of the
Elizabethan literature.
The second source was the growth of an interest in
classic literature. All through the last two-thirds of this
century, though so little creative work was done, the
interest in that literature grew among men of the upper
classes. The Wars of the Roses did not stop the reading
of books. The Paston Letters, 1422-1509, the corre-
spondence of a country family from Henry VI. to Henry
VII., are pleasantly, even correctly written, and contain
passages which refer to translations of the classics and to
manuscripts sent to and fro for reading. A great number
of French translations of the Latin classics were read in
England. Henry V. and VI., Edward IV., and some of
the great nobles were lovers of books. Men like Duke
Humphrey of Gloucester made libraries and brought over
Italian scholars to England to translate Greek works.
There were even scholars in England, like John, Lord
Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, who had won fame in the
8O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
schools of Italy, and whose translations of Cicero's De
Amidtid and of Caesar's De Bello Gallico prove, with his
Latin letters, how worthy he was of the praise of Padua
and the gratitude of Oxford. He added many MSS. to
the library of Duke Humphrey. The two great universi-
ties were also now reformed ; new colleges were founded,
new libraries were established, Greek, Latin, and Italian
MSS. were collected in them. The New Learning had
begun to move in these great centres. A number of uni-
versity men went to study in Italy, to Padua, Bologna,
and Ferrara. Among these were Robert Flemmyng,
Dean of Lincoln; John Gunthorpe, Dean of Wells;
William Grey, Bishop of Ely; John Phreas, Provost
of Balliol ; William Sellynge, Fellow of All Souls, all of
whom collected MSS. in Italy of the classics, with which
they enriched the libraries of England. It is in this grow-
ing influence of the great classic models of literature that
we find the gathering together of another of the sources
of that Elizabethan literature which seems to flower so
suddenly, but which had been long preparing.
52. The Italian Revival of Learning. The impulse,
as we see, came from Italy, and was due to that great
humanistic movement which we call the Renaissance,
and which had properly begun in Italy with Dante and
his circle, with Petrarca and Boccaccio, with Giotto and
Nicolo Pisano. It carried with it, as it went on reviving
the thought, literature and law of Greece and Rome, the
overthrow of Feudalism and the romantic poetry of the
Middle Ages. It made classic literature and art the basis,
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 8 1
of a new literature and a new art, which was not at first
imitative, save of excellence of form. It began a new
worship of beauty, a new worship of knowledge, and a
new statesmanship. It initiated those new views of man
and of human life, of its aims, rights, and duties, of its
pleasures and pains, of religion, of knowledge, and of the
whole course of the history of the world, which produced,
as they fell on various types of humanity, the Refor-
mation, a semi-pagan freedom of thought and life, the
theories and ideas which took such furious form in the
French Revolution, the boundless effort which attempted
all things, and the boundless curiosity which penetrated
into every realm of thought and feeling, and considered
nothing too sacred or too remote for investigation by
knowledge or for representation in art. At every one of
those points it has affected literature up to the present day.
No sooner had Petrarca and Boccaccio started it than
Italy began to send eager searchers over Europe and
chiefly to Constantinople. For more than seventy years
before that city was taken by the Turk, shoals of MSS.
had been carried from it into Italy together with a host
of objects of ancient art. Before 1440 the best Latin
classics and many of the Greek, were known, and were
soon studied, lectured on, imitated, and translated. By
1460 Italy, in all matters of thought, life, art, literature,
and knowledge, was like a hive of bees in a warm sum-
mer. We have seen with what slowness this vast impulse
was felt in England in the fifteenth century. But it had
begun, and in Elizabeth's time, pouring into England, it
G
82 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
went forth conquering and to conquer. As France
dominated the literature of England after the Conquest,
till Chaucer, touched by Italy, made it English, so Italy
dominated it till Shakespeare and his fellows, touched
also by Italy, made it again English.
53. There was now a Transition Period both in
Prose and Poetry The reigns of Richard III. and
Henry VII. brought forth no prose of any worth, but
the country awakened into its first Renaissance with the
accession of Henry VIII., 1509. John Colet, Dean of St.
Paul's, with William Lilly, the grammarian, set on foot a
school where the classics were taught in a new and prac-
tical way, and between the year 1500 and the Reforma-
tion twenty grammar-schools were established. Erasmus,
who had all the enthusiasm which sets others on fire, had
come to England in 1497, and found Grocyn and Linacre
at Oxford, teaching the Greek they had learnt from Chal-
condylas at Florence. He learnt Greek from them, and
found eager admiration of his own scholarship in Bishop
Fisher, Sir Thomas More, Colet, and Archbishop War-
ham. From these men a liberal and moderate theology
spread, which soon, however, perished in the heats of the
Reformation. But the New Learning they had started
grew rapidly, assisted by the munificence of Wolsey; and
Cambridge, under Cheke and Smith, excelled even Ox-
ford in Greek learning. The study of the great classics
set free the minds of men, stirred and gave life to letters,
woke up English prose from its sleep, and kindled the
young English intelligence in the universities. Its earliest
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 83
prose was its best. It was in 1513 (not printed till 1557)
that THOMAS MORE wrote the history in English, of
Edward V.'s life and Richard III.'s usurpation. The
simplicity of his genius showed itself in the style, and
his wit in the picturesque method and the dramatic
dialogue that graced the book. This stately historical
manner was laid aside by More in the tracts of nervous
English with which he replied to Tyndale, but both his
styles are remarkable for their purity. Of all the " strong
words " he uses, three out of four are Teutonic. More's
most famous work, the Utopia, 1516, was written in
Latin, but was translated afterwards, in 1551, by Ralph
Robinson. It tells us more of the curiosity the New
Learning had awakened in Englishmen concerning all
the problems of life, society, government, and religion,
than any other book of the time. It is the representative
book of that short but well-defined period which we may
call English Renaissance before the Reformation. We see
in all this movement another of the sources of the Eliza-
bethan outburst. Much of the progress of prose was due
to the patronage of the young king. It was the king who
asked Lord Berners to translate Froissart, a translation
which in 1523 made a landmark in our tongue. It was
the king who supported Sir Thomas Elyot in his effort to
improve education, and encouraged him to write books
(1531-46) in the vulgar tongue that he might please
his countrymen. It was the king who made Leland,
our first English writer on antiquarian subjects, the
"King's Antiquary," 1533. It was the king to whom
84 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Roger Ascham dedicated his first work, and who sent
him abroad to pursue his studies. This book, the
Toxophilus, or the School of Shooting, 1545, was writ-
ten for the pleasure of the yeomen and gentlemen of
England in their own tongue. Ascham apologises for
this, and the apology marks the state of English prose.
" Everything has been done excellently well in Greek
and Latin, but in the English tongue so meanly that no
man can do worse." But " I have written this English
matter, in the English tongue for English men." Ascham's
quaint English has its charm, and he did not know that
the very rudeness of language of which he complained
was in reality laying the foundations of an English more
Teutonic and less Latin than the English of Chaucer.
54. Prose and the ReforMtin. The bigotry, the
avarice, and the violent comtroversy of the Reformation
killed for a time the New Learning, but the Reformation
did a vast work for English literature, and prepared the
language for the Elizabethan writers, by its version of
the Bible. WILLIAM TYNDALE'S Translation of the New
Testament, 1525, fixed our standard English once for all,
and brought it finally into every English home. Tyndale
held fast to pure English. In his two volumes of polit-
ical tracts " there are only twelve Teutonic words which
are now obsolete, a strong proof of the influence his
translation of the Bible has had in preserving the old
speech of England." Of the 6000 words of the Author-
ised Version, still in a great part his translation, only 250
are not now in common use. " Three out of four of his
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 85
nouns, adverbs, and verbs are Teutonic." And he spoke
sharply enough to those who said our tongue was so rude
that the Bible could not be translated into it. " It is not
so rude as they are false liars. For the Greek tongue
agreeth more with the English than the Latin ; a thou-
sand parts better may it be translated into the English
than into the Latin."
Tyndale was helped in his English Bible by William
Roy, a runaway friar; and his friend Rogers, the first
martyr in Queen Mary's reign, added the translation of
the Apocrypha, and made up what was wanting in Tyn-
dale's translation from Chronicles to Malachi out of
Coverdale's translation. It was this Bible which, re-
vised by Coverdale and edited and re-edited as Crom-
well's Bible, 1539, and again as Cranmcr*s Bible, 1540,
was set up in every parish church in England. It got
north into Scotland and made the Lowland English more
like the London English. It passed over to the Prot-
estant settlements in Ireland. After its revisal in 1611
it went with the Puritan Fathers to New England and
fixed the standard of English in America. Many mill-
ions of people now speak the English of Tyndale's Bible,
and there is no book which has had, through the Au-
thorised Version, so great an influence on the style of
English literature and the standard of English prose. In
Edward VI. 's reign also Cranmer edited the English
Prayer Book, 1549-52. Its English is a good deal
mixed with Latin words, and its style is sometimes weak
or heavy, but on the whole it is a fine example of stately
86 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
prose. It also steadied our speech. LATIMER, on the
contrary, whose Sermon on the Ploughers and others were
delivered in 1549 and in 1552, wrote in a plain, shrewd
style, which by its humour and rude directness made him
the first preacher of his day. On the whole the Refor-
mation fixed and confirmed our English tongue, but at the
same time it brought in through theology a large number
of Latin words. The pairing of English and Latin words
(acknowledge and confess, etc.) in the Prayer Book is
a good example of both these results.
55. Poetry in the Sixteenth Century under the In-
fluence of Chaucer. One source, we have said, of the
Elizabethan literature, before Elizabeth, was the recovery,
through Caxton's press, of Chaucer and his men. It is
probable that the influence of Italian literature on English
poets was now kept from becoming overwhelming by the
strong English element in Chaucer. At least this was
one of the reasons for the clear poetic individuality of
England; and we can easily trace its balancing effect
in Spenser. It was of importance, then, that before
Surrey and Wyatt again brought Italian elements into
English verse, there should be a revival of Chaucer,
both in England and Scotland. This transition period,
short as it was, is of interest. STEPHEN HAWES, in the
reign of Henry VII., represented the transition by an
imitation of the old work. Amid many poems, some
more imitative of Lydgate than of Chaucer, his long alle-
.gorical poem, entitled the Pastime of Pleasure, is the
best. In fact, it is the first, since the middle of the
in FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 87
fifteenth century, in which Imagination again began to
plume her wings and soar. Within the realm of art, it
corresponded to that effort to resuscitate the dead body
of the Old Chivalry which Henry VIII. and Francis I.
attempted. It goes back for its inspiration to the Ro-
mance of the Rose, and is an allegory of the right educa-
tion of a knight, showing how Grand Amour won at last
La Bel Pucell. But, like all soulless resurrections, it
died quickly.
On the other hand, JOHN SKELTON represents the
transition by at first following the old poetry, and then,
pressed upon by the storm of human life in the present,
by taking an original path. His imitative poetry belongs
mostly to Henry VII. 's time, but when the religious and
political disturbances began in Henry VIII. 's time,
Skelton became excited by the cry of the people for
Church reformation. His poem, Why come ye not to
Court? was a fierce satire on the great Cardinal. That
of Colin Clout was the cry of the country Colin, and of
the Clout or mechanic of the town against the corruption
of the Church ; and it represents the whole popular feel-
ing of the time just before the movement of the Reforma-
tion took a new turn from the opposition of the Pope to
Henry's divorce. Both are written in short " rude rayling
rimes, pleasing only the popular ear," and Skelton chose
them for that purpose. He had a rough, impetuous
power, but Skelton could use any language he pleased.
He was an admirable scholar. Erasmus calls him the
" glory and light of English letters," and Caxton says
88 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHA*.
that he improved our language. His poem, the Bowge of
Court (rewards of court), is full of powerful satire against
the corruption of the times, and of vivid impersonations
of the virtues and vices. But he was not only the satirist.
The pretty and new love lyrics that we owe to him fore-
shadow the Elizabethan imagination and life ; and the
Boke of Phyllyp Sparowe, which tells, in imitation of
Catullus, the grief of a nun called Jane Scrope for the
death of her sparrow, is a gay and inventive poem.
Skelton stands a landmark in English literature be-
tween the mere imitation of Chaucer and the rise of a new
Italian influence in England in the poems of Surrey and
Wyatt. In his own special work he was entirely original.
The Ship of Fooles, 1508, by Barclay, is of this time,
but it has no value. It is a paraphrase of a famous
German work by Sebastian Brandt, published at Basel.
It was popular because it attacked the follies and ques-
tions of the time. Its sole interest to us is in its pictures
of familiar manners and popular customs. But Barclay
did other work, and he established the eclogue in Eng-
land. With him the transition time is over, and the
curtain is ready to rise on the Elizabethan age of poetry.
While we wait, we will make an interlude out of the work
of the poets of Scotland.
SCOTTISH POETRY
56. Scottish Poetry is poetry written in the English
tongue by men living in Scotland. These men, though
calling themselves Scotsmen, are of good English blood.
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 89
But the blood, as I think, was mixed with a larger infu-
sion of Celtic blood than elsewhere.
Old Northumbria extended from the Humber to the
Firth of Forth, leaving however on its western border a
strip of unconquered land, which took in Lancashire,
Cumberland, and Westmoreland in our England, and,
over the border, most of the western country between
the Clyde and Solway Firth. This unconquered country
was the Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde, and was dwelt in
by the Celtic race. The present English part of it was
conquered and the Celts absorbed. But in the part to
the north of the Solway Firth the Celts were not con-
quered and not absorbed. They remained, lived with
the Englishmen who were settled over the old Nor-
thumbria, intermarried with them, and became under Scot
kings a people with the Celtic elements more dominant
in them than in the rest of our nation. English litera-
ture in the Lowlands of Scotland would then retain more
of these Celtic elements than elsewhere ; and there are
certain peculiarities infused through the whole of English
poetry in Scotland which are especially Celtic.
5 7. Celtic Elements of Scottish Poetry. The first
of these is the love of wild nature for its own sake.
There is a passionate, close, and poetical observation and
description of natural scenery in Scotland from the
earliest times of its poetry, such as we do not possess in
English poetry till the time of Thomson. The second is
the love of colour. All early Scottish poetry differs from
English in the extraordinary way in which colour is in-
9O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
sisted on, and at times in the lavish exaggeration of it
The third is the wittier and coarser humour in the Scot-
tish poetry, which is distinctly Celtic in contrast with
that humour which has its root in sadness and which be-
longs to the Teutonic races. Few things are really more
different than the humour of Chaucer and the humour of
Dunbar, than the humour of Cowper and the humour of
Burns. These are the special Celtic elements in the
Lowland poetry.
58. But there are also national elements in it which,
exaggerated and isolated as they were, are also Celtic.
The wild individuality of the Gaelic clans was not un-
represented in the Lowland kingdom, and became there
as assertive a nationality as Ireland has ever proclaimed.
The English were as national as the Scots, but they were
not oppressed. But for nearly forty years the Scots re-
sisted for their very life the efforts of England to conquer
them. And the war of freedom left its traces on their
poetry from Barboui to Burns and Walter Scott in the
almost obtrusive way in which Scotland, and Scottish
liberty, and Scottish heroes are thrust forward in their
verse. Their passionate nationality appears in another
form in their descriptive poetry. The natural descrip-
tion of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or even Milton, is not
distinctively English. But in Scotland it is always the
scenery of their own land that the poets describe. Even
when they are imitating Chaucer they do not imitate his
conventional landscape. They put in a Scottish land-
scape ; and in the work of such men as Gawin Douglas
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 9!
the love of Scotland and the love of nature mingle their
influences together to make him sit down, as it were, to
paint, with his eye on everything he paints, a series of
Scottish landscapes.
59. The first of the Scottish poets, omitting Thomas
of Erceldoune, is JOHN BARBOUR, Archdeacon of Aber-
deen. His long poem of The Bruce, 1375-7, represents
the whole of the eager struggle for Scottish freedom
against the English which closed at Bannockburn ; and
the national spirit, which I have mentioned, springs in it,
full grown, into life. But it is temperate, it does not
pass into the fury against England, which is so plain in
writers like BLIND HARRY, who, about 1461, composed a
long poem in the heroic couplet of Chaucer on the deeds
of William Wallace. In Henry V.'s reign, ANDREW OF
WVNTOUN wrote his Oryginale Cronykil of Scotland, one
of the rhyming chronicles of the time. It is only in the
next poet that we find the full influence of Chaucer,
and it is thereafter continuous till the Elizabethan time.
JAMES THE FIRST of Scotland was prisoner in England
for nineteen years, till 1422. There he read Chaucer,
and fell in love with Lady Jane Beaufort, niece of
Henry IV. The poem which he wrote The King's
Quair (the quire or book) is done in imitation of
Chaucer, and in Chaucer's seven-lined stanza, which
from James's use of it is called " Rime Royal." In six
cantos, sweeter, tenderer, and purer than any verse till
we come to Spenser, he describes the beginning of his
love and its happy end. " I must write," he says, " so
92 ENGLISH LITERATUR2 CHAP
much because I have come so from Hell to Heaven/
Though imitative of Chaucer, his work has an original
element in it. The natural description is more varied,
the colour is more vivid, and there is a modern self-
reflective quality, a touch of mystic feeling which does
not belong to Chaucer.
ROBERT HENRYSON, who died about 1500, a school-
master in Dunfermline, was also an imitator of Chaucer,
and his Testament of Cresseid continues Chaucer's
Troilus. But he did not do only imitative work. He
treated the fables of ^Esop in a new fashion. In his
hands they are long stories, full of pleasant dialogue,
political allusions, and with elaborate morals attached to
them. They have a peculiar Scottish tang, and are full
of descriptions of Scottish scenery. He also reanimated
the short pastoral in his Robin and Makyne. It is a
natural, prettily-turned dialogue; and a flashing Celtic
wit, such as charms us in Duncan Gray, runs through it.
The individuality which reformed two modes of poetic
work in these poems appears again in his sketch of the
graces of womanhood in the Garment of Good Ladies ;
a poem of the same type as those thoughtful lyrics which
describe what is best in certain phases of professions, or
of life, such as Sir H. Wotton's Character of a Happy
Life, or Wordsworth's Happy Warrior.
But among many poets whom we need not mention,
the greatest is WILLIAM DUNBAR. He carries the in-
fluence of Chaucer on to the end of the fifteenth century
and into the sixteenth. His genius, though masculine,
m FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 93
loved beauty, and his work was as varied in its range as
it was original. He followed the form and plan of Chau-
cer in his two poems of The Thistle and the Rose, 1503,
and the Golden Terge, 1508, the first on the marriage of
James IV. to Margaret Tudor, the second an allegory of
Love, Beauty, Reason, and the poet. In both, though
they begin with Chaucer's conventional May morning,
the natural description becomes Scottish, and in both the
national enthusiasm of the poet is strongly marked. But
he soon ceased to imitate. The vigorous fun of the
satires and of the satirical ballads that he wrote is only
matched by their coarseness, a coarseness and a fun that
descended to Burns. Perhaps Dunbar's genius is still
higher in a wild poem in which he personifies the seven
deadly sins, and describes their dance, with a mixture of
horror and humour which makes the little thing unique.
A man as remarkable as Dunbar is GAWIN DOUGLAS,
Bishop of Dunkeld, who died in 1522, at the Court of
Henry VIII., and was buried in the Savoy. He trans-
lated into verse Ovid's Art of Love, now lost, and after-
wards, with truth and spirit, the ALneids of Virgil, 1513.
To each book of the ^Eneid he wrote a prologue of his
own. Three of them are descriptions of the country in
May, in Autumn, and in Winter. The scenery is alto-
gether Scottish, and the few Chaucerisms that appear
seem absurdly out of place in a picture of nature which
is painted with excessive care and directly from the truth.
The colour is superb, but the landscape is not composed
by any art into a whole. There is nothing like it in
94 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
England till Thomson's Seasons, and Thomson was a
Scotsman. Only the Celtic love of nature can account
for the vast distance between work like this and contem-
porary work in England such as Skelton's. Of Douglas's
other original work, one poem, the Palace of Honour,
1501, continues the influence of Chaucer.
There were a number of other Scottish poets who are
all remembered by Dunbar in his Lament for the Makars,
and praised by SIR DAVID LYNDSAY, whom it is best to
mention in this place, because he still connects Scottish
poetry with Chaucer. He was born about 1490, and was
the last of the old Scottish school, and the most popular.
He is the most popular because he is not only the poet,
but also the reformer. His poem the Dreme, 1528, links
him back to Chaucer. It is in the manner of the old
poet. But its scenery is Scottish, and instead of the May
morning of Chaucer, it opens on a winter's day of wind
and sleet. The place is a cave over the sea, whence
Lyndsay sees the weltering of the ocean. Chaucer goes
to sleep over Ovid or Cicero, Lyndsay falls into a dream
as he thinks of the "false world's instability," wavering
like the sea waves. The difference marks not only the
difference of the two countries, but the different natures
of the men. Chaucer did not care much for the popular
storms, and loved the Court more than the Commonweal.
Lyndsay in the Dreme and in two other poems the
Complaint to the King, and the Testament of the King's
Papyngo is absorbed in the evils and sorrows of the
people, in the desire to reform the abuses of the Church,
Ill FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 95
of the Court, of party, of the nobility. In 1539 his
Satire of the Three Estates, a Morality interspersed with
interludes, was represented before James V. at Linlith-
gow. It was a daring attack on the ignorance, profli-
gacy, and exactions of the priesthood, on the vices and
flattery of the favourites "a mocking of abuses used in
the country by diverse sorts of estates." A still bolder
poem, and one thought so even by himself, is the Mon-
archic, 1553, his last work. He is as much the reformer,
as he is the poet, of a transition time. Still his verse
hath charms, but it was neither sweet nor imaginative.
He had genuine satire, great moral breadth, much
preaching power in verse, coarse, broad humour in
plenty, and more dramatic power and invention than
the rest of his fellows.
60. The Elizabethan Dawn : Wyatt and Surrey.
While poetry under Skelton and Lyndsay became an
instrument of reform, it revived as an art at the close of
Henry VIII. 's reign in SIR THOMAS WYATT and LORD
HENRY HOWARD, Earl of Surrey. They were both Italian
travellers, and in bringing back to England the inspi-
ration they had gained from Italian and classic models
they re-made English poetry. They are our first really
modern poets ; the first who have anything of the modern
manner. Though Italian in sentiment, their language is
more English than Chaucer's, that is, they use fewer
romance words. They handed down this purity of
English to the Elizabethan poets, to Sackville, Spenser,
g6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAR
and Shakespeare. They introduced a new kind of poetry,
the amourist poetry a poetry extremely personal, and
personal as English poetry had scarcely ever been before.
The amourists, as they are called, were poets who com-
posed a series of poems on the subject of the joys and
sorrows of their loves sonnets mingled with lyrical
pieces after the manner of Petrarca, and sometimes in
accord with the love philosophy he built on Plato. They
began with Wyatt and Surrey. They did not die out till
the end of James I.'s reign. The subjects of Wyatt and
Surrey were chiefly lyrical, and the fact that they imitated
the same model has made some likeness between them.
Like their personal characters, however, the poetry of
Wyatt is the more thoughtful and the more strongly felt,
but Surrey's has a sweeter movement and a livelier fancy.
Both did this great thing for English verse they chose
an exquisite model, and in imitating it "corrected the
ruggedness of English poetry." A new standard was
made below which the future poets should not fall. They
also added new stanza measures to English verse, and
enlarged in this way the "lyrical range." Surrey was
the first, in his translation of the Second and Fourth
Books of Virgil's sEneid, to use the ten-syllabled, un-
rhymed verse, which we now call blank verse. In his
hands it is not worthy of praise. Sackville, Lord Buck-
hurst, introduced it into drama ; Marlowe made it the
proper verse of the drama. In plays it has a special
manner of its own ; in poetry proper it was, we may say,
not only created but perfected by Milton.
m FROM CHAUCER TO ELIZABETH 97
The new impulse thus given to poetry was all but
arrested by the bigotry that prevailed during the reigns
of Edward VI. and Mary, and all the work of the New
Learning seemed to be useless. But Thomas Wilson's
book in English on Rhetoric and Logic in 1553, and the
publication of Thomas Tusser's Pointes of Husbandrie and
of Tottel's Miscellany of Uncertain Authors, 1557, in the
last year of Mary's reign, proved that something was
stirring beneath the gloom. The Miscellany contained
40 poems by Surrey, 96 by Wyatt, 40 by Grimoald, and
134 by uncertain authors. The date should be remem-
bered, for it is the first printed book of modern English
poetry. It proves that men cared now more for the new
than the old poets, that the time of mere imitation of
Chaucer was over, and that of original creation begun.
It ushers in the Elizabethan Literature.
H
98 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER IV
THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE
61. Elizabethan Literature, as a literature, may be
said to begin with Surrey and Wyatt. But as their
poems were published shortly before Elizabeth came to
the throne, we date the beginning of the early period of
Elizabethan literature from the year of her accession,
1558. That period lasted till 1579, and was followed by
the great literary outburst of the days of Spenser and
Shakespeare. The apparent suddenness of this outburst
has been an object of wonder. I have already noticed
its earliest sources in the last hundred years. And now
we shall best seek its nearest causes in the work done
during the early years of Elizabeth. The flood-tide which
began in 1579 was preceded by a very various, plentiful,
but inferior literature, in which new forms of poetry and
prose-writing were tried, and new veins of thought opened.
These twenty years from the Mirror for Magistrates,
1559, to the Shephearffs Calendar, 1579, sowed seeds
which when the time came broke into flower. We wonder
at the flower, but it grew naturally through seed and stem,
leaves and blossom. They made the flower, since the
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 99
circumstances were favourable. And never in England,
save in our own century, were they so favourable.
62. First Elizabethan Period, 1558-1570. (i.) The
literary prose of the beginning of this time is represented
by the Scholemaster of ASCHAM, published in 1570. This
book, which is on education, is the work of the scholar of
the New Learning of the reign of Henry VIII. who has
lived on into another period. It is not, properly speak-
ing, Elizabethan ; it is like a stranger in a new land and
among new manners.
(2.) Poetry is first represented by SACKVILLE, Lord
Buckhurst. The Mirror for Magistrates, for which he
wrote, 1563, the Induction and one tale, is a series of
tragic poems on the model of Boccaccio's Falls of Princes,
already imitated by Lydgate. Seven poets at least, with
Sackville, contributed tales to it, but his poem is poetry
of so fine a quality that it stands absolutely alone during
these twenty years. The Induction paints the poet's
descent into Avernus, and his meeting with Henry
Stafford, Duke of Buckingham, whose fate he tells with
a grave and inventive imagination, and with the first true
music which we hear since Chaucer. Being written in
the manner and stanza of the elder poets, this poem has
been called the transition between Lydgate and Spenser.
But it does not truly belong to the old time ; it is as
modern as Spenser, and its allegorical representations
are in the same manner as those of Spenser. GEORGE
GASCOIGNE, whose satire, the S tee If Glas, 1576, is our
first long satirical poem, deserves mention among a
IOO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
crowd of poets who came after Sackville. They wrote
legends, pieces on the wars and discoveries of the
Englishmen of their day, epitaphs, epigrams, songs, son-
nets, elegies, fables, and sets of love poems ; and the best
things they did were collected in such miscellaneous
collections as the Paradise of Dainty Devices, in 1576.
This book, with TotteFs, set on foot both now and in the
later years of Elizabeth a crowd of other miscellanies of
poetry which represent the vast number of experiments
made in Elizabeth's time, in the subjects, the metres,
and the various kinds of lyrical poetry. At present, all
we can say is that lyrical poetry, and that which we may
call " occasional poetry," were now in full motion. The
popular Ballads also took a wide range. The registers
of the Stationers' Company prove that there was scarcely
any event of the day, nor almost any controversy in lit-
erature, politics, religion, which was not the subject of
verse, and of verse into which imagination strove to enter.
The ballad may be said to have done the work of the
modem weekly review. It stimulated and informed the
popular intellectual life of England.
(3.) Frequent translations were now made from the
classical writers. We know the names of more than
twelve men who did this work, and there must have been
many more. Already in Henry VIII. 's and Edward VI. 's
time, ancient authors had been made English ; and now
before 1579, Virgil, Ovid, Cicero, Demosthenes, Plu-
tarch, and many Greek and Latin plays, were translated.
Among the rest, Phaer's Virgil, 1562, Arthur Golding's
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE IOI
Ovid's Metamorphoses, 1567, and George Turbervile's
Historical Epistles of Ovid, 1567, are, and especially the
first, remarkable. The English people in this way were
brought into contact, more than before, with the classical
spirit, and again it had its awakening power. We cannot
say that either the fineness or compactness of classic
work appeared in these heterogeneous translations,
though one curious result of them was the craze which
followed, and which Gabriel Harvey strove, fortunately
in vain, to impose on Spenser, for reproducing classical
metres in English poetry. Nor were the old English
poets neglected. Though Chaucer and Lydgate, Lang-
land, and the rest, were no longer imitated in this time
when fresh creation had begun, they were studied, and
they added their impulse of life to original poets like
Spenser.
(4.) Theological Reform stirred men to another kind
of literary work. A great number of polemical ballads,
pamphlets, and plays issued every year from obscure
presses and filled the land. Poets like George Gas-
coigne and still more Barnaby Googe, represent in their
work the hatred the young men had of the old religious
system. It was a spirit which did not do much for
literature, but it quickened the habit of composition,
and made it easier. The Bible also became common
property, and its language glided into all theological
writing and gave it a literary tone; while the publica-
tion of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments or Book of
Martyrs, 1563, gave to the people all over England a
IO2 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
book which, by its simple style, the ease of its story-
telling, and its popular charm made the very peasants
who heard it read feel what is meant by literature.
(5.) The history of the country and its manners was
not neglected. A whole class of antiquarians wrote
steadily, if with some dulness, on this subject. Grafton,
Stow, Holinshed, and others, at least supplied materials
for the study and use of historical dramatists.
(6.) The love of stories grew quickly. The old Eng-
lish tales and ballads were eagerly read and collected.
Italian tales by various authors were translated and
sown so broadcast over London by William Painter in
his collection, The Palace of Pleasure, 1566, by George
Turbervile, in his Tragical Tales in verse, and by
others, that it is said they were to be bought at every
bookstall. The Romances of Spain and Italy poured
in, and Amadis de Gaul, and the companion romances
the Arcadia of Sannazaro and the Ethiopian History,
were sources of books like Sidney's Arcadia, and, with
the classics, supplied materials for the pageants. A
great number of subjects for prose and poetry were
thus made ready for literary men, and prose fiction
became possible in English literature.
(7.) All over Europe, and especially in Italy, now
closely linked to England, the Renaissance had pro-
duced a wild spirit of exhausting all the possibilities
of human life. Every form, every game of life, was
tried, every fancy of goodness or wickedness followed
for the fancy's sake. Men said to themselves " Attempt,
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE IO3
Attempt." The act accompanied the thought. Eng-
land at last shared in this passion, but in English life
it was directed. There was a great liberty given to
men to live and do as they pleased, provided the
queen was worshipped and there was no conspiracy
against the State. That much direction did not apply
to purely literary production. Its attemptings were
unlimited. Anything, everything was tried, especially
in the drama.
(8.) The masques, pageants, interludes, and plays that
were written at this time are scarcely to. be counted.
At every great ceremonial, whenever the queen made
a progress or visited one of the great lords or a uni-
versity, at the houses of the nobility, and at the Court
on all important days, some obscure versifier, or a
young scholar at the Inns of Court, at Oxford or at
Cambridge, produced a masque or a pageant, or wrote
or translated a play. The habit of play-writing became
common ; a kind of school, one might almost say a
manufacture of plays, arose, which partly accounts for
the rapid production, the excellence, and the multitude
of plays that we find after 1576. Represented all over
England, these masques, pageants, and dramas were
seen by the people, who were thus accustomed to take
an interest, though of an uneducated kind, in the larger
drama that was to follow. The literary men on the
other hand ransacked, in order to find subjects and
scenes for their pageants, ancient and mediaeval, magi-
cal, and modern literature, and many of them in doing
IO4 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
so became not fine but multifarious scholars. The
imagination of England was quickened and educated
in this way, and as Biblical stories were well known
and largely used, the images of oriental life were kept
among the materials of dramatic imagination.
(9.) Another influence bore on literature. It was
that given by the stories of the voyagers, who, in the
new commercial activity of the country, penetrated into
remote lands, and saw the strange monsters and savages
which the poets now added to the fairies, dwarfs, and
giants of the Romances. Before 1579, books had been
published on the north-west passage. Frobisher had
made his voyages, and Drake had started, to return in
1580, to amaze all England with the story of his sail
round the world and of the riches of the Spanish Main.
We may trace everywhere in Elizabethan literature the
impression made by the wonders told by the sailors and
captains who explored and fought from the North Pole
to the Southern Seas.
(10.) Then there was the freest possible play of lit-
erary criticism. Every wine-shop in London, every
room at the university, was filled with the talk of young
men on any work which was published and on the manu-
scripts which were read. Out of this host emerged the
men of genius. Moreover, far apart from these, there
were in England now, among all the noise and stir, quiet
scholars, such as Contarini and Pole had been in Italy,
followers of Erasmus and Colet, precursors of Bacon,
who kept the lamp of scholarship burning, and who,
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE IOC
when literature became beautiful, nurtured and praised
it. Nor were the young nobles, who like Surrey had
been in Italy and had known what was good, less useful
now. There were many men who, when Shakespeare
and Spenser came, were able to say " This is good,"
and who drew the new genius into light.
(n.) Lastly, we have proof that there was a large
number of persons writing who did not publish their
works. It was considered at this time, that to write for
the public injured a man, and unless he were driven by
poverty he kept his manuscript by him. But things
were changed when a great genius like Spenser took the
world by storm ; when Lyly's Euphues enchanted court
society; when a fine gentleman like Sir Philip Sidney
was known to be a writer. Literature was made the
fashion, and the disgrace being taken from it, the pro-
duction became enormous. Manuscripts written and
laid by were at once sent forth; and when the rush
began it grew by its own force. Those who had previ-
ously been kept from writing by its unpopularity now
took it up eagerly, and those who had written before
wrote twice as much now. The great improvement also
in literary quality is also accounted for by this that
men strove to equal such work as Sidney's or Spenser's,
and that a wider and more exacting criticism arose.
Nor must one omit to say, that owing to this employ-
ment of life on so vast a number of subjects, and to the
voyages, and to the new literatures searched into, and to
the heat of theological strife, a multitude of new words
IO6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
streamed into the language, and enriched the vocabulary
of imagination. Shakespeare uses 15,000 words.
63. The Later Literature of Elizabeth's Reign, 1579-
1602, begins with the publication of Lyly's Euphues,
1579, and Spenser's Shepheards Calendar, also in 1579,
and with the writing of Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and
his Apology for Poetrie, 1580-1. It will be best to
leave the poem of Spenser aside till we come to write
of the poets.
The Euphues was the work of JOHN LYLY, poet and
dramatist. It is in two parts, Euphues the Anatomic of
Wit, and Euphues and his England. In six years it ran
through five editions, so great was its popularity. Its
prose style is odd to an excess, " precious " and sweet-
ened, but it has care and charm, and its very faults were
of use in softening the solemnity and rudeness of previ-
ous prose. The story is long, and is more a loose frame-
work into which Lyly could fit his thoughts on love,
friendship, education, and religion, than a true story. It
made its mark because it fell in with all the fantastic and
changeable life of the time. Its far-fetched conceits, its
extravagance of gallantry, its endless metaphors from the
classics and especially from natural history, its curious
and gorgeous descriptions of dress, and its pale imitation
of chivalry, were all reflected in the life and talk and
dress of the court of Elizabeth. It became the fashion
to talk " Euphuism," and, like the Utopia of More, Lyly's
book has created an English word.
The Arcadia was the work of SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, and
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE IO/
though written about 1580, did not appear till after his
death. It is more poetic and more careless in style than
the Euphues, but it endeavours to get rid of the mere
quaintness for quaintness' sake, and of the far-fetched
fancies, of Euphuism. It is less the image of the time
than of the man. We know that bright and noble figure,
the friend of Spenser, the lover of Stella, the last of the
old knights, the poet, the critic, and the Christian, who,
wounded to the death, gave up the cup of water to a
dying soldier. We find his whole spirit in the story of
the Arcadia, in the first two books and part of the third,
which alone were written by him. It is a pastoral ro-
mance, after the fashion of the Spanish romances, col-
oured by his love of his sister, Lady Pembroke, and by
the scenery of Wilton under the woods of which he wrote
it. The characters are real, but the story is confused
by endless digressions. The sentiment is too fine and
delicate for the world of action. The descriptions are
picturesque ; a quaint or poetic thought or an epigram
appear in every line. There is no real art in it, nor is it
true prose. But it is so full of poetical thought that it
became a mine into which poets dug for subjects.
64. Poetic Criticism began before the publication of
the Faerie Queene, and its rise shows the interest now
awakened in poetry. The Discourse of English Poetrie,
1586, written by William Webbe "to stirre up some other
of meet abilitie to bestow travell on the matter," was
followed three years after by the Art of English Poesie,
attributed to George Puttenham, an elaborate book,
IO8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
"written," he says, "to help the courtiers and the gen-
tlewomen of the court to write good poetry, that the art
may become vulgar for all Englishmen's use," and the
phrase marks the interest now taken in poetry by the
highest society in England. Sidney himself joined in
this critical movement. His Apology for Poetrie, the
style of which is much more like prose than that of his
Arcadia, defended against Stephen Gosson's School of
Abuse in which poetry and plays were attacked from the
Puritan point of view, the nobler uses of poetry. But
he, with his contemporary, Gabriel Harvey, was so en-
thralled by the classical traditions that he also defended
the "unities" and attacked all mixture of tragedy and
comedy, that is, he supported all that Shakespeare was
destined to violate. The Defence of Rhyme, written
much later by Samuel Daniel, and which finally destroyed
the attempt to bring classical metres into our poetry;
and also Campion's effort, in his Observations, in favour
of rhymeless verse, must be mentioned here. Their
matter belongs to this time.
65. Later Prose Literature. (i.) Theological Litera-
ture remained for some years after 1580 only a literature
of pamphlets. Puritanism, in its attack on the stage,
and in the Martin Marprelate controversy upon episcopal
government in the Church, flooded England with small
books. Lord Bacon even joined in the latter contro-
versy, and Nash the dramatist made himself famous in
the war by the vigour and fierceness of his wit. Period-
ical writing was, as it were, started on its course. Over
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE IOQ
this troubled and multitudinous sea rose at last the
stately work of RICHARD HOOKER. It was in 1594 that
the first four books of The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity,
a defence of the Church against the Puritans, were given
to the world. Before his death he finished the other
four. The book has remained ever since a standard
work. It is as much moral and political as theological.
Its style is grave, clear, and often musical. He adorned
it with the figures of poetry, but he used them with
temperance, and the grand and rolling rhetoric with
which he often concludes an argument is kept for its
right place. On the whole, it is the first monument of
splendid literary prose that we possess.
(2.) We may place beside it, as other great prose of
Elizabeth's later time, the development of The Essay in
LORD BACON'S Essays, 1597, and Ben Jonson's Dis-
coveries, published after his death. The highest literary
merit of Bacon's Essays is their combination of charm
and of poetic prose with conciseness of expression and
fulness of thought. But the oratorical and ideal manner
in which, with his variety, he sometimes wrote, is best
seen in his New Atlantis, that imaginary land in the
unreachable seas.
(3.) The Literature of Travel was carried on by the
publication in 1589 of HAKLUYT'S Navigation, Voyages,
and Discoveries of the English Nation. The influence of
a compilation of this kind, containing the great deeds of
the English on the seas, has been felt ever since in the
literature of fiction and poetry.
IIO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
(4.) In the Tales, which poured out like a flood from
the "university wits," from such men as Peele, and
Lodge, and Greene, we find the origin of English fiction,
and the subjects of many of our plays ; while the fan-
tastic desire to revive the practices of chivalry which was
expressed in the Arcadia, found food in the continuous
translation of romances, chiefly of the Charlemagne
cycle, but now more from Spain than from France ; and
in the reading of the Italian poets, Boiardo, Tasso, and
Ariosto, who supplied a crowd of our books with the
machinery of magic, and with conventional descriptions
of nature and of women's beauty.
66. Edmund Spenser. The later Elizabethan poetry
begins with the Shepheards Calendar of Spenser.
Spenser was born in London in 1552, and educated at
the Merchant Taylors' Grammar School, which he left
for Cambridge in April, 1569. There seems to be evi-
dence that in this year the Sonnets of Petrarca and the
Visions of Bellay afterwards published in 1591, were
written by him for a miscellany of verse and prose issued
by Van der Noodt, a refugee Flemish physician. At
sixteen or seventeen, then, he began literary work. At
college Gabriel Harvey, a scholar and critic, and the
Hobbinoll of Spenser's works, and Edward Kirke, the
E. K. of the Shepheards Calendar, were his friends. In
1576 he took his degree of M.A., and before he returned
to London spent some time in the wilds of Lancashire,
where he fell in love with the " Rosalind " of his poetry,
a " fair widowe's daughter of the glen." His love was
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE III
not returned, a rival interfered, but he clung fast until
his marriage to this early passion. His disappointment
drove him to the South, and there, 1 5 79, he was made
known through Leicester to Leicester's nephew, Philip
Sidney. With him, and perhaps at Penshurst, the Shep-
heards Calendar was finished for the press, and the
Faerie Queene conceived. The publication of the for-
mer work, 1579, made Spenser the first poet of the day,
and so fresh and musical, and so abundant in new life
were its twelve eclogues, that men felt that at last Eng-
land had given birth to a poet as original, and with as
much metrical art as Chaucer. Each month of the year
had its own eclogue ; some were concerned with his
shattered love, two of them were fables, three of them
satires on the lazy clergy ; one was devoted to fair Eliza's
praise : one, the Oak and the Briar, prophesies his
mastery over allegory. The others belong to rustic
shepherd life. The English of Chaucer is imitated, but
the work is full of a new spirit, and as Spenser had begun
with translating Petrarca, so here, in two of the eclogues,
he imitates Clement Marot. The " Puritanism " of the
poem is the same as that of the Faerie Queene which he
now began to compose. Save in abhorrence of Rome,
Spenser does not share in the politics of Puritanism.
Nor does he separate himself from the world. He is as
much at home in society and with the arts as any literary
courtier of the day. He was Puritan in his attack on the
sloth and pomp of the clergy ; but his moral ideal, built
up, as it was, out of Christianity and Platonism, rose far
above the narrower ideal of Puritanism.
112 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
In the next year, 1580, he went to Ireland with Lord
Grey of Wilton as secretary, and afterwards saw and
learnt that condition of things which he described in his
View of the Present State of Ireland. He was made
Clerk of Degrees in the Court of Chancery in 1581, and
Clerk of the Council of Munster in 1586, and it was then
that the manor and castle of Kilcolman were granted to
him. Here, at the foot of the Galtees, and bordered to
the north by the wild country, the scenery of which is
frequently painted in the Faerie Queene, and in whose
woods and savage places such adventures constantly took
place in the service of Elizabeth as are recorded in the
Faerie Queene, the first three books of that great poem
were finished.
67. The Faerie Queene. The plan of the poem is
described in Spenser's prefatory letter to Raleigh. The
twelve books were to tell the warfare of twelve Knights,
in whom twelve virtues were represented. They are
sent forth from the court of Gloriana, Queen of Fairy-
land, and their warfare is against the vices and errors, im-
personated, which opposed those virtues. In Arthur, the
Prince, the Magnificence of the whole of virtue is repre-
sented, and he was at last to unite himself in marriage to
the Faerie Queene, that divine glory of God to which all
human act and thought aspired. Six books of this plan
were finished ; the legends of Holiness, Temperance, and
Chastity, of Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. The two
posthumous cantos on Mutability seem to have been part
of a seventh legend, on Constancy, and their splendid
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 113
work makes us the more regret that the story of the
poem being finished is not true. Alongside of the spirit-
ual allegory is the historical one, in which Elizabeth is
Gloriana, and Mary of Scotland Duessa ; and Leicester,
and at times Sidney, Prince Arthur, and Lord Grey is
Arthegall, and Raleigh Timias, and Philip II. the Soldan,
or Grantorto. In the midst, other allegories slip in, re-
ferring to events of the day, and Elizabeth becomes
Belphcebe and Britomart, and Mary is Radegund, and
Sidney is Calidore, and Alencon is Braggadochio. At
least, these are considered probable attributions. The
dreadful " justice " done in Ireland, by the " iron man,"
and the wars in Belgium, and Norfolk's conspiracy, and
the Armada, and the trial of Mary are also shadowed
forth.
The allegory is clear in the first two books. After-
wards it is troubled with digressions, sub-allegories, gene-
alogies, with anything that Spenser's fancy led him to
introduce. Stories are dropt and never taken up again,
and the whole tale is so tangled that it loses the interest
of narrative. But it retains the interest of exquisite alle-
gory. It is the poem of the noble powers of the human
soul struggling towards union with God, and warring
against all the forms of evil ; and these powers become
real personages, whose lives and battles Spenser tells in
verse so musical and so gliding, so delicately wrought, so
rich in imaginative ornament, and so inspired with the
finer life of beauty, that he has been called the poets'
Poet. But he i the poet of all men who love poetry.
114 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Descriptions like those of the House of Pride and the
Mask of Cupid, and of the Months, are so vivid in form
and colour, that they have always made subjects for
artists ; while the allegorical personages are, to the very
last detail, wrought out by an imagination which de-
scribes not only the general character, but the special
characteristics of the Virtues or the Vices, of the Months
of the year, or of the Rivers of England. In its ideal
whole, the poem represents the new love of chivalry,
of classical learning ; the delight in mystic theories of
love and religion, in allegorical schemes, in splendid
spectacles and pageants, in wild adventure ; the love of
England, the hatred of Spain, the strange worship of the
queen, even Spenser's own new love. It takes up and
uses the popular legends of fairies, dwarfs, and giants, all
the recovered romance and machinery of the Italian
epics, and mingles them up with the wild scenery of
Ireland, with the savages and wonders of the New World.
Almost the whole spirit of the Renaissance under Eliza-
beth, except its coarser and baser elements, is in its
pages. Of anything impure, or ugly, or violent, there
is no trace. And Spenser adds to all his own sacred
love of love, his own pre-eminent sense of the loveliness
of loveliness, walking through the whole of this woven
world of faerie
" With the moon's beauty and the moon's soft pace."
The first three books were finished in Ireland, and
Raleigh listened to them in 1589 at Kilcolman Castle,
IV
among the alder shades of the river Mulla that fed the
lake below the castle. Delighted with the poem, he
brought Spenser to England, and the queen, the court,
and the whole of England soon shared in Raleigh's
delight. It was the first great ideal poem that England
had produced ; it places him side by side with Milton,
but on a throne built of wholly different material. It has
never ceased to make poets, and it will live, as he said
in his dedication to the queen, " with the eternitie of her
fame."
68. Spenser's Minor Poems. The next year, 1591,
Spenser, being still in England, collected his smaller
poems, most of which seem to be early work, and
published them. Among them Mother HubbercTs Tale
is a remarkable satire, somewhat in the manner of
Chaucer, on society, on the evils of a beggar soldiery, of
the Church, of the court, and of misgovernment. The
Ruins of Time, and still more the Tears of the Muses,
support the statement that literature was looked on coldly
previous to 1580. Sidney had died in 1586, and three of
these poems bemoan his death. The others are of slight
importance, and the whole collection was entitled Com-
plaints. His Daphnaida seems to have also appeared in
1591. Returning to Ireland, he gave an account of his
visit and of the court of Elizabeth in Colin Cloufs come
Home again, and at last, after more than a year's pursuit,
won, in 1594, his second love for his wife, and found with
her perfect happiness. A long series of lovely " Sonnets "
the Amoretti, records the progress of his wooing ; and
Il6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the Epithalamion, his exultant marriage hymn, is the most
glorious love-song in the English tongue. These three
were published in 1595. At the close of 1595 he brought
to England in a second visit the last three books of the
Faerie Queene. The next year he spent in London, and
published these books, as well as the Prothalamion on
the marriage of Lord Worcester's daughters, the Hymns
on Love and Beauty and on Heavenly Love and Beauty.
The two first hymns were rapturously written in his
youth; the two others, now written, and with even
greater rapture, enshrine that love philosophy of Petrarca
which makes earthly love a ladder to the love of God.
The close of his life was sorrowful. In 1598, Tyrone's
rebellion drove him out of Ireland. Kilcolman was
sacked and burnt, one of his children perished in the
flames, and Spenser and his family fled for their lives to
England. Broken-hearted, poor, but not forgotten, the
poet died in a London tavern. All his fellows went with
his body to the grave, where, close by Chaucer, he lies in
Westminster Abbey. London, " his most kindly nurse,"
takes care also of his dust, and England keeps him in
her love.
69. Later Elizabethan Poetry : Translations. There
are three translators that take literary rank among the
crowd that carried on the work of the earlier time. Two
mark the influence of Italy, one the more powerful influ-
ence of the Greek spirit. SIR JOHN HARINGTON in 1591
translated Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, FAIRFAX in 1600
translated Tasso's Jerusalem, and his book is " one of the
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 1 1/
glories of Elizabeth's reign." But the noblest translation
is that of Homer's whole work by GEORGE CHAPMAN, the
dramatist, the first part of which appeared in 1598. The
vivid life and energy of the time, its creative power and
its force, are expressed in this poem, which is " more an
Elizabethan tale written about Achilles and Ulysses "
than a translation. The rushing gallop of the long four-
teen-syllable stanza in which it is written has the fire and
swiftness of Homer, but it has not his directness or dig-
nity. Its " inconquerable quaintness" and diffuseness
are wholly unlike the pure form and light and measure ot
Greek work. But it is a distinct poem of such power
that it will excite and delight all lovers of poetry, as it
excited and delighted Keats. John Florio's Translation
of the Essays of Montaigne, 1603, and North's Plutarch,
are also, though in prose, to be mentioned here, because
Shakespeare used the books, and because we must mark
Montaigne's influence on English literature even before
his retranslation by Charles Cotton.
70. The Four Phases of Poetry after 1579. Spenser
reflected in his poems the romantic spirit of the English
Renaissance. The other poetry of Elizabeth's reign
reflected the whole of English Life. The best way to
arrange it omitting as yet the Drama is in an order
parallel to the growth of the national life, and the proof
that it is the best way is, that on the whole such an his-
torical order is a true chronological order. First, then,
if we compare England after 1580, as writers have often
done, to an ardent youth, we shall find in the poetry of
n8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the first years that followed that date all the elements of
youth. It is a poetry of love, and romance, and imag-
ination, of Romeo and Juliet. Secondly, and later on,
when Englishmen grew older in feeling, their enthusiasm,
which had flitted here and there in action and literature
over all kinds of subjects, settled down into a steady
enthusiasm for England itself. The country entered on
its early manhood, and parallel with this there is the
great outbreak of historical plays, and a set of poets whom
I will call the Patriotic Poets. Thirdly, and later still,
the fire and strength of the people, becoming inward,
resulted in a graver and more thoughtful national life,
and parallel with this are the tragedies of Shakespeare
and the poets who have been called philosophical.
These three classes of poets overlapped one another,
and grew up gradually, but on the whole their succes-
sion is the image of a real succession of national thought
and emotion.
A. fourth and separate phase does not represent, as these
do, a new national life, a new religion, and new politics,
but the despairing struggle of the old faith against the
new. There were numbers of men, such as Wordsworth
has finely sketched in old Norton in the Doe of Rylstone,
who vainly and sorrowfully strove against all the new
national elements. ROBERT SOUTHWELL, of Norfolk, a
Jesuit priest, was the poet of Roman Catholic England.
Imprisoned for three years, racked ten times, and finally
executed, he wrote, while confessor to Lady Arundel, a
number of poems published at various intervals, and
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 1 19
finally collected under the title, St. Peter's Complaint,
Mary Magdalen's Tears, with other works of the Author,
R.S. The Maonia, and a short prose work Marie Mag-
dalen's Funerall Tears, became also very popular. It
marks not only the large Roman Catholic element in the
country, but also the strange contrasts of the time that
eleven editions of books with these titles were published
between 1595 and 1609, at a time when, the Venus and
Adonis of Shakespeare led the way for a multitude of
poems following on Marlowe's Hero and Leander and
Lodge's Glaucus and Scylla which sang devotedly of
love and amorous joy.
71. The Love Poetry. I have called it by this name
because all its best work is almost limited to that subject
the subject of youth. The Love sonnets, written in
a series, are a feature of the time. The best are Sidney's
Astrophel and Stella, Daniel's Delia, Constable's Diana,
Drayton's Idea, Spenser's Amoretti, and Shakespeare's
Sonnets. More than twelve collections of these love
sonnets, each dedicated to one lady, and often a hun-
dred in number, were published between 1593 and 1596,
and these had been preceded by many others.
The Miscellanies, to which I have already alluded,
and the best of which were The Passionate Pilgrim,
England's Helicon, and Davison's Rhapsody, were
scarcely less numerous than the Song-books published
with music, full of delightful lyrics. The wonder is that
the lyrical level in such a multitude of short poems is
so high throughout. Some songs reach a first-rate ex-
I2O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
cellence, but even the least good have the surprising
spirit of poetry in them. The best of them are " old
and plain, and dallying with the innocence of love,"
childlike in their natural sweetness and freshness, but
full also of a southern ardour of passion. Shakespeare's
excel the others in their gay rejoicing, their firm reality,
their exquisite ease, and when in the plays, gain a
new beauty from their fitness to their dramatic place.
Others possess a quaint pastoralism like shepherd life
in porcelain, such as Marlowe's well-known song, " Come
live with me, and be my love ; " others a splendour of
love and beauty as in Lodge's Song of Rosaline, and
Spenser's on his marriage. To specialise the various
kinds would be too long, for there never was in our
land a richer outburst of lyrical ravishment and fancy.
England was like a grove in spring, full of birds in
revel and solace. Love poems of a longer kind were
also made, such as Marlowe's Hero and Leander, the
Venus and Adonis and, if we may date them here, the
Elegies of John Donne. I mention only a few of these
poems, the mark of which is a luscious sensuousness.
There were also religious poems, the reflection of the
Puritan and Church elements in English society. They
were collected under such titles as the Handful of
Honeysuckles, the Poor Widow's Mite, Psalms and
Sonnets, and there are some good things among them
written by William Hunnis.
72. The Patriotic Poets. Among all this poetry of
Romance, Religion, and Love, rose a poetry which
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 121
devoted itself to the glory of England. It was chiefly
historical, and as it may be said to have had its germ
in the Mirror for Magistrates, so it had its perfect
flower in the historical dramas of Shakespeare. Men
had now begun to have a great pride in England. She
had stepped into the foremost rank, had outwitted
France, subdued internal foes, beaten and humbled
Spain on every sea. Hence the history of the land
became precious, and the very rivers, hills, and plains
honourable, and to be sung and praised in verse. This
poetic impulse is best represented in the works of three
men WILLIAM WARNER, SAMUEL DANIEL, and MICHAEL
DRAYTON. Born within a few years of each other, about
1560, they all lived beyond the century, and the national
poetry they set on foot lasted when the romantic poetry
lost its wealth and splendour.
William Warner's great book was Albion's England,
1586, a history of England in fourteen-syllable verse
from the Deluge to Queen Elizabeth. It is clever,
humorous, now grave, now gay, crowded with stories,
and runs to 10,000 lines. Its popularity was great,
and the English in which it was written deserved it.
Such stories in it as Argentile and Curan, and the
Patient Countess, prove Warner to have had a true,
pathetic vein of poetry. His English is not however so
good as that of " well-languaged Daniel," who, among
tragedies and pastoral comedies, the noble series of
sonnets to Delia and poems of pure fancy, wrote The
Complaint of Rosamond, far more poetical than his
122 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
steadier, even prosaic Civil Wars of York and Lan-
caster. Spenser saw in him a new " shepherd of poetry
who did far surpass the rest," and Coleridge says that
the style of his Hymen's Triumph may be declared
" imperishable English." Of the three the easiest poet
was Drayton. The Barons' 1 Wars, England's Heroical
Epistles, 1597, The Miseries of Queen Margaret, and
Four Legends, together with the brilliant Ballad of
Agincourt prove his patriotic fervour. Not content with
these, he set himself to glorify the whole of his land in
the Polyolbion, thirty books, and nearly 100,000 lines.
It is a description in Alexandrines of the "tracts,
mountains, forests, and other parts of this renowned
isle of Britain, with intermixture of the most remark-
able stories, antiquities, wonders, pleasures, and com-
modities of the same, digested into a poem." It was
not a success, though it deserved success. Its great
length was against it, but the real reason was that this
kind of poetry had had its day. It appeared in 1613,
in James I.'s reign. He, as well as Daniel, did other
work. Indeed Drayton is a striking instance of the way
in which these divisions, which I have made for the sake
of a general order, overlapped one another. He is as
much the love poet as the patriotic poet in his eclogues
of 1593 and in his later Idea; he is also a religious, a
satirical, a lyrical, and a fairy poet. He plays on every
kind of harp.
73. Philosophical Poets. Before the date of the
Polyolbion a change had come. As the patriotic poets
IV THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE 123
on the whole came after the romantic, so the patriotic,
on the whole, were followed by the philosophical poets.
The land was settled ; enterprise ceased to be the first
thing ; men sat down to think, and in poetry questions
of religious and political philosophy were treated with
" sententious reasoning, grave, subtle, and condensed."
Shakespeare, in his passage from comedy to tragedy, in
1 60 1, illustrates this change. The two poets who best
represent it are SIR JNO. DAVIES and FULKE GREVILLE,
Lord Brooke. In Davies himself we find an instance of
it. His earlier poem of the Orchestra, 1596, in which
the whole world is explained as a dance, is as exultant
as Spenser. His later poem, 1599, is compact and vig-
orous reasoning, for the most part without fancy. Its
very title, Nosce te ipsum Know Thyself and its
divisions, i. "On humane learning," 2. "The immor-
tality of the soul " mark the alteration. Two little
poems, one of Bacon's, on the Life of Man, as a bubble,
and one of Sir Henry Wotton's, on the Character of a
Happy Life, are instances of the same change. It is still
more marked in Lord Brooke's long, obscure poems On
Human Learning, on Wars, on Monarchy, and on Relig-
ion. They are political and historical treatises, not
poems, and all in them, said Lamb, "is made frozen
and rigid by intellect." Apart from poetry, "they are
worth notice as an indication of that thinking spirit
on political science which was to produce the riper
speculations of Hobbes, Harrington, and Locke."
Brooke too, in a happier mood, was a lyrist; and his
124 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
collection, Calica, has some of the graces of love and
its imagination.
74. Satirical Poetry, which lives best when imaginative
creation begins to decay, arose also towards the end of
Elizabeth's reign. It had been touched in the begin-
ning before Spenser by Gascoigne's Stcclc Glas, but had
no further growth save in prose until 1593, when John
Donne is supposed to have written some of his Satires.
Thomas Lodge, Joseph Hall, John Marston, wrote satir-
ical poems in the last part of the sixteenth century.
These satires are all written in a rugged, broken style,
supposed to be the proper style for satire. Donne's are
the best, and are so because he was a true poet. Though
his work was mostly done in the reign of James I., and
though his poetical reputation, and his influence (which
was very great) did not reach their height till after the
publication in 1633 of all his poems, he really belongs^
by dint of his youthful sensuousness, of his imaginative
flame, and of his sad and powerful thought, to the Eliza-
bethans. So also does William Drummond, of Haw-
thornden, whose work was done in the reign of James I.,
and whose name is linked by poetry and friendship to
Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Both are the
result of the Elizabethan influence extending to Scotland.
Drummond's sonnets and madrigals have some of the
grace of Sidney, and he rose at intervals into grave and
noble verse, as in his sonnet on John the Baptist. We
turn now to the drama, which in this age grew into
magnificence.
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 125
THE DRAMA
75. Early Dramatic Representation in England.
The English Drama grew up through the Mystery and
the Miracle play, the Morality and the Interlude, the
rude farce of the strolling players and the pageant.
The Mystery was the representation (at first in or near
the Church, and by the clergy ; and then in the towns,
and by the laity) of the events of the Old and New
Testaments which bore on the Fall and the Redemption
of Man. The Miracle play, though distinct elsewhere
from the Mystery, was the common name of both in
England, and was the representation of some legendary
story of a saint or martyr. These stories gave more
freedom of speech, a more worldly note, and a greater
range of characters to the mystery plays. They also
supplied a larger opportunity for the comic element. The
Miracle plays of England fell before long into two classes,
represented at the feasts of Christmas Day and Easter
Day; and about 1262 the town-guilds took them into
their hands. At Christmas the Birth of Christ was rep-
resented, and the events which made it necessary, back
to the Fall of Man. At Easter the Passion was repre-
sented in every detail up to the Ascension, and the play
often began with the raising of Lazarus. Sometimes even
the Baptism was brought in, and finally, the Last Judg-
ment was added to the double series, which thus em-
braced the whole history of man from the creation to the
close. About the beginning of the fourteenth century
126 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
these two series were brought together into one, and
acted on Corpus Christi Day on a great moveable stage
in the open spaces of the towns. The whole series con-
sisted of a number of short plays written frequently by
different authors, and each guild took the play which
suited it best. In a short time, there was scarcely a
town of any importance in England from Newcastle to
Exeter which had not its Corpus Christi play, and the
representations lasted from one day to eight days. Of
these sets of plays we possess the Towneley plays, 32 in
all, those of York, 48 in all, those of Chester, 24 in all,
and a casual collection, called of Coventry, of later and
unconnected plays. Of course, these sets only represent
a small portion of the Miracle plays of England. It is
not improbable that every little town had its own maker
of them. Any play that pleased was carried from the
town to the castle, from the castle, it may be, to the
court. The castle chaplain sometimes composed them :
the king kept players of them and scenery for them.
On the whole this irregular drama lasted, if we take in
its Anglo-Norman beginnings in French and Latin, for
nearly 500 years, from mo, when we first hear at St.
Albans of the Miracle play of St. Catherine, to the reign
of Henry III., when The Harrowing of Hell, our first
extant religious drama in English, was acted, and then
to 1580, when we last hear of the representation of a
Miracle play at Coventry.
76. Separate plays preceded and existed alongside
of these large series. Not only on the days of Christ-
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA I2/
mas, Easter, and Corpus Christi were plays acted, but
plays were made for separate feasts, saints' days, and
the turns of the year, and these had the character of
the counties where they were made. The villages took
them up, and soon began to ask for secular as well as
religious representations at their fairs and merry-mak-
ings. The strolling players answered the demand, and
secular subjects began to be treated with romantic or
comic aims, and with some closeness to natural life.
We have a play about Robin Hood of the sixteenth
century, acted on May Day; the Play of St. George;
the Play of the Wake on St. John's Eve. Some of the
farcical parts of the Miracle plays, isolated from the
rest, were acted, and we have a dramatic fragment
taken from the very secular romance of Dame Siriz,
which dates from the time of Edward I. We may be
sure it was not the only one.
77. The Morality begins as we come to the reign
of Edward III. We hear of the Play of the Pater-
noster, and of one of its series, the Play of Laziness.
But the oldest extant are of the time of Henry VI.
The Castle of Constancy ; Humanity ; Spirit, Will, and
Understanding these titles partly explain what the
Morality was. It was a play in which the characters
were the Vices and Virtues, with the addition after-
wards of allegorical personages, such as Riches, Good
Deeds, Confession, Death, and any human condition or
quality needed for the play. These characters were
brought together in a rough story, at the end of whiclj
128 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Virtue triumphed, or some moral principle was estab-
lished. The later dramatic fool grew up in the Moral-
ities out of a personage called "The Vice," and the
humorous element was introduced by the retaining of
" The Devil " from the Miracle play and by making
The Vice torment him. We draw nearer then in the
Morality to the regular drama. Its story had to be
invented, a proper plot had to be conceived, a clear
end fixed upon, to produce which the allegorical char-
acters acted on one another. We are on the very
verge of the natural drama; and so close was the
relation that the acting of Moralities did not die out
till about the end of Elizabeth's reign. A certain tran-
sition to the regular drama may be observed in them
when historical characters, celebrated for a virtue or
vice, were introduced instead of the virtue or the
vice, as when Aristides took the place of Justice.
Moreover, as the heat of the struggle of the Reforma-
tion increased, the Morality was used to support a side.
Real men and women were shown under the thin cloaks
of its allegorical characters. The stage was becoming a
living power when this began.
78. The Interludes must next be noticed. There had
been interludes in the Miracle plays, short, humorous
pieces, interpolated for the amusement of the people.
These were continued in the Moralities, and were made
closer still to popular life. It occurred to JOHN HEY-
WOOD to identify himself with this form of drama, and to
raise the Interludes into a place in literature. In his
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA I2Q
hands, from 1520 to 1540, the Interlude became a kind
of farce, and he wrote several for the amusement of the
court of Henry VIII. He drew the characters from real
life ; in many cases he gave them the names of men and
women, but he retained " the Vice " as a personage.
79. The Regular Drama: its First Stage. These
were the beginnings of the English Drama. To trace
the many and various windings of the way from the
Interludes of Heywood to the regular drama of Elizabeth
were too long and too involved a work for this book.
We need only say that the first pure English comedy
was Ralph Roister Doister, written by NICHOLAS UDALL,
master of Eton, known to have been acted before 1551,
but not published till 1566. It is our earliest picture of
London manners; it is divided into regular acts and
scenes, and is made in rhyme. The first English tragedy
is Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, written by Sackville
and Norton, and represented in 1561. The story was
taken from British legend ; the method followed that of
Seneca. A few tragedies on the same classical model fol-
lowed, but before long this classical type of plays died out.
For twenty years or so, from 1560 to 1580, the drama
was learning its way by experiments. Moralities were
still made, comedies, tragi-comedies, farces, tragedies;
and sometimes tragedy, farce, comedy, and morality were
rolled into one play. The verse of the drama was as
unsettled as its form. The plays were written in dog-
gerel, in the fourteen-syllable line, in prose, and in a ten-
syllable verse, and these were sometimes mixed in the
K
I3O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
same play. They were acted chiefly at the Universities,
the Inns of Court, the Court, and after 1576 by players
in the theatres. Out of this confusion arose 1580-8
(i) two sets of dramatic writers, the "University Wits"
and the theatrical playwrights; (2) a distinct dramatic
verse, the blank verse destined to be used by Marlowe,
Peele, and Greene ; and (3) the licensed theatre.
80. The Theatre. A patent was given in 1574 to
the Earl of Leicester's servants to act plays in any town
in England, and they built in 1576 the Blackfriars Thea-
tre. In the same year two others were set up in the
fields about Shoreditch "The Theatre" and "The
Curtain." The Globe Theatre, built for Shakespeare
and his fellows in 1599, may stand as a type of the rest.
In the form of a hexagon outside, it was circular within,
and open to the weather, except above the stage. The
play began at three o'clock; the nobles and ladies sat
in boxes or in stools on the stage, the people stood in
the pit or yard. The stage itself, strewn with rushes,
was a naked room, with a blanket for a curtain. Wooden
imitations of animals, towers, woods, houses, were all the
scenery used, and a board, stating the place of action,
was hung out from the top when the scene changed.
Boys acted the female parts. It was only after the
Restoration that movable scenery and actresses were
introduced. No "pencil's aid" supplied the landscape
of Shakespeare's plays. The forest of Arden, the castle
of Macbeth, were " seen only by the intellectual eye."
81. The Second Stage of the Drama ranges from
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 13!
1580 to 1596. It includes the plays of Lyly, Peele,
Greene, Lodge, Marlowe, Kyd, Nash, and the earliest
works of Shakespeare. During this time we know that
more than 100 different plays were performed by four
out of the eleven companies ; so swift and plentiful was
their production. They were written in prose, and in
rhyme, and in blank verse mixed with prose and rhyme.
Prose and rhyme prevailed before 1587, when Marlowe
in his play of Tamburlaine made blank verse so new
and splendid a thing that it overcame all other dra-
matic vehicles. JOHN LYLY, however, wrote so much of
his eight plays in prose, that he established, we may say,
the use of prose in the drama an innovation which
Gascoigne introduced, and which Shakespeare carried
to perfection. Some beautiful little songs scattered
through Lyly's plays are the forerunners of the songs
with which Shakespeare and his fellows illumined their
dramas, and the witty "quips and cranks," repartees
and similes of Lyly's fantastic prose dialogue were the
school of Shakespeare's first prose dialogue. PEELE,
GREENE, and MARLOWE, the three important names of
the period, belong to the University men. So do Lodge
and Nash, and perhaps Kyd. They are the first in
whose hands the play of human passion and action is
expressed with any true dramatic effect. GEORGE
PEELE'S Arraignment of Paris, 1584, and his David
and Bethsabe are full of passages of new and delightful
poetry, and when the poetry is good, his blank verse
and his heroic couplet are smooth and tender. ROBERT
132 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
GREENE, of whose prose in pamphlet and tale much
might be said, spent ten years in writing, and died in
1592. There is little poetry in his plays, but he could
write a charming song. KYD'S best play is the Spanish
Tragedy. None of these men had the power of work-
ing out a play by the development of their " characters "
to a natural conclusion. They anticipate the poetry,
but not the art, of Shakespeare. CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
as dramatist surpassed, as poet rose far above, them,
and as metrist is almost as great as Shakespeare. The
difference between the unequal action and thought of
his Doctor Faustus, and the quiet and orderly progres-
sion to its end of the play of Edward II., is all the more
remarkable when we know that he died at thirty. As
he may be said to have made the verse of the drama, so
he created the English tragic drama. His best plays
are wrought with a new skill to their end, his characters
are outlined with strength and developed with fire.
Each play illustrates one ruling passion, in its growth,
its power, and its extremes. Tamburlaine paints the
desire of universal empire ; the Jew of Malta, the mar-
ried passions of greed and hatred; Doctor Faustus, the
struggle and failure of man to possess all knowledge and
all pleasure without toil and without law ; Edward II., the
misery of weakness and the agony of a king's ruin. His
knowledge of human nature was neither extensive nor
penetrative, but the splendour of his imagination, and
the noble surging of his verse, make us forget his want
of depth and of variety. Every one has dwelt on his
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 133
intemperance in phrases and of images, but the spirit of
poetry moves in them ; we even enjoy the natural faults
of fiery youth in a fiery time. He had no humour, and
his farcical fun is like the boisterous play of a clumsy
animal. In nothing is the difference between Shake>
speare and him and his fellows more infinite than in this
point of humour. And indeed he had little pathos.
His sorrows are too loud. Nevertheless, by force of
poetry, not of dramatic art, Marlowe made a noble
porch to the temple which Shakespeare built. That tem-
ple, however, in spite of all the preceding work, seems to
spring out of nothing, so astonishing it is in art, in
beauty, in conception. He himself was his only worthy
predecessor, and the third stage of the drama includes
his work, that of Ben Jonson's, and of a few others. It
is the work, moreover, not of University men who did
not know the stage, but of men who were not only men
of genius, but also playwrights who understood what a
play should be, and how it was to be staged.
82. William Shakespeare in twenty-eight years made
the drama represent almost the whole of human life. He
was baptised April 26, 1564, and was the son of a com-
fortable burgess of Stratford-on-Avon. While he was
still young his father fell into poverty, and an interrupted
education left him an inferior scholar. " He had small
Latin and less Greek ; " but he had a vast store of English. 1
1 He uses 15,000 words, and he wrote pure English. Out of every
five verbs, adverbs, and nouns (e.g. in the last act of Othello) , four are
Teutonic ; and he is more Teutonic in comedy than in tragedy.
134 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
However, by dint of genius and by living in a society
in which every kind of information was attainable, he
became an accomplished man. The story told of his
deer-stealing in Charlecote woods is without proof, but
it is likely that his youth was wild and passionate. At
nineteen he married Anne Hathaway, more than seven
years older than himself, and was probably unhappy with
her. For this reason, or from poverty, or from the driv-
ing of the genius that led him to the stage, he left Strat-
ford about 1586-7, and came to London at the age of
twenty-two years, and falling in with Marlowe, Greene,
and the rest, became an actor and playwright, and may
have lived their unrestrained and riotous life for some
years. It is convenient to divide his work into periods,
and to state the order in which it is now supposed his
plays were written. But we must not imagine that the
periods and the order are really settled. We know some-
thing, but not all we ought to know, of this matter.
83. His First Period. It is probable that before
leaving Stratford he had sketched a part at least of his
Venus and Adonis. It is full of the country sights and
sounds, of the ways of birds and animals, such as he saw
when wandering in Charlecote woods. Its rich and over-
laden poetry and its warm colouring made him, when it
was published, 1593, at once the favourite of men like
Lord Southampton, and lifted him into fame. But before
that date he had done work for the stage by touching up
old plays, and writing new ones. We seem to trace his
" prentice hand " in some dramas of the time, but the
first he is usually thought to have fully retouched is Ti-
tus Andronicus, and some time after the First Part of
Henry VI. Love's Labour's Lost, supposed to be written
1589 or 1590, the first of his original plays, in which he
quizzed and excelled the Euphuists in wit, was followed
by the involved and rapid farce of the Comedy of Errors.
Out of these frolics of intellect and action he passed
into pure poetry in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, and
mingled into fantastic beauty the classic legend, the
mediaeval fairyland, and the clownish life of the English
mechanic. Italian story laid its charm upon him about
the same time, and the Two Gentlemen of Verona pre-
ceded the southern glow of passion in Romeo and Juliet,
in which he first reached tragic power. They are said to
complete, with Love's Labour's Won, afterwards recast as
All's Well that Ends Well, the love plays of his early
period. We should read along with them, as belonging
to the same period, the Rape of Lucrece, a poem finally
printed in 1594, one year later than the Venus and Ado-
nis, which was probably finished, if not wholly written,
at this passionate time.
The same poetic succession we have traced in the poets,
is now found in Shakespeare. The patriotic feeling of
England, also represented in Marlowe and Peele, had
seized on him, and he began his great series of historical
plays with Richard II. and Richard III. To introduce
Richard III. or to complete the subject, he recast the
Second and Third Parts of Henry VI., and ended what
we have called his first period by King John about 1596,
136 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
84. His Second Period, 1596-1601. In the Merchant
of Venice Shakespeare reached entire mastery over his
art. A mingled woof of tragic and comic threads is
brought to its highest point of colour when Portia and
Shylock meet in court. Pure comedy followed in his
retouch of the old Taming of the Shrew, and all the wit
of the world mixed with noble history met in the first and
second Henry IV., 15978; while Falstaffwas continued
in the Merry Wives of Windsor. The historical plays
were then closed with Henry V., 1599; a splendid dra-
matic song to the glory of England. The Globe Theatre
of which he was one of the proprietors, was built in 1599.
In the comedies he wrote for it, Shakespeare turned to
write of love again, not to touch its deeper passion as
before, but to play with it in all its lighter phases. The
flashing dialogue of Much Ado About Nothing was fol-
lowed by the far-off forest world of As You Like It, 1599,
where " the time fleets carelessly," and Rosalind's char-
acter is the play. Amid all its gracious lightness steals in
a new element, and the melancholy of Jaques is the first
touch we have of the older Shakespeare who had " gained
his experience, and whose experience had made him
sad." As yet it was but a touch ; Twelfth Night shows
no trace of it, though the play that followed, AIFs Well
that Ends Well, 1601? again strikes a sadder note. We
find this sadness fully grown in the later Sonnets, which
are said to have been finished about 1602. We know
that some of the Sonnets existed in 1598, but they were
all printed together for the first time in 1609. They
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 137
form together the most deep, ardent, subtle, and varied
representation of love in our language, and their emotion
is mingled with so great a wealth of simple and complex
thought that they seem to be written out of the experi-
ence, not of one but of many men.
Shakespeare's life changed now, and his mind changed
with it. He had grown wealthy during this period,
famous, and loved by society. He was the friend of the
Earls of Southampton and Essex, and of William Herbert,
Lord Pembroke. The queen patronised him; all the
best literary society was his own. He had rescued his
father from poverty, bought the best house in Stratford
and much land, and was a man of wealth and comfort.
Suddenly all his life seems to have grown dark. His
best friends fell into ruin, Essex perished on the scaffold,
Southampton went to the Tower, Pembroke was banished
from the court ; he may himself, some have thought, have
been slightly involved in the rising of Essex. Added to
this, we may conjecture, from the imaginative pageantry
of the sonnets, that he had unwisely loved, and been
betrayed in his love by a dear friend. Public and pri-
vate ill then weighed heavily upon him; he seems to
even have had disgust for his profession as an actor;
and in darkness of spirit, though still clinging to the
business of the theatre, he passed from comedy to write
of the sterner side of the world, to tell the tragedy of
mankind.
85. His Third Period, 1601-1608, begins with the
last days of Queen Elizabeth. It opens with Julius
138 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Casar, and we may have, scattered through the telling
of the great Roman's fate, the expression of Shake-
speare's sorrow for the ruin of Essex. Hamlet followed,
1601-3? f r tne P oet fel^ h'ke the Prince of Denmark,
that "the time was out of joint." Hamlet, the dreamer,
may well represent Shakespeare as he stood aside from
the crash that overwhelmed his friends, and thought on
the changing world. The tragi-comedy of Measure for
Measure, 1603 ? may have now been written, and is tragic
in thought throughout. Othello, 1604, Macbeth, Lear,
Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus,
1608? Timon (only in part his own), were all written in
these five years. The darker sins of men ; the unpitying
fate which slowly gathers round and falls on mistakes
and crimes, on ambition, luxury, and pride ; the aveng-
ing wrath of conscience ; the cruelty and punishment of
weakness ; the treachery, lust, jealousy, ingratitude, mad-
ness of men ; the follies of the great and the fickleness
of the mob, are all, with a thousand other varying
moods and passions, painted, and felt as his own while
he painted them, during this stern time.
86. His Fourth Period, 1608-1613. As Shakespeare
wrote of these things he passed out of them, and his last
days are full of the gentle and loving calm of one who
has known sin and sorrow and fate, but has risen above
them into peaceful victory. Like his great contemporary
Bacon, he left the world and his own evil time behind
him, and with the same quiet dignity sought the inno-
cence and stillness of country life. The country breathes
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 139
through all the dramas of this time. The flowers Perdita
gathers in Winter's Tale, the frolic of the sheep-shear-
ing, he may have seen in the Stratford meadows; the
song of Fidele in Cymbelinc is written by one who already
feared no more the frown of the great, nor slander, nor
censure rash, and was looking forward to the time when
men should say of him
Quiet consummation have ;
And renowned be thy grave !
Shakespeare probably left London in 1609, and lived in
the house he had bought at Stratford-on-Avon. He was
reconciled, it is said, to his wife, and the plays now writ-
ten dwell on domestic peace and forgiveness. The story
of Marina, which he left unfinished, and which it is
supposed two later writers expanded into the play of
Pericles, is the first of his closing series of dramas.
Cymbelinc, 1609? The Tempest, 1610? Winter's Tale,
bring his history up to 1611, and in the next year he
may have closed his poetic life by writing, with Fletcher,
Henry VIII., 1612? The Two Noble Kinsmen of Fletcher,
part of which is attributed to Shakespeare, and in which
the poet sought the inspiration of Chaucer, would belong
to this period. For some three years he kept silence 4
and then, on the 23d of April, 1616, it is supposed on
his fifty-second birthday, he died.
87. His Work. We can only guess with regard to
Shakespeare's life and character. It has been tried to
find out what he was from his sonnets, and from his plays,
I4O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAI>,
but every attempt seems to be a failure. We cannot lay
our hand on anything and say for certain that it was
spoken by Shakespeare out of his own personality. He
created men and women whose dramatic action on each
other, and towards a chosen end, was intended to please
the public, not to reveal himself. Frequently failing in
fineness of workmanship, having, but far less than the
other dramatists, the faults of the art of his time, he was
yet in all other points in creative power, in impassioned
conception and execution, in truth to universal human
nature, in intellectual power, in intensity of feeling, in
the great matter and manner of his poetry, in the weld-
ing together of thought, passion, and action, in range, in
plenteousness, in the continuance of his romantic feeling
the greatest poet our modern world has known. Like
the rest of the greater poets, he reflected the noble things
of his time, but refused to reflect the base. Fully in-
fluenced, as we see in Hamlet he was, by the graver and
more philosophic cast of thought of the latter time of
Elizabeth ; passing on into the reign of James I., when
pedantry took the place of gaiety, and sensual the place
of imaginative love in the drama, and artificial art the
place of that art which itself is nature ; he preserves to
the last the natural passion, the simple tenderness, the
sweetness, grace, and fire of the youthful Elizabethan
poetry. The Winter's Tale is as lovely a love-story as
Romeo and Juliet, the Tempest is more instinct with im-
agination and as great in fancy as the Midsummer Nighfs
Dream, and yet there are fully twenty years between
IY THE ENGLISH DRAMA 14!
them. The only change is in the increase of power and
in a closer, graver, and more ideal grasp of human nature.
In the unchangeableness of this joyful and creative art-
power Shakespeare is almost alone. It is true that in
these last plays his art is more self-conscious, less natu-
ral, and the greater glory is therefore lost, but the power
is not less nor the beauty.
88. The Decline of the Drama begins while Shake-
speare is alive. At first we can scarcely call it decline,
it was so superb in its own qualities. For it began
with "rare BEN JONSON." With him are connected
by associated work, by quarrels, and by date, Dekker,
Marston, and Chapman. They belong with Shakespeare
to the days of Elizabeth and the days of James I. Ben
Jonson's first play, in its very title, Every Man in his
Humour, 1596, enables us to say in what the first step
of this decline consisted. The drama in Shakespeare's
hands had been the painting of the whole of human
nature, the painting of characters as they were built up
by their natural bent, and by the play of circumstance
upon them. The drama, in Ben Jonson's hands, was
the painting of particular phases of human nature, espe-
cially of his own age ; and his characters are men and
women as they may become when they are completely
mastered by a special bias of the mind or Humour.
"The Manners, now called Humours, feed the stage,"
says Jonson himself. Every Man in his Humour was
followed by Every Man out of his Humour, and by
Cynthia's Revels, written to satirise the courtiers. The
142 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
fierce satire of these plays brought the town down upon
him, and he replied to their " noise " in the Poetaster,
in which Dekker and Marston were satirised. Dekker
answered with the Satiro-Mastix, a bitter parody on
the Poetaster, in which he did not spare Jonson's bodily
defects. Silent then for two years, he reappeared with
the tragedy of Sejanus, and then quickly produced
three splendid comedies in James I.'s reign, Volpone the
Fox, the Silent Woman, and the Alchemist, 1605-9-10.
The first is the finest thing he ever did, as great in
power as it is in the interest and skill of its plot ; the
second is chiefly valuable as a picture of English life
in high society; the third is full of Jonson's obscure
learning, but its character of Sir Epicure Mammon is
done with Jonson's keenest power. In 1611 his Catiline
appeared, and then Bartholomew Fair. Eight years
after he was made Poet Laureate. Soon he became
poor and palsy- stricken, but his genius did not decay.
His tender and imaginative pastoral drama, the Sad
Shepherd, proves that, like Shakespeare, Jonson grew
gentler as he grew near to death, and death took him
in 1637. He was a great man. The power and copi-
ousness of the young Elizabethan age belonged to him ;
and he stands far below, for he had no passion, but
still worthily by, Shakespeare, " a robust, surly, and ob-
serving dramatist." THOS. DEKKER, whose lovely lyrics
are well known, and whose copious prose occupies five
volumes, " had poetry enough," Lamb said, " for any-
thing." His light comedies of manners are excellent
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 143
pictures of the time. But his romantic poetry is better
felt in such dramas as Patient Grissil, Old Fortunatus,
and The Witch of Edmonton, in which, though others
worked them along with Dekker, the women are all his
own by tenderness, grace, subtlety, and pathos. JOHN
MARSTON, whose chief plays were written between 1602
and 1605, needs little notice here. He is best known
by certain noble and beautiful passages, and his finest
plays were Antonio and Mellida and the Malcontent.
Of the three GEO. CHAPMAN was the most various genius,
and the most powerful. He illuminated the age of
Elizabeth by the first part of his translation of Homer ;
he lived on into the reign of Charles I. His poems
(of which the best are his continuation of Marlowe's
Hero and Leander, and The Tears of Peace) are ex-
treme examples of the gnarled, sensuous, formless, and
obscure poetry of which Dryden cured our literature.
His plays are of a finer quality, especially the five
tragedies taken from French history. They are weighty
with thought, but the thought devours their action, and
they are difficult and sensational. Inequality pervades
them. His mingling of intellectual violence with intel-
lectual imagination, of obscurity with a noble exultation
and clearness of poetry, is a strange compound of the
earlier and later Elizabethans. He, like Marlowe, but
with less of beauty, "hurled instructive fire about the
world." With these three I may mention Cyril Tourneur
and John Day, the one as ferocious in the Atheists Trag-
fdy as the other was graceful in his Parliament of Bees.
144 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Both were poets, and both were more truly Elizabethan
than Beaumont, Fletcher, or Webster.
89. Masques. Rugged as Jonson was, he could turn
to light and graceful work, and it is with his name that
we connect the Masques. He wrote them delightfully.
Masques were dramatic representations made for a fes-
tive occasion, with a reference to the persons present
and the occasion. Their personages were allegorical.
They admitted of dialogue, music, singing, and dancing,
combined by the use of some ingenious fable into a
whole. They were made and performed for the court
and the houses of the nobles, and the scenery was as
gorgeous and varied as the scenery of the playhouse
proper was poor and unchanging. Arriving for the first
time at any repute in Henry VIII.'s time, they reached
splendour under James and Charles I. Great men took
part in them. When Ben Jonson wrote them, Inigo
Jones made the scenery and Lawes the music; and
Lord Bacon, Whitelock, and Selden sat in committee
for the last great masque presented to Charles. Milton
himself made them worthier by writing Comus, and their
scenic decoration was soon introduced into the regular
theatres.
90. Beaumont and Fletcher worked together, and be-
long not only in date, but in spirit, to the reign of James.
In two plays, Henry VIII. and The Two Noble Kinsmen,
Fletcher has been linked to Shakespeare. With Beau-
mont as fellow-worker and counsellor, he wrote about
a third of the more than fifty plays which go under
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 145
their names. Beaumont died, aged thirty, in 1616,
Fletcher, aged fifty, in 1625. The creative power of
the Elizabethan time has no more striking example
than in their vast production. The inventiveness of
the plays is astonishing, and their plots are almost
always easily connected and well supported. Far the
greater part of the work was done by Fletcher, but it
has been tried to trace Beaumont's hand chiefly in such
fine tragedies as The Maid's Tragedy and Philaster.
In comedy Fletcher is gay, and quick, and interesting.
In tragedy and comedy alike, his level of goodness is
equal, but then we have none of those magnificent out-
bursts of imaginative passion to which, up to this time,
we have been accustomed. The Faithful Shepherdess
of Fletcher is a lovely pastoral, and the lyrics which
diversify his plays have even some of the charm of
Shakespeare.
He and his fellows represent a distinct change, and
not for the better, in the drama a kind of fourth
stage. Its poetry is on the whole less masculine. Its
blank verse is rendered smoother and sweeter by the
incessant addition of an eleventh syllable, but it is also
enfeebled. This weak ending, by the additional free-
dom and elasticity it gave to the verse, was suited to
the rapid dialogue of comedy, but the dignity of trag-
edy was lowered by it. The change is also seen in
other matters. In the previous plays moral justice is
done. The good are divided from the bad. Fletcher
seems quite indifferent to this. In the previous plays,
146 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
men and women, save in Shakespeare, are coarse and
foul enough at times, but they are so by nature or
under furious passion. In Fletcher, there is a natural
indecency, an every-day foulness of thought, which be-
longs to the good and the bad alike. The women are,
when good, beyond nature, and, when bad, below it.
The situations invented tend to be studiously out of the
way, beyond the natural aspects of humanity. The aim
of art has changed for the worse. It strives for the
strange and the sensational. Even JOHN WEBSTER lost
some of the power his genius gave him by the ghastly
situations he chose to dwell upon. Yet he all but re-
deemed the worst of them by the intensity of his imag-
ination, and by the soul-piercing power with which, in
a few words, he sounds the depths of the human heart
when it is wrought bv remorse, by sorrow, by fear, or
by wrath to its greatest point of passion. Moreover,
in his worst characters there is some redeeming touch,
and this poetic pity saves his sensationalism from weari-
ness, and brings him nearer to Shakespeare than others
of his time. His two greatest plays, things which will
be glorious forever in poetry, are The Duchess of
Malfi, acted in 1616, and the White Devil, Vittoria
Corrombona, printed in 1612. One other play of the
time is held to approach them in poetic quality, The
Changeling, by Thomas Middleton, but it does so only
in parts.
91. Decay of the Drama. In the next dramatists, in
the followers, if I may thus class them, of MASSINGER
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 147
and FORD, the change for the worse in the drama is
more marked than in the work of those of whom we
have been speaking. The poetic and creative qualities
are both less, the sensationalism is greater, the foulness
of language increases, the situations are more out of
nature, the verse is clumsier and more careless, the
composition and connexion of the plots are tumbled
and confused. But these statements are only moder-
ately true of Massinger and Ford. They stand at the
head of the rapid decay of the drama, but they still
retain a predominant part of that which made the
Elizabethans great. Massinger's first dated play was
the Virgin Martyr, 1620. He lived poor, and died
" a stranger," in 1639. In these twenty years he wrote
thirty-seven plays, of which the New Way to Pay Old
Debts is the best known by its character of Sir Giles
Overreach. His versification and language are flexible
and strong, "and seem to rise out of the passions he
describes." He speaks the tongue of real life. He is
greater than he seems to be. Like Fletcher, there is
a steady equality in his work. Coarse, even foul as he
is in speech, he is the most moral of the secondary
dramatists. Nowhere is his work so forcible as when
he represents the brave man struggling through trial to
victory, the pure woman suffering for the sake of truth
and love; or when he describes the terrors that con-
science brings on injustice and cruelty. JOHN FORD,
his contemporary, published his first play, the Lovers
Melancholy, in 1629, and five years after, Perkin War'
148 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAR
beck, one of the best historical dramas after Shake-
speare. Between these dates appeared others, of which
the best are the Broken Heart and 'Tis Pity She's a
Whore. He carried to an extreme the tendency of the
drama to unnatural and horrible subjects, but he did so
with great power. He has no comic humour, but few
men have described better the worn and tortured hu-
man heart. A crowd of dramatists carried on the pro-
duction of plays till the Commonwealth. Some names
alone we can mention here Thomas Heywood, Henry
Glapthorne, Richard Broome, William Rowley, Thomas
Randolph, Nabbes, and Davenport. Of these "all of
whom," says Lamb, " spoke nearly the same language,
and had a set of moral feelings and notions in com-
mon," James Shirley is the best and last. He lived
till 1666. In him the fire and passion of the old time
pass away, but some of the delicate poetry remains, and
in him the Elizabethan drama dies. Sir John Suckling
and Davenant, who wrote plays before the Common-
wealth, can scarcely be called even decadent Eliza-
bethans. In 1642 the theatres were closed during the
calamitous times of the Civil War. Strolling players
managed to exist with difficulty, and against the law,
till 1656, when Sir William Davenant had his opera
of the Siege of Rhodes acted in London. It was the
beginning of a new drama, in every point but impurity
different from the old, and four years after, at the Res-
toration, it broke loose from the prison of Puritanism to
indulge in a shameless license.
IV THE ENGLISH DRAMA 149
In this rapid sketch of the drama in England we
have been carried on beyond the death of Elizabeth
to the date of the Restoration. It was necessary, be-
cause it keeps the whole story together. We now re-
turn to the time that followed the accession of James I.
ISO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER V
FROM ELIZABETH'S DEATH TO THE RESTORATION,
1603-1660
92. The Literature of this Period may fairly be
called Elizabethan, but not so altogether. The prose
retained the manner of the Elizabethan time and the
faults of its style, but gradually grew into greater ex-
cellence, spread itself over larger fields of thought, and
took up a greater variety of subjects. The poetry, on
the whole, declined. It exaggerated the vices of the
Elizabethan art, and lessened its virtues. But this is
not the whole account of the matter. We must add
that a new prose, of greater force of thought and of a
simpler style than the Elizabethan, arose in the writings
of a theologian like Chillingworth, an historian like
Clarendon, and a philosopher like Hobbes : and that
a new type of poetry, distinct from the poetry of fan-
tastic wit into which Elizabethan poetry had descended,
was written by some of the lyrical writers. It was Eliza-
bethan in its lyric note, but it was not obscure. It had
grace, simplicity, and smoothness. In its greater art and
clearness it tells us that the critical school is at hand.
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 1$I
93. Prose Literature. James I. The greatest prose
triumph of this time was the Authorised Version of the
Bible. There is no need to dwell on it, nor on all it has
done for the literature of England. It lives in almost
every book of worth and imagination, and its style, es-
pecially when the subject soars, is inspired by the spirits
of fitness and beauty and melody. Philosophy passed
from Elizabeth into the reign of James I. with Francis
Bacon. The splendour of the form and of the English
prose of the Advancement of Learning, two books of
which were published in 1605, raises it into the realm
of pure literature, fit was expanded into nine Latin
books in 1623, and with the Novum Organon, finished
in 1620, and the Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis,
1622, formed the Instauratio Magna. The impulse
these books gave to research, and to the true method
of research, awoke scientific inquiry in England; and
before the Royal Society was constituted in the reign of
Charles II., our science, though far behind that of the
Continent, had done some good work. William Harvey
lectured on the circulation of the blood in 1615, and
during the Civil War and the Commonwealth men like
Robert Boyle, the chemist, John Wallis, the mathe-
matician, and others, met in William Petty's rooms at
Brazenose, and prepared the way for Newton.
94. History, except in the publication of the earlier
Chronicles of Archbishop Parker, does not appear in
the later part of Elizabeth's reign, but under James I.
Camden, Spelman, Selden, and Speed continued the anti-
152 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
quarian researches of Stow and Grafton. Bacon wrote
a dignified History of Henry VII., and Daniel the poet,
in his History of England to the Time of Edward III.,
1613-18, was one of the first to throw history into such a
literary form as to make it popular. KNOLLES'S History
of the Turks, 1603, and SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S vast
sketch of the History of the World, show how for the
first time history spread itself beyond English interests.
Raleigh's book, written in the peaceful evening of a
stormy life, and in the quiet of his prison, is not only
literary from the impulsive passages which adorn it, but
from its still spirit of melancholy thought. In 1614,
John Selden's Titles of Honour added to the accurate
work he had done in Latin on the English Records,
and his History of Tithes was written with the same
careful regard for truth in 1618.
95. Miscellaneous Literature. The pleasure of Travel,
still lingering among us from Elizabeth's reign, found a
quaint voice in Thomas Coryat's Crudities, which, in
1611, describes his journey through France and Italy;
and in George Sandys' book, 1615, which tells his
journey in the East ; while Henry Wotton's Letters from
Italy are pleasant reading. The care with which Samuel
Purchas embodied (1613) in Purchas his Pilgrimage
(" his own in matter, though borrowed ") and in Hak-
luyfs Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes (1625), the
great deeds, sea voyages, and land travels of adventurers,
brings us back to the time when England went out to
win the world. The painting of short "Characters"
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 153
was begun by Sir Thomas Overbury's book in 1614, and
carried on in the following reign by John Earle and
Joseph Hall, who became bishops. This kind of litera-
ture marks the interest in individual life which now began
to arise, and which soon took form in Biography.
96. In the Caroline Period and the Commonwealth,
Prose grew into a nearer approach to the finished in-
strument it became after the Restoration. History was
illuminated, and its style dignified, by the work of Claren-
don- the History of the Rebellion (begun in 1641) and
his own Life, Thomas May wrote the History of the
Parliament of 1640, a book with a purpose. Thomas
Fuller's Church History of Britain, 1656, may in style
and temper be put alongside of his Worthies of England
in 1662.
In Theology and Philosophy the masters of prose at
this time were Jeremy Taylor and Thomas Hobbes. It
is a comfort amidst the noisy war of party to breathe the
calm spiritual air of The Great Exemplar and the Holy
Living and Dying which Taylor published at the close
of the reign of Charles I. They had been preceded in
1647 by tne Liberty of Prophesying, in which, agreeing
with his contemporaries, John Hales and William Chil-
lingworth, he pleaded the cause of religious toleration,
and of Tightness of life as more important than correct
theology. Taylor was the most eloquent of men, and
the most facile of orators. Laden with thought, his
books are read for their sweet and deep devotion (a
quality which also belonged to his fellow-writer, Lancelot
154 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Andrewes), even more than for their impassioned and
convoluted outbreaks of beautiful words. On the Puritan
side, the fine sermons of Richard Sibbes converted Rich-
ard Baxter, whose manifold literary work only ended in
the reign of James II. One little thing of his, written
at the close of the Civil War, became a household book
in England. There used to be few cottages which did
not possess a copy of the Saints' Everlasting Rest. The
best work of Hobbes belonged to Charles I. and the
Commonwealth, but will better be noticed hereafter.
The other great prose writer is one of a number of
men whose productions may be classed under the title
of Miscellaneous Literature. He is Sir Thomas Browne,
who, born in 1605, died in 1682. In 1642 his Religio
Medici was printed, and the book ran over Europe.
The Enquiry into Vulgar Errors followed in 1646, and
the Hydriotaphia, or Urn- Burial, in 1658. These books,
with other happy things of his, have by their quaintness,
their fancy, and their special charm always pleased the
world, and often kindled weary prose into fresh produc-
tion. We may class with them Robert Burton's Anatomy
of Melancholy, a book of inventive wit and scattered learn-
ing, and Thomas Fuller's Holy and Profane State and
Worthies of England, in which gaiety and piety, good
sense and whimsical fancy meet. This kind of writing
was greatly increased by the setting up of libraries,
where men dipped into every kind of literature. It
was in James L's reign that Sir Thomas Bodley estab-
lished the Bodleian at Oxford, and Sir Robert Cotton
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 1 55
a library now in the British Museum. A number of
writers took part in the Puritan and Church contro-
versies, among whom for graphic force William Prynne
stands out clearly. But the great controversialist was
Milton. His prose is still, under the Commonwealth,
Elizabethan in style. It has the fire and violence, the
eloquence and diffuseness of the earlier literature, but in
spite of the praise its style has received, it can in reality
be scarcely called a style. It has all the faults a prose
style can have except obscurity and the commonplace.
Its magnificent storms of eloquence ought to be in
poetry, and it never charms, though it amazes, except
when Milton becomes purposely simple in personal
narrative. It has no humour, but it has almost unex-
ampled individuality and ferocity. Among this tem-
pestuous pamphleteering one pamphlet is almost singular
in its masterly and uplifted thought, and the style only
rarely loses its dignity. This is the Areopagitica, In
pleasant contrast to these controversies arises the gentle
literature of Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler, 1653, a
book which resembles in its quaint and garrulous style
the rustic scenery and prattling rivers that it celebrates,
and marks the quiet interest in country life which had
now arisen in England. Prose, then, in the time of
James and Charles I., and of the Commonwealth, had
largely developed its powers.
97. The Poetry of the Reign of James I. It is said
that during this reign and the following one, poetry
declined. On the whole that is true, but it is true with
ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
many modifications. We must remember that Shake-
speare and many of the Elizabethan poets, like Drayton
and Daniel, did their finest work in the reign of James I.
Yet there was decline. The various elements which we
have noticed in the poetry of Elizabeth's reign, without
the exception even of the slight Catholic element, though
opposed to each other, were filled with one spirit the
love of England and the queen. Nor were they ever
sharply divided ; they are found interwoven, and modi-
fying one another in the same poet, as for instance Puri-
tanism and Chivalry in Spenser, Catholicism and Love in
Constable : and all are mixed together in Shakespeare
and the dramatists. This unity of spirit in poetry
became less and less after the queen's death. The ele-
ments remained, but they were separated. The cause of
this was that the strife in politics between the Divine
Right of Kings and Liberty, and in religion between the
Church and the Puritans, grew so defined and intense
that England ceased to be at one, and the poets repre-
sented the parties, not the whole, of England. Then,
too, that general passion and life which inflamed every-
thing Elizabethan lessened, and as it lessened, the faults
of the Elizabethan work became more prominent ; they
were even supposed to be excellences. Hence the fan-
tastic, far-fetched, involved style, which was derived from
the Euphues and the Arcadia, grew into favour and was
developed in verse, till it ended by greatly injuring good
sense and clearness in English poetry. In the reaction
from this the critical and classical school began. Again,
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 1 57
when passion lessens, original work lessens, and imitation
begins. The reign of James is marked by a class of
poets who imitated Spenser. Giles Fletcher in his
Chris? s Victory and Triumph, 1610, owned Spenser as
his master. So did his brother Phineas Fletcher, whose
Purple Island, an allegory of the human body, 1633, nas
both grace and sweetness. We may not say that Will-
iam Browne imitated, but only that he was influenced
by Spenser. His Britannia's Pastorals in two parts,
1613-16, followed by the seven eclogues of the Shepherd's
Pipe, are an example in true poetry of the ever-recurring
element in English poetry, pleasure in country life and
scenery, which from this time forth grew through Milton,
Wither, Marvell, and then, after an apparent death, through
Thomson, Gray, and Collins, into its wonderful flower in
our own century. These, if we include the poetry of the
Dramatists, especially the Underwoods of Ben Jonson,
and the poems already mentioned of Drummond and
Stirling, are the poets of the reign of James I. They
link back to Elizabeth's time and its temper, and it may
be said of them that they have no special turn, save that
which arises from their own individuality. That cannot
be said of the poets of Charles I.'s reign, even though
they may be classed as writing under the influence of
Ben Jonson and of Donne.
98. The Caroline Poets, as they are called, are love
poets or religious poets. Often, as in the case of Herrick
and Crashaw, they combined both kinds into a single
volume. Sometimes they were only religious like Her-
158 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
bert, sometimes only love poets like Lovelace and Suck-
ling. But whatever they were, they were as individual as
Botticelli, with whose position and whose contemporaries
in painting they may, with much justice, be compared.
The greatest of these was ROBERT HERRICK. The gay
and glancing charm of The Hesperides, 1648, in which
Horace and Tibullus seem to mingle ; their peculiar art
which never misses its aim, nor fails in exquisite execution ;
the almost equal power of The Noble Numbers, published
along with the Hesperides, in which the spiritual side of
Herrick's nature expressed itself, make him, within his
self-chosen and limited range, the most remarkable of
those who at this time sat below the mountain top on
which Milton was alone. Close beside him, but more
unequal, was THOMAS CAREW, whose lyrical poems, well
known as they are, do not prevent our pleasure in his
graver work like the Elegy on Donne. Greater in im-
agination, but more unequal still, was RICHARD CRASHAW.
One of his poems, The Flaming Heart, expresses in its
name his religious nature and his art. He does not
burn with a steady fire, he flames to heaven ; and when
he does, he is divine in music and in passion. At other
times he is one of the worst of the fantasticals, of those
lovers of the quaint for quaintness' sake, among whom the
exclusively religious poets of the time are sadly to be
classed. There is GEORGE HERBERT, whose Temple,
1631, is, by the purity and devotion of its poems, dear
to all. It is his quiet religion, his quaint, contemplative,
vicarage-garden note of thought and scholarship which
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 159
pleases most, and will always please, the calm piety of
England. He also is individual, and so is HENRY
VAUGHAN, whose Sacred Poems , 1651, unequal as a whole,
love nature dearly, and leap sometimes into a higher air
of poetry than Herbert could attain ; " transcend our
wonted themes, and into glory peep." Nor must we
forget WILLIAM HABINGTON, who mingled his devotion to
Roman Catholicism with the praises of his wife under the
name of Castara, 1634; nor GEORGE WITHER, who sent
forth, just before the Civil War began, when he left the
king for the Parliament, his Hallelujah, 1641, a noble
series of religious poems ; nor FRANCIS QUARLES, whose
Divine Emblems, 1635, is still read in the cottages of
England. These poets, with Henry More, the Platonist,
and Joseph Beaumont, the friend of Crashaw and the
rival of More, are far below (Wither's work being ex-
cepted) both Herbert and Vaughan, and bring to an end
the religious poetry of this curious transition time. I
have omitted some poems of Cowley and of Edmund
Waller, which appeared during the Commonwealth, be-
cause both these poets belong to a new class of poetry,
the classical poetry of the Restoration. Between this
new kind of poetry, which rose to full power in Dryden,
and the dying poetry of the transition, stands alone the
majestic work of a great genius who touches the great
Elizabethan time with one hand and our own time with
the other. But before we speak of Milton, a word must
be said of the lyrics.
99. The Songs and other Lyrical Poetry. All through
l6o ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the period between James I. and the Restoration, Song-
writing went on, and was more natural and less " meta-
physical " than the other forms of poetry. The elements
of decay attacked it slowly ; those of brightness and pas-
sion, nature and gaiety, continued to live in it. Moreover,
the time was remarkable for no small number of lyrical
poems, other than songs, of a strange loveliness, in which
the Elizabethan excellences were enhanced by a special,
particular grace, due partly to the more isolated life some
of the poets led, and partly to the growth among them of
a more artistic method.
With regard to the Songs, a distinct set of them, on the
most various subjects, are to be found in the Dramatists,
from Ben Jonson to Shirley. Another set has been
collected out of the many Song-books which appeared
with music and words. Many arose in the court of
Charles I. and among the Royalists in the country,
Cavalier songs on love, on constancy, on dress, on
fleeting fancies of every kind. Others were on battle and
death for the king ; and a few, sterner and more ideal,
on the Puritan side. The same power of song-writing
went on for a brief time after the Restoration, but finally
perished in the political ballad which was sung about the
streets by the political parties of the Revolution. Then
the song-lyric of love was almost silent till the days of
Burns.
With regard to the Lyrical poems, it is impossible to
mention all that are worthy, but an age which produced
the masques, the poems, and the Sad Shepherd of Ben
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION l6l
Jonson; which heard the lyrical measures of Fletcher's
Faithful Shepherdess ; which read with joy Herrick's
Corinna and his country lyrics ; which wished, while it
had its delight in Wither's Philarete, that it was not so
long ; which felt a finer thrill than usual of the imagina-
tion in Marvell's Emigrants in the Bermudas and The
Thoughts in a Garden ; which was caught, as it were into
another world, by the Allegro, the Penseroso, the songs
in Comus and the Arcades, and by the Lycidas of Milton
can scarcely be called an age of decay. There was
decline, on the whole. We feel what had passed away
when we come to the days of the Restoration. But the
Elizabethan lyrical day died in a lovely sunset. And as
if to make this clear, we meet with Milton who bore the
passion, the force, and the beauty of the past along with
his own grandeur into the age of Dryden.
100. John Milton was the last of the Elizabethans, and,
except Shakespeare, far the greatest of them all. Born in
1608, in Bread Street (close by the Mermaid Tavern), he
may have seen Shakespeare, for he remained till he was
sixteen in London. His literary life may be said to begin
with his entrance into Cambridge, in 1625, the year of the
accession of Charles I. Nicknamed the " Lady of Christ's "
from his beauty, delicate taste, and moral life, he soon
attained a reputation by his Latin poems and discourses,
and by his English poems which revealed as clear and
original a genius as that of Chaucer and Spenser. Of
Milton even more than of the two others, it may be said
that he was " whole in himself, and owed to none." The
M
1 62 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Ode to the Nativity, 1629, the third poem he composed,
while it went back to the Elizabethan age in beauty, in
instinctive fire, went forward into a new world of art, the
world where the architecture of the lyric is finished with
majesty and music. The next year heard the noble
sounding strains of At a Solemn Music ; and the sonnet,
On Attaining the Age of Twenty-three, reveals in dignified
beauty that intense personality which lives, like a force,
through every line he wrote. He left the university in
1632, and went to live at Horton, near Windsor, where
he spent five years, steadily reading the Greek and Latin
writers, and amusing himself with mathematics and music.
Poetry was not neglected. The Allegro and Penseroso
were written in 1633 and probably the Arcades ; Comus
was acted in 1634, and Lycidas composed in 1637.
They prove that though Milton was Puritan in heart his
Puritanism was of that earlier type which disdained
neither the arts nor letters. But they represent a grow-
ing revolt from the Court and the Church. The Pen-
seroso prefers the contemplative life to the mirthful, and
Comus, though a masque, rose into a celestial poem to
the glory of temperance, and under its allegory attacked
the Court. Three years later, Lycidas interrupts its ex-
quisite stream of poetry with a fierce and resolute onset
on the greedy shepherds of the Church. Milton had
taken his Presbyterian bent.
In 1638 he went to Italy, the second home of so many
of the English poets, visited Florence where he saw
Galileo, and then passed on to Rome. At Naples he
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 163
heard the sad news of civil war, which determined him
to return ; " inasmuch as I thought it base to be travel-
ling at my ease for amusement, while my fellow-country-
men at home were righting for liberty." At the meeting
of the Long Parliament we find him in a house in Alders-
gate, where he lived till 1645. He had projected while
abroad a great epic poem on the subject of Arthur, but
in London his mind changed, and among a number of
subjects, tended at last to Paradise Lost, which he meant
to throw into the form of a Greek Tragedy with lyrics
and choruses.
10 1. Milton's Prose. The Commonwealth. Suddenly
his whole life changed, and for twenty years 1640-60
he was carried out of art into politics, out of poetry
into prose. Most of the Sonnets, however, belong to
this time. Stately, rugged, or graceful, as he pleased to
make them, some with the solemn grandeur of Hebrew
psalms, others having the classic ease of Horace, some
of his own grave tenderness, they are true, unlike those
of Shakespeare and Spenser, to the correct form of this
difficult kind of poetry. But they were all he could now
do of his true work. Before the Civil War began in
1642, he had written five vigorous pamphlets against
Episcopacy. Six more pamphlets appeared in the next
two years. One of these was the Areopagitica ; or,
Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, 1644, a
bold and eloquent attack on the censorship of the press
by the Presbyterians. Another, remarkable, like the
Areopagitica, for its finer prose, was a tract On Educa-
164 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP
tion. The four pamphlets in which he advocated con-
ditional divorce made him still more the horror of the
Presbyterians. In 1646 he published his poems, and in
that year the sonnet On the Forcers of Conscience shows
that he had wholly ceased to be Presbyterian. His
political pamphlets begin when his Tenure of Kings and
Magistrates defended in 1649 tne execution of the king.
The Eikonoclastes answered the Eikon Basilike (a portrait-
ure of the sufferings of the king) ; and his famous Latin
Defence for the People of England, 1651, replied to Sal-
masius's Defence of Charles /., and inflicted so pitiless a
lashing on the great Leyden scholar that Milton's fame
went over the whole of Europe. In the next year he
wholly lost his sight. But he continued his work (being
Latin secretary since 1649) when Cromwell was made
Protector, and wrote another Defence for the English
People, 1654, and a further Defence of Himself against
scurrilous charges. ' This closed the controversy in 1655.
In the last year of the Protector's life he began the
Paradise Lost, but the death of Cromwell threw him
back into politics, and three more pamphlets on the
questions of a Free Church and a Free Commonwealth
were useless to prevent the Restoration. It was a won-
der he was not put to death in 1660, and he was in hid-
ing and also in custody for a time. At last he settled in
a house near Bunhill Fields. It was here that Paradise
Los f was finished, before the end of 1665, and then pub-
lished in 1667.
102. Paradise Lost. We may regret that Milton was
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 165
shut away from his art during twenty years of contro-
versy. But it may be that the poems he wrote when the
great cause he fought for had closed in seeming defeat
but real victory, gained from its solemn issues and from
the moral grandeur with which he wrought for its ends
their majestic movement, their grand style, and their
grave beauty. During the struggle he had never for-
gotten his art. " I may one day hope," he said, speak-
ing of his youthful studies, " to have ye again, in a still
time, when there shall be no chiding. Not in these
Noises," and the saying strikes the note of calm sublim-
ity which is kept in Paradise Lost.
As we read the great epic, we feel that the lightness of
heart of the Allegro, that even the quiet classic philosophy
of the Comus, are gone. The beauty of the poem is like
that of a stately temple, which, vast in conception, is
involved in detail. The style is the greatest in the whole
range of English poetry. Milton's intellectual force sup-
ports and condenses his imaginative force, and his art is
almost too conscious of itself. Sublimity is its essential
difference. The subject is one phase of the great and
universal subject of high poetic thought and passion, that
struggle of Light with Darkness, of Evil with Good,
which, arising in a hundred myths, keeps its undying
attraction to the present day. But its great difficulty in
his case was that he was obliged to interest us, for a
great part of the poem, in two persons, who, being inno-
cent, were without any such play of human passion and
trouble as we find in OEdipus, ^Eneas, Hamlet, or Alceste,
1 66 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
In the noble art with which this is done Milton is su-
preme. The interest of the story collects at first round
the character of Satan, but he grows meaner as the poem
develops, and his second degradation after he has de-
stroyed innocence is one of the finest and most consistent
motives in the poem. This at once disposes of the view
that Milton meant Satan to be the hero of the epic. His
hero is Man. The deep tenderness of Milton, his love
of beauty, the passionate fitness of his words to his work,
his religious depth, fill the scenes in which he paints
Paradise, our parents and their fall, and at last all thought
and emotion centre round Adam and Eve, until the
closing lines leave us with their lonely image on our
minds. In every part of the poem, in every character in
it, as indeed in all his poems, Milton's intense individu-
ality appears. It is a pleasure to find it. The egotism
of such a man, said Coleridge, is a revelation of spirit.
103. Milton's Later Poems. Paradise Lost was fol-
lowed by Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, pub-
lished together in 1671. Paradise Regained opens with
the journey of Christ into the wilderness after his bap-
tism, and its four books describe the temptation of Christ
by Satan, and the answers and victory of the Redeemer.
The speeches in it overwhelm the action, and their
learned argument is only relieved by a few descriptions ;
but these, as in that of Athens, are done with Milton's
highest power. Its solemn beauty of quietude, and a
more severe style than that of Paradise Lost, make us
feel in it that Milton has grown older.
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION l6/
In Samson Agonistes the style is still severer, even to
the verge of a harshness which the sublimity alone tends
to modify. It is a choral drama, after the Greek model.
Samson in his blindness is described, is called on to make
sport for the Philistines, and overthrows them in the end.
Samson represents the fallen Puritan cause, and Samson's
victorious death Milton's hopes for the final triumph of
that cause. The poem has all the grandeur of the last
words of a great man in whom there was now " calm of
mind, all passion spent." It is also the last word of the
music of the Elizabethan drama long after its notes
seemed hushed, and its deep sound is strange in the
midst of the shallow noise of the Restoration. Soon
afterwards, November, 1674, blind and old and fallen on
evil days, Milton died; but neither blindness, old age,
nor evil days could lessen the inward light, nor impair
the imaginative power with which he sang, it seemed
with the angels, the " undisturbed song of pure concent,"
until he joined himself, at last, with those "just spirits
who wear victorious palms."
104. His Work. To the greatness of the artist Milton
joined the majesty of a clear and lofty character. His
poetic style was as stately as his character, and proceeded
from it. Living at a time when criticism began to purify
the verse of England, and being himself well acquainted
with the great classical models, his work is seldom weak-
ened by the false conceits and the intemperance of the
Elizabethan writers, and yet is as imaginative as theirs,
and as various. He has not their naturalness, nor all
1 68 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
their intensity, but he has a larger grace, a lovelier col-
our, a closer eye for nature, a more finished art, and a
sublime dignity they did not possess. All the kinds of
poetry which he touched he touched with the ease of
great strength, and with so much energy, that they be-
came new in his hands. He put a fresh life into the
masque, the sonnet, the elegy, the descriptive lyric, the
song, the choral drama; and he created the epic in
England. The lighter love poem he never wrote, and
we are grateful that he kept his coarse satirical power
apart from his poetry. In some points he was untrue
to his descent from the Elizabethans, for he had no dra-
matic faculty, and he had no humour. He summed up
in himself the learned and artistic influences of the Eng-
lish Renaissance, and handed them on to us. His taste
was as severe, his verse as polished, his method and lan-
guage as strict as those of the school of Dryden and
Pope that grew up when he was old. A literary past
and present thus met in him, nor did he fail, like all the
greatest men, to make a cast into the future. He estab-
lished the poetry of pure natural description. Lastly, he
did not represent in any way the England that followed
the Stuarts, but he did represent Puritan England, and
the whole spirit of Puritanism from its cradle to its grave.
105. The Pilgrim's Progress. We might say that
Puritanism said its last great words with Milton, were it
not that its spirit continued in English life, were it not
also that four years after his death, in 1678, JOHN BUN-
VAN, who had previously written religious poems, and in
V ELIZABETH TO THE RESTORATION 169
1665 the Holy City, published the Pilgrim's Progress.
It is the journey of Christian the Pilgrim from the City
of Destruction to the Celestial City. The second part
was published in 1684. In 1682 he had written the
allegory of the Holy War, and in 1680 The Life and
Death of Mr. Badman, a curious little story. I class
the Pilgrim's Progress here, because in its imaginative
fervour and imagery, and in its quality of naturalness, it
belongs to the spirit of the Elizabethan times. Written
by a man of the people, it is a people's book ; and its
simple form grew out of passionate feeling, and not out
of self-conscious art. The passionate feeling was relig-
ious, and in painting the pilgrim's progress towards
Heaven, and his battle with the world and temptation
and sorrow, the book touched those deep and universal
interests which belong to poor and rich. Its language,
the language of the Bible, and its allegorical form, initi-
ated a plentiful prose literature of a similar kind. But
none have equalled it. Its form is almost epic : its dra-
matic dialogue, its clear types of character, its vivid
descriptions, as of Vanity Fair, and of places, such as the
Valley of the Shadow of Death and the Delectable
Mountains, which represent states of the human soul,
have given an equal but a different pleasure to children
and men, to the villager and the scholar.
ENGLISH LITERATURE CttA*.
CHAPTER VI
FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE DEATH OF POPE AND
SWIFT, 1660-1745
1 06. Poetry. Change of Style. We have seen the
natural style as distinguished from the artificial in the
Elizabethan poets. Style became not only natural but
artistic when it was made by a great genius like Chaucer,
Shakespeare, or Spenser, for a first-rate poet creates
rules of art : his work is filled with laws which other men
see, collect, and obey. Art, which is the just and lovely
arrangement of nature to fulfil a nobly chosen aim, is
then born. But when the art of poetry is making, the
second-rate poets, inspired only by their feelings, will
write in a natural style unrestrained by rules, that is,
they will put their feelings into verse without caring
much for the form in which they do it. As long as they
live in the midst of a youthful national life, and feel an
ardent sympathy with it, their style will be fresh and im-
passioned, and give pleasure because of the strong feel-
ing that inspires it. But it will also be extravagant and
unrestrained in its use of images and words because of
its want of art. This is the general history of the style
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE I/I
of the second-class poets of the middle period of Eliza-
beth's reign, and even Shakespeare affords examples of
this want of art. (2) Afterwards the national life grew
chill, and the feelings of the poets also chill. Then the
want of art in the style made itself felt. The far-fetched
images, the hazarded meanings, the over-fanciful way of
putting thoughts, the sensational expression of feeling,
in which the Elizabethan poets indulged, not only ap-
peared in all their ugliness when they were inspired by
no ardent feeling, but were indulged in far more than be-
fore. Men tried to produce by extravagant use of words
the same results that a passionate sense of life had pro-
duced, and the more they failed the more extravagant and
fantastic they became, till at last their poetry ceased to
have clear meaning. This is the general history of the
style of the poets from the later days of Elizabeth till the
Civil War. (3) The natural style, unregulated by art,
had thus become unnatural. When it had reached that
point, men began to feel how necessary it was that the
work of poetry should be subjected to the rules of art,
and two influences partly caused and partly supported this
desire. One was the influence of Milton. Milton, first
by his superb genius, which, as I said, creates of itself
rules of art, and secondly by his knowledge and imitation
of the great classical models, was able to give the first
example in England of a pure, grand, and finished style ;
and in blank verse, in the lyric and the sonnet, wrote for
the first time with absolute correctness. Another influence
was that of the movement all over Europe towards inquiry
1/2 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
into the right way of doing things, and into the truth of
things, a movement we shall soon see at work in science,
politics, and religion. In poetry it produced a school
of criticism which first took form in France, and the
influence of Boileau, La Fontaine, and others who were
striving after greater finish and neatness of expression,
told on England now. It is an influence which has been
exaggerated. It is absurd to place the " creaking lyre "
of Boileau side by side with Dryden's " long resounding
march and energy divine." Our critical school of poets
have few French qualities in them even when they imi-
tate the French. (4) Further, our own poets had
already, before the Restoration, begun the critical work,
and the French influence served only to give it a greater
impulse. We shall see the growth of a colder and more
correct phrasing and versification in Waller, Denham, and
Cowley. Vigour was given to this new method in art by
Dryden, and perfection of artifice added to it by Pope.
The artificial style succeeded to and extinguished the
natural, or to put it otherwise, a merely intellectual
poetry finally overcame a poetry in which emotion always
accompanied thought.
107. Change of Poetic Subject. The subject of the
Elizabethan poets was Man as influenced by the Pas-
sions, and it was treated from the side of natural feeling.
This was fully and splendidly done by Shakespeare. But
after a time this subject followed, as we have seen in
speaking of the drama, the same career as the style. It
was treated in an extravagant and sensational manner,
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE 1/3
and the representation of the passions tended to become
unnatural or fantastic. Milton redeemed the subject
from this vicious excess. He wrote in a grave and natu-
ral manner of the passions of the human heart ; he made
strong in English poetry the religious passions of love of
God, of sorrow for sin, and he raised in song the moral
passions into a solemn splendour. But with him the
subject of man as influenced by the great passions died
for a time. Dryden, Pope, and their followers turned
to another subject. They left, except in Dryden's
Dramas and Fables, the passions aside, and wrote of the
things in which the intellect and the casuistical con-
science, the social and political instincts in man, were
interested. In this way the satiric, didactic, philosophi-
cal, and party poetry of a new school arose.
1 08. The Poems in which the New School began belong
in date to the age before the Restoration, but in spirit
and form they were the sources of the poetry which is
called classical or critical, or artificial. EDMUND WALLER,
SIR JOHN DENHAM, and ABRAHAM COWLEY are the pre-
cursors of Dryden. Waller remodelled the heroic coup-
let of Chaucer, and gave it the precise character which
made it for nearly a century and a half the prevailing
form of verse. He wrote his earliest poems about 1623,
in precisely the same symmetrical manner as Dryden
and Pope. His new manner was not followed for many
years, till Denham published in 1642 his Coopers Hill.
" The excellence and dignity of rhyme were never fully
known," said Dryden, " till Mr. Waller taught it, but this
ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
sweetness of his lyric poetry was afterwards followed in
the epic of Sir John Denham in his Cooper's Hill." The
chill stream of this poem, which is neither "lyric" nor
" epic," has the metrical cadence, but none of the grip
and force of Dryden's verse. Cowley's earlier poems
belong to the Elizabethan phantasies, but the later were,
with the exception of some noble poems of personal feel-
ing, cold and exact enough for the praise of the new
school. He invented that curious misnomer the Pin-
daric Ode which, among all its numerous offspring,
had but one splendid child in Dryden's Alexander's
Feast. When Gray took up the ode again, Cowley was
not his master. Sir W. Davenant's Gondibert, 1651, also
an heroic poem, is another example of this transition.
Worthless as poetry, it represents the new interest in
political philosophy and in science that was arising, and
preludes the intellectual poetry. Its preface discourses
of rhyme and the rules of art, and embodies the critical
influence which came over with the exiled court from
France. The critical school had therefore begun even
before Dryden's poems were written. The change was
less sudden than it seemed.
Satiric poetry, soon to become a greater thing, was
made during this transition time into a powerful weapon
by two men, each on a different side. Andrew Marvell's
Satires, after the Restoration, exhibit the Puritan's wrath
with the vices of the court and king, and his shame for
the disgrace of England among the nations. The Hudi-
bras of SAMUEL BUTLER, in 1663, represents the fierce
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF ~POPE 1/5
reaction which had set in against Puritanism. It is
justly famed for wit, learning, good sense, and ingenious
drollery, and, in accordance with the new criticism, it is
absolutely without obscurity. It is often as terse as
Pope's best work. But it is too long, its wit wearies us
at last, and it undoes the force of its attack on the Puri-
tans by its exaggeration. Satire should have at least the
semblance of truth ; yet Butler calls the Puritans cow-
ards. We turn now to the greatest of these poets in
whom poetry is founded on intellect rather than on feel-
ing, and whose verse is mostly devoted to argument and
satire.
109. John Dryden was the first of the new, as Milton
was the last of the elder, school of poetry. It was late in
life that he gained fame. Born in 1631, he was a Crom-
wellite till the Restoration, when he began the changes
which mark his life. His poem on the death of the Pro-
tector was soon followed by the Astreea Redux, which
celebrated the return of Justice to the realm in the per-
son of Charles II. The Annus Mirabilis appeared in
1667, and in this his metrical ease was first clearly marked.
But his power of exact reasoning expressing itself with
powerful and ardent ease in a rapid succession of con-
densed thoughts in verse, was not shown (save in drama)
till he was fifty years old, in the first part of Absalom and
Achitophel, the foremost of English satires. He had been
a playwriter for fourteen years, till its appearance in 1681,
and the rhymed plays which he had written enabled him
to perfect the versification which is now so remarkable
176 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
in his work. The satire itself, written in mockery of the
Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, attacked Shaftesbury
as Achitophel, was kind to Monmouth as Absalom, and
in its sketch of Buckingham as Zimri the poet avenged
himself for the Rehearsal. It was the first fine example
of that party poetry which became still more bitter and
personal in the hands of Pope. It was followed by the
Medal, a new attack on Shaftesbury, and the Mac Fleck-
noe, 1682, in which Shadwell, a rival poet, who had sup-
ported Shaftesbury's party, was made the witless successor
of Richard Flecknoe, a poet of all kinds of poetry, and
master of none. Then in the same year, after the arrest
of Monmouth, the second part of Absalom and Achito-
phel appeared, all of which, except two hundred lines,
was written by Nahum Tate. These were four terrible
masterpieces of ruthless wit and portraiture. Then he
turned to express his transient theology in verse, and the
Religio Laid, 1682, defends and states the argument for
the Church of England. It was perhaps poverty that led
him to change his religion, and the Hind and Panther,
1687, is a model of melodious reasoning in behalf of the
milk-white hind of the Church of Rome. The Dissenters
are mercilessly treated under the image of the baser
beasts ; while at first the Panther, the Church of Eng-
land, is gently touched, but in the end lashed with sever-
ity. However, Hind and Panther tell, at the close, two
charming stories to one another. It produced in reply
one of the happiest burlesques in English poetry, The
Country Mouse and the City Mouse, the work of Charles
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE I//
Montague (Lord Halifax), and Mat Prior. Deprived of
his offices at the Revolution, Dryden turned again to the
drama and to prose, but the failure of the last of his good
plays in 1694, drove him again from the stage, and he
gave himself up to his Translation of Virgil which he
published in 1697. As a narrative poet his Fables,
Ancient and Modern, finished late in life, in 1699, give
him a high rank in this class of poetry. They sin from
coarseness, but in style, in magnificent march of verse,
in intellectual but not imaginative fire, in ease but not
in grace, they are excellent. As a lyric poet his fame
rests on the animated Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687,
and on Alexander's Feast, 1697. From Milton's death,
1674, till his own in 1700, Dryden reigned undisputed,
and round his throne in Will's Coffeehouse, where he sat
as " Glorious John," we may place the names of the lesser
poets, the Earls of Dorset, Roscommon, and Mulgrave,
Sir Charles Sedley, and the Earl of Rochester. The
lighter poetry of the court lived on in the two last. John
Oldham won a short fame by his Satire on the Jesuits,
1679; and Bishop Ken, 1668, established, in his Morn-
ing and Evening Hymns, a new type of religious poetry.
no. Prose Literature of the Restoration and Revolu-
tion. Criticism. As Dryden was now first in poetry, so
he was in prose. No one can understand the poetry of
this time, in its relation to the past, to the future, and
to France, who does not read the Critical Essays pre-
fixed to his dramas, On the Historical Poem, on dramatic
rhyme, on Heroic Plays, on the classical writers, and his
1/8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Essay on Dramatic Poetry. He is in these essays, not
only the leader of modern literary criticism, but the
leader of that modern prose in which the style is easy,
unaffected, moulded to the subject, and in which the
proper words are put in the proper places. Dryden was
a great originator.
in. Science. During the Civil War the religious
and political struggle absorbed the country, but yet,
apart from the strife, a few men who cared for scien-
tific matters met at one another's houses. Out of this
little knot, after the Restoration, arose the Royal Society,
embodied in 1662. Astronomy, experimental chemistry,
medicine, mineralogy, zoology, botany, vegetable physi-
ology, were all founded as studies, and their literature
begun, in the age of the Restoration. One man's work
was so great in science as to merit his name being men-
tioned among the literary men of England. In 1671
Isaac Newton laid his Theory of Light before the Royal
Society ; in the year before the Revolution his Principia
established, by its proof of the theory of gravitation, the
true system of the universe.
It was in political and religious knowledge, however,
that the intellectual inquiry of the nation was most
shown. When the thinking spirit succeeds the active
and adventurous in a people, one of the first things they
will think upon is the true method and grounds of gov-
ernment, both divine and human. Two sides will be
taken : the side of authority and the side of reason in
Religion ; the side of authority and the side of indi-
vidual liberty in Politics.
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OP POPE 179
112. The Theological Literature of those who declared
that reason was supreme as a test of truth, arose with
some men who met at Lord Falkland's just before the
Civil War, and especially with John Hales and William
Chillingworth. The same kind of work, though modified
towards more sedateness of expression, and less rational-
istic, was now done by Archbishop Tillotson, and Bishop
Burnet. In 1678, Cud worth's Intellectual System of the
Universe is perhaps the best book on the controversy
which then took form against those who were called
Atheists. A number of divines in the English Church
took sides for Authority or Reason, or opposed the
growing Deism during the latter half of the seventeenth
century. It was an age of preachers, and Isaac Barrow,
Newton's predecessor in the chair of mathematics at
Cambridge, could preach, with grave and copious elo-
quence, for three hours at a time. Theological prose
was strengthened by the publication of the sermons of
Edward Stillingfleet and William Sherlock, and their
adversary, Robert South, was as witty in rhetoric as
he was fierce in controversy.
113. Political Literature. The resistance to authority
in the opposition to the theory of the Divine Right of
Kings did not much enter into literature till after the
severe blow that theory received in the Civil War. Dur-
ing the Commonwealth and after the Restoration the
struggle took the form of a discussion on the abstract
question of the Science of Government, and was mingled
with an inquiry into the origin of society and the ground
l8o ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
of social life. THOMAS HOBBES, during the Common-
wealth, was the first who dealt with the question from
the side of abstract reason, and he is also, before Dryden,
the first of all our prose writers whose style may be said
to be uniform and correct, and adapted carefully to the
subjects on which he wrote. His treatise, the Leviathan,
1651, declared (i) that the origin of all power was in
the people, and (2) that the end of all power was the
commonweal. It destroyed the theory of a Divine
Right of Kings and Priests, but it created another kind
of Divine Right when it said that the power lodged in
rulers by the people could not be taken away by the
people. Sir R. Filmer supported the side of Divine
Right in his Patriarcha, published 1680. Henry Nevile,
in his Dialogue concerning Government, and James Har-
rington in his romance, The Commonwealth of Oceana,
published at the beginning of the Commonwealth, con-
>>ended that all secure government was to be based on
property, but Nevile supported a monarchy, and Har-
rington with whom I may class Algernon Sidney, whose
political treatise on government is as statesmanlike as it
is finely written a democracy, on this basis. I may
here mention that it was during this period, in 1667, that
the first effort was made after a Science of Political
Economy by Sir William Petty in his Treatise on Taxes.
The poll tieal pamphlet was also begun at this time by Sir
Roger L' Estrange, and George Savile, Lord Halifax.
114. John Locke, after the Revolution, in 1690, fol-
lowed the two doctrines of Hobbes in his treatises on
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE l8l
Civil Government, but with these important additions
(i) that the people have a right to take away the power
given by them to the ruler, (2) that the ruler is respon-
sible to the people for the trust reposed in him, and (3)
that legislative assemblies are Supreme as the voice of
the people. This was the political philosophy of the
Revolution. Locke carried the same spirit of free in-
quiry into the realm of religion, and in his Letters on
Toleration laid down the philosophical grounds for lib-
erty of religious thought. He finished by entering the
realm of metaphysical inquiry. In 1690 appeared his
Essay concerning the Human Understanding, in which
he investigated its limits, and traced all ideas, and there-
fore all knowledge, to experience. In his clear state-
ment of the way in which the Understanding works, in
the way in which he guarded it and Language against
their errors in the inquiry after truth, he did almost as
much for the true method of thinking as Bacon had done
for the science of nature.
115. The intellectual stir of the time produced, apart
from the great movement of thought, a good deal of
Miscellaneous Literature. The painting of short " char-
acters " was carried on after the Restoration by Samuel
Butler and W. Charleton. These " characters " had no
personality, but as party spirit deepened, names thinly
disguised were given to characters drawn of living men,
and Dryden and Pope in poetry, and all the prose wits
of the time of Queen Anne and George I., made per-
sonal and often violent sketches of their opponents a
1 82 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
special element in literature. On the other hand, Izaak
Walton's Lives, in 1670, are examples of kind, agreeably
and careful Biography. Cowley's small volume, written
shortly before his death in 1667, gave richness to the
Essay, and its prose almost anticipated the prose of Dry-
den. John Evelyn's multitudinous writings are them-
selves a miscellany. He wrote on painting, sculpture,
architecture, timber (the Sylva), on gardening, com-
merce, and he illustrates the searching spirit of the age.
In William III.'s time Sir William Temple's pleasant
Essays bring us in style and tone nearer to the great
class of essayists of whom Addison was chief. Lady
Rachel Russell's Letters begin the Letter-writing liter-
ature of England. Pepys (1660-9), anc ^ Evelyn, whose
Diary grows full after 1 640, gave rise to that class of gos-
siping Memoirs which has be.n of so much use in giving
colour to history. History itself at this time is little
better than memoirs, and such a name may be fairly
given to Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Time and
to his History of the Reformation. Finally Classical
Criticism, in the discussion on the genuineness of the
Letters of Phalaris, was created by Richard Bentley in
1697-9. Literature was therefore plentiful. It was
also correct, but it was not inventive.
1 1 6. The Literature of Queen Anne and the First
Georges. Witt the closing years of William III. and
the accession of Queen Anne (1702) a literature arose
which was partly new and partly a continuance of that
of the Restoration. The conflict between those who
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE 183
took the oath to the new dynasty and the Nonjurors who
refused, the hot blood that it produced, the war between
Dissent and Church, and between the two parties which
now took the names of Whig and Tory, produced a mass
of political pamphlets, of which Daniel Defoe's and
Swift's were the best ; of songs and ballads, like Lillibul-
lero, which were sung in every street ; of squibs, reviews,
of satirical poems and letters. Every one joined in it,
and it rose to importance in the work of the greater men
who mingled literary studies with their political excite-
ment. In politics, all the abstract discussions we have
mentioned ceased to be abstract, and became personal
and practical, and the spirit of inquiry applied itself more
closely to Lhe questions of every-day life. The whole of
this stirring literary life was concentrated in London,
where the agitation of society was hottest; and it is
round this vivid -ity life that the literature of Queen
Anne and the two following reigns is best grouped.
117. It was, with a few exceptions, a Party Literature.
The Whig and Tory leaders enlisted on their sides the
best poets and prose writers, who fiercely satirised and
unduly praised them under names thinly disguised. Our
" Augustan Age " was an age of unbridled slander. Per-
sonalities were sent to and fro like shots in battle. Those
who could do this work well were well rewarded, but the
rank and file of writers were left to starve. Literature
was thus honoured not for itself, but for the sake of party.
The result was that the abler men lowered it by making
it a political tool, and the smaller men, the fry of Grub
184 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Street, degraded it by using it in the same way, only in a
baser manner. Their flattery was as abject as their abuse
was shameless, and both were stupid. They received and
deserved the merciless lashing which Pope was soon to
give them in the Dunciad. Being a party literature, it
naturally came to study and to look sharply into human
character and into human life as seen in the great city.
It debated subjects of literary and scientific inquiry and
of philosophy with great ability, but without depth. It
discussed all the varieties of social life, and painted town
society more vividly than has been done before or since ;
and it was so wholly taken up with this, that country life
and its interests, except in the writings of Addison, were
scarcely touched by it at all. Criticism being so active,
the form in which thought was expressed was now espe-
cially dwelt on, and the result was that the style of English
prose became even more simple than in Dryden's hands ;
and English verse, leaving Dryden's power behind it,
reached a neatness of expression as exquisite as it was
artificial. At the same time, and for the same reasons,
Nature, Passion, and Imagination decayed in poetry.
n 8. Alexander Pope absorbed and reflected all these
elements. Born in 1688, he wrote tolerable verse at
twelve years old ; the Pastorals appeared in 1 709, and
two years afterwards he took full rank as the critical poet
in the Essay on Criticism (1711). The next year saw
the first cast of his Rape of the Lock, the most brilliant
occasional poem in our language. This closed what we
may call his first period. In 1712 his sacred pastoral,
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE 185
The Messiah, appeared, and in 1713, when he published
Windsor Forest, he became known to Swift and to Henry
St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. When these, with Gay,
Parnell, Prior, Arbuthnot, and others, formed the Scrib-
lerus Club, Pope joined them, and soon rose into great
fame by his Translation of the Iliad (1715-20), and by
the Translation of the Odyssey (1723-5), in which he
was assisted by Fenton and Broome. Being now at ease,
for he received fully gooo/. for this work, he published
from his retreat at Twickenham, and in bitter scorn of
the poetasters and of all the petty scribblers who annoyed
him, the Dunciad, 1728. Its original hero was Lewis
Theobald, but when the fourth book was published, under
Warburton's influence, in 1742, Colley Gibber was en-
throned as the King of Dunces instead of Theobald.
The fiercest and finest of Pope's satires, it closes his
second period which breathes the savageness of Swift.
The third phase of Pope's literary life was closely linked
to his friend Bolingbroke. It was in conversation with
him that he originated the Essay on Man (1732-4) and
the Imitations of Horace. The Moral Essays, or Epis-
tles to men and women, were written to praise those
whom he loved, and to satirise the bad poets and the
social follies of the day, and all who disliked him or his
party. Among these, who has not read the Epistle to
Dr. Arbuthnot? In the last few years of his life, Bishop
Warburton, the writer of the Legation of Moses and
editor of Shakespeare, helped him to fit the Moral
Essays into the plan of which the Essay on Man formed
1 86 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
part. Warburton was Pope's last great friend; but
almost his only old friend. By 1740 nearly all the
members of his literary circle were dead, and a new
race of poets and writers had grown up. In 1744 he
died. His Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady and the
Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard show how he once tried
to handle the passions of sorrow and love. The mas-
terly form into which he threw the philosophical prin-
ciples he condensed into didactic poetry make them
more impressive than they have a right to be. The
Essay on Man, though its philosophy is poor and not
his own, is crowded with lines that have passed into
daily use. The Essay on Criticism is equally full of
critical precepts put with exquisite skill. The Satires
and Epistles are didactic, but their excellence is in the
terse and finished types of character, in the almost cre-
ative drawing of which Pope remains unrivalled, even by
Dryden. His translation of Homer resembles Homer
as much as London resembled Troy, or Marlborough
Achilles, or Queen Anne Hecuba. It is done with great
literary art, but for that very reason it does not make us
feel the simplicity and directness of his original. It has
neither the manner nor the spirit of the Greek, just as
Pope's descriptions of nature have neither the manner
nor the spirit of nature. The heroic couplet, in which he
wrote nearly all his work, he used with a correctness that
has never been surpassed, but its smooth perfection, at
length, wearies the ear. It wants the breaks that passion
and imagination naturally make. Finally, he had the
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE l8/
spirit of an artist, hating those who degraded his art, and
at a time when men followed it for money, and place,
and the applause of the club and of the town, he loved
it faithfully to the end, for its own sake.
119. The Minor Poets who surrounded Pope in the
first two-thirds of his life did not approach his genius.
Richard Blackmore endeavoured to restore the epic in
his Prince Arthur, 1695, and Samuel Garth's mock heroic
poem of the Dispensary appeared along with John Pom-
fret's poems in 1699. In 1701, Defoe's Trueborn Eng-
lishman defended William III. against those who said he
was a foreigner, and Prior's finest ode, the Carmen Secu-
lare, took up the same cause. John Philips is known by
his Miltonic burlesque of The Splendid Shilling, and his
Cyder was a Georgic of the apple. Matthew Green's
Spleen and Ambrose Philip's Pastorals were contempo-
rary with Pope's first poetry ; and John Gay's Shepherd's
Week, six pastorals, 1714, were as lightly wrought as his
famous Fables. He had a true vein of happy song, and
Black-eyed Susan remains with the Beggars' Opera to
please us still. The political poems of Swift were coarse,
but always hit home. Addison celebrated the Battle of
Blenheim in the Campaign, and his cultivated grace is
found in some devotional pieces. On his death Thomas
Tickell made a noble elegy. Prior's charming ease is
best shown in the light narrative poetry which we may say
began with him in the reign of William III. In Pope's
later life a new and quickening impulse came upon poetry,
and changed it root and branch. It arose in Ramsay's
1 88 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Gentle Shepherd, 1725, and in Thomson's Seasons, 1730,
and it rang the knell of the manner and the spirit of the
critical school.
1 20. The Prose Literature of Pope's time collects
itself round four great names, Swift, Defoe, Addison, and
Bishop Berkeley, and they all exhibit those elements of
the age of which I have spoken. JONATHAN SWIFT was
the keenest of political partisans, for his fierce and
earnest personality made everything he did impassioned.
But he was far more than a partisan. He was the most
original prose writer of his time the man of genius among
many men of talent. It was not till he was thirty years
old, 1697, that he wrote the Battle of the Books, concern-
ing the so-called Letters of Phalaris, and the Tale of a
Tub, a satire on the Dissenters, the Papists, and even the
Church of England. These books, published in 1704,
made his reputation. He soon became the finest and
most copious writer of pamphlets England had ever
known. At first he supported the Whigs, but left them
for the new Tory party in 1710, and his tracts brought
him court favour, while his literary fame was increased
by many witty letters, poems, and arguments. On the
fall of the Tory party at the accession of George I., 1714,
he retired to the Deanery of St. Patrick in Ireland, an
embittered man, and the Drapier's Letters, 1724, writ-
ten against Wood's halfpence, gained him popularity in
a country that he hated. In 1726 his inventive genius,
his savage satire, and his cruel indignation with life were
all shown in Gulliver's Travels. The voyage to Lilliput
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE 189
and Brobdingnag satirised the politics and manners of
England and Europe ; that to Laputa mocked the philoso-
phers ; and the last, to the country of the Houyhnhnms,
lacerated and defiled the whole body of humanity. No
English is more robust than Swift's, no life in private
and public more sad and proud, no death more pitiable.
He died in 1745 hopelessly insane. DANIEL DEFOE'S
vein as a pamphleteer seems to have been inexhaustible,
and the style of his tracts was as roughly persuasive as
it was popular. Above all he was the journalist. His
Review, published twice a week for a year, was wholly
written by himself; but he "founded, conducted, and
wrote for a host of other newspapers," and filled them
with every subject of the day. His tales grew out of
matters treated of in his journals, and his best art lay
in the way he built up these stories out of mere sug-
gestions. "The little art he is truly master of," said one
of his contemporaries, " is of forging a story and impos-
ing it on the world for truth." His circumstantial inven-
tion, combined with a style which exactly fits it by its
simplicity, is the root of the charm of the great story
by which he chiefly lives in literature. Robinson Crusoe,
1719, equalled Gulliver's Travels in truthful representa-
tion, and excelled them in invention. The story lives
and charms from day to day. But none of his stories
are real novels ; that is, they have no plot to the working
out of which the characters and the events contribute.
They form the transition, however, from the slight tale
and the romance of the Elizabethan time to the finished
novel of Richardson and Fielding.
I9O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
121. Metaphysical Literature, which drifted into the-
ology, was enriched by the work of BISHOP BERKELEY.
The Platonic dialogue of Hylas and Philonous, 1713,
charms us even more than his subtle and elastic Sin's,
1 744. These books, with Aldphron, the Minute Philoso-
pher, 1732, questioned the real existence of matter,
"no idea can exist," he said, "out of the mind," and
founded on the denial of it an answer to the English
Deists, round whom in the first half of the eighteenth
century centred the struggle between the claims of nat-
ural and revealed religion. The influence of Shaftes-
bury's Characteristics, 1711, was far more literary than
metaphysical. He condemned metaphysics, but his phi-
losophy, such as it was, inspired Pope, and his cultivated
thinking on several subjects made many writers in the
next generation care for beauty and grace. He, like
Bolingbroke, and Wollaston, Tindal, Toland, and Collins,
on the Deists' side, were opposed by Samuel Clark, by
Bentley, by Bishop Butler, and by Bishop Warburton.
BISHOP BUTLER'S acute and solid reasoning treated in
his Sermons the subject of Morals, inquiring what was
the particular nature of man, and hence determining the
course of life correspondent to this nature. His Analogy
of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and
Course of Nature, 1736, endeavours to make peace be-
tween authority and reason, and has become a standard
book. I may mention here a social satire, The Fable of
the Bees, by Mandeville, half-poem, half-prose dialogue,
and finished in 1729. It tried to prove that the vices
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE igi
of society are the foundation of civilisation, and is one
of the first of a new set of books which marked the rise
in England of the bold speculations on the nature and
ground of society to which the French Revolution gave
afterwards so great an impulse.
122. The Periodical Essay is connected with the
names of JOSEPH ADDISON and SIR RICHARD STEELE.
The gay, light, graceful, literary Essay, differing from
such Essays as Bacon's as good conversation about a
subject differs from a clear analysis of all its points, was
begun in France by Montaigne in 1580. Charles Cot-
ton, a wit of Charles II. 's time, retranslated Montaigne's
Essays, and they soon found imitators in Cowley and
Sir W. Temple. But the periodical Essay was created
by Steele and Addison. It was at first published three
times a week, then daily, and it was anonymous, and
both these characters necessarily changed its form from
that of an essay by Montaigne. Steele began it in the
Tatter, 1 709, and it treated of everything that was going
on in the town. He paints as a social humourist the
whole age of Queen Anne the political and literary
disputes, the fine gentlemen and ladies, the characters
of men, the humours of society, the new book, the new
play ; we live in the very streets and drawing-rooms of
old London. Addison soon joined him, first in the Tat-
ler, afterwards in the Spectator, 1711. His work is more
critical, literary, and didactic than his companion's. The
characters he introduces, such as Sir Roger de Coverley,
are finished studies after nature. The humour is very
192 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
fine and tender ; and, like Chaucer's, it is never bitter.
The style adds to the charm : in its varied cadence and
subtle ease it has not been surpassed within its own
peculiar sphere in England ; and it seems to grow out
of the subjects treated of. Addison's work was a great
one, lightly done. The Spectator, the Guardian, and the
Freeholder, in his hands, gave a better tone to manners,
and hence to morals, and a gentler one to political and
literary criticism. The essays published every Friday
were chiefly on literary subjects, the Saturday essays
chiefly on religious subjects. The former popularised
literature, so that culture spread among the middle
classes and crept down to the country ; the latter popu-
larised religion. " I have brought," he says, " philosophy
out of closets and libraries, schools and colleges, to dwell
in clubs and assemblies, at tea-tables and in coffee-houses."
THE DRAMA, FROM THE RESTORATION TO 1 780
123. The Drama after the Restoration took the tone
of the court both in politics and religion, but its partisan-
ship decayed under William III., and died in the reign
of Queen Anne. The court of Charles II., which the
plays now written represented much more than they did
the national life, gave the drama the "genteel" ease
and the immorality of its society, and encouraged it
to find new impulses from the tragedy and comedy of
Spain and of France. The French romances of the
school of Calprenede and Scude"ry furnished plots to
the playwriters. The great French dramatists, Corneille,
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE 193
Racine, and Moliere, were translated and borrowed from
again and again. The " three unities " of Corneille, and
rhyme instead of blank verse as the vehicle of tragedy,
were adopted, but " the spirit of neither the serious nor
the comic drama of France could then be transplanted
into England."
Two acting companies were formed on Charles II. 's
return, under Thomas Killigrew and Davenant ; actresses
came on the stage for the first time, the ballet was intro-
duced, and scenery began to be largely used. Dryden,
whose masterly force was sure to strike the key-note that
others followed, began his comedies in 1663, but turned
to tragedy in the Indian Queen, 1664. This play, with
the Indian Emperour, established for fourteen years the
rhymed couplet as the dramatic verse. His defence of
rhyme in the Essay on Dramatic Poesy asserted the
originality of the English school, and denied that it fol-
lowed the French. The Maiden Queen, 1667, brought
him new fame, and then Tyrannic Love and the Con-
quest of Granada, 1672, induced the burlesque of the
Rehearsal, written by the Duke of Buckingham, in which
the bombastic extravagance of these heroic plays was
ridiculed. Dryden now changed, in 1678, his dramatic
manner, and following Shakespeare, "disencumbered
himself from rhyme" in his fine tragedy of All for Love,
and showed what power he had of low comedy in the
Spanish Friar. After the Revolution, his tragedy of
Don Sebastian ranks high, but not higher than his brill-
iantly written comedy of Amphitryon , 1690. Dryden is
194 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the representative dramatist of the Restoration. Among
the tragedians who followed his method and possessed
their own, those most worthy of notice are Nat Lee,
whose Rival Queens, 1667, deserves its praise; Thomas
Otway, whose two pathetic tragedies, the Orphan and
Venice Preserved, still keep the stage ; Thomas Southerne
whose Fatal Marriage, 1694, was revived by Garrick;
and Congreve who once turned from comedy to write
The Mourning Bride.
It was in comedy, however, that the dramatists ex-
celled. Sir George Etherege originated with great skill
the new comedy of England with She Would if She
Could, 1668. Sedley, Mrs. Behn, Lacy, and Shadwell
carry on to the Revolution that light Comedy of Man-
ners which William Wycherley's gross vigour and natural
plots lifted into an odious excellence in such plays as the
Country Wife and the Plain Dealer. Three great come-
dians followed Wycherley William Congreve, whose
well-bred ease is almost as remarkable as his brilliant
wit ; Sir John Vanbrugh, and George Farquhar, both of
whom have quick invention, gaiety, dash, and sincerity.
The indecency of all these writers belongs to the time,
but it is partly forgotten in their swift and sustained
vivacity. This immorality produced Jeremy Collier's
famous attack on the stage, 1698; and the growth of
a higher tone in society, uniting with this attack, began
to purify the drama, though Mrs. Centlivre's comedies,
during the reign of Queen Anne, show no love of purity.
Steele, at this time, whose Lying Lover makes him the
VI RESTORATION TO DEATH OF POPE 1 95
father of Sentimental comedy, wrote all his plays with
a moral purpose. Nicholas Rowe, whose melancholy
tragedies " are occupied with themes of heroic love," is
dull, but never gross ; while Addison's ponderous tragedy
of Cato, 1713, praised by Voltaire as the first tragedie
raisonnable, marks, in its total rejection of the drama of
nature for the classical style, " a definite epoch in the
history of English tragedy, an epoch of decay, on which
no recovery has followed." Comedy, however, had still
a future. The Beggars' Opera of Gay, 1728, revived an
old form of drama in a new way. Colley Gibber carried
on into George II. 's time the light and the sentimental
comedy ; Fielding made the stage the vehicle of criticism
on the follies, literature, and politics of his time ; and Foote
and Garrick did the same kind of work in their farces.
The influence of the Restoration drama continues, past
this period, in the manner of Goldsmith and Sheridan
who wrote between 1768 and 1778; but the lambent
humour of Goldsmith's Good-natured Man and She
Stoops to Conquer, and the wit, almost as brilliant and
more epigrammatic than Congreve's, of Sheridan's Rivals
and the School for Scandal, are not deformed by the
indecency of the Restoration. Both were Irishmen, but
Goldsmith has more of the Celtic grace and Sheridan
of the Celtic wit. The sentimental comedy was carried
on into the next age by Macklin, Murphy, Cumberland,
the Colmans, and many others, but we may say that with
Sheridan the history of the elder English Drama closes.
That which belongs to our century is a different thing.
196 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER VII
PROSE LITERATURE FROM THE DEATH OF POPE AND OF
SWIFT TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FROM THE
FRENCH REVOLUTION TO THE DEATH OF SCOTT
1745-1789-1832
124. Prose Literature. The rapid increase of manu-
factures, science, and prosperity which began with the
middle of the eighteenth century is paralleled by the
growth of Literature. The general causes of this growth
were
ist, That a good prose style had been perfected, and
the method of writing being made easy, production in-
creased. Men were born, as it were, into a good school
of the art of composition.
2ndly, The long peace after the accession of the House
of Hanover had left England at rest, and given it wealth.
The reclaiming of waste tracts, the increased population
and trade, made better communication necessary; and
the country was soon covered with a network of high-
ways. The leisure gave time to men to think and
write; the quicker interchange between the capital and
the country spread over England the literature of the
capital, and stirred men everywhere to express their
VII PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1745 TO 1789 197
thoughts. The coaching services and the post carried
the new book and the literary criticism to the villages,
and awoke the men of talent there, who might otherwise
have been silent.
3rdly, The Press sent far and wide the news of the
day, and grew in importance till it contained the opinions
and writings of men like Johnson. Such seed produced
literary work in the country. Newspapers now began
to play a larger part in literature. They rose under the
Commonwealth, but became important when the censor-
ship which reduced them to a mere broadsheet of news
was removed after the Revolution of 1688. The politi-
cal sleep of the age of the two first Georges hindered
their progress ; but in the reign of George III., after a
struggle with which the name of John Wilkes and the
author of the Letters of Junius are connected, and
which lasted from 1764 to 1771, the press claimed and
obtained the right to criticise the conduct and measures
of ministers and the king; and the further right to
publish and comment on the debates in the two Houses.
4thly, Communication -with the Continent had in-
creased during the peaceable times of Walpole, and
the wars that followed made it still more common.
With its increase two new and great outbursts of litera-
ture told upon England. France sent the works of
Montesquieu, of Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, D'Alem-
bert, and the rest of the liberal thinkers who were
called the Encyclopaedists, to influence and quicken
English literature on all the great subjects that belong
198 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
to the social and political life of man. Afterwards,
the fresh German movement, led by Lessing and others,
and carried on by Goethe and Schiller, added its impulse
to the poetical school that arose in England along with
the French Revolution. These were the general causes
of the rapid growth of literature from the time of the
death of Swift and of Pope.
125. Prose Literature between 1745 and the French
Revolution may be said to be bound up with the literary
lives of one man and his friends. SAMUEL JOHNSON,
born in 1709, and whose first important prose work,
the Life of Savage, appeared in 1744, was the last
representative of the literary king, who, like Dryden
and Pope, held a court in London. Poor and un-
known, he worked his way to fame, and his first poem,
the London, 1738, satirised the town where he loved to
live. His longer and better poem, The Vanity of
Human Wishes, was published in 1749, and his moral
power was never better shown than in its weighty verse.
His one play, Irene, was acted in the same year. He
carried on the periodical essays in the Rambler, 1750-2,
but in it, as afterwards in the Idler, grace and lightness,
the essence of this kind of essay, were lost. Driven
by poverty, Johnson undertook a greater work : the
Dictionary of the English Language, 1755, and his
celebrated letter to Lord Chesterfield, concerning its
publication, gave the death-blow to patronage, and
makes Johnson the first of the modern literary men
who, independent of patrons, live by their pen and find
Vli PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1745 TO 1789 199
in the public their only paymaster. He represents thus
a new class. In 1759 he set on foot the Didactic Novel
in Rasselas. For a time he was one of the political
pamphleteers, from 1770 to 1776. As he drew near to
his death his Lives of the Poets appeared as prefaces
to his edition of the poets in 1781, and lifted biography
into a higher place in literature. But he did even more
for literature as a converser, as the chief talker of a
literary club, than by writing, and we know exactly what
a power he was by the vivid Biography, the best in our
language, which James Boswell, with fussy devotedness,
made of his master in 1791. Side by side with Johnson
stands OLIVER GOLDSMITH, whose graceful and pure
English is a pleasant contrast to the loaded Latinism of
Johnson's style. The Vicar of Wakefield, the History
of Animated Nature, are at one in charm, and the
latter is full of that love of natural scenery, the senti-
ment of which is absent from Johnson's Journey to
the Western Isles. Both these men were masters of
Miscellaneous Literature, and in that class, I mention
here, as belonging to the latter half of the eighteenth
century, EDMUND BURKE'S Vindication of Natural So-
ciety, a parody of Bolingbroke ; and his Inquiry into
the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful,
a book which in 1 75 7 introduced him to Johnson. Nor
ought we to forget Sir Joshua Reynolds, another of
Johnson's friends, who first made English art literary
in his Discourses on Painting; nor Horace Walpole,
whose Anecdotes of Painting, 1762-71, still please;
2O6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHA.
and whose familiar Letters, malicious, light as froth, but
amusing, retail with liveliness all the gossip of the time.
Among all these books on the intellectual subjects of life
arose to delight the lovers of quiet and the country the
Natural History of Selborne, by Gilbert White. His
seeing eye and gentle heart are imaged in his fresh
and happy style.
126. The Novel. "There is more knowledge of the
heart," said Johnson, " in one letter of Richardson's than
in all Tom Jones" and the saying introduces SAMUEL
RICHARDSON and HENRY FIELDING, the makers of the
modern novel. Wholly distinct from merely narrative
stories like Defoe's, the true novel is a story wrought
round the passion of love to a tragic or joyous conclusion.
But the name is applied now to any story of human life
which is woven by the action of characters or of events
on characters to a chosen conclusion. Its form, far more
flexible than that of the drama, admits of almost infinite
development. The whole of human life, at any time, at
any place in the world, is its subject, and its vast sphere
accounts for its vast production. Pamela, 1741, appeared
while Pope was yet alive, and was the first of Richardson's
novels. Like Clarissa Harlowe, 1 748, it was written in
the form of letters. The third of these books was Sir
Charles Grandison. They are novels of Sentiment, and
their purposeful morality and religion mark the change
which had taken place in the morals and faith of litera-
ture since the preceding age.
Clarissa Harlowe is a masterpiece in its kind. Rich-
Vll FROSE LITERATURE FROM 1745 TO 1789 2OI
ardson himself is mastered day by day by the passionate
creation of his characters : and their variety and the
variety of their feelings are drawn with a slow, diffusive,
elaborate intensity which penetrates into the subtlest
windings of the human heart. But all the characters are
grouped round and enlighten Clarissa, the pure and
ideal star of womanhood. The pathos of the book, its
sincerity, its minute reality, have always, but slowly, im-
passioned its readers, and it stirred as absorbing an
interest in France as it did in England. " Take care,"
said Diderot, " not to open these enchanting books, if
you have any duties to fulfil." HENRY FIELDING followed
Pamela with Joseph Andrews, 1742, and Clarissa with
Tom Jones, 1749. At the same time, in 1748, appeared
TOBIAS SMOLLETT'S first novel, Roderick Random, Both
wrote many other stories, but in the natural growth and
development of the story, and in the infitting of the
characters and events towards the conclusion, Tom
Jones is said to be the English model of the novel. The
constructive power of Fielding is absent from Smollett,
but in inventive tale-telling and in cynical characterisa-
tion, he is not easily equalled. Fielding, a master of
observing and of recording what he observed, draws
English life both in town and country with a coarse and
realistic pencil : Smollett is led beyond the truth of
nature into caricature. Ten years had thus sufficed to
create a wholly new literature.
LAURENCE STERNE published the first part of Tristram
Shandy in the same year as Rasselas, 1759. Tristram
2O2 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Shandy and the Sentimental Journey are scarcely novels.
They have no plot, they can scarcely be said to have any
story. The story of Tristram Shandy wanders like a
man in a labyrinth, and the humour is as labyrinthine
as the story. It is carefully invented, and whimsically
subtle ; and the sentiment is sometimes true, but mostly
affected. But a certain unity is given to the book by the
admirable consistency of the characters. A little later, in
1766, Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield was the first and,
perhaps, the most charming, of all those novels which we
may call idyllic, which describe in a pure and gentle style
the simple loves and lives of country people. Lastly, but
still in the same circle of Johnson's friends, Miss Burney's
Evelina, 1778, and her Cecilia, in which we detect John-
son's Roman hand, were the first novels of society.
127. History shared in the progress made after 1745
in prose writing, and was raised into the rank of literature
by three of Johnson's contemporaries. All of them were
influenced by the French school, by Montesquieu and
Voltaire. DAVID HUME'S History of England, finished
in 1761, is, in the writer's endeavour to make it a philo-
sophic whole, in its clearness of narrative and purity of
style, our first literary history. But he is neither exact,
nor does he care to be exact. He does not love his sub-
ject, and he wants sympathy with mankind and with his
country. His manner is the manner of Voltaire, passion-
less, keen, and elegant. DR. ROBERTSON, Hume's friend,
was a careful and serious but also a cold writer. His
histories of Scotland, of Charles V., and of America
VII PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1745 TO 1789 2O3
show how historical interest again began to reach beyond
England. EDWARD GIBBON, whose Decline and Fall of
the Roman Empire, completed in 1 788, gave a new im-
pulse and a new model to historical literature, had no
more sympathy with humanity than Hume, and his irony
lowers throughout the human value of his history. But
he had creative power, originality, and the enjoyment and
imagination of his subject. It was at Rome in 1 764, while
musing amid the ruins of the Capitol, that the idea of
writing his book arose in his mind, and his conception
of the work was that of an artist. Rome, eastern and
western, was painted in the centre of the world, dying
slowly like a lion in his cave. Around it and towards it he
drew all the nations and hordes and faiths that wrought
its ruin ; told their stories from the beginning, and the re-
sults on themselves and on the world of their victories over
Rome. This imaginative conception, together with the
collecting and use of every detail of the arts, literature,
customs, and manners of the times he described, the read-
ing and use of all the contemporary literature, the careful
geographical detail, the marshalling of all this information
into his narration and towards his conclusion, the power
with which he moved over this vast arena, and the use of
a full if too grandiose a style to give importance to his
subject, makes him the one historian of the eighteenth
century whom modern research recognises as its master.
128. Philosophical and Political Literature. Hutch-
eson, Hartley, and Reid were inferior as philosophers
to DAVID HUME, who inquired, while he followed Locke,
2O4 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
into the nature of the human understanding, and based
philosophy upon psychology. He constructed a science
of man; and finally limited all our knowledge to the
world of phenomena revealed to us by experience. In
morals he made utility the only measure of virtue. The
first of his books, the Treatise of Human Nature, 1 739,
was written in France, and was followed by the Inquiry
concerning the Principles of Morals in 1751. The Dia-
logues on Natural Religion were not published till after
his death. These were his chief philosophical works.
But in 1741-2, he had published two volumes Q{ Essays
Moral and Political, from which we might infer a politi-
cal philosophy ; and in 1752 the Political Discourses ap-
peared, and they have been fairly said to be the cradle
of political economy. But that subject was afterwards
taken up by ADAM SMITH, a friend of Hume's, whose
book on the Moral Sentiments, 1759, classes him also
with the philosophers of Scotland. In his Wealth of
Nations, 1776, by its theory that labour is the source of
wealth, and that to give the labourer absolute freedom to
pursue his own interest in his own way is the best means
of increasing the wealth of the country ; by its proof that
all laws made to restrain, or to shape, or to promote com-
merce, were stumbling-blocks in the way of the wealth
of a state, he created the Science of Political Economy,
and brought the theory of Free Trade into practice. All
the questions of labour and capital were now placed on a
scientific basis, and since that time the literature of the
whole of the subject has engaged great thinkers. As the
VII PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1745 TO 1789
immense increase of the industry, wealth, and commerce
of the country from 1720 to 1770 had thus stirred inquiry
into the laws which regulate wealth, so now the Metho-
dist movement, beginning in 1738, awoke an interest in
the poor, and gave the first impulse to popular education.
Social Reform became a literary subject, and fills a large
space until 1832, -when political reform brought forward
new subjects, and the old subjects under new forms.
This new philanthropy was stirred into further growth
by the theories of the French Revolution, and these
theories, taking violent effect in France, roused into
opposition the genius of Edmund Burke. Unlike Hume,
whose politics were elaborated in the study, Burke wrote
his political tracts and speeches face to face with events
and upon them. Philosophical reasoning and poetic
passion were wedded together in them on the side of
Conservatism, and every art of eloquence was used with
the mastery that imagination gives. In 1766 he defended
Lord Rockingham's administration ; he was then wrongly
suspected of the authorship of the Letters of Junius,
political invectives (1769-72), whose trenchant style has
preserved them to this day. Burke's Thoughts on the
Cause of the Present Discontents, 1770, maintained an
aristocratic government ; and the next year appeared his
famous Speech on American Taxation, while that on
American Conciliation, 1774, was answered by his friend
Johnson in Taxation no Tyranny. The most powerful
of his works were the Reflections on the French Revo-
lution, 1 790, the Letter to a Noble Lord, and the Letters
2O6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
on a Regicide Peace, 1796-7. The first of these, an-
swered by Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, and by
James Mackintosh's Vindicia Gallica, spread over all
England a terror of the principles of the Revolution ; the
third doubled the eagerness of England to carry on the
war with France. As a writer he needed more temper-
ance, but, if he had possessed it, we should probably have
not had his magnificence. As an orator he ended by
wearying his hearers, but the very men who slept under
him in the House read over and over again the same
speech when published with renewed delight. Gold-
smith's praise of him that he "wound himself into
his subject like a serpent" gives the reason why he
sometimes failed as an orator, why he generally suc-
ceeded as a writer.
129. Prose from 1789-1832. Miscellaneous. The
death of Johnson marks a true period in our later prose
literature. London had ceased then to be the only literary
centre. Books were produced in all parts of the country,
and Edinburgh had its own famous school of literature.
The doctrines of the French Revolution were eagerly
supported and eagerly opposed, and stirred like leaven
through a great part of the literary work of England.
Later on, through Coleridge, Scott, Carlyle, and others,
the influence of Lessing, Goethe, of all the new literature
of Germany, began to tell upon us, in theology, in phi-
losophy, and even in the novel. The great English
Journals, the Morning Chronicle, the Times, the Morning
Post, the Morning Herald, were all set on foot between
VII PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1789 TO 1832 2O/
1775 and 1793, between the war with America and the
war with France ; and when men like Coleridge and
Canning began to write in them the literature of journal-
ism was started. A literature especially directed towards
education arose in the Cyclopaedias, which began in 1778,
and rapidly developed into vast dictionaries of know-
ledge. Along with them were the many series issued
from Edinburgh and London of Popular Miscellanies. A
crowd of literary men found employment in writing about
books rather than in writing them, and the literature of
Criticism became a power. The Edinburgh Review was
established in 1802, and the Quarterly, its political op-
ponent, in 1809, and these were soon followed by Eraser's
and Black-wood's Magazine. Jeffrey, Professor Wilson,
Sydney Smith, and a host of others wrote in these reviews
on contemporary events and books. Interest in con-
temporary stimulated interest in past literature, and Cole-
ridge, Charles Lamb, Thomas Campbell, Hazlitt, Southey,
and Savage Landor carried on that study of the Eliza-
bethan and earlier poets to which Warton had given so
much impulse in the eighteenth century. Literary quar-
rels concerning the nature of poetry produced books like
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria ; and Wordsworth's
Essays on his own art are in admirable prose. DE
QUINCEY, one of the Edinburgh School, is, owing to the
over-lapping and involved melody of his style, one of our
best, as he is one of our most various miscellaneous
writers : and with him for masculine English, for various
learning and forcible fancy, and, not least, for his vigor-
2O8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
ous lyrical work and poems, we may rank WALTER
SAVAGE LANDOR, who deepened an interest in English
and classic literature and made a literature of his own.
CHARLES LAMB'S inimitable fineness of perception was
shown in his criticisms on the old dramatists, but his
most original work was the Essays of Elia, in which he
renewed the lost grace of the Essay, and with a humour
not less gentle, more surprising, more self-pleased than
Addison's.
130. Theological Literature had received a new im-
pulse in 1738-91 from the evangelising work of John
Wesley and Whitfield; and their spiritual followers,
Thomas Scott, Newton, and Cecil, made by their writ-
ings the Evangelical School. William Paley, in his
Evidences, defended Christianity from the common-sense
point of view ; while the sermons of Robert Hall and of
Dr. Chalmers are, in different ways, fine examples of
devotional and philosophical eloquence.
131. The eloquent intelligence *of Edinburgh con-
tinued the Literature of Philosophy in the work of
Dugald Stewart, Reid's successor, and in that of Dr.
Browne, who for the most part opposed Hume's funda-
mental idea that Psychology is a part of the science of
life. Coleridge brought his own and German philosophy
into the treatment of theological questions in the Aids to
Reflection, and into various subjects of life in the Friend,
The utilitarian view of morals was put forth by Jeremy
Bentham with great power, but his chief work was in the
province of law. He founded the philosophy of juris,-*
VII PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1789 TO 1832 2OQ
prudence, he invented a scientific legal vocabulary, and we
owe to him almost every reform that has improved our law.
He wrote also on political economy, but that subject was
more fully developed by Malthus, Ricardo, and James Mill.
132. Biography and travel are linked at many points
to history, and the literature of the former was enriched
by Hayley's Cowper, Southey's Life of Nelson, McCrie's
Life of Knox, Moore's Life of Byron, and Lockhart's
Life of Scott. As to travel, it has rarely produced books
which may be called literature, but the works of biog-
raphers and travellers have brought together the mate-
rials of literature. Bruce left for Africa in 1762, and in
the next seventy years Africa, Egypt, Italy, Greece,
the Holy Land, and the Arctic Regions were made the
common property of literary men.
133. The Historical School produced Mitford's His-
tory of Greece and Lingard's History of England; but
it was Henry Hallam who for the first time wrote history
in this country without prejudice. His Europe during
the Middle Ages, 1818, is distinguished by its exhaustive
and judicial summing-up of facts, and his Constitutional
History of England opened a new vein of history in the
best way. Since his time, history has become more
and more worthy of the name of fine literature, and the
critical schools of our own day, while making truth the
first thing, and the philosophy of history the second, do
not disdain but exact the graces of literature. But of all
the forms of prose literature, the novel was the most
largely used and developed.
2IO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
134. The Novel. The stir of thought made by the
French Revolution had many side influences on novel-
writing. The political stories of Thomas Holcroft and
William Godwin disclosed a new realm to the novelist.
The Canterbury Tales of Sophia and Harriet Lee, and
the wild and picturesque tales of Mrs. Radcliffe intro-
duced the romantic novel. Mrs. Inchbald's Simple
Story, 1791, started the novel of passion, whilst Mrs.
Opie made domestic life the sphere of her graceful and
pathetic stories, 1806. Miss Edgeworth in her Irish
stories gave the first impulse to the novel of national
character, and in her other tales to the novel with a
moral purpose, 1800-47. Miss Austen, "with an ex-
quisite touch which renders commonplace things and
characters interesting from truth of description and sen-
timent," produced the best novels we have of everyday
society, 1811-17. With the peace of 1815 arose new
forms of fiction ; and travel, now popular, gave birth to
the tale of foreign society and manners; of these,
Thomas Hope's Anastasius (1819) was the first. The
classical novel arose in Lockhart's Valerius, and Miss
Ferrier's humorous tales of Scottish life were pleasant
to Walter Scott.
It was WALTER SCOTT, however, who raised the whole
of the literature of the novel into one of the great in-
fluences that bear on human life. Men are still alive
who remember the wonder and delight with which
Waverley (1814) was welcomed. The swiftness of work
combined with vast diligence which belongs to very great
VII PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1789 TO 1832 211
genius belonged to him. Guy Mannering was written
in six weeks, and the Bride of Lammermoor, as great in
fateful pathos as Romeo and Juliet, but more solemn,
was done in a fortnight. There is then a certain abandon
in his work which removes it from the dignity of the
ancient writers, but we are repaid for this loss by the in-
tensity, and the animated movement, the clear daylight,
and the inspired delight in and with which he invented
and wrote his stories. It is not composition ; it is Scott
actually present in each of his personages, doing their
deeds and speaking their thoughts. His national tales
and his own country was his best inspiration are
written with such love for the characters and the scenes,
that we feel his living joy and love underneath each of
the stories as a completing charm, as a spirit that en-
chants the whole. And in these tales and in his poems
his own deep kindliness, his sympathy with human
nature, united, after years of enmity, the Highlands to
the Lowlands. In the vivid portraiture and dramatic
reality of such tales as Old Mortality and Quentin Dur-
ward he created the historical novel. "All is great,"
said Goethe, speaking of one of these historical tales, " in
the Waverley Novels ; material, effect, characters, execu-
tion." In truth, so natural is Scott's invention, that it
seems creation even the landscape is woven through
the events and in harmony with them. His comprehen-
sive power, which drew with the same certainty so many
characters in so many various classes, was the direct re-
sult of his profound sympathy with the simpler feelings
212 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
of the human heart, and of his pleasure in writing so
as to make human life more beautiful and more good in
the eyes of men. He was always romantic, and his per-
sonal romance did not fail him when he came to be old.
Like Shakespeare he kept that to the very close. The
later years of his life were dark, but the almost unrivalled
nobleness of his battle against ill fortune proves that he
was as great-hearted as he was great. " God bless thee,
Walter, my man," said his uncle, " thou hast risen to be
great, but thou wast always good." His last long tale of
power was the Fair Maid of Perth, 1828, and his last
effort, in 1831, was made the year before he died. That
year, 1832, which saw the deaths of Goethe and Scott,
is the close of an epoch in literature.
vm POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 213
CHAPTER VIII
POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832
135. The Elements and Forms of the New Poetry.
The poetry we are now to study may be divided into two
periods. The first dates from about the middle of
Pope's life, and closes with the publication of Cowper's
Task, 1785 ; the second begins with the Task and closes
in 1832. The first is not wrongly called a time of transi-
tion. The influence of the poetry of the past lasted ;
new elements were added to poetry, and new forms of it
took shape. There was a change also in the style and
in the subject of poetry. Under these heads I shall
bring together the various poetical works of this period,
(i) The influence of the didactic and satirical poetry
of the critical school lingered among the new elements
which first modified and then changed poetry altogether.
It is found in Johnson's two satires on the manners of
his time, the London, 1 738, and the Vanity of Human
Wishes, 1 749 ; in Robert Blair's dull poem of The
Grave, 1 743 ; in Edward Young's Night Thoughts, 1 743,
a poem on the immortality of the soul, and in his satires
on The Universal Passion of fame ; in the tame work of
214 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHA*.
Richard Savage, Johnson's poor friend ; and in the short-
lived but vigorous satires of Charles Churchill, who died
in 1764, twenty-one years after Savage. The Pleasures
of the Imagination, 1744, by Mark Akenside, belongs
also in spirit to the time of Queen Anne, and was sug-
gested by Addison's essays in the Spectator on Imagi-
nation.
(2) The study of the Greek and Latin classics re-
vived, and with it a more artistic poetry. Men like
Thomas Gray and William Collins attempted to " revive
the just designs of Greece," not only in fitness of lan-
guage, but in perfection of form. They are commonly
placed together, but the genius of each was essentially
different. What they had in common belonged to the
age in which they lived, and one of these elements
was a certain artificial phrasing from which they found it
difficult to escape. Both sought beauty more than their
fellows, but Collins found it more than Gray. He had
the greater grace and the sweeter simplicity, and his Ode
to Simplicity tells us the direction in which poetry was
going. His best work, like The Ode to Evening, is near
to Keats, and recalls that poet's imaginative way. His in-
ferior work is often rude and his style sometimes obscure,
but when he is touched by joy in "ecstatic trial," or
when he sits with Melancholy in love of peace and gentle
musing, he is indeed inspired by truth and loveliness.
He died too young to do much in a perfect way. Gray
was different. All is clear light in his work. There is
no gradual dusky veil such as Collins threw with so much
vm POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 215
charm over his expression. Out of his love of Greek
work he drew his fine lucidity. Out of the spirit of his
own time and from his own cultivated experience he
drew the moral criticism of human life which gives his
poetry its weight, even its heaviness. It is true the
moral criticism, even in the Ekgy, shares in the com-
monplace, but it was not so commonplace in his time,
and it is so full of a gentle charity that it transcends his
time. He moved with easy power over many forms of
poetry, but there is naturalness and no rudeness in the
power. It was adorned by high ornament and finish.
The Odes are far beyond their age, especially The
Progress of Poesy y and each kind has its own appropri-
ate manner. The Elegy will always remain one of the
beloved poems of Englishmen. It is not only a piece of
exquisite work ; it is steeped in England. It is contem-
plative and might have been cold. On the contrary,
even when it is conventional, it has a certain passion in
its contemplation which is one of the marks of the work
of Gray. Had he had more imagination he would have
been greater, but the spirit of his age repressed nature in
him. But he stands clear and bright, along with his
brother, on the ridge between the old and the new.
Having ascended through the old poetry, he saw the new
landscape of song below him, felt its fresher air, and sent
his own power into the men who arose after him.
(3) The study of the Elizabethan and the earlier
poets like Chaucer, and of the whole course of poetry in
England, was taken up with great interest. Shakespeare
2l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and Chaucer had engaged both Dryden and Pope ; but
the whole subject was now enlarged. Gray, like Pope,
projected a history of English poetry, and his Ode on
the Progress of Poesy illustrates this new interest.
Thomas Warton wrote his History of English Poetry,
1774-81, and brought the lovers of poetry into closer
contact with Chaucer. Pope's, Theobald's, Sir Thomas
Hanmer's, and Warburton's editions of Shakespeare were
succeeded by Johnson's in 1765 ; and Garrick began the
restoration of the genuine text of Shakespeare's plays
for the stage. Spenser formed the spirit and work of
some poets, and Thomas Warton wrote an essay on the
Faerie Queene. William Shenstone's Schoolmistress , 1742,
was one of these Spenserian poems, and so was Thom-
son's delightful Castle of Indolence, 1748. James Beattie,
in the Minstrel, 1771, also followed the stanza and man-
ner of Spenser.
(4) A new element interest in the romantic past
was aided by the publication of Dr. Percy's Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry, 1765. The narrative ballad and
the narrative romance, afterwards taken up and perfected
by Sir Walter Scott, had already begun to strike their
roots afresh in English poetry. The Braes of Yarrow
and Mallet's William and Margaret were written before
1725. Men now began to seek among the ruder times
of history for wild, natural stories of human life ; and
the pleasure in these increased and accompanied the
growing love of lonely, even of savage scenery. Even
before the Reliques were published, Gray's power of
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832
seeing into the right thing is seen in this matter. He
entered the new paths, and in a new atmosphere, when
he wrote of the Norse legends, or studied what he could
learn of the poetry of Wales. The Osstan, 1762, of
James Macpherson, which imposed itself on the public
as a translation of Gaelic epic poems, is an example of
this new element. Still more remarkable in this way
were the poems of Thomas Chatterton,
" That sleepless soul who perished in hit pride."
He pretended to have discovered, in a muniment room
at Bristol, the Death of Sir Charles Bawdin, and other
poems, by an imaginary monk named Thomas Rowley,
1768. Written with quaint spelling, and with a great
deal of lyrical invention, they raised around them a great
controversy. His early death, at seventeen, has, by the
pity of it, lifted his lyric poetry, romantic as it is, into
more repute than it deserves.
136. Change of Style. We have seen how the natural
style of the Elizabethan poets had passed into a style
which erred against the simplicity of natural expression.
In reaction from this the critical poets set aside natural
feeling, and wrote according to intellectual rules of art.
Their style lost life and fire ; and losing these, lost art
and gained artifice. Unwarmed by natural feeling, it be-
came as unnatural a style, though in a different way,
as that of the later Elizabethan poets. But out of the
failure of nature without art, and of art without nature,
2l8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and cut of the happy union of both in scattered and
particular examples, the way was now ready for a style
in which the art should itself be nature, and it found
its first absolute expression in a few of Cowper's lyrics.
His style, in such poems as the Lines to Mary Unwin,
and in The Castaway, arises out of the simplest pathos,
and yet is almost as pure in expression as a Greek elegy.
The work was then done ; but the element of fervent
passion did not enter into poetry till the poems of Robert
Burns appeared in 1 786.
137. Change of Subjec*. Nature. The Poets have
always worked on two great subjects man and nature.
Up to the age of Pope the subject of man was chiefly
treated, and we have seen how many phases it went
through. There remained the subject of nature and of
man's relation to it ; that is, of the visible landscape, sea,
and sky, and all that men feel in contact with them.
Natural scenery had been hitherto chiefly used as a back-
ground to the picture of human life. It now began to
occupy a much larger space in poetry, and after a time
grew to occupy a distinct place of its own apart from
man. Much of this was owing to the opening out of the
wild country by new roads and to the increased safety of
travel. It is the growth of this new subject which will
engage us now.
138. The Poetry of Natural Description. We have
already found in the poets, but chiefly among the lyrical
poets, a pleasure in rural scenery and the emotions it
awakened. But nature is only, as in the work of Shake-
vni POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 219
speare, Marvell, Milton, Vaughan, or Herrick, incident-
ally introduced. The first poem devoted to natural
description appeared while Pope was yet alive, in the
very midst of the town poetry. It was the Seasons,
1726-30; and it is curious, remembering what I have
said about the peculiar turn of the Scots for natural de-
scription, that it was the work of JAMES THOMSON, a Scots-
man. It described the landscape and country life of
Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. He wrote with
his eye upon their scenery, and even when he wrote of
it in his room, it was with "a recollected love." The
descriptions were too much like catalogues, the very
fault of the previous Scottish poets, and his style was
heavy and cold, but he was the first poet who deliber-
ately led the English people into that separated world of
natural description which has enchanted us in the work
of modern poetry. The impulse he gave was soon fol-
lowed. Men left the town to visit the country and
record their feelings. John Dyer's Grongar Hill, 1726,
a description of a journey in South Wales, and his Fleece,
I 757> are f uu< f country sights and scenes: and even
Akenside mingled his spurious philosophy with pictures
of the solitudes of nature.
Foreign travel now enlarged the love of nature. The
wilder country of England was eagerly visited. Gray's
letters, some of the best in the English language, de-
scribe the landscape of Yorkshire and Westmoreland with
a minuteness quite new in English literature. In his
poetry he used the description of nature as "its most
22O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
graceful ornament," but never made it the subject. It
was interwoven with reflections on human life, and used
to point its moral. Collins observes the same method
in his Ode on the Passions and the Ode to Evening.
There is as yet but little love of nature entirely for its
own sake. A further step was made by Oliver Gold-
smith in his Traveller, 1 764, a sketch of national man-
ners and governments, and in his Deserted Village, 1770.
He describes natural scenery with less emotion than
Collins, but does not moralise it like Gray. The scenes
he paints are pure pictures, and he has no personal
interest in them. The next step was made a few years
later by some fourth-rate men like the two Wartons.
Their poems do not speak of nature and human life, but
of nature and themselves. They see the reflection of
their own passions in the woods and streams, and this
self-conscious pleasure with lonely nature grew slowly
into a main subject of poetry. These were the steps
towards that love of nature for its own sake which we
shall find in the poets who followed Cowper. One poem
of the time almost anticipates it. It is the Minstrel,
1771, of JAMES BEATTIE. This poem represents a young
poet educated almost altogether by solitary communion
with nature, and by love of her beauty ; and both in the
spirit and treatment of the first part of the story resem-
bles very closely Wordsworth's description of his own
education by nature in the beginning of the Prelude.
139. Further Change of Subject. Man. During
this time the interest in mankind, that is, in man inde-
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 221
pendent of nation, class, and caste, which we have seen
in prose, began to influence poetry. One form of it
appeared in the pleasure the poets began to take in
men of other nations than England ; another form of it
and this was increased by the Methodist revival was
a deep feeling for the lives of the poor. Thomson
speaks with sympathy of the Siberian exile and the
Mecca pilgrim, and the Traveller of Goldsmith enters
into foreign questions. His Deserted Village, Shenstone's
Schoolmistress, Gray's Elegy celebrate the annals of the
poor. Michael Bruce in his Lochleven praises the " secret
primrose path of rural life," and Dr. John Langhorne in
his Country Justice pleads the cause of the poor and
paints their sorrows. Connected with this new element
is the simple ballad of simple love, such as Shenstone's
Jemmy Dawson, Mickle's Mariner's Wife, Goldsmith's
Edwin and Angelina, poems which started afresh a de-
lightful type of poetry, afterwards worked out more com-
pletely in the Lyrical Ballads of Wordsworth. In a class
apart stands the Song to David, a long poem written by
Christopher Smart, a friend of Johnson's. Its power of
metre and imaginative presentation of thoughts and
things, and its mingling of sweet and grand religious
poetry ought to make it better known.
140. Scottish Poetry illustrates and anticipates the
poetry of the poor and the ballad. We have not men-
tioned it since Sir David Lyndsay, for with the exception
of stray songs its voice was almost silent for a century
and a half. It revived in ALLAN RAMSAY, a friend of
222 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Pope and Gay. His light pieces of rustic humour were
followed by the Tea Table Miscellany and the Ever- Green,
collections of existing Scottish songs mixed up with some
of his own. Ramsay's pastoral drama of the Gentle Shep-
herd, 1725, is a pure, tender, and genuine picture of
Scottish life and love among the poor and in the country.
ROBERT FERGUSON deserves to be named because he
kindled the muse of Burns, but his occasional pieces,
1773, are chiefly concerned with the rude and humorous
life of Edinburgh. One man, Michael Bruce, illustrates
the English transition of which I have spoken. The
Ballad, Scotland's dear companion, took a more modern
but pathetic form in some Yarrow poems, in Auld Robin
Gray and the Lament for Flodden. The peculiarities I
have dwelt on already continue in this Scottish revival.
There is the same nationality, the same rough wit, the
same love of nature, but the love of colour has lessened.
141. The Second Period of the New Poetry. The
new elements and the changes on which I have dwelt
are expressed by three poets Cowper, Crabbe, and
Burns. But before these we must mention the poems
of WILLIAM BLAKE, the artist, and for three reasons, (i)
They represent the new elements. The Poetical Sketches,
written in 1777, illustrate the new study of the Eliza-
bethan poets. Blake imitated Spenser, and in his short
fragment of Edward III. we hear again the note of
Marlowe's violent imagination. A short poem To the
Muses is a cry for the restoration to English poetry of
the old poetic passion it had lost. In some ballad poems
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 223
we trace the influence represented by Ossian and quick-
ened by the publication of Percy's Reliques. (2) We
find also in his work certain elements which belong to
the second period of which I shall soon speak. The
love of animals is one. A great love of children and
the poetry of home is another. He also anticipated in
1789 and 1794, when his Songs of Innocence and Experi-
ence were written, the simple natural poetry of ordinary
life which Wordsworth perfected in the Lyrical Ballads,
1798. Moreover, the democratic element, the hatred of
priestcraft, and the cry against social wrongs which came
much later into English poetry spring up in his poetry.
Then, he was a full Mystic, and through his mysticism
appears that search after the true aims of life and after a
freer theology which characterise our poetry after 1832.
(3) He cast back as well as forward, and reproduced in
his songs the spirit, movement, and music of the Eliza-
bethan songs. The little poems in the Songs of Inno-
cence, on infancy and first motherhood, and on subjects
like the Lamb, are without rival in our language for sim-
plicity, tenderness, and joy. The Songs of Experience
give the reverse side of the Songs of Innocence, and they
see the evil of the world as a child with a man's heart
would see it with exaggerated horror. This small but
predictive work of Blake, coming where it did, between
1777 and 1794, going back to Elizabethan lyrics and for-
ward to those of Wordsworth, is very remarkable.
142. William Cowper's first poems were some of the
Olney Hymns, 1 7 79, and in these the religious poetry of
224 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Charles Wesley was continued. The profound personal
religion, gloomy even to insanity as it often became,
which fills the whole of Cowper's poetry, introduced a
theological element into English poetry which continually
increased till it died out with Browning and Tennyson.
His didactic and satirical poems in 1782 link him back-
wards to the last age. His translation of Homer, 1791,
and of shorter pieces from the Latin and Greek, connects
him with the classical influence, his interest in Milton
with the revived study of the English poets. The play-
ful and gentle vein of humour which he showed in John
Gilpin and other poems, opened a new kind of verse to
poets. With this kind of humour is connected a simple
pathos of which Cowper is a great master. The Lines to
Mary Unwin and to his Mother's Picture prove, with
the work of Blake, that pure natural feeling wholly free
from artifice had returned to English song. A new ele-
ment was also introduced by him and Blake the love
of animals and the poetry of their relation to man, a vein
plentifully worked by after poets. His greatest work was
the Task, 1785. It is mainly a description of himself
and a life in the country, his home, his friends, his
thoughts as he walked, the quiet landscape of Olney, the
life of the poor people about him, mixed up with disqui-
sitions on political and social subjects, and at the end, a
prophecy of the victory of the Kingdom of God. The
change in it in relation to the subject of nature is very
great. Cowper loves nature entirely for her own sake.
The change in relation to the subject of man is equally
VIU POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 22$
great. The idea of mankind as a whole which we have
seen growing up is fully formed in Cowper's mind. And
though splendour and passion were added by the poets
who succeeded him to the new poetry, yet they worked
on the thoughts he had begun to express, and he is so
far their forerunner.
143. George Crabbe took up the side of the poetry of
man which had to do with the lives of the poor in the
Village, 1783, and in the Parish Register, 1807. In the
short tales related in these books we are brought face to
face with the sacrifices, temptations, love, and crimes of
humble life, and the effect of these poems in widening
human sympathies was great among his readers. His
work wanted the humour of Cowper, and though often
pathetic and always forcible, was perhaps too unrelenting
for pure pathos. He did much better work afterwards
in his Tales of the Hall, His work on nature is as mi-
nute and accurate, but as limited in range of excellence,
as his work on man. ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, himself a
poor shoemaker, added to this poetry of the poor. The
Farmer's Boy, finished in 1798, and the Rural Tales,
are poems as cheerful as Crabbe 's were stern, and his
descriptions of rural life are not less faithful. The poetry
of the poor, thus started, long continued in our verse.
Wordsworth added to it new features, and Thomas Hood
in short pieces like the Song of the Shirt gave it a direct
bearing on social evils.
144. One element, the passionate treatment of love,
had been on the whole absent from our poetry since the
Q
226 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
Restoration. It was restored by Robert Burns. In his
love songs we hear again, even more simply, more directly,
the same natural music which in the age of Elizabeth en-
chanted the world. It was as a love-poet that he began
to write, and the first edition of his poems appeared in
1786. But he was not only the poet of love, but also of
the new excitement about mankind. Himself poor, he
sang the poor. He did the same work in Scotland in
1786 which Crabbe began in England in 1783 and Cow-
per in 1785, and it is worth remarking how the dates run
together. As in Cowper, so also in Burns, the further
widening of human sympathies is shown in his tenderness
for animals. He carried on also the Celtic elements of
Scottish poetry, but the rattling fun of the Jolly Beggars
and of Tarn d* Shanter is united to a life-like painting of
human character which is peculiarly English. A large
gentleness of feeling often made his wit into that true
humour which is more English than Celtic, and the pas-
sionate pathos of such poems as Mary in Heaven is con-
nected with this vein of English humour. The special
nationality of Scottish poetry is as strong in Burns as in
any of his predecessors, but it is also mingled with a
larger view of man than the merely national one. Nor
did he fail to carry on the Scottish love of nature, though
he shows the English influence in using natural descrip-
tion not for the love of nature alone, but as a background
for human love. It was the strength of his passions and
the weakness of his moral will which made his poetry
and spoilt his life.
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 22/
145. The French Revolution and the Poets. Certain
ideas relating to mankind considered as a whole had
been growing up in Europe for some centuries, and we
have seen their influence on the work of Cowper, Crabbe,
and Burns. These ideas spoke of a return to nature, and
of the best life being found in the country rather than
in the town, so that the simple life of the poor and the
scenery of the country were idealised into subjects for
poetry. They spoke also of natural rights that belonged
to every man, and which united all men to one another.
All men were equal, and free, and brothers. There was
therefore only one class, the class of man; only one
nation, the nation of man, of which all were citizens.
The divisions therefore which wealth and rank and
caste and national boundaries had made were theo-
retically put aside as wrong. Such ideas had been
growing into the political, moral, and religious life of
men ever since the Renaissance, and they brought with
them their own emotions. France, which does much of
the formative work of Europe, had for some time past
expressed them constantly in her literature. She now
expressed them in the action which overthrew the Bastille
in 1789 and proclaimed the new Constitution in the fol-
lowing year. They passed then from an abstract to a
concrete form, and became active powers in the world,
and it is round the excitement they kindled in England
that the work of the poets from 1790 to 1832 can best
be grouped. Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey ac-
cepted them at first with joy, but receded from them
228 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
when they ended in the violence of the Reign of Terror,
and in the imperialism of Napoleon. Scott turned from
them with pain to write of the romantic past which they
destroyed. Byron did not express them themselves, but
he expressed the whole of the revolutionary spirit in its
action against old social opinions. Shelley took them up
after the reaction against them had begun to die away,
and in half his poetry re-expressed them. Two men,
Rogers and Keats, were wholly untouched by them.
One special thing they did for poetry. They brought
back, by the powerful feelings they kindled in men,
passion into its style, into all its work about man, and
through that, into its work about nature.
But, in giving the French Revolution its due weight,
we must always remember that these ideas existed al-
ready in England and were expressed by the poets. The
French outburst precipitated them, and started our new
poetry with a rush and a surprise. But the enthusiasm
soon suffered a chill, and a great part of our new poetry
was impelled, not by the Revolution, but by the indig-
nant revolt against what followed on it. Moreover, I
have already shown that fully half of the new lines of
thought and feeling on which the poetry of England
ran in the nineteenth century had been laid down in
the century which preceded it, and they were com-
pleted now.
146. Robert Southey began his political life with the
revolutionary poem of Wat Tyler, 1 794 ; and between
1801 and 1814 wrote Thalaba, Madoc, The Curse of
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 229
Kehama, and Roderick the Last of the Goths. Thalaba
and Kehama are stories of Arabian and of Indian mythol-
ogy. They are real poems, and have the interest of
good narrative and the charm of musical metre, but
the finer spirit of poetry is not in them. Roderick is
the most human and the most poetical. His Vision of
Judgment, written on the death of George III., and ridi-
culed by Byron in another Vision, proves him to have
become a Tory of Tories. SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE could
not turn round so completely, but the stormy enthusiasm
of his early poems was lessened when in 1 796 he wrote
the Ode on the Departing Year and France, an Ode,
1798. His early poems are transitional, partly based
on Gray, violent and obscure in style. But when he
came to live with Wordsworth, he gained simplicity,
and for a short time his poetic spirit was at the height
of joy and production. But his early disappointment
about France was bitter, and then, too, he injured his
own life. The noble ode to Dejection is instinct not
only with his own wasted life, but with the sorrow of
one who has had golden ideals and found them turn
in his hands to clay. His best work is but little, but
unique of its kind. For exquisite metrical movement
and for imaginative phantasy, there is nothing in our
language to be compared with Christabel and Kubla
Khan. The Ancient Mariner, published as one of the
Lyrical Ballads in 1798, belongs to the dim country
between earth and heaven, where the fairy music is
heard, sometimes dreadful, sometimes lovely, but always
23O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
lonely. All that he did excellently might be bound up
in twenty pages, but it should be bound in pure gold.
147. Of all the poets misnamed Lake Poets, William
Wordsworth was the greatest. Born in 1770, educated
on the banks of Esthwaite, he loved the scenery of the
Lakes as a boy, lived among it in his manhood, and
died in 1850 at Rydal Mount, close to Rydal Lake.
He took his degree in 1791 at Cambridge. The year
before, he had made a short tour on the Continent,
and stepped on the French shore at the very time
when the whole land was "mad with joy." The end
of 1791 saw him again in France and living at Orleans.
He threw himself eagerly into the Revolution, joined
the "patriot side," and came to Paris just after the
September massacre of 1792. Narrowly escaping the
fate of his friends the Brissotins, he got home to Eng-
land before the execution of Louis XVI. in 1793, and
published his Descriptive Sketches and the Evening
Walk. His sympathy with the French continued, and
he took their side against his own country. He was
poor, but his friend Raisley Calvert left him goo/, and
enabled him to live the simple life he had then chosen
the life of a retired poet. At first we find him at
Racedown, where in 1797 he made friendship with
Coleridge, and then at Alfoxden, in Somerset, where
he and Coleridge planned and published in 1798 the
first volume of the Lyrical Ballads. After a winter in
Germany with Coleridge, where the Prelude was be-
gun, he took a small cottage at Grasmere, and the
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 231
first book of The Recluse tells of his settlement in that
quiet valley. It tells also of the passion and intensity
of the young man who saw infinite visions of work
before him, and who lived poor, in daily and unbroken
joy. It was in this irradiated world that he wrote the
best of his poems. There in 1805-6 he finished the
Prelude. Another set of the Lyrical Ballads appeared
in 1800, and in 1807 other poems. The Excursion
belongs to 1814. From that time till his death he
produced from his home at Rydal Mount a long suc-
cession of poems.
148. Wordsworth and Nature. The Prelude is the
history of Wordsworth's poetical growth from a child
till 1806. It reveals him as the poet of Nature and
of Man. His view of nature was entirely different from
that which up to his time the poets had held. Words-
worth conceived, as poet, that nature was alive. It had,
he imagined, one living soul which, entering into flower,
stream, or mountain, gave them each a soul of their
own. Between this Spirit in nature and the mind of
man there was a prearranged harmony which enabled
nature to communicate its own thoughts to man, and
man to reflect upon them, until an absolute union be-
tween them was established. This was, in fact, the
theory of the Florentine Neo-Platonists of the Renais-
sance. They did not care for nature, but when Words-
worth either reconceived or adopted this idea, it made
him the first who loved nature with a personal love,
for she, being living, and personal, and not only his
232 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
reflection, was made capable of being loved as a man
loves a woman. He could brood on her character, her
ways, her words, her life, as he did on those of his
wife or sister. Hence arose his minute and loving ob-
servation of her and his passionate description of all
her life. This was his poetic philosophy with regard
to nature, and bound up as it was with the idea of
God as the Thought which pervaded and made the
world, it rose into a poetic religion of nature and man.
149. Wordsworth and Man. The poet of nature in
this special way, Wordsworth is even more the poet of
man. It is by his close and loving penetration into
the realities and simplicities of human life that he him-
self makes his claim on our reverence as a poet. He
relates in the Prelude how he had been led through his
love of nature to honour man. The shepherds of the
Lake hills, the dalesmen, had been seen by him as
part of the wild scenery in which he lived, and he
mixed up their life with the grandeur of nature and
came to honour them as part of her being. The love
of nature led him to the love of man. It was exactly
the reverse order to that of the previous poets. At
Cambridge, and afterwards, in the crowd of London
and in his first tour on the Continent, he received new
impressions of the vast world of man, but nature still
remained the first. It was only during his life in France
and in the excitement of the new theories and their ac-
tivity that he was swept away from nature and found
himself thinking of man as distinct from her and first
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832
in importance. But the hopes he had formed from the
Revolution broke down. All his dreams about a new
life for mankind were made vile when France gave up
liberty for Napoleon; and he was left without love of
nature or care for man. It was then that his sister
Dorothy, herself worthy of mention in a history of litera-
ture, led him back to his early love of nature and restored
his mind. Living quietly at Grasmere, he sought in the
simple lives of the dalesmen round him for the founda-
tions of what he felt to be a truer view of mankind than
the theories of the French Revolution afforded. And
in thinking and writing of the common duties and faith,
kindnesses and truth of lowly men, he found in man once
more
an object of delight,
Of pure imagination and of love.
With that he recovered his interest in the larger move-
ments of mankind. His love of liberty and hatred of
oppression revived. He saw in Napoleon the enemy of
the human race. A series of sonnets followed the events
on the Continent. One recorded his horror at the attack
on the Swiss, another mourned the fate of Venice, an-
other the fate of Toussaint the negro chief; others cele-
brated the struggle of Hofer and the Tyrolese, others
the struggle of Spain. Two thanksgiving odes rejoiced in
the overthrow of the oppressor at Waterloo. He became
conservative in his old age, but his interest in social
and national movements did not decay. He wrote, and
234 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
badly, on Education, the Poor Laws, and other sub-
jects. When almost seventy he took the side of the
Carbonari and sympathised with the Italian struggle.
He was truly a poet of mankind. But his chief work
was done in his own country and among his own folk ;
and he is the foremost singer of those who threw around
the lives of homely men and women the glory and sweet-
ness of song. He made his verse " deal boldly with sub-
stantial things " ; his theme was " no other than the very
heart of man " ; and his work has become what he de-
sired it to be, a force to soothe and heal the weary soul
of the world, a power like one of nature's, to strengthen
or awaken the imagination in mankind. He lies asleep
now among the people he loved, in the green churchyard
of Grasmere, by th* side of the stream of Rothay, in a
place as quiet as hi, life. Few spots on earth are more
sacred than his grave.
150. Sir Walter Scott was Wordsworth's dear friend,
and his career as a poet began with the Lay of the Last
Minstrel, 1805. But before that he had collected,
inspired by his revolt from the Revolution to the re-
gretted past, the song>> and ballads of the Border.
Marmion was published in 1808, and the Lady of the
Lake in 1810. These were his best poems; the others,
with the exception of some lyrics which touch the sad-
ness and exultation of life with equal power, do not
count in our estimate of him. He brought the narrative
poem into a new and delightful excellence. In Mar-
mion and the Lady of the Lake his wonderful inventiveness
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 235
n story and character is at its height, and it is matched
by the vividness of his natural description. No poet,
and in this he carries on the old Scottish quality, is a
finer colourist. Nearly all his natural description is of
the wild scenery of the Highlands and the Lowland
moorland. He touched it with a pencil so light, grace-
ful, and true, that the very names are made forever
romantic ; while his faithful love for the places he de-
scribes fills his poetry with the finer spirit of his own
tender humanity.
151. Scotland produced another poet in Thomas
Campbell. His earliest poem, the Pleasures of Hope,
1799, belonged in its formal rhythm and rhetoric, and
in its artificial feeling for nature, to the time of Thomson
and Gray rather than to the newer time. He will chiefly
live by his lyrics. Hohenlinden, the Battle of the Baltic,
the Mariners of England, are splendid specimens of the
war poetry of England ; and the Song to the Evening Star
and Lord Ullirfs Daughter, full of tender feeling, mark
the influence of the more natural style that Wordsworth
had brought to excellence.
152. Rogers and Moore. The Pleasures of Memory,
1792, and the Italy, 1822, of Samuel Rogers, are the
work of a slow and cultivated mind, and contain some
laboured but fine descriptions. The curious thing is that,
living apart in a courtly region of culture, there is not a
trace in all his work that Europe and England and
society had passed during his life through a convulsion
of change. To that convulsion the best poems of THOMA
236 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAR
MOORE may be referred. They are the songs he wrote
to the Irish airs collected in 1796. The best of them
have for their hidden subject the struggle of Ireland
against England. Many of them have lyrical beauty and
soft melody. At times they reach true pathos, but their
lightly lifted gaiety is also delightful. He sang them
himself in society, and it is not too much to say that they
helped by the interest they stirred to further Catholic
Emancipation.
153. We turn to very different types of men when we
come to "Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Of the three, LORD
BYRON had most of the quality we call force. Born in
1788, his Hours of Idleness, a collection of short poems,
in 1807, was mercilessly lashed in the Edinburgh Review.
The attack only served to awaken his genius, and he
replied with astonishing vigour in the satire of English
Bards and Scotch Reviewers in 1809. Eastern travel
gave birth to the first two cantos of Childe Harold, 1812,
to the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos in 1813, to the
Corsair and Lara in 1814. The Siege of Corinth, Par-
isina, the Prisoner of Chilian, Manfred, and Childe
Harold were finished before 1819. In 1818 he began
a new style in Beppo, which he developed fully in the
successive issues of Don Juan, 1819-24. During this
time he published a number of dramas, partly historical,
as his Marino Faliero, partly imaginative, as the Cain.
His life had been wild and useless, but he died in trying
to redeem it for the sake of the freedom of Greece. At
Missolonghi he was seized with fever, and passed away
in April, 1824.
Vin POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 237
154. The Position of Byron as a Poet is a curious one.
He is partly of the past and partly of the present. Some-
thing of the school of Pope clings to him ; yet no one so
completely broke away from old measures and old man-
ners to make his poetry individual, not imitative. At
first, he has no interest whatever in the human questions
which were so strongly felt by Wordsworth and Shelley.
His early work is chiefly narrative poetry, written that
he might talk of himself and not of mankind. Nor has
he any philosophy except that which centres round the
problem of his own being. Cain, the most thoughtful
of his productions, is in reality nothing more than the
representation of the way in which the doctrines of
original sin and final reprobation affected his own soul.
We feel naturally great interest in this strong personality,
put before us with such obstinate power, but it wearies
us at last. Finally it wearied himself. As he grew in
power, he escaped from his morbid self, and ran into
the opposite extreme in Don Juan. It is chiefly in it
that he shows the influence of the revolutionary spirit.
It is written in bold revolt against all the conventionality
of social morality and religion and politics. It claimed
for himself and for others absolute freedom of individual
act and thought in opposition to that force of society
which tends to make all men after one pattern. This
was the best result of his work, though the way in which
it was done can scarcely be approved. As the poet of
nature he belongs also to the old and the new school.
Byron's sympathy with nature is a sympathy with himself
238 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
reflected in her moods. But he also escapes from this
position of the later eighteenth century poets, and looks
on nature as she is, apart from himself; and this escape
is made, as in the case of his poetry of man, in his later
poems. Lastly, it is his colossal power and the ease that
comes from it, in which he resembles Dryden, as well as
his amazing productiveness, which mark him specially.
But it is always more power of the intellect than of the
imagination.
155. In Percy Bysshe Shelley, on the contrary, the
imagination is first and the intellect second. He pro-
duced while yet a boy some worthless tales, but soon
showed in Queen Mab, 1813, the influence of the revolu-
tionary era, combined in him with a violent attack on the
existing forms of religion. One half of Shelley's poetry,
and of his heart, was devoted to help the world towards
the golden year he prophesied in Queen Mab, and to
denounce and overthrow all that stood in its way. The
other half was personal, an outpouring of himself in his
seeking after the perfect ideal he could not find, and,
sadder still, could not even conceive. Queen Mab is an
example of the first, Alas for of the second. The hopes
for man with which Queen Mab was written grew cold,
and he turned from writing about mankind to describe
in Alastor the life and wandering and death of a lonely
poet. But the Alastor who isolated the poet from man-
kind was, in Shelley's own thought, a spirit of evil, and
his next poem, the Revolt of Islam, 1817, unites him
again to the interests of humanity. He wrote it with the
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 239
hope that men were beginning to recover from the apathy
and despair into which the failure of the revolutionary
ideas had thrown them, and to show them what they
should strive and hope for, and destroy. The poem
itself has finer passages in it than Alas tor, but as a whole
it is inferior to it. It is far too formless. The same year
Shelley went to Italy, and never returned to England.
He then produced Rosalind and Helen and Julian and
Maddalo; but the new health and joy he now gained
brought back his enthusiasm for mankind, and he broke
out into the splendid lyric drama of Prometheus Unbound.
Asia, at the beginning of the drama separated from Pro-
metheus, is the all-pervading Love which in loving makes
the universe of nature. When Prometheus is united to
Asia, the spirit of Love in man is wedded to the spirit of
Love in nature, and all the world of man and nature is
redeemed. The marriage of these two, and the distinct
existence of each for that purpose, is the same idea as
Wordsworth's differently expressed ; and Shelley and he
are the only two poets who have touched it philosophi-
cally, Wordsworth with most contemplation, Shelley with
most imagination. Prometheus Unbound is the finest
example we have of the working out in poetry of the idea
of a regenerated universe, and the fourth act is the
choral song of its emancipation. Then, ShdJey, having
expressed this idea with exultant imagination, turned to
try his matured power upon other subjects. Two of
these were neither personal nor for the sake of man.
The first, the drama of the Cenci, is as restrained in
24O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
expression as the previous poem is exuberant : yet there
is no poem of Shelley's in which passion and thought
and imagery are so wrought together. The second was
the Adonais, a lament for the death of John Keats. It
is a poem written by one who seems a spirit about a
spirit, and belongs in expression, thought, and feeling to
that world above the senses in which Shelley habitually
lived. Of all this class of poems, to which many of his
lyrics belong, Epipsychidion is the most impalpable, but,
to those who care for Shelley's ethereal world, the finest
poem he wrote. Of the same class is the Witch of Atlas,
the poem in which he has personified divine Imagination
in her work in poetry, and imaged all her attendants, and
her doings among men.
As a lyric poet, Shelley, on his own ground, is easily
great. Some of the lyrics are purely personal ; some, as
in the very finest, the Ode to the West Wind, mingle
together personal feeling and prophetic hope for man-
kind. Some are lyrics of pure nature ; some are dedi-
cated to the rebuke of tyranny and the cause of liberty ;
others belong to the indefinite passion he called love,
and others are written on visions of those " shapes that
haunt Thought's wildernesses." They form together the
most sensitive, the most imaginative, and the most musi-
cal, but the least tangible lyrical poetry we possess.
As the poet of nature, he had the same idea as Words-
worth, that nature was alive : but while Wordsworth
made the active principle which filled and made nature
to be Thought, Shelley made it Love. The natural
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832
world was dear then to his soul as well as to his eye,
but he loved best its indefinite aspects. He wants the
closeness of grasp of nature which Wordsworth and Keats
had, but he had the power in a far greater degree than
they of describing the cloud-scenery of the sky, the
doings of the great sea, and vast realms of landscape.
He is in this, as well as in his eye for subtle colour, the
Turner of poetry. What he might have been we cannot
tell, for at the age of thirty he left us, drowned in the sea
he loved, washed up and burned on the sandy spits near
Pisa. His ashes lie beneath the walls of Rome, and Cor
cordium, " Heart of hearts," written on his tomb, well
says what all who love poetry feel when they think of
him.
156. John Keats lies near him, cut off like him before
his genius ripened ; not so ideal, but for that very reason
more naturally at home with nature than Shelley. In
one thing he was entirely different from Shelley he had
no care whatever for the great human questions which
stirred Shelley ; the present was entirely without interest
to him. He marks the close of that poetic movement
which the ideas of the Revolution had crystallised in
England, as Shelley marks the attempt to revive it.
Keats, seeing nothing to move him in an age which had
now sunk into apathy on these points, went back to
Spenser, and especially to Shakespeare's minor poems,
to find his inspiration ; to Greek and mediaeval life to
find his subjects, and established, in doing so, that which
has been called the literary poetry of England. Leigh
242 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAr.
Hunt, his friend and Shelley's, did part of this work.
The first subject on which Keats worked, after some
minor poems in 1817, was Endymion, 1818, his last,
Hyperion, 1820. These, along with Lamia, which is, on
the whole, the finest of his longer poems, were poems of
Greek life. Endymion has all the faults and all the
promise of a great poet's early work, and no one knew
its faults better than Keats, whose preface is a model of
just self-judgment. Hyperion, a fragment of a tale of the
overthrow of the Titans, is itself like a Titanic torso. Its
rhythm was derived from Milton, but its poetry is wholly
his own. But the mind of Keats was as yet too luxuriant
to support the greatness of his subject's argument, and
the poem dies away. It is beautiful, even in death.
Both poems are filled with that which was deepest in the
mind of Keats, the love of loveliness for its own sake,
the sense of its rightful and pre-eminent power ; and in
the singleness of worship which he gave to Beauty, Keats
is especially the ideal poet. Then he took us back into
mediaeval romance, and in this also he started a new
type of poetry. There are two poems which mark this
revival Isabella, and the Eve of St. Agnes. Mediasval
in subject, they are modern in manner ; but they are,
above all, of the poet himself. Their magic is all his
own. In smaller poems, such as the Ode on a Grecian
Urn, the poem To Autumn, to the Nightingale, and
some sonnets, he is the fairest of all Apollo's children.
He knew the inner soul of words. He felt the world
where ideas and their forms are one, where nature and
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 243
humanity, before they divide, flow from a single source.
In all his poems, his painting of nature is as close as
Wordsworth's, but more ideal ; less full of the imagina-
tion that links human thought to nature, but more full of
the imagination which broods upon enjoyment of beauty.
He was not much interested in human questions, but as
his mind grew, humanity made a more and more impera-
tive call upon him. Had he lived, his poetry would have
dealt more closely with the heart of man. His letters,
some of the most original in the English language, show
this clearly. The second draft of Hyperion, unpublished
in his lifetime, and inferior as poetry to the first, accuses
himself of apartness from mankind, and expresses his
resolve to write of Man, the greatest subject of all.
Whether he could have done this well remains unknown.
His career was short; he had scarcely begun to write
when death took him away from the loveliness he loved
so keenly. Consumption drove him to Rome, and there
he died, save for one friend, alone. He lies not far
from Shelley, on the " slope of green access," near the
pyramid of Caius Cestius. He sleeps apart ; he is him-
self a world apart.
157. Modern English Poetry. Keats marks the ex-
haustion of the impulse which began with Burns and
Cowper. There was no longer now in England any
large wave of public thought or feeling such as could
awaken the national emotion and life out of which poetry
is naturally born. We have then, arising after the deaths
of Keats, Shelley, and Byron, a number of pretty little
244 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
poems, having no inward fire, no idea, no marked char-
acter. They might be written by any versifier at any
time, and express pleasant, indifferent thought in pleas-
ant verse. Such were Mrs. Hemans' poems, and those
of L. E. L., and such were Tennyson's earliest poems, in
1830. There were, however, a few men who, close to
1820 and 1822, had drunk at the fountain of Shelley, and
who, for a very brief time, continued, amid the apathy,
to write with some imagination and fervour. T. L. Bed-
does, whose only valuable work was done between 1822
and 1825, was one of these. George Barley, whose Sylvia
earned the praise of Coleridge, was another. They rep-
resent in their imitation of Shelley, in their untutored
imagination, the last struggles of the poetic phase which
closed with the death of Byron. When Browning imitated
or rather loved Shelley in his first poem, Pauline, it was
to bid Shelley farewell ; when Tennyson imitated Byron
and was haunted by Keats in his first poems, it was also
to bid them both farewell. Then Tennyson and Browning
passed on to strike unexpected waters out of the rocks
and to pour two rivers of fresh poetry over the world.
For with the Reform agitation, and the twofold religious
movement at Oxford, which was of the same date, a
novel national excitement came on England, and with
it the new tribe of poets arose among whom we have
lived. The elements of their poetry were also new,
though we can trace their beginnings in the previous
poetry. This poetry took up, so far as Art could touch
them, the theological, social, and even the political ques-
viil POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 245
tions which disturbed England. It came, before long,
moved by the critical and scientific inquiries into the
origins of religion and man and the physical world, to
represent the scepticism of England and the struggle
for faith against doubt. It gave itself t metaphysics,
but chiefly under the expression and analysis of the
characters of men and women. It played with a vast
variety of subjects, and treated them all with a personal
passion which filled them with emotion. It worked
out, from the point of view of deep feeling, the relation
of man to God, and of man to sorrow and immor-
tality. It studied and brought to great excellence the
Idyll, the Song, and the short poem on classic subjects
with a reference to modern life. It increased, to an
amazing extent, the lyrical poetry of England. The
short lyric was never written in such numbers and of
such excellence since the days of Elizabeth. It recapt-
ured and clothed in a new dress the Arthurian tale, and
linked us, back through many poets, to the days of
legend and delight. It re-established for us in this new
time, as the most natural and most emotional subject of
English poetry, England, her history, her people, and
her landscape, so that the new poets have described not
only the whole land but the natural scenery and histori-
cal story, the human and animal life of the separate
counties. Our native land, as in the days of Elizabeth,
has been idealised.
Nor did this new impulse stay in England only. It
went abroad for its subjects, and especially to Italy. It
246 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
strove to express the main characteristics of periods of
history and of art, of the origins of religions and of Chris-
tianity, of classic and Renaissance thought at critical
times, and of lyric passion in modern life. Indeed, it
aimed at a universal representation of human life and
at a subtle characterisation of individual temperaments.
Thus, it was a poetry of England, and also of the larger
world beyond England.
Apart from the main stream of poetry, there were
separate streams which represented distinct passages in
the general movement. The Sonnets of Charles Tenny-
son Turner, which began in 1830, stand by their grace
and tenderness at the head of a large production of
poetry which describes with him the shy, sequestered,
observant life of the English scholar and lover of nature,
of country piety and country people. One man among
them stands alone, William Barnes, of Dorsetshire. The
time will come when the dialect in which he wrote will
cease to prevent the lovers of poetry from appreciating
at its full worth a poetry which, written in the mother-
tongue of the poor and of his own heart, is as close to
the lives and souls of simple folk as it is to the woods
and streams, the skies and farms of rustic England.
Among them also is Coventry Patmore, who, though
alive, belongs to the past. What Barnes did for the
peasant and the farmer, Patmore did for the cultivated
life which in quiet English counties gathers round the
church, the parsonage, and the hall, the lives and piety
of the English homes that are still the haunts of ancient
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 247
peace. His work, with its retired and careful if over-
delicate note, is a true picture of a small part of English
life. But it has the faults of its excellences.
The High Church and Broad Church movements, as
they were called, produced two sets of poetical writers who
also stand somewhat apart from the main line of English
poetry. The first is best represented by John Keble,
whose Christian Year, in 1827, with its poetry, so good
within its own range, so weak beyond it, was the source
of many books of poems of a similar but inferior char-
acter. On the other hand the impulse towards a wider
theology was combined in some poets with a laxer moral-
ity than England is accustomed to maintain, and Bailey's
Festus, 1839, was the first of a number of sensational
poems which painted the struggles of the spirit towards
immortal life, and of the senses towards mortal love with
equal effervescence. A noble translation of Omar
Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, and the fine ballad-songs
and Andromeda of Charles Kingsley, may also be said to
flow apart from the main stream in which poetry flowed.
Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning (whose wife
will justly share his fame) began to write between 1830
and 1833, and continued their work side by side for fifty
years, when they died, almost together. Both of them
were wholly original, and both of them, differing at every
point of their art, kept with extraordinary vitality their
main powers, and were capable of fresh invention, even
to the very last. They passed through a long period of
change and development, during which all the existing
248 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
foundations of faith and knowledge and art were dug out,
investigated, tested, and an attempt made to reconstruct
them, an attempt which still pursues its work. They
lived and wrote in sympathy with the emotions which
this long struggle created in the minds of men, and ex-
pressed as much of these emotions as naturally fell within
their capability and within the sphere of poetry. And
this they did with great eagerness and intensity. Their
love of beauty and of their art was unbroken, and they
had as much power, as they had desire, to shape the
thought and the loveliness they saw great poets who
have illuminated, impelled, adorned, and exalted the
world in which we live.
At first the great inquiry into the roots of things dis-
turbed the next generation of poets, those who stepped
to the front between 1850 and 1860 ; and as Arthur Hugh
Clough expressed the trouble of the want of clear light
on the fates of men and their only refuge in duty, so
Matthew Arnold, more deeply troubled, embodied in his
poetry, even in his early book of 1852, the restlessness,
the dimness, the hopelessness of a world which had lost
the vision of the ancient stars and could cling to nothing
but a stoic conduct. But he did this with keen sorrow,
and with a vivid interest in the world around him. Then
about 1860 the poets grew weary of the whole struggle.
Theology, the just aim and ends of life, science, political
and social questions, ceased on the whole to awaken the
slightest interest in them. Exactly that which took place
in the case of Keats now took place. The poets sought
VIII POETRY FROM 1730 TO 1832 249
only for what was beautiful, romantic, of ancient heroism,
far from a tossed and wearied world, far from all its
tiresome questions. Dante G. Rossetti, whose sister,
Christina, touched the romantic and religious lyric with
original beauty, was the leader of this school. He, and
others still alive, found their chief subjects in ancient
Rome and Greece, in stories and lyrics of passion, in
mediaeval romance, in Norse legends, in the old England
of Chaucer, and in Italy. But this literary poetry has
now almost ceased to be produced, and has been suc-
ceeded as in 1825 by a vast criticism of poetry, and by a
multitudinous production, much inspired from France, of
poetry, chiefly lyrical, which has few elements of endur-
ance and little relation to life. What will emerge from
this we cannot tell, but we only need some new human
inspiration, having a close relation to the present, and
bearing with it a universal emotion, to create in England
another school of poetry as great as that which arose in
the beginning of this century, and worthy of the tradi-
tions which have made England the creator and lover of
poetry for more than 1200 years.
2$O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER IX
PROSE LITERATURE FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT TO THE
DEATH OF GEORGE ELIOT (1832-1881)
158. The Growth of the Reading Public. It has been
pointed out (page 196) that, with the middle of the
eighteenth century, there began in England a period of
rapid increase in manufactures, science, and prosperity,
which was paralleled by a remarkable growth in litera-
ture. This increase in material welfare has continued
throughout the nineteenth century. Science has made
greater progress within a hundred years than within the
five preceding centuries, and the discoveries of science
have affected in a most wonderful way the lives of men.
The greater part of the population of Great Britain, even
people of the smallest means, may live in accordance
with nature's laws, supplied with proper food, water,
clothing, and shelter, and free from dangerous epi-
demics. Laws have given greater liberty to the indi-
vidual, have mitigated the lot of the poor and unfortunate,
and have helped to reform the vicious. Improvements
in machinery, the growth of commerce, and the colonisa-
tion of new lands, have aided in the greater diffusion of
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO l88l 2$ I
wealth among the people; and, though various industrial
and economic causes still tend to crowd the poor into
unhealthy districts of large cities, and deprive them of
the full rewards of their labour, it is, in the main, true
that, in point of material welfare, the average English-
man has at his command far more means towards health
and happiness than he would have had a century ago.
Education, too, is more widely spread: we all know
more of the essential facts of history and principles of
science, have a truer idea of what life means, and are
thus better prepared to enjoy and appreciate literature.
This increase in material prosperity has been accom-
panied by a remarkable growth in population. In 1800
the population of Great Britain and Ireland was about
15,000,000. In 1899 it is about 40,000,000. If,
moreover, we would estimate the present extent of the
English-speaking race, we must add to these 40,000,000
the even greater population of the United States, as well
as the English-speaking population of the colonies and
possessions of Great Britain in various parts of the world.
The total would probably exceed 125,000,000.
With this growth of English-speaking people in many
separate lands, it has come about that each of the large
bodies of the race has developed, to some extent, its
own special literature; and within a century it will
probably be necessary to discuss, not only the literature
of England itself, but that of Canada and Australia, just
as, in subsequent chapters, we find it necessary to treat
briefly of literature in the United States of America, or,
252 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
as it is loosely called, American literature. For the
present we can afford to neglect, in a sketch of English
literature, the literature of the British colonies; but it is
important that we should remember that the boundaries
of the reading public are no longer those of the times of
Addison, when there was little writing outside of Lon-
don, and authors there felt that they were addressing
largely their own immediate circle of friends and fellow-
citizens. For, though no one book, except the Bible,
can be known to even a majority of the great total
referred to, any book in English may, according to the
degree to which it is fitted to instruct and entertain the
people, reach the hands of multitudes of men, women,
and children, not only in England, but wherever the
English tongue is spoken. The English language, too,
has become so important that it is understood by many
cultivated people of other nationalities, so that an Eng-
lish book of merit may also be read in all civilised
countries. The city-audience of the beginning of the
eighteenth century has thus, at the end of the nineteenth
century, become almost a world-audience.
Many changes, similar to those mentioned in pages
196-98, have also come about in the tastes and needs of
the wide public to whom the literature of this century
is addressed :
(i) As has been explained above (page 196), a good
prose style has been inherited from the eighteenth cen-
tury and has been perfected in this century. Educated
men are born, as it were, into a good school of compo-
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO l88l
sition, and, profiting by the experience of their prede-
cessors, do not now have to discover for themselves how
to make their meaning clear and their style effective.
(2) The increase in health, wealth, and comfort on
the part of the people at large has given us leisure to
read and means to purchase books, while the extraordi-
nary development of railways and of postal and tele-
graph systems has, in many respects, made each of the
English-speaking nations almost a unit in feeling, and
has greatly increased the bonds of sympathy and under-
standing between them. The whole race may know
almost immediately what is known and felt by any large
body of individuals in it. The common interests of the
race are thus emphasised, and the thought of any indi-
vidual stimulated and broadened by his acquaintance
with the experience of his brothers.
(3) The same and similar causes have given a great
impetus to the press. Not only are many more books
printed than formerly; not only have newspapers in-
creased rapidly in numbers and circulation; but there
has arisen a host of periodicals, published weekly or at
longer intervals, devoted less to news than to literature,
which together reach a large part of the reading public.
It may even be doubted whether the reading of people,
at the end of the century, does not consist less of books
than of periodicals of various sorts, including news-
papers. This enormous growth of periodical literature
has been rendered possible by the inventions that make
printing less costly and more rapid, and by the fact thr.t
254 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
periodicals receive for the advertising of merchandise
large sums which may be drawn upon for the payment
of authors and artists. Books and periodicals have
become cheaper, and, through the better organisation of
the publishing trade, more easily obtainable. It is now
possible to procure, for a comparatively small sum, a
library which even fifty years ago would have been
beyond the means of any but the rich.
(4) It has been remarked (page 197) that in the
eighteenth century communication with the continent
of Europe increased, so that English literature stimu-
lated that of other European nations, and was in turn
stimulated by them. This process still continues. The
civilised world has in some respects become a single
body, for purposes of culture; and ideas or works of
art that appeal strongly to one nation have their influ-
ence upon all. With regard to English literature more
particularly, it is noteworthy that a similar process has
tended to remove the barriers between different classes
of the reading public. The reduction in the price of
printed matter; the increase in the amount; the growth
of rapid communication; the consequent increase in
knowledge, on the part of each individual or commu-
nity, of what is thought and done by other individuals
or communities; the industrial and legal changes that
have tended to obliterate the differences in experience
and opportunity between rich and poor; the decay of
social distinctions; the increase in education among all
classes, all these have assisted in bringing about a
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 2 55
remarkable unity of sentiment. An author may feel
not only that he addresses a large audience, but that he
is, to a great degree, in sympathy with large and appar-
ently diverse portions of that audience. Nor is he
addressing men alone, for, from the eighteenth century
on, with new opportunities for education, women have
constituted an increasingly large part of the English
reading public, which is now composed of both sexes
and of all classes, in many lands.
The expansion of the reading public, which is char-
acteristic of this century and which has been described
above, and the accompanying increase in the production
of printed matter, make it exceedingly difficult to sum-
marise the history of English literature in this century.
We must limit ourselves by speaking, with only the rarest
exceptions, of men no longer living, and of English
authors who have exerted a strong influence on the more
thoughtful parts of this public. We must necessarily
omit many such authors, but we must be careful not to
include authors whose works, though they were widely
circulated and became favourites with large numbers of
people, have failed to exert a permanent influence, and,
with slight changes of the popular taste, have passed into
oblivion.
159. The Victorian Age. The period of prosperity
which dawned upon England at about the time of Queen
Victoria's accession to the throne, and which has lasted
throughout the century, has been attended by an intel-
lectual and emotional awakening of the nation, of which
2 $6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the growth of the reading public is merely a sign. In
the fine arts, in the industrial arts, in pure and applied
science, in all branches of human activity, the
period has been one of continuous development. The
literature of the period has been remarkable for its
variety and excellence, not only in poetry, but in the
several branches of prose. It has been lacking only in
the drama, which has been so inconspicuous that we
need not again refer to it. This lack seems to be mainly
due to the fact that, following the line of Scott's suc-
cesses, authors have cultivated the novel, which has
throughout the century been the most profitable branch
of literature, and to the fact that until recently it has
been possible for the managers of theatres to please their
audiences by the translation or adaptation of clever
French plays.
1 60. The Romantic School in Prose. The romantic
school in poetry has been clearly described in the pre-
ceding chapter (pages 213-18). From the middle of the
eighteenth century on, men had been turning away from
the more formal classic models, and had been increas-
ingly influenced by earlier English poetry, by the
quaintness and romance of mediaeval life, by a desire
to make use of the more impressive elements of verse,
and, especially, by a growing sympathy for that in life
which had the greatest emotional value. Under such
influences the poetry of the nineteenth century became,
in many respects, radically different from that of the
eighteenth. The same influences were working to trans-
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 257
form prose literature, both in matter and in style. As
to matter, it will be noticed that in this century writers
have been deeply interested in the emotional life of the
past and the present, tending in novels to the narration
of stirring incidents or the portrayal of striking types,
and, in other forms of prose, to whatever moved the
hearts of the people through beauty, sympathy, sense of
contrast, or the embodiment of vigorous ideals. They
have been anxious to draw on all material that would
incite us to tears or laughter, or that would fill us with
enthusiasm, or that seemed to involve impressive or
impelling truths. This impulse has been, to a great
extent, shared by the other great European literatures.
It has persisted throughout the century, and is still, in
a somewhat modified form, a dominant force.
161. The Scientific Movement. Less easily recog-
nised, less often flowering into great literature, there
runs throughout the period a strong impulse towards
research and observation, towards the accurate and dis-
passionate statement of the full truth in all branches of
human knowledge. In science, men who appreciated
the grandeur and dignity of their calling have made
efforts to make clear to the common people the results
of organised investigation; in history and economics,
to make clear the real purport of past and present events
and the principles of human action involved; and in
philosophy, theology, and kindred subjects of enquiry,
to learn the truth at all costs and to reproduce it faith-
fully. In the novel a similar impulse, common to most
8
ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
modern literatures, has led some writers to a more de-
tailed observation of the facts of life, and to the presen-
tation of them in a less fanciful fashion. This method
is called " realism." It was at first feared that the whole
scientific movement would tend to weaken the power of
the imagination in literature; but there seems to be
room in our hearts for both interests, that in life as
portrayed by the skilled observer and that in life as
portrayed by the man of imagination, and it is grow-
ing clearer that the two can often be combined.
162. Prose Style in the Nineteenth Century. By
the middle of the eighteenth century a good prose style
had already been formed. It was clear and orderly,
the courteous language of accomplished gentlemen,
and was free from the intricacy and eccentricity of earlier
periods. In Goldsmith it was simple and flowing; in
Johnson, dignified, if not pompous; in Burke and Gib-
bon, sonorous. In the nineteenth century the essential
qualities of clearness and dignity have been perpetuated;
but we have also learned to expect, in prose literature,
a certain melody or singing quality, as if the writer were
appealing to the ear even more than to the eye; and,
even when this is absent, at least an earnest eloquence,
as is appropriate when the appeal is to the emotions as
well as to the intellect.
163. The Novel. From Defoe to Scott the hold of
the novel on the public grew stronger. Each great
novelist, moreover, added something to the development
of his art. Defoe taught his skill in arousing curiosity;
IX
Richardson, the use of detail and of sentiment; Field-
ing, the creation of characters that have all the sem-
blance of reality; Smollett, the force of rough humour
and the sketching of whimsical characters; Miss Austen,
the building up of characters through minute observa-
tion. Scott first gave the modern public the taste for
the rapidly moving tale of romantic adventure.
Dickens succeeded Scott as a popular favourite, but
before taking him up we must speak of several novelists
of less importance in the early part of the century.
FREDERICK MARRYAT followed Smollett in his rough tales
of sea life, the best of which are Peter Simple (1834)
and Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836). Full of eccentric
characters, practical jokes, and amusing incidents, they
portrayed so admirably the bluff and hearty side of
active life as long to keep their freshness and charm.
CHARLES LEVER, an Irishman, in Charles O'Malley
(1841) and many other tales of the same sort, did for
the army what Marryat did for the navy. His novels
are weak in plot, but full of dashing adventure and
bubbling over with merriment. BENJAMIN DISRAELI,
Earl of Beaconsfield, the great Tory statesman, was
the author of many novels dealing with fashionable
life, of which the best are perhaps Coningsby (1844)
and Sybil (1845), which have in common the motive
of explaining the principles and ideals on which he
based the reconstruction of his party. Loose in plot,
but brilliant in style, they won the public partly
through their cleverness, partly because they dealt
26O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
with the rich and the great, and partly because they are
mainly biographies, as it were, of ardent, impression-
able, and ambitious minds. They are likewise remark-
able because in them, for the first time in English
literature, were revealed the brilliance and wisdom of
the Jewish race. Edward Lytton Bulwer, Lord Lytton,
more commonly known as BULWER- LYTTON, wrote a long
series of novels with the definite purpose of entertaining
the public. They were of many sorts, as became his
versatile genius, and were received with favour partly
because, like Disraeli's, they drew many of their charac-
ters from high life, of which the growing multitude of
readers heard with delight, but chiefly because they often
dealt with mystery and crime, and because, again like
Disraeli's tales, they followed Byron's narrative poems
in presenting, in an heroic light, men of great ambition,
whether for good or for ill. Romanticism worshipped
the individual whose spirit was high and whose will was
strong. The novel of Bulwer-Lytton's that retains its
interest most permanently is The Last Days of Pompeii
(1834), which is fortunate in having as its theme one
of the most tragic events in all history. GEORGE BOR-
ROW'S intimate acquaintance with the Gypsies and his
experiences as a colporteur in Spain gave him material
for The Bible in Spain (1843), Lavengro (1851), and
other volumes of romantic adventure. To CHARLOTTE
BRONTE belongs the distinction of having produced per-
haps the most typical English novel of the Romantic
school, Jane Eyre (1847), the heroine of which conceals
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 26 1
an indomitable will under the exterior of a quiet and
plain governess, on whom is centred the fiery passion
of a grim hero of higher station.
The real successor of Scott, however, was CHARLES
DICKENS, who, from Pickwick Papers (1837) to Our
Mutual Friend (1865), poured forth a series of re-
markable novels, which were read wherever the English
tongue was known, and which made their author beloved
from the palace of the prince to the camp of the Cali-
fornian miner. If Scott was the Wizard of the North,
Dickens was the Wizard of the South. He had Scott's
genius for story-telling; he knew the way to the hearts
of the people; and, at a time when the uniformity of
modern life was beginning to do away with many of the
external differences between persons and places, he fol-
lowed Smollett in creating a host of odd characters,
taken largely from the ranks of the poor and the humble.
These fantastic figures he produced in such numbers and
with such vitality that they form a little world of their
own; and we often say of odd people that they look as
if they had stepped from the pages of Dickens. His
tales all appeal strongly to the emotions, sometimes by
humour, sometimes by horror or pathos. They all have
a strong dramatic element, are now farcical, now
melodramatic, and, at their best, delightful comedies.
His queer characters have the semblance of life, but we
feel them to be creatures of the fancy, who could not
exist in an actual world. In spite of this, he was a man
who knew well what English life was, especially among
262 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the poorer classes, and earnestly tried to make it better
by picturing its evils; and his tender heart and the won-
derful power of his fancy made him one of the great
English story-tellers.
Equally great as a master of tears and gentle laughter
was WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY, who, though less
widely popular than Dickens, was, and is, on the whole,
a greater favourite with readers of more social expe-
rience. Of gentler birth, breeding, and education,
Thackeray began his career by dabbling both in art and
in letters; and it was only in 1848, when Vanity Fair
appeared, that the public realised that a new and great
interpreter of life had arisen. Vanity Fair was followed
by Pendennis (1850), Esmond (1852), The Newcomes
(1855), and The Virginians (1859), as well as by two
volumes of lectures, English Humourists (1853) and
The Four Georges (1860). A just idea of Thackeray's
merits can be obtained by contrasting his work with
that of Dickens. (i) In the field of the creative
imagination they are both great, but Thackeray's char-
acters belong largely to the so-called upper classes.
(2) Thackeray's characters, like those of Fielding,
impress one less as odd than as real, less as what
we could fancy ourselves as being than as what we
are. (3) Thackeray does not so much tell a rapid
and exciting tale as follow a curious form of confidential
address, as if he were actually speaking directly to the
reader. His style and his matter are full of the personal
qualities of a man who, by sympathy and experience,
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 263
knew the life of the social world, and presented his
views, without exaggeration, in the careless but modu-
lated voice of a gentleman in conversation. The absence
of melodrama in his writings, and his habit of gently
railing at cant and hypocrisy in all its forms, have some-
times brought on him the reproach of cynicism; but it
is now more apparent that his zeal was always for truth
and honour. He felt stirring in his own heart the im-
pulses that led now to virtue, now to vice, and was too
candid to represent life as other than it was; too full of
sympathy with all his brother-men to represent them
otherwise than as compounded of the clay of which we
all are fashioned. His Henry Esmond is generally
agreed to be, of all historical novels in English, that
which most faithfully reproduces the life of a vanished
epoch, and may profitably be contrasted, in its methods,
with Dickens' Tale of Two Cities.
Marian Evans, who wrote under the name of GEORGE
ELIOT, was a country girl of great power of mind and
much learning, who reached middle life before she
realised that she had a natural talent for the creation of
character and the telling of tales. In her first stories
and novels, Scenes of Clerical Life (1858), Adam Bede
(1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner
(1861), she revealed her talent, and displayed also,
in dealing with simple and earnest characters and with
country life, much power of humour, of pathos, and
even of tragedy, and especially a deep feeling for moral
problems. In her later works, <Romola (1863), Felix
264 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
(1866), Middlemarch (1872), and Daniel Deronda
(1876), she threw an increasingly greater stress on
ethical problems, so that her novels became really studies
in the portrayal of the conscience and moral develop-
ment or retrogression of men and women. Those who
like best novels dealing with the lighter sides of life, or
those in which the ethical purpose is less explicit, have
thought her later work inferior to her earlier; but the
English public has always gladly read literature in which
such purposes were prominent, and George Eliot's hold
on the people at large has not been greatly weakened on
this account. Less famous than Scott, Dickens, and
Thackeray, she retains an honoured place in English
literature by right of her power as a story-teller and a
creator of character, and of her success in dealing with
the moral and religious elements in life.
Our century has been rich in minor novelists, each
with a special claim to recognition. MRS. GASKELL is
best known by her Cranford (1853), a story of village
life which reveals both sympathy and close observation,
and which has become a classic. ANTHONY TROLLOPE
wrote more than any of his contemporaries, and though
his quiet but pleasing novels of life in the country and
in the cathedral towns, of which Barchester Towers
(1857) is a good example, never reached the first rank,
they were almost uniform in excellence, and won, to no
small degree, the favour of the public. CHARLES READE
wrote with more vivacity. His was a manly spirit, hating
fraud and useless convention; and his novels, of which
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 265
Put Yourself in his Place (1870) is typical, strike at the
false and commend the true in modern civilisation.
He was also the author of a good historical novel,
The Cloister and the Hearth (1860). CHARLES KINGSLEY
was a clergyman and a reformer, and his novels, like
himself, were overflowing with physical energy and
moral earnestness. He is best known by a charming tale
for children, The Water Babies (1863), and by two his-
torical novels, Hypatia (1853) and Westward Ho ! (1855).
Greater than any of these writers is GEORGE MEREDITH,
whose Richard Feverel (1859), Beauchamp's Career
(1875), and Diana of the Crossways (1885) have been
recognised by acute readers as showing a rare power of
analysing the more subtle sides of human nature, and a
rare power of portraying characters of great charm and
nobility. Unfortunately, a somewhat whimsical style
and method of narration has kept him from being as
widely read as Dickens and Thackeray, to whose class
he belongs by the type and scope of his genius.
The last third of the century has seen, in Europe, the
rise of the realistic school of fiction, which endeavours
to give an accurate picture of life as it actually appears
to the observer, but which, on the continent, has shown
a tendency to take for its subject-matter, in many in-
stances, vice and crime and the ignoble side of man's
character. English fiction, throughout the century, has,
on the whole, preferred to follow a less scientific and
more purely fanciful or idealistic method, though from
Jane Austen down a strong undercurrent of realism
266 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
has, from time to time, made itself manifest; the ten-
dency to treat dispassionately of crime and vice has
been wholly absent. While standing somewhat aloof, in
this respect, from the realistic movement, English fic-
tion has, in the last two decades of the century, revived
the novel of romantic adventure, returning to the field
opened by Scott; and the public, perhaps a little weary
of novels of society, reform, and ethics, has welcomed
the change. Of the new writers of tales of adventure by
sea and land the chief was ROBERT Louis STEVENSON,
who, while himself fighting bravely against disease,
delighted young and old by his New Arabian Nights
(1882), Treasure Island (1883), a tale of pirates, and
by Kidnapped (1886) and The Master of Ballantrae
(1889), in which the elements of adventure and of char-
acter are cunningly combined.
The nineteenth century has done its work in present-
ing us with almost all the possible ways of treating human
life in fiction. The twentieth century must follow the
general methods of the nineteenth, combining and ex-
tending them, as our century has done with the methods
of Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett. A very great
number of novels is published each year, but it is plain
that, though many writers are skilled in this form of
composition, few or none give promise of becoming
masters. It is plain, too, that the hold of the short story
is growing stronger. What the nineteenth century has
taught us is sympathy. We have learned to feel, through
the art of the narrator, what men and women are doing
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 267
and suffering throughout the world; and we give our
sympathy both to the more complex group of characters
and more intricate series of events portrayed in the novel
and to those indicated in the less detailed, more rapid
and suggestive short story, the very movement and brevity
of which seem so highly typical of modern life and
emotion.
164. History. We now turn to other branches of
prose-writing, in which, not through fictions, but by the
clear and impressive statement of what they believed to
be facts and principles, men have won honour and influ-
ence over their fellows.
The essays and history of THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY
have been almost as widely read as the novels of Scott
and Dickens. He had been a precocious boy, with a
prodigious memory, great industry, and a genius for the
accumulation and organisation of facts; and he was but
a young man when, in 1825, he astonished the public
by a remarkable essay on Milton, in which he sketched
rapidly, but brilliantly, the life, works, and times of
the Puritan poet. From his first essay to his last,
Macaulay's skill, vivacity, and information never
flagged, and he became the people's great painter of
historical scenes and historical characters, excelling
in his power of visualising the events and the per-
sonages of the past. This power was even more
clearly shown in the uncompleted History of England
from the Accession of James II. (1848-60). Mac-
aulay wrote at a time when the reading public was
268 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
rapidly increasing, when knowledge of history was like-
wise growing, and when, partly led on by Scott, men
were eager to understand and realise for themselves the
character and meaning of past events. That Macaulay
was able to satisfy this longing was due not only to
his power of imagination, but to his clear, rapid,
and entertaining style, which had a strong influence
on journalism and letters. Macaulay 's mind was down-
right and positive. His information was often insuf-
ficient, his judgment hasty, his attitude prejudiced; but
his clear and brilliant intellect and his clear and brill-
iant style made him, of all the writers of the century,
the greatest populariser of history.
THOMAS CARLYLE was a man of a wholly different sort.
He had known poverty, physical pain, and mental suffer-
ing. He was irritable, morose, inclined to believe that
most men were fools, and that what truth and nobility
there was in the world was disguised and concealed by
the wrappings of hypocrisy, cant, and affectation. His
first important work, Sartor Rcsartus (1834), a "philoso-
phy of clothes," expresses in a grotesque form this pes-
simistic feeling and his resolve to find and hold fast to
the truth in a world of shams. It was this resolve
that led him to the field of history. In The French
Revolution (1837), Heroes and Hero Worship (1841),
Cromwell's Letters and Speeches (1845), and History
of Frederick H (1858-65), he expounded with great
energy and vividness the idea that the truly great
men, the heroes, are those who battle against the
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 269
folly and vice of the multitudes, and that it is they
who should be admired and followed as prophets
and teachers. Carlyle's style is broken and grotesque,
but at times full of grandeur. His great power over
men lay in his genius for worshipping the noble and
energetic and steadfast in warrior-characters; in a skill
not wholly unlike Macaulay's in visualising their acts
and their surroundings; and in a power transcending
Macaulay's for analysing and appreciating the motives
that sway men. Carlyle also exerted a strong influence
on the thought and literature of the century by introduc-
ing into England a knowledge of German philosophy
and letters, which were at that time of a particularly
stimulating character.
Comparable with Macaulay and Carlyle in the power
of imaginative visualisation of the past was JAMES AN-
THONY FROUDE, whose History of England from the Fall
of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Armada (1856-69) charmed
all by its brilliant and rapid style, its grasp alike of
character and of political history, and its note of patri-
otic devotion. With all this, Froude was peculiarly
prone to errors of fact and of judgment.
Throughout the century there have been many histori-
ans of note, but, with the possible exception of JOHN
RICHARD GREEN, whose Short History of the English
People (1874) combined a picturesque and sympathetic
style with painstaking accuracy and sound scholarship,
they wrote for the learned public, and have been little
known or appreciated by the general public. Among
2/O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
these are the two historians of Greece, GEORGE GROTE
and BISHOP THIRLWALL; DEAN MILMAN, the historian of
Latin Christianity ; and CHARLES MERIVALE, the historian
of the Roman Empire. To these names, which show how
English interest clung to the history of classical and
early Christian times, should be added those of HENRY
THOMAS BUCKLE, author of a stimulating but incom-
plete History of Civilisation in Europe (1857-61), and
EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN, whose elaborate History
of the Norman Conquest (1867-76) was perhaps the
most painstakingly accurate English historical work of
the century.
165. Criticism. We now turn to a group of writers
who were scarcely less important than Macaulay and
Carlyle, in that they helped to improve the taste of the
public and to stimulate, to a considerable degree, inter-
est in art and letters. Chief among these was JOHN
RUSKIN, whose enthusiasm for nature and art and con-
stant appeal to the emotions rather than to the intellect
mark his kinship with the poets and novelists of the
romantic school. In his two longer works, Modern
Painters (1843-60) and Stones of Venice (1851-53), as
well as in many minor writings, he called forcibly to
the attention of his countrymen at a time when the
tendency was to conventionalise art and to make social
economics a matter of abstract calculation the minute
beauties of nature, especially in clouds and mountains,
the charm and inner meaning of mediaeval and Renais-
sance art, and the forgotten truths that even humble call-
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 27!
ings have a dignity of their own when rightly followed,
and that happiness is not to be measured by rank nor
value and worth by gold alone. Full of prejudices, an
implacable foe to modern industrial progress, often
lacking in accurate knowledge of the matters he treated,
and prone to make laws of art by generalisation from
his personal fancies, he was, in spite of all this, a power-
ful influence in breaking down foolish conventions and
in opening the eyes of many to the beauty of the art of
the past and to the glory and shame of contemporary
civilisation. His style is among the most beautiful
in English literature, rich and sonorous, with a lyric
swing and cadence.
MATTHEW ARNOLD performed a service for literature
somewhat similar to that which Ruskin performed for
art, though he appealed less to the emotions of his
readers and more to their critical faculties. He wrote
much on questions of Church and State, and much in
analysis of existing social conditions, frequently in a
tone half-bantering, half-serious. His more permanent
work is contained in his two series of Essays in Criti-
cism (1865, 1888), in which he tried to make clear that
scholars and thoughtful people generally throughout all
Europe were attacking the problems of literature, phi-
losophy, science, and kindred subjects in much the same
orderly way, and in accordance with much the same
fundamental beliefs and principles. He illustrated this
conception by a critical estimate of several famous
authors, in essays which have themselves become famous,
ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and did a great deal to convince the public that judg-
ments as to the kind or value of literary productions are
not matters of whim or fancy, but may be profitably dis-
cussed on the basis of aesthetic and ethical principles.
Arnold's style was calm and resolute, and owed much
of its effectiveness to his curious habit of repeating at
intervals a phrase or catchword, such as " sweetness and
light," which recalled forcibly his main tenet. Arnold
was dogmatic in his opinions, but he always explained
his reasons for holding them; and one who disagreed
with his results could determine how and why the dis-
agreement came about. He thus acted as a clarifier of
thought in every field which he touched.
Ruskin and Arnold, with Carlyle, were the great
influences on criticism in this period, but two minor
critics of literature deserve mention, WALTER BAGEHOT
and WALTER PATER. Bagehot was a banker, and ren-
dered criticism and literature itself an important service
by neglecting the implicit convention of men of letters
that criticism belonged to them alone, and, without pre-
tence at an elaborate style or method, by showing what
judgment an acute man of affairs had to pass on books
and authors. It thus became clear and it is each year
growing clearer that literature is written for all, and
may be fairly judged by all who read with open eyes and
an open heart. Pater rendered criticism an equally
great service by the extraordinary subtlety and skill of
his analysis of all aesthetic pleasures. Practically with-
out a profession, he lived a life of leisure and seclusion^
devoting himself entirely to the quest of the beautiful
and the delicate analysis of all its effects. He be-
lieved that each art, and each work of any of the
arts, has its own peculiar note, as it were, of beauty,
and can be best enjoyed when that note is discov-
ered and appreciated. This stimulating conception
was developed in Studies in the Renaissance (1873)
and Appreciations (1889). He was also the author of
Marius the Epicurean (1885), an historical novel, in
which the philosophic, religious, and literary thought
of the second century was analysed in accordance with
the same principle.
1 66. Theology, Philosophy, and Science. England
has been lacking in great theologians and philosophers
during this period. In religious literature the strongest
influence was that of JOHN HENRY NEWMAN; in philoso-
phy, that of JOHN STUART MILL. The circumstances of
Cardinal Newman's career, no less than his high abili-
ties, made him the most distinguished representative in
English-speaking countries of an historic church; and
his voice, in the minds of many, came to stand for all
the processes of thought and feeling involved in Chris-
tianity as an ancient organised body of belief and tra-
dition. His style, too, was resonant and powerful, yet
subtle, and based on Roman models; and its exquisite
purity and dignity gain by contrast with the emotional
whimsicalities of Carlyle, and even of Ruskin. His
many volumes of sermons, his Idea of a University
(1854), his Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864), and other
2/4 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
works of greater or less importance, had a strong
influence on thoughtful men, who found in them
an almost perfect expression of noble and spiritual
thoughts.
Mill was eminent in metaphysics; but it is character-
istic of him and his race that he devoted his attention,
with scarcely less persistence and success, to questions
of ethics, economics, and public welfare, as in his essays
on Liberty (1859) and on The Subjection of Women
(1869), the latter a plea for the emancipation of women.
A similar devotion to public welfare was prominent
in the English scientific work of the last part of the
century.
England's greatest contribution to science during the
century was the fertile thought conceived at practically
the same period by ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE and
CHARLES DARWIN, and first formulated by Darwin in his
On the Origin of Species (1859), and later works, that
the whole development of life on the planet was due to
the modification of heredity by the law of natural selec-
tion. This gave impulse to a great movement of research,
carried on by groups of scholars throughout the civilised
world, which has resulted in an almost complete change
in the conception of man's relation to the universe, and
which has stimulated, if not transformed, history and
psychology and all cognate branches of thought. Most
of these scholars have written for the learned public
alone, but we must mention several who have served
truth and their country well by popularising, to some
IX PROSE LITERATURE FROM 1832 TO 1881 275
degree, the results of research, JOHN TYNDALL, a great
physicist; THOMAS HUXLEY, who did much to make
clear the meaning of evolution and its bearing on ethics
and religion; and HERBERT SPENCER, the formulator of
a system of philosophy based on the principle of
evolution.
2/6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
CHAPTER X
POETRY FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT TO THE DEATHS OF
TENNYSON AND BROWNING (1832-1892)
167. Alfred Tennyson. In treating the poetry of the
period it is necessary only to expand the sketch given
in pages 243-49. ALFRED TENNYSON was, in many re-
spects, the most remarkable author of the century in
England. From early manhood to extreme old age he
put his verse before the public, which at first, following
the critics, read him grudgingly and then with increas-
ing approbation, until, from In Memoriam (1850) to
the Death of (Enone (1892), he reached the hearts of
the English-speaking race as no man had before him.
That he was appreciated so widely was partly due to the
influences (pages 250-55) that had created a vast reading
public, and had put all parts of it, realising their com-
mon humanity, into sympathy with one another; but it
is also due to the genius of the singer. His themes were
such as had long filled the hearts of all, but had hitherto
received no adequate expression. He sang of patriot-
ism, of passionate regret for the beloved dead, of hope
and faith in God and man and heaven, of constancy in
X POETRY FROM 1832 TO 1892 2/7
love, of noble ideals of purity and honour, of all the
struggles that lead us higher. He was master of every
form of lyric and narrative verse, combining the melody
of Coleridge, the colour of Keats, the story-telling power
of Scott, the ethical impulse of Wordsworth. Living
aloof from the crowd, he was independent of political
or religious creeds, or social coteries, and was thus in
his seclusion a poet of pure contemplation, free to
reflect in his poems the currents of thought and feeling
in his day, without giving them a partisan form. He
pleased all classes of the public : the acutely literary by
the exquisite finish of his form, no less than by qualities
that appealed to the people at large the melody of his
song and the sweep of his blank verse. He became
poet-laureate in 1850 by royal command, but he was
none the less so by national acclamation.
1 68. Robert Browning was almost the exact contem-
porary of Tennyson, and throughout a long life devoted
himself to poetry with equal earnestness. A man of
genius, with great stores of information, a mind of ex-
traordinary acuteness, and a creative imagination of the
first rank, he had not the qualities that allowed him to
appeal strongly to the great public, which was bewildered
by his Sordetto (1840). It was not until the appearance
of Men and Women (1855) that he acquired a staunch
following of ardent admirers, and not until the publica-
tion of The Ring and the Book (1868) that he was gen-
erally recognized as a great poet. He never became a
national favourite, as did Tennyson, but he appealed
2/8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
with great force to all who loved analysis of character.
What stood in the way of Browning's popularity was, in
part, his intricate manner of expression, but mainly the
fact that, in the field of dramatic monologue, which he
made his own, his purpose was to reveal the individu-
ality by reproducing minute processes of thought. His
hold on his admirers, now rapidly growing in numbers,
is due partly to the rare melody of his verse in certain
poems or isolated passages, but mainly to the mighty
band of dramatis persona, of all times and nations, but
chiefly, perhaps, of mediaeval Italy, which he created,
a band equalled only by that of Shakespeare, and
whose inner thoughts he analysed with marvellous reality.
He thus satisfied to the full, in the more acute class of
readers, the passion which has been one of the great
strains of modern thought, the passion for reproduc-
tions in art of the life of typical men and women of the
past.
169. Other Poets. Our century, so rich in great
poets, was also rich in poets less great. ELIZABETH
BARRETT BROWNING, the wife of Robert Browning, was
another of the remarkable group of women who have
been an essential element in the literature of this period,
adding to it qualities which, in kind or in degree, are
peculiarly feminine. Mrs. Browning had the woman's
heart of spontaneous and undisciplined feeling, over-
flowing with pity and indignation, as in her humani-
tarian protests for the oppressed; or with pure affection,
as in her beautiful Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850).
X POETRY FROM 1832 TO 1892
Mention, too, must be made of MACAULAY'S Lays of
Ancient Rome (1842). His verses were mechanical, but
they had a swing and force that made them favourites
with many, particularly the young. MATTHEW ARNOLD
and ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH (who were both affected
deeply by the thought of their time, and remain,
to a great extent, poets for scholars, rather than for
the people); CHARLES KINGSLEY'S fine ballads and
Andromeda (1858), his experiment in hexameter ; and
EDWARD FITZGERALD'S remarkable translation of Omar
Khayyam (1858), have already been mentioned (pages
247-48). Two strains in our modern poetry remain to
be spoken of. The first is that of the writers of vers de
societe and of other forms of light and charming verse,
WINTHROP MACKWORTH PRAED, CHARLES STUART CAL-
VERLEY, FREDERICK LOCKER- LAMPSON, AUSTIN DOBSON,
whose graceful art and whose influence in widening
the scope of English poetry by introducing the ballade
and other foreign forms of verse it would be churlish
not to recognise and appreciate. The second is that of
the poets sometimes called pre-Raphaelites, DANTE
GABRIEL ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA ROSSETTI, WILLIAM MORRIS,
and ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE (page 249). Rossetti
was a painter of much skill and beauty, and Morris had,
in several of the arts, and particularly in the handicrafts,
a strong influence in bringing about a better condition
of the public taste in household decoration. As artists
and as poets the whole group turned for inspiration to the
art and poetry of the Middle Ages, before Raphael set
28O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAR
the seal of academic convention on the young Renais
sance, when each man in his own art created, with com-
plete naivete, what seemed beautiful in his own eyes.
An Italian by blood and temperament, Rossetti's trend
was towards the Italian poetry of the thirteenth century,
and especially its worship of beauty and its expression
in the sonnet of the ecstasy of contemplative love.
Morris loved to retell tales of mediaeval and ancient
romance, in The Earthly Paradise (1868-70), Sigurd the
Volsung (1876), and his translations of the ^Eneid (1876)
and the Odyssey (1887). Swinburne turned to many
sources, to the Middle Ages, to the Elizabethans, to
the Greeks, for his inspiration, and, in his Atalanta in
Calydon (1864) and Poems and Ballads (1866), thrilled
men by a richness of rhythm and a harmony of sound
which were new to English verse, and which have given
him a strong influence over younger writers. But all
these poets lived apart from the people, dazed by their
own worship of vanished ideals, and out of sympathy
with modern life. Their school ceases with their own
voices, and the elements they contributed to English
verse are absorbed, like so many others, in the great
current of English poetry.
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 28 1
CHAPTER XI
PROSE LITERATURE IN THE UNITED STATES
1 70. The Growth of a New Nation. Settlements in
the territory that now constitutes the United States were
begun very early in the seventeenth century ; but it was
not until well within the present century that the inhabi-
tants of this land have come to consider themselves wholly
as brothers. Nothing could have exceeded in diversity
the elements that entered into the process of amalgama-
tion. Along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts there were Eng-
lish, Dutch, German, Swedish, French, Spanish, Scotch,
and Irish colonists ; and after the struggle for indepen-
dence was over, and especially after the opportunities
existing in the new world became generally known, there
have flocked to us, through every open gate, emigrants
of all races and from all countries, but particularly from
lands where severe governmental rule or harsh economic
conditions have driven out the oppressed, the poor, or
the ambitious. Diverse as were these elements, how-
ever, the process of unification has gone steadily on. By
far the majority of the early settlers were English, and, the
original colonies belonging to the English crown or soon
282 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
falling to it, the English speech became the official and
current language. But, though using a single speech and
subject to a single rule, it was long before the colonies
reached uniformity of sentiment. Drawn together gradu-
ally by common interests and mutual intercourse, it was
only late in the eighteenth century that they timidly
banded together to secure those interests. Carried further
than they intended, they achieved independence, and
became technically a nation. But even then a genuinely
national spirit was, to a large degree, impossible. The
states were full of jealousies and antipathies, falling, like
the German states of the same period, into little geo-
graphical groups. It was not until at least several decades
of the nineteenth century had passed that the people of
the United States grew to realise fully that they were
brothers, and to develop, consciously and unconsciously,
the policy and the temperament that were to distinguish
them in many ways from their kindred across the sea.
Indeed, we may say that it was not until the nation had
spread from one ocean to the other, and until the most
radical differences between parts of the country had been
settled by the great Civil War and the mutual under-
standing which slowly followed it, that the men of our
land have felt that they were bound together by ties
which cannot be broken.
171. The Growth of a New Literature. There were
several causes which prevented the upgrowing of literature
in the United States until the nation had, to some extent,
reached consciousness as a nation. First, the time and
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 283
strength of the colonists were filled with pressing and
often perilous duties. At the outset these were so en-
grossing that they took away alike the desire to produce
literature and the desire to receive it. The life of con-
templative leisure, which tends to foster literature, is still
rare among us, for even when the more arduous duties of
the pioneer were over, the impulse towards a life of
activity was strong, as it must always be in a young state,
and our best minds turned from the task of clearing a
continent to the organising and upbuilding of a great
commercial and industrial nation. Second, there were
peculiar circumstances in the life of each section of the
country that acted as a deterring force. In the southern
colonies it was the fact that men lived mainly on planta-
tions, somewhat isolated from their fellows, and that the
influence of slavery tended to produce an aristocratic and
unprogressive society. The middle colonies lacked the
spur of high ideals, and cared more for commerce than
for learning and the arts. In New England, on the other
hand, where life was more strenuous, the influence of
religion was blighting. Puritans of the Puritans, straitest
of the sect, they regarded the works of the imagination
as sinful, and their abnormal self-analysis and religious
narrowness destroyed the element of beauty even in the
literature of piety. Third, the ties that bound each
colony to the mother country were stronger even than
the ties that bound them to one another, and the litera-
ture of England satisfied all their needs.
Thus it came about that little writing of merit was done
284 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAR
in America until this century. We have, of course, the
writings of such of the early explorers and settlers as were
most impressed by the wonders of a virgin world, by their
novel adventures, or by a dim vision of what civilisation
on this continent might become. But quaint as these
are, they can scarcely be counted as the beginnings of
American literature. The succeeding generations of
writers born on the new soil, the descendants of the
pioneers, felt dimly that new thoughts were stirring within
them ; but in all matters of expression they turned natur-
ally to English models, to Pope or Addison, imitat-
ing them consciously like unskilled novices. This period
of apprenticeship lasted until after the beginning of the
nineteenth century, broken only by a few men, to be
mentioned later, who were too intent on ideas of great
purport to follow any model slavishly. From the time
of Irving on, however, we meet new conditions. The
reading public was rapidly increasing, and cared more
and more for the work of American authors. Beginning
with Cooper, Hawthorne, and Emerson, American writers,
too, began to look within their own hearts, rather than
abroad, both for the matter of which they wrote, and for
the manner in which they wrote. The national move-
ment thus begun has grown in strength throughout the
country. As generation succeeded generation, we have
thought less and less of English models and tended more
and more to the natural expression of our own thoughts.
172. National Elements in American Literature. Our
literature is thus both dependent and independent, both
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 285
a branch and a tree. The colonists came in the age of
Shakespeare and Milton, bringing with them the glorious
speech of the period and the staunch English temper of
mind and body. The language still remains common to
both nations, with only the slightest divergencies, due
sometimes to the survival here of words or idioms that
have now passed out of the British vocabulary, some-
times to changes that have occurred in Great Britain
within the last two centuries, and sometimes to similar
changes in the United States, changes which the di-
verse elements in our population and the rapidly shifting
experiences of our people have made peculiarly fitting.
The racial traits of the English, especially those most
firmly rooted in the Anglo-Saxon stock, have been pre-
served in America ; but they have suffered a sea-change,
remaining the same and yet becoming different. Just as
it is impossible not to distinguish, as a rule, Americans
from Englishmen by their voices, dress, demeanor, habits,
and general theory of life, so it is impossible as a rule not
to find in American and in English literature of this cen-
tury somewhat different characteristics. To formulate
these national elements in American literature is a diffi-
cult task, but we cannot easily err in pointing out three.
First, American literature is in the main addressed to
the people at large, rather than to any set or class, and
is characterised by plainness and simplicity. It retains
much of the savour of the eighteenth century, partly
because the social centres in the United States were
until recently compact, neighbourly little places, quite like
286 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the London of Queen Anne's day, and partly because the
conditions of political and social life long tended to keep
the citizen's mind peculiarly alert, as in the little eigh-
teenth-century London, to matters of common interest
and welfare. The characteristic American style is thus
precisely what we should expect in a democracy : in
prose, the plain diction of Emerson, Thoreau, and Lin-
coln; in poetry, the homely, domestic verse of Long-
fellow and Whittier. Second, American literature is full
of hope and resoluteness. At the close of the nine-
teenth century the pioneers are still at their task in the
extreme West as their ancestors were in the extreme
East at the beginning of the seventeenth. The clearing of
a continent has taught us self-reliance. Thrown early on
our own resources, both as a nation and as individuals,
we have held fast to the belief that industry brings happi-
ness, and from first to last, from Franklin to Parkman, it is
hard to find in our literature the notes of dread and doubt
and despair. Third, American literature has a strong
tinge of humour. This is, in fact, a continuation of the old
mood of Steele and Swift and Defoe, and the England
that laughed with them and was swayed by them, a
mood rather serious than merry, striving to recover a
manly balance of thought and action by contemplating
typical absurdities of foolishness and prejudice. But it is
above all the mood of a democracy, in which the citizens
form together a huge family, undivided save by the sim-
plest artificial distinctions, and in which, aware of the
frailty of all, we are quick to catch the ludicrous aspect
H PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 287
of life, its incongruities and surprises, the odd simulari-
ties between things seemingly diverse, the infinite and
whimsical variations of human nature.
173. Prose before Irving. It was in New England,
where learning was cherished and the life of the spirit
burned most brightly, that American literature first found
voice in the works of COTTON MATHER, who was by blood
and training a fit representative of the New England hier-
archy, for he came of a family of famous clergymen and
was himself the most learned and rigorous upholder of
the early principles of a church state. He is remem-
bered because of his connection with the Salem witch-
craft and by two remarkable works, his Wonders of the
Invisible World (1693) and his Magnalia Christi Ameri-
cana (1702), the history of Christ's church in America.
The former is full of vicious superstition, the latter
crammed with useless learning, but both are thoroughly
typical. To Cotton Mather the New World was the
abode of devils, and it was only by fasting and prayer,
by single-minded devotion to the letter of the stern Puri-
tan creed, by obedience to the laws of God and the rule
of his ministers on earth, that the demon-haunted wilder-
ness could be turned into the saintly paradise for which
he yearned. The Magnolia Christi Americana is a stout
folio, written in the quaint style of the seventeenth cen-
tury divines, at a moment when the almost absolute
power of the church was weakening. It is memorable
because it stands as the prose epic of the militant church
of the first American century, and because it breathes a
288 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
spirit of noble patriotism, not for a country which had as
yet no separate existence, but for that high dream of an
American theocracy which influenced so potently our
subsequent fortunes.
Within half a century from the time at which Mather
wrote, gross superstition had vanished from New Eng-
land, and the church, separated from the state, had with-
drawn to its natural functions. But the flame of religious
feeling burned more fiercely than ever. JONATHAN ED-
WARDS believed that men were thronging to hell, where
they were to be tortured with fire by the divine ven-
geance, and his powerful sermons, such as Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God, give an impressive expression
to this terrible conviction. Edwards himself was a man
of pure and exalted character, a Puritan mystic, who de-
sired a heaven of holiness, and who in his youth spent
much time, as he wrote, " in viewing the clouds and sky,
to behold the sweet glory of God in these things ; in the
meantime singing forth, with a low voice, his contempla-
tions of the Creator and Redeemer." He was, never-
theless, the most acute metaphysician of his day, and
influenced profoundly both American and British philo-
sophical thought by his Modern Prevailing Notions of
the Freedom of the Will (1754), written *while he was
living as a missionary among the Stockbridge Indians.
In a clear, firm style as different as possible from that
of Cotton Mather he endeavoured logically to establish
the extreme doctrine of foreordination, that man's
will is never free, but that, even while seemingly most
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 289
unfettered in his choice, he is perforce walking in the
path predestined from all eternity.
From the sombre fanaticism of Mather and Edwards,
we turn with delight to the cheery good sense of BENJA-
MIN FRANKLIN. He was a New Englander also, the son
of a soap-maker, the descendant of a long line of North
England blacksmiths ; but, by thrift and honest wisdom,
he came to be one of the great founders of the Republic,
a distinguished man of science, and a benefactor of the
people in innumerable ways. He was the incarnation of
the robust intelligence and inventive and constructive
genius that accomplished our independence, achieved
our commercial and industrial prosperity, and has lain at
the root of our progress in literature and science. Be-
wildered at finding so strikingly practical a figure in the
land of Mather and Edwards, critics have sometimes
declared that Franklin was a typical Englishman of the
eighteenth century, and that it is, as it were, only by
accident that he was born and bred on this side of the
water. But they who speak thus misread the character
of New England. Since the landing of the Puritans and
the Pilgrims the writing of books had been the privilege
of the learned, and the learned wrote of little else than
theology. We have only to look below the surface, how-
ever, to see that the common people were throughout
this long period of silence slowly developing the Yankee
traits of mind and temper to which Franklin first gave
expression in literature.
Franklin was early familiar with Pilgrim's Progress and
2QO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the Spectator, and he began his literary career by imita-
tions of the latter. He had caught, however, the essen-
tial spirit of his models rather than their form, and it
was the plain speech of Bunyan and the ease of Addison
which showed themselves most clearly in his important
works. These consisted chiefly of short articles of many
kinds, by which he sought with success to influence pub-
lic opinion on a variety of subjects. Much that he wrote
is still interesting, but his fame as a man of letters is due
mainly to his Poor Richard's Almanac (1732-48) and
his Autobiography. Each year the humble little Almanac
contained a fresh set of Poor Richard's pithy proverbs,
in prose or verse, and each year they were pored over,
not merely by individuals, but by whole households
throughout the land. The Autobiography, many times
issued in a garbled form, and printed in full only in
1868, has likewise been a permanent favourite with the
people, who read with perennial delight the simple but
wise tale of the steps by which a humble Yankee boy rose
to be second only to Washington in the esteem of his
contemporaries.
With Franklin in this early period of our literature
must be mentioned the group of noble men who gave
their lives to the founding of the state, men who wrote
well because they had high thoughts and were labouring
for great ideals. Such were GEORGE WASHINGTON, the
dignity of whose state papers are the reflection of his
own character; THOMAS JEFFERSON, who gave to the
Declaration of Independence (1775) the sonorous elo-
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 2QI
quence with which it solemnly calls on God and the
nations of the world to witness America's proclamation
of the inalienable rights of her citizens; ALEXANDER
HAMILTON, one of the ablest political thinkers of the
time and principal author of the remarkable series of
papers on the theory of government that form the Feder-
alist (1787-88) ; and THOMAS PAINE, who was unfor-
tunately best known by his violent deistical writings, but
who was the most effective pamphleteer of the Revolution,
and by his Common Sense (1776) and The Crisis (1776-
83) gave important support to the American cause.
1 74. Irving and Cooper. Writing that dealt with
aught but spiritual truths or plain facts was frowned upon
in New England, and American imaginative literature
had its birth in the more liberal Middle States. CHARLES
BROCKDEN BROWN of Philadelphia is said to have been
the first man of letters in America who supported him-
self by his pen. His six novels belong to the English
school contemporary with him and preceding Scott.
He delighted in the horrors of death, crime, and pesti-
lence. But it should be noticed that Brown was the first
to discover the richness of the field open to American
writers of fiction, and to substitute, as in Edgar Huntley
(1801), "the incidents of Indian hostility and the perils
of the western wilderness " for the puerile terrors of Mrs.
Radcliffe and the Castle of Otranto.
It was in the fertile field of native romance that Amer-
ican literature won its earliest successes, a few years
later, in the tales of WASHINGTON IRVING and the novels
292 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
of JAMES FENIMORE COOPER. Irving was by nature akin
to Addison, Steele, and Goldsmith. He loved their
kindly, contemplative, whimsical mood, and his work is
a continuation of theirs without being in any sense an
imitation of it. Irving first became known through his
burlesque chronicle of the Dutch New Amsterdam,
Knickerbocker's History of New York (1809), a mock-
heroic parody of a now forgotten volume of local history.
His Sketch Book (1820), Bracebridge Hall (i.'&zi) , which
were the first American books read in England, showed,
at the beginning of his career, the two kinds of material
of which he was master. In the sketches dealing with an
English Christmas he continued, so to speak, the Sir
Roger de Coverley papers, writing from the point of
view, not of the native Englishman, but of his trans-
Atlantic cousin ; in the story of Rip Van Winkle he took
up the legends that clustered around the river of his
boyhood. In the Tales of a Traveller (1824), and in
other volumes, he continued to treat these two diverse
subjects, and to them, led by his long residence on the
continent of Europe and especially in Spain, he added
the Spanish legend. Irving thus revealed to Americans
the charm of the Old and what was of even greater
service the charm of the New World. His richest vein
was that of the romantic tale tinged with humour, and it
is clear that his temperament, which united a love of
humour with a love of romance, allowed him to combine
the best qualities of the eighteenth century essayist with
those of the story-tellers of his own time.
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Irving discovered for us the picturesque treasures of
native scenery and of Dutch colonial life ; Cooper, the
romance of the virgin wilderness and of the American
revolution. He was not by instinct a man of letters.
He had not the breadth and urbanity of nature which
Irving possessed, and he had not Irving's grace of style.
But he had the gift of story-telling ; and he was so for-
tunate as to have seen, in part, a side of American life
that was of permanent interest to the world, the titanic
strife on the westward-moving borders between the pio-
neer and the Indian. He grew towards middle age with-
out a thought of authorship, when chance led him to
novel- writing. The Spy (1821), dealing with the Ameri-
can Revolution, was followed by a rapid succession of
remarkable tales of adventure by land and sea. Of these
the most famous are The Pilot (1823), of which John
Paul Jones is the hero, and The Last of the Mohicans
(1826), the best of the Leatherstocking tales. In gen-
eral, it may be said that Scott was Cooper's model ; but
Scott merely pointed out the way. Each turned with
genuine delight to the romance of his own soil. Scott
wrote of knights and pretenders, of frays and tournaments
and dungeons ; Cooper, of trappers and braves, of wild
expeditions, of the scalping-knife and the stake. And
America and Europe read and reads the Waverley
novels and the Leatherstocking tales with equal joy.
Cooper's novels of the sea are scarcely less prized, for
they are the fruit of actual knowledge of nautical affairs ;
but his greatest contribution to fiction lay in the few great
2Q4 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAF.
figures of pioneer life, Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and
Uncas, which he created, and which must stand in liter-
ature as permanent types.
175. Poe and Hawthorne. EDGAR ALLAN POE and
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE had much in common. They
were as unlike the energetic and resolute Scott and
Cooper as were Keats and Shelley, and, like the latter,
they were supersensitive, ethereal, enamoured of the alle-
gorical and the ideal.
Poe's physique conditioned his art. His intellect was
extraordinarily clear and brilliant, delighting in intricate
problems ; but his nervous system was so morbidly excit-
able that he was a prey to despair and gloom, and his
mind was preoccupied by thoughts of death, the grave,
and all that is ghastly and horrible. From this curious
conjunction of qualities came the power of his Tales of
the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840) and his other sto-
ries. Sometimes, as in The Gold Bug, Poe applied his
marvellous skill as an analyst to a mere cryptogram;
sometimes, as in the famous Murders in the Rue Morgue,
to tracing out, with the same inexorable logic, the perpe-
trator of a crime ; sometimes, as in Hans Pfaal, to the
construction of a hoax ; but more often, as in Ligeia, The
Masque of the Red Death, and The Fall of the House of
Usher, to producing by degrees on the reader the effect
of utter terror, but terror so refined by the beauty of the
style as to have become a pleasure. In this strange
power he has never been surpassed.
Hawthorne was a New Englander and came of a typi-
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES
cal family of Salem sea captains seafarers from father
to son, the descendants of a judge in the Salem witch
trials. In Hawthorne all the inherited activities were
turned inwards. Living for years in extreme seclusion in
the quiet little seaport of Salem, writing by day and walk-
ing on the beach by night, he brooded over the shapes
his fancy fashioned, and particularly over the figures from
the Puritan past that had trodden less than two centuries
before where his feet then trod. His Twice-Told Tales
(1837, 1842) and Scarlet Letter (1850) were historical
romances as much as those of Cooper, but in a different
sense. Hawthorne's interest lies not in a plot of adven-
ture but in the analysis of moral impulses, of tempera-
ment and character, of the essential qualities, indeed, of
Puritan life. No one portrayed better than he its pictu-
resque elements, the little town hemmed in by the
forest, the quaint garb and speech, the medley of relig-
ion and superstition. But it was the life of the spirit
with which he was preoccupied, and, as in the Marble
Faun (1860), the tendency is always toward the allegori-
cal, as if he would say, " Thus lives the soul of man, and
these are the crises through which it passes, whether to-
day, or centuries ago, whether in the Old World or the
New." Hawthorne's mind was not morbid, and his style
has lurking within it an element of the humorous and the
grotesque, which tempers the sombreness of the tragic
and heightens the effect of his quiet mirth.
176. The Novel after Hawthorne. Mention must
also be made of Mrs. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE'S Uncle
296 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAI>.
Tom's Cabin (1852), a novel which has probably had a
larger circulation than any other book of the century, and
of which Lincoln said, only half in jest, that it had brought
about the Civil War. Mrs. Stowe wrote many other books,
some of which give quaint pictures of rural life in New
England, but none of them equalled her romance of slav-
ery, which was translated into many tongues and read
everywhere by the poor and oppressed, as well as by all
who sympathised with them. It owed its extraordinary
power, not to graces of style or peculiar skill in narrative,
though the author possessed such skill to a consider-
able degree, but to the fact that the subject involved
was then burning in the hearts of men, and to the fact
that, as no one had foreseen, the strongest possible argu-
ments against slavery were not those derived from the
Constitution or from any theory as to the abstract rights
of man, but the elemental feelings aroused by this artless
tale of a country clergyman's wife, who, busied with her
housework and her babies, had yet time to brood over
the wrongs done by law to the helpless and the innocent.
Poe died in 1849, Cooper in 1851, Irving in 1859, Haw-
thorne in 1864. When the Civil War was over and there
was again a surplus of energy to devote to fiction, the
last of the earlier generation of story-tellers in America
had passed away. Slowly there grew up a new genera-
tion, but it had other subjects and other ways. The
effect of the war had been to break down in many ways
the barriers to complete understanding and sympathy
between different parts of the country, and to allow us to
3d PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 29?
form stronger ties of association with other nations. The
bitter experience of the tragedy of national and individual
life gained through the great conflict had swept away
many national and local absurdities, and brought us into
the full current of modern thought and feeling. The
results of this clarifying process were two : we gained
interest in ourselves, and we were in a position to appre-
ciate the contemporary movements of European thought.
Up to 1870 no one had written well of modern American
life. Cooper had confined himself largely to colonial
and revolutionary times, Hawthorne and Foe lived in a
world of dreams. But from the Luck of Roaring Camp
(1870) in which FRANCIS BRET HARTE depicted, some-
what after the manner of Dickens, the rough but sterling
characters of the extreme West, to the end of the cen-
tury, the trend of fiction was towards the portrayal of
characters distinctive of special parts of the country,
scarcely any section of which is not now well represented
in current literature. Though romance has happily not
died out from American life or American fiction, there
has also been a strong trend towards realism in fiction, the
leaders in this movement, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS and
HENRY JAMES, following, with important variations, the
general method of the strong European school, from
which England has to a great degree held herself aloof
(page 265). It is also interesting to notice the promi-
nent part played in the literature of this period by the
short story, which, from Poe and Hawthorne on, has been
a favourite with American authors, and which has proved
298 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
an excellent vehicle for the studies of local character,
towards which, as has just been said, prose fiction so
strongly tended.
177. Statesmen. A democratic government is by
nature prolific in political orators, who arouse the people
to the appreciation of whatever is essential in matters
under public discussion, and who, addressing large and
representative audiences, and taking for their themes
national issues, are themselves incited to their fullest
powers by the magnitude of the interests involved, and
the fact that they stand face to face with those to whom
they appeal, and do not address the impersonal reader
through the medium of the printed page. In the United
States, the period between the War of 1812 and the Civil
War was especially rich in such orators, particularly in
the Senate, where for forty years debate centred on the
most vital questions, affecting the unity and welfare of
the young republic. Of these statesmen the greatest was
DANIEL WEBSTER, whose penetrating intellect, magnificent
voice, grand presence, sincere devotion to the cause of
national unity, and extraordinary power of marshalling
facts and principles so as to produce conviction, have
caused him to be ranked among the great orators of the
world, and made him one of the strongest forces in that
slow process by which the inhabitants of many federated
states came to feel themselves one nation.
The work of ABRAHAM LINCOLN began as that of Web-
ster closed, and it has become plain that the work of both
was part of the same great task of awakening a nation.
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 2Q9
Great minds, like those of Hamilton and Webster, had
long held forth the idea of complete national unity. With
Hamilton the idea was a political abstraction. Webster
was the voice that taught the concept to the people. Lin-
coln, born of the very heart of the people, self-taught, and
growing spontaneously towards the right, was the token
that the mass of the people had unconsciously made that
concept their own, and became the great instrument by
which that concept became realised. A less powerful
orator than Webster, who spoke after the fashion of
Demosthenes and Cicero, he uttered his plain thoughts
only in the homely speech of the people. Not much of
what he said and wrote belongs to literature, but those
few words, as in the Address at Gettysburg (1863) and
the Second Inaugural Address (1865), sank into the
hearts of men, for he spoke in the name of the nation
and as its good genius.
1 78. Historians. The first American historian who
was also a man of letters was undoubtedly Cotton Mather,
whose conception of the Magnalia Christi Americana
was that it should record all that was essential in the
history of the church, which was to him what our country
is to us. But it was destined that more than a century
and a half should pass before a writer of equal power
should attempt to deal with any important part of our
history. We may except Irving's biographies of Colum-
bus and Washington, works of solid merit, whose real
value has been obscured by their author's reputation as
a writer of stories. But Irving was not a historian of the
3OO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP
first rank, and WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT and JOHN
LOTHROP MOTLEY, who were, chose foreign themes.
Prescott was fascinated by the romance of Spanish dis-
covery. His Conquest of Mexico (1843) an ^ Conquest
of Peru (1847) were the result of elaborate and pains-
taking research, a task made more onerous by the fact
that he was nearly blind. The entrancing theme and his
firm but somewhat cold style made his works widely read,
and it is to be regretted that the science of archaeology
was then so little advanced as to allow him to form an
altogether false conception of the primitive people of
whom he wrote. Motley, equally attracted by Spanish
history, chose for a theme the struggle with the Nether-
lands and the establishment there of a democratic gov-
ernment, a subject which he investigated with equal
thoroughness, and treated, in his Rise of the Dutch Re-
public (1856) and History of the United Netherlands
(i 86 1-68), in a noble and impassioned style, and with
sympathy for the cause of political and religious freedom.
FRANCIS PARKMAN, superior to both as a historian and a
man of letters, chose the struggle between France and
England for supremacy in the New World, an epic
theme, which, though partly disabled by ill health, he
treated in full in a series of works, beginning with the
Conspiracy of Pontiac (1851) and closing with A Half-
Century of Conflict (1892). Parkman's mastery of his
subject was complete, and his style, clear, pure, supple,
and brilliant, though less sonorous than that of Gibbon,
has not been surpassed by that of any historian. The
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES $01
history of the United States has been attempted, in
whole or in part, by many excellent writers, among whom
should be mentioned GEORGE BANCROFT, and has been
made the subject of much detailed research, but no one
has yet treated it in such a fashion that his work has
become literature.
179. The New England Group of Essayists. As we
have said, it was in New England that the life of the in-
tellect and of the spirit was the most intense in the seven-
teenth and the eighteenth centuries. The same statement
holds true of the nineteenth century, up to, at least, the
time of the Civil War. The Puritan inheritance was a
remarkable one. On generation after generation it had
impressed the immense importance of the soul and its
relation to a personal God, thereby awakening to an ex-
traordinary degree the consciousness of the individual.
It had, moreover, kept the eyes of man open to the mys-
terious side of existence, teaching him to watch for mani-
festations of God and the devil. On the other hand, the
narrowness and bigotry of the sect had sealed all the
aesthetic senses of man, forcing him to fix his attention
alone upon his own sins and the just anger of an avenging
God, and rendering greater his torments on earth by
teaching, explicitly or implicitly, that his doom or his
pardon had been predestined from all eternity. As time
passed by, this grim conception of life became modified.
The New England colleges had gone steadily on with
their work of education. More important still, the com-
mon sense of the people awoke, touching life with humour
3O2 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
and sagacity. Beginning in the early years of the nine-
teenth century, there arose what might be called a human-
istic or humanitarian movement, both within and without
the church, which insisted less on man's innate moral de-
pravity and more on his power, in many ways, to lay him-
self open to spiritual influences, and by high resolve and
earnest effort to make himself and the world better.
Cutting itself adrift from the church sometimes, the move-
ment showed itself in strange and transient sects and in
wild schemes for the better organization of society, and
produced swarms of fanatic reformers. It was also closely
associated with political and literary movements. It was
the mother of abolitionism, and it led directly to the tran-
cendental theories that were the basis of Emerson's phil-
osophy. Slowly the reticent New England mind, so cold
and grim, so closed to aught but God, opened also to
man, and the result was, for half a century, an outpouring
of the heart in prose and song that constitutes the major
part of American literature. Of the writers we have
mentioned, Webster, Hawthorne, Prescott, Motley, and
Parkman were New Englanders, and of those whom we
have still to mention, Emerson, Thoreau, Holmes, Lowell,
Bryant, Longfellow, and Whittier. Most of them, too,
came of Massachusetts stock, and are associated with the
north-eastern part of that state, where the Puritan civi-
lisation put out its deepest roots, and where the humani-
tarian movement found its chief seat.
The humanitarian movement may then be in general
defined as an awakening to a sense of human relations.
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In this literary and philosophical movement the chief
figure for many years was RALPH WALDO EMERSON, who
combined the two strains of New England thought repre-
sented by Cotton Mather and by Franklin. For two
centuries one group of minds had been mystics, and
another the incarnation of common sense ; one stood for
the priesthood, the other for the people. Emerson's
fathers had long been clergymen, and he began his career
by preaching. His mind instinctively turned to the un-
seen. His philosophy, best expressed perhaps in Nature
(1836), was that of the German idealists, that all vis-
ible is but a form of the spirit, a manifestation of God ;
that man himself is another division of that same spirit,
having knowledge of God, its source, through innate ideas.
But though his thought ran at times to the extreme of
mysticism, it had that singular characteristic which we
find in Franklin and in Lincoln, and which makes us feel
them American. He loved simple things and ways and
people. He saw into the hearts of men with eyes not
distorted by erudition or dogma, and read there the es-
sential elements of human action. More like Montaigne
than any other European author, he loved to be the voice
of wisdom and to utter in the homeliest manner the most
vital truths. He lectured much and wrote much, in-
fluencing men strongly in both ways. His Essays (1841,
1844), Representative Men (1850), and Conduct of Life
(1860), were great forces in awakening the people, for,
whatever subject he treated, he preached freedom of
thought, nobility of mind, and high resolution.
3O4 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP
HENRY DAVID THOREAU, Emerson's friend and fellow-
townsman, published only two books during his lifetime,
A Week on the Concord and Merrimac Rivers (1848),
and Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), though since
his death several other volumes have been compiled from
his papers. Thoreau was a man of education, but he
preferred to support himself by the work of his own
hands. He was an expert pencil-maker, an excellent
surveyor, and by the intermittent exercise of these em-
ployments, as well as by farm labour, he earned enough for
his simple needs. Much of his time was spent in the open
air, either in the woods and fields about his native place,
or in occasional longer journeys through New England.
His ruling passions were his deep and constant delight
in nature and his love of simplicity and independence.
Both passions were most completely and naturally grati-
fied when he passed more than two years in a little hut
which he built by Walden pond near Concord, tilling a
small plot of ground, and depending for sustenance and
for enjoyment almost entirely on his own resources. His
books are the reflection of a singularly quiet and beautiful
character, self- poised and self- controlled like that of a
stoic, but full of a sympathy with nature that became at
times almost mystic. No one has known nature in New
England better than he, or approached him in the
description of it, or given better expression to the type
of New England feeling that finds content and high
thoughts in a quiet and simple country life.
Few contrasts can be greater than that between Emer-
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son and Thoreau, with their gentle and thoughtful country
ways, and OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, long professor of
anatomy at the Harvard Medical School in Boston.
Holmes said jestingly of his city that it was the hub of the
solar universe, but it is plain that in his heart he felt this
to be true, for neither his subjects nor his sympathies
often allow him to stray far beyond the city borders.
His genius had in it no touch of the mystic ; he was not
greatly impressed by nature ; he did not love solitude ;
his social and professional connections held him aloof
from the common folk ; he was essentially an aristocrat.
But his intellect, if little touched by the imagination, was
keen, and his wit brilliant ; and he was a shrewd observer
of human nature. Of his verse we shall speak later ; it
was by his prose that he caught the ear of the people.
In the first volume of the Atlantic Monthly, destined to
contain for a period so much of the best in American
literature, appeared his Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
(1858), and this was followed by The Professor at the
Breakfast Table (1860), and The Poet at the Breakfast
Table (1872). They are essay-novels, and begin quite
after the fashion of Tristram Shandy. The novel ele-
ment, though slight, is worth taking account of, in that it
is so complete a foil to the work of Hawthorne. Holmes
takes the types of a Boston boarding-house as his charac-
ters. He throws no veil of glamour over them, as Haw-
thorne would have done, but judges them as a physician
might, with an accurate knowledge of their physical and
mental peculiarities. The shrewd estimates of people,
f
3O6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
the pretty little romances he imagines about them as
a man might imagine such things for his own amusement
pleased everyone ; and everyone was also pleased by
the essay elements, the wise and witty opinions of men
and things, the humour, the pathos, the fashion all his
own, in which, as it were, he turned inside out the gar-
ment of life, allowing men to smile at the oddities re-
vealed, but showing them also, by this whimsical method,
something more of its true shape than they would other-
wise have known.
Most of the writers whom we have mentioned in this
chapter were graduated from Harvard College, which in
the first half of the century performed a unique service
in firing the ambition of young men in letters at the same
time that she trained their judgment and moulded their
taste. GEORGE TICKNOR, the historian of Spanish litera-
ture, held the famous professorship of belles-lettres from
1820 to 1835, and was succeeded by Longfellow, and he
in his turn, in 1855, by JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, who, like
his predecessor, was already a poet, and who was also to
become the first critic in the land. Lowell had many
accomplishments. He had a wide knowledge of the
romance languages and literatures, and of English prose
and poetry. He was for years editor of the Atlantic
Monthly and of the North American Review, and he
served as ambassador both to Spain and to England.
But his most conspicuous service to his country and to
literature were his critical essays, which deal almost
invariably with great literature and are the fruit of long
XI PROSE IN THE UNITED STATES 307
reading and study. Lowell had a genius for criticism.
His style was rich and buoyant, abounding in happy
fancies and striking turns of expression. Less dogmatic
than Arnold, and less occupied with the foundation of a
critical method, he wrote with more enthusiasm as well
as with greater knowledge. With all his interest in
foreign literature, a sound knowledge of which he did
much to make possible in America, he was a lover of his
own country and our own letters. He was of the stock
that made New England, and he never lost his deep
affection for her peculiar characteristics, her idiosyncra-
sies of language and temper, and the great principles
which she has done so much to establish in American
life.
The chapter would be incomplete were we to omit
mention of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known
under his pseudonym, MARK TWAIN, whose works have
perhaps been more widely read than those of any other
English author of this century. He may be classed as a
novelist. Huckleberry Finn (1884) and its sequels, as
well as other stories, are, apart from their ludicrous side,
of great value as fiction, for they portray with great
vividness and accuracy phases of American life before
the Civil War, particularly in the Mississippi valley.
But his wide fame is chiefly due to his Innocents
Abroad (1869), Roughing It (1872), and A Tramp
Abroad (1880), which not only provoked hearty laugh-
ter but served also to mould the thought of the
nation. Beneath all his extravagance and whimsicality
3O8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
of statement, beneath apparent irreverence and (some-
times) even coarseness, there lurks a serious and a high
motive. Mark Twain, like Franklin and Lincoln, came
of the people, and he represents, in much the same way
that Lincoln did, the mass of the people, their native
ideals, their real temper, their impatience of mere learn-
ing and mere convention and mere fancy. And so his
own laughter was echoed by theirs whenever he touched
on vital questions of character and conduct, showing, for
example, as he did in Innocents Abroad, the foolishness
of that form of European travel that cultivates affectation,
mock appreciation, and the worship of the mere acci-
dents of antiquity, which civilisation has long justly
discarded. A deadly foe of sham and cant in all their
forms, strong in his sanity and in his reliance upon the
beliefs and principles of the people, he has been as
brave a soldier for the cause of humanity as was Heine.
XII POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 309
CHAPTER XII
POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES
1 80. Prose rather than poetry has been the natural
form of expression in American literature, a form
wholly consonant with our national mood, that of clear-
headed, well-ordered aspiration. The part of literature
which we call poetry is great in importance, but very
limited in its field. Only ideas of certain sorts can be
expressed by it. Its production is dependent, to a large
degree, on a state of society in which an author is free to
live a life of resolute leisure like that of Tennyson or
Shelley, free from all that would divert his fancy or his
imagination from communion with his dreamlike ideals.
Such opportunities the American social system rarely fur-
nishes. Our thoughts have been of necessity immediately
concerned with the present, with what has been done,
with what must now be done. Prose is, therefore, our
characteristic language, the language of debate, and
discussion, and explanation, the language of the orator,
the statesman, the historian, the critic, the novelist.
It must not be forgotten, however, that there are three
elements in American life that have had a great influence
JIO ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
in moulding the national character, and which have, to
some degree, given to our poetry traits peculiarly Ameri-
can. These are, first, the influence of American scenery,
BO wild, so dominating, so long free from the touch of
man; second, the religious influence of the forms of
dissenting Christianity most wide-spread among us, all
of which have tended to awaken an intense interest in
the inner life, the life of the soul, with its subtle hopes
and fears, with its tenderness of conscience, its sympathy
with human frailty, its reliance on the unseen ; third, the
pervading influence of a well-assimilated democracy, in
which there was long little difference in comfort, edu-
cation, and refinement between the rich and the poor,
the great and the humble, and where each individual
and each household knew the joys of homely living.
These elements the attentive student will find running
throughout American verse. Unlike the prose of our
century, it has not been in volume and value com-
parable with that produced by some other great nations,
and particularly by England, but it has yet had its
modest glories.
181. Early American Verse. There is little early
American verse worth mentioning. Between the landing
of the Pilgrims and Bryant's Thanatopsis (1817) there
had passed two centuries in which no melodious voice
was heard. Religion had stifled poetry ; the trend of life
had been away from it. If we had been a primitive race
we might have had our epics and ballads ; but we were
too old for these, and too young, too distracted by toil,
XII POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 311
to sing in a new fashion of a new life. What verse there
was followed European models, feeble imitations, in
the seventeenth century, of Donne and Quarles and Du
Bartas ; and, in the eighteenth, of Butler and Pope. The
first sign of quickening spirit was the swarm of political
and satirical ballads in Revolutionary times, of which
survives only the rollicking tune and bantering words of
Yankee Doodle. After the establishment of the Repub-
lic, we have, in addition, a few poems endeared to us by
tradition as the first lispings of patriotic verse, Hail Co-
lumbia (1798) and the Star Spangled Banner (1814).
Then came more ambitious, but still artless attempts to
sing of New World stuff, such as those made by PHILIP
FRENEAU, who, before Cooper, saw the romance of the
Indian, of whom his fathers had thought only as a danger-
ous beast ; or by JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE, who wrote the
American Flag, the best piece of patriotic verse in the
early century, and the Culprit Fay (1835), in which
the birds and beasts and 'flowers of our own land begin
to appear in our poetry ; or by his friend, FITZ-GREENE
HALLECK, who wrote so tenderly of his death. Nor
must we omit mention of JOHN HOWARD PAYNE, whose
Home, Sweet Home (1823) touched deeply the hearts
of a land where men migrate so freely.
1810. Bryant. American poetry, however, begins
with William Cullen Bryant. Born in 1794, in the Berk-
shire highlands, he shared as a boy in the austere life of
early New England, where, though few knew want, every
farmer's boy was hardened to fatigue and cold, and
$12 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
taught stern lessons of frugality by tasks that bred reso-
luteness and self-control. The terrors of inexorable fore-
ordination and punishment were ceasing somewhat to
haunt men's minds, but there was little innocent mirth and
spontaneous joy. Life was work, and work against odds.
Bryant spent the years of his manhood in New York,
where he became a distinguished journalist, but his best
verse, Thanatopsis, To a Water-Fowl, The Death of the
Flowers, was either written in his boyhood or is wholly
removed hi spirit from his later urban life. It breathes a
high spirit of austerity and stoic resignation, and is the
song of men who, escaped from the haunting terrors of
superstition, look anew on nature, and see in it only what
is cold and dark and silent the stern, unsetting stars,
the silent beauty of the wilderness, the desolate sea, but
are still " sustained and soothed by an unfaltering trust."
182. Longfellow and Whittier. The best-known
name in American poetry is that of HENRY WADSWORTH
LONGFELLOW, whose first experiments in verse were pub-
lished as early as 1826. His ambition from boyhood
was to enter the then entirely unprofitable field of litera-
ture, but his interests were fortunately in part those of
the student and teacher. His work as instructor in mod-
ern languages at Bowdoin College attracted attention, and
after several years of study and travel abroad he suc-
ceeded George Ticknor in the now famous professorship
of belles-lettres at Harvard College. Longfellow's work
as a teacher was of great service to the cause of letters in
America, for no one in his time did more to diffuse the
XII POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 313
knowledge and appreciation of what was best in European
literature. As a poet, a part of his influence lay along
the same lines. He translated much foreign verse,
always with grace and fidelity, setting the seal on his
labours by his memorable rendering of the Divine Comedy
(1867). But his influence was greater than that of a
translator. The Golden Legend (\%$i} and almost num-
berless minor pieces, bred of his own fancy or based on
foreign originals, reproduced the inner spirit of mediaeval
times, at least on its gentler side, the glamour and
romance alike of southern climes and of the north.
A close student of European literature and sensitive
to literary movements, he conceived in his apprentice
days the idea of creating new forms in American
literature, by applying to native material the methods
already common elsewhere. The idea was a natural
one and the execution was admirable. His two early
attempts at native ballads, The Skeleton in Armor and
The Wreck of the Hesperus, were entirely successful,
and his later attempts at the pastoral and the epic
Evangeline (1847), after the manner of Goethe's Her-
mann and Dorothea, and Hiawatha (1855), in the
metre of the Finnish Kalevala, were not only im-
mensely popular, serving their purpose in awakening the
country to the romance of its own soil, but must remain
permanent monuments of our literature. Though Long-
fellow was a master pioneer in this way, he was most
loved by the people for the gentle moralising of his verse.
A kindly man, devoted to his work and to his family and
314 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHA*.
friends, he cared little for the great contemporary move-
ments in thought and politics. He loved the outward
aspects of nature, without passion or mysticism, and drew
from them, with the quaintness of the early German
romanticists, little lessons, as in The Rainy Day. He
was not a great thinker, and his work, like his life, held
aloof from great or intricate problems ; but he sang
sweetly and gently, his heart was pure, his sympathy
strong, and he lived a simple life. He was the first to
reveal to us the magic of foreign poetry and to show us
that American subjects had as much romance as those
of Europe. He appealed to the young and old, to men
and women, and he was the greatest household poet of
the century.
An almost exact contemporary of Longfellow was JOHN
GREENLEAF WHITTIER, born in 1807, in Haverhill, Massa-
chusetts, of a family that had been permanently settled
in that vicinity since the early days of the seventeenth
century. His early life was that of the ordinary farmer's
lad, full of labour and hardship, and free from affectation.
His formal education was slight, but he knew men and
good books, and his skill as a rhymster and his interest
in public affairs led him into journalism and politics. By
1832 he had won a name for himself in both fields, and
seemed likely to represent his district in Congress, but
his delicate health forced him to give up his ambitions in
either direction, and he retired to his native county, where
he spent, with slight exceptions, the remainder of his
long life. Whittier was first known by his political verse.
XII POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 31$
A Quaker, with the spirit of a reformer, he early joined
the anti-slavery party, and became one of the leading
abolitionists, and certainly the great poet of the move-
ment. His verses were efficacious in moulding the
opinions of all ranks of society in the North and West,
from the President and his Cabinet to the lowest soldier
or tax-payer; but they were instruments in a transient
struggle, the product of discord and sectional feeling, and
cannot perhaps be expected to remain permanently in
the national memory.
Whittier's religious verse is much more national in
character. His Quaker tolerance, his life of moral ear-
nestness, his gentle, unspotted character, and his simple
way of taking the world, made him a fitting spokesman
in verse of the more liberal religious feeling of the day.
It is, however, by his verses on country life, as in Snow-
Bound (1866) and The Tent on the Beach (1867), rather
than by his political or religious poetry, that Whittier will
be remembered. A bachelor and an invalid, not bound
by the ties that commonly blind men to wider thoughts
than society and ambition, following pursuits that gave
ample leisure for meditation, he lived, with Quaker and
Puritan frugality, a life full of reminiscence of boyhood
days and of the country ways that had never ceased to be
his. And this reminiscence and this sympathy became
the voice of a whole multitude, East and West, that still
toiled in the fields, or turned gladly back in spirit from
city counting-houses to the orchards and brooks of their
early years. Without Longfellow's learning and cultiva-
3l6 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAR
tion, he rivalled him too on his own field, reviving inci-
dents of early New England life after a less bookish
fashion, and one truer alike to the facts and to the temper
of the time, in ballads that are among the best in modern
English literature.
183. Emerson, Holmes, and Lowell. Longfellow was
closely connected with the group of New England prose-
writers described in the preceding chapter; Whittier,
owing to his country life and retiring habits, stood some-
what outside of it. Hawthorne and Thoreau were not
poets; but EMERSON, HOLMES, and LOWELL, the three
remaining figures in what might be called the Boston or
Cambridge school, were poets as well as prose-writers,
though their fame in the former field is not so great as
in the latter.
In prose, EMERSON'S glory was that by his noble phi-
losophy he thrilled the young and earnest with the desire
to live lives self-controlled, self-reliant, hopeful, simple;
and his voice was the first in America to rouse such
enthusiasm in the hearts of the aspiring, and to teach
such noble lessons. In verse Emerson's influence was
not different. Indeed, poetry and prose seemed to him
closely akin. His imagination once kindled and finding
vent in words, it was merely a matter of throwing them
into groups of one kind or another, or of so altering them
at times that they fell into a simple rhythm or made
simple rhymes or assonances. His ear was not keen in
either respect, and it is said that at times he scarcely
knew whether what he had written was prose or verse.
XII POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 317
Yet such was the naked power of his imagination that, as
in the case of the Hebrew poets, we find a simple art the
fitting medium for thoughts of singular simplicity and
remarkable power. The thought of the essays is in large
measure that of the poems, which are mainly gnomic or
didactic, the sage's aphorisms, pregnant with deep sug-
gestion, as in his mystical and beautiful Brahma. Some-
times, however, he undertook historical subjects, as in
the famous Concord Hymn, or was moved to give utter-
ance to the emotion caused by his own personal experi-
ence, as in the most touching of his poems, // is Time to
Be Old and the Threnody. But his best-known work
has perhaps been his nature poems, The Humble-Bec,
Monadnock, and The Snow-storm, where his art is
more like that of Whittier, and stamps them both as men
who had seen nature face to face, with the eyes of simple
humanity, and not through library windows.
HOLMES was the city member of the little group, and
his verse has the urban qualities that remind us of Pope
and Queen Anne's London. He was only about twenty
when his spirited lines on the proposed destruction of the
old frigate Constitution (1830) were on everyone's lips.
His first volume of poems (1836) showed the quali-
ties that remained his throughout life. He had the gift
of broad and farcical humour, the more delicate art of wit,
and a vein of genuine pathos and serious thought, the
last at its best in the Last Leaf and the Chambered Nau-
tilus. But it was wit, the pun, the sparkling jest, the
neatly turned and salient thought, that made him the
3l8 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP.
favourite poet at public or private gatherings in his native
state ; and though little of his verse on trivial topics and
occasions now no longer memorable can ultimately sur-
vive, it is astonishing how much of it retains its interest.
He was less an imitator of Pope than a belated member
of Pope's own school, with equal wit and skill in epigram,
and a power over Pope's favourite metre that has not
been equalled except by Pope.
Like Holmes, LOWELL was a wit, and it was by clever
satire and humorous criticism that he first won favour in
his Biglow Papers (1848 and 1867) and his Fable for
Critics (1848). He differs from Holmes, however, in
that his talent is that of the brilliant improvisatore rather
than that of the somewhat mechanical artist, and that he
dealt with larger subjects. Holmes had an eighteenth
century heart, tolerant and kindly, but at bottom coldly
observant of human nature and incapable of devotion to
a cause. Lowell was made in a later and larger mould.
His heart was set on the welfare of his country, and so,
scholar and Yankee that he was, he gave his political satire
the flavour of rustic speech and jest, as only one could
do who was learned in antiquarian lore and bred in the
stronghold of the New England spirit. His best serious
verse was The Vision of Sir Launfal (1848), a mediaeval
tale, in the manner of Longfellow, with a prelude and
interlude which are accurately descriptive of nature in
New England, and the noble Commemoration Ode (1865).
184. Poe. We now leave the New England school
of poets, passing to POE, who was the only writer outside
XII POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 319
of New England who was contemporary with them, and
to later poets. Poe published thin volumes in 1827, 1829,
and 1831, containing, at least in germ, many of his best
poems ; and his last volume of collected verse appeared
in 1845. It must therefore be kept in mind that he wrote
before any of the preceding writers, except Bryant, had
done work that would justify their present reputation.
Poe had closer affinities with Coleridge, Shelley, and
Keats than had any other American poet, and is our soli-
tary figure on that side of the romantic school. He ab-
horred didacticism in verse, and loved the form of poetry
which by rhythm and melody appeals exclusively to the
imagination. What he wrote was short, exquisite in form,
and ethereal in matter, the artistic expression of moods
that are allied to madness, moods in which death con-
quers all, and ghosts and demons and evil harbingers are
on every hand. This unreal world he sung in a melody
more piercingly sweet, more haunting, more mystically
sad and terrible than that of any other American poet,
and the peculiarities of his genius and of his art have
caused him rightly to be hailed, in his limited field of
pure fancy, as the greatest that has arisen among us.
185. Whitman and Later Poets. Emerson had de-
clared that men must look into their own hearts and on
nature for inspiration and solace, and that Americans
must find the stimulus for their own literature hi their
own national and personal experiences. As if in response
to his call and his example, Hawthorne, Longfellow, and
Whittier were doing, in the sixth decade of the century,
32O ENGLISH LITERATURE CHA*.
their most characteristic work ; and in the same decade
appeared a thin volume entitled Leaves of Grass (1855),
by WALT WHITMAN. This, with succeeding productions
of the same character, have been much read, and, espe-
cially in Europe, have been thought typical of the ideas
of a great democracy. Whitman's manner was that of
the rhapsodist, who, deeply moved and despising con-
vention, uttered his thought in language depending largely
for its effect on its irregular rhythm, usually without the
aid of rhyme. Like Whittier, and with him almost alone
among our poets, Whitman knew the life of the people.
But it was the old New England farming folk with which
Whittier was familiar. Whitman knew the humbler city
folk, firemen and drivers and mechanics, more typical
even than farmers of the men whose political judgment or
caprice determines the destinies of our municipalities or
the nation. These men, as symbols of democracy, he
idolised, seeing in them the nobility of active and healthy
life. He felt himself their brother, the type of the race.
He sang of them, of his joy in comradeship with them, of
their wondrous diversity of toil, of a commonwealth based
on honest living and plain thinking, of the joy of mere
physical existence, of the great panorama of nature spread
before us, of national ideals, of our heroes. His song
was full of uncouth words and rough thoughts, and not
free from affectation, and the people of whom he wrote
have not understood him ; but others have, and the
grandeur of his conception and the majestic sweep of
his verse entitle him to a place among our poets.
XU POETRY IN THE UNITED STATES 321
Poe died young, in 1849, but the other poets mentioned
in this chapter lived singularly long and happy lives.
Even the venerable Bryant lived until 1878; Longfellow
and Emerson, until 1882; Lowell, until 1891; Whittier
and Whitman, until 1892 ; and Holmes, until 1894. The
men who began American poetry have, then, survived
almost until the end of the century. Of these men, the
New England poets formed a group by themselves, whose
tendencies and habits of thought give our verse its chief
characteristics, namely, simplicity and a love for the di-
dactic. In the first respect they differ greatly from the
contemporary English school, who, from Keats to Ten-
nyson, have depended to a large degree on the exquisite
finish which they gave to their verse. In the second
respect, the American school followed the lead of Words-
worth.
Whitman may, on the whole, be regarded as a member
of the New England school in spirit, and as merely push-
ing to an extreme the methods of Emerson and Thoreau,
though it must be confessed that it is easier to put him
in a class by himself. At all events, he has had no
prominent disciples, and his influence, wherever felt, has
served merely to add to the simplicity of our verse and
its disregard of the more intricate conventions of form.
Poe's influence, on the contrary, has led towards greater
care for form and interest in the craftsman's side of
poetry. The influence of the school of the Pre-Raphael-
ites, which would have worked in the same direction, has
scarcely been felt in America Since the Civil War only
v
322 ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAP. XII
two tendencies have been distinguishable in our poetry.
The first is parallel to the tendency noted in the novel
and short story (see page 297), namely, towards verse
dealing with the humours and peculiarities of life in
certain localities, usually in dialect, the best example of
which is perhaps to be found in the poems of BRET
HARTE. The other is that towards craftsmanship, best
shown in the verse of SIDNEY LANIER, poet and musician,
the intricate melody and charm of whose lyrics and
odes make him the only other poet of the century whom
it would be appropriate to mention here.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
A.D.
449 .... English History begins in Britain. The Jutes land
in Thanet.
597 .... Christianity brought into England by Augustine;
627 .... And into Northumbria by Paulinus.
635, et seq. . The Celtic Missionaries evangelise Northumbria.
664 .... The Synod of Whitby.
670-80 . . The poems of Csedmon.
669-71 . . School of Canterbury; Archbishop Theodore. A x
680 7-709. . The literary work of Ealdhelm. (Born 656.) \
690 (cir.) . The laws of Inc. J y
674-82 . . Wearmouth, Jarrow, and their libraries, founded by
Benedict Biscop.
673 .... Baeda, Benedict's scholar, born.
731. . . . Bseda's Ecclesiastical History. (Death of Bseda, 735.)
735 .... Ecgberht, Archbp. of York, establishes the School
of York and the Library. (Died 766.)
766-82 . . jEthelbert and Alcuin make York the centre of
European learning.
782-92 . . Alcuin carries the learning of York to Europe.
793 .... The first Viking raid on Northumbria.
Cynewulf (born about 720) wrote his poems prob-
ably in the latter half of this century.
800 .... Charles the Great crowned emperor.
830 . . . = About this date the " Heliand," an Old Saxon
poem, was written.
3 2 3
324 ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
867-76 . . The final destruction of the seats of learning in
Northumbria by " the Army."
8fi .... The accession of Alfred.
886 (cir.) . Alfred begins his literary work. The English
Chronicle is first carefully edited in this reign.
901 .... Death of vElfred.
913. . . . Rolf settles in Normandy.
937 .... Song of Battle of Brunanburh, in the Chronicle.
961-88 . . Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury.
964, et seq. . King Eadgar, with ^thelwold and Oswald, Bishops
of Winchester and Worcester, revives English
monachism in Wessex and East Anglia.
971 .... Blickling Homilies.
991 .... Song of the Battle of Maldon.
991-96 . . ^Elfric's Homilies; after 1005, his Treatise on the
Old and New Testament. (Died 1020-25.)
1031 . . . Swegen of Denmark becomes King of England.
1042-65 . . Reign of Edward the Confessor. England's first
contact with French Romance.
Latin translation of a late Greek Romance, Apol-
lonius of Tyre, and of two small books belonging
to the Alexander Saga.
1066 . . . The Lay of Roland is brought to England.
1066 . . . William I.
1070 . . . Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury.
The " Charlemagne," Norman poem, before the end
of the nth century.
1071 . . . The Exeter Book given by Leofric, Bishop of Exe-
ter, to his Cathedral.
1085 . . . The Domesday Book.
1087 William If. crowned by Lanfranc.
1093 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1095 . . . The beginning of the Crusades. The stories of the
East soon come to the West.
zioo . . . Henry I.
1109 . . . University of Paris rises into importance with Wil-
liam of Champeaux and Peter Abelard.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
325
A.D.
i no . . . Miracle play of St. Catherine.
1118 . . . End of Florence of Worcester's Chronicle.
1 1 20 . . . End of William of Malmesbury's Historia regum
Anglorum.
1126-43 William of Malmesbury's Historic novelise.
1129 . . . End of Simeon of Durham's Chronicle.
11 35-54 Henry of Huntingdon's History of England.
1135 . . . Stephen.
11 3 2 ~35 Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Britonum. Final
form, 1147.
1154 . . . English Chronicle ends.
Gesta Stephani. Hexham Chroniclers.
At the end of reign of Henry I. and during
Stephen's reign the Cistercians brought about a
religious revival. The Abbeys founded in the
North.
1154 . . . Henry II.
1155 . . . Wace's Geste des Bretons (Brut d'Engleterre).
1 1 60 . . . Benoit de Sainte More's Roman de Troie.
1156-59?. . John of Salisbury's Polycraticus.
1160-70 . . Walter Map's De Nugis curialium; Golias.
(cir.) The Lais of Marie de France; written in Eng-
land.
1160-70 . . Robert de Boron's Le petit Saint Graal.
1170 . . . Wace finishes his Roman de Rou.
1170-90 . . Le Grand Saint Graal; Queste de Saint Graal;
Lancelot du Lac, by Walter Map?
1180-90? . . Chrestien de Troye's Conte de Graal (Percevale).
Chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough, continued
by Roger of Howden.
Ranulf de Glanvill's work on English law.
Richard Fitz Nigel's Dialogus de Scaccario.
Gerald de Barri (Giraldus Cambrensis) Itinera-
rium; Journey in Wales; Conquest of Ireland
written in this and the two following reigns.
j iSg . . . Richard I.
1198 . . . William of Newborough's Chronicle.
326 ENGLISH LITERATURE
In the middle of the 1 2th century the troubadour poetry of
Southern France rose into its fine flower in the work of Bernart
de Ventadorn. He had been preceded by Guilhem de Poitiers,
the first troubadour of whom we know. Bertrand de Born,
Geoffrey Rudel, Pierre Vidal are famous troubadours of this cen-
tury. The lyrics of Northern France, those of the trouveres, grew
out of this Provengal poetry. No lyrical poetry in England in this
century. The chansons de geste of the last century in France
were largely added to in this. Great literary activity prevailed in
Wales from the middle of this century down to the death of
Llewellyn in 1282. The epic of the Cid was shaped about 1160-70
out of ballads that had sung the border battles of Moors and
Spaniards. In Germany the Minnelieder arose in the middle of
the century, and Wolfram von Eschenbach introduced his new
conception of Parzival into the Arthurian legend. Also in the
middle of this century the Niebelungen Lied was cast into its form.
Italian poetry began with Ciullo d'Alcamo in Sicily, and Folca-
chiero of Siena, in the years 1172-78. In this century also the
mediaeval tales from India were cast into the History of the Seven
Sages, and into the Disciplina Clericalis. These materials were
moulded into various shapes by the French poets, and afterwards
in England.
A.D.
//99 . . . John.
Chronicle of Richard of Devizes. Annals of Barn-
well. Chronicle of Jocelyn of Brakelond, and
others.
1150-1200 . Sayings of Alfred.
1200-30 . . Roman de la Rose (Part I.) by Guillaume de Lorris.
1205 . . . Loss of Normandy.
1205 (cir.) . Layamon's Brut.
1215 . . . TheOrmulum. The Great Charter.
1210-50 . . Reign of Frederick II. Italian poetry in Sicily.
1216 . . . Henry III.
Chronicle of Roger of Wendover at St. Albans.
1235-73 Matthew Paris' Greater Chronicle; History of
England; Lives of earlier abbots.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 327
A.D.
1220-76 . . Guide Guinicelli. Father of new national litera-
ture in Italy.
1 220 (cir.) . Owl and Nightingale (Dorsetshire).
1220 (cir.) . Ancren Riwle (Dorsetshire).
1221 . . . Coming of Black Friars to England (Dominicans).
1224 . . . Coming of Grey Friars (Franciscans).
1225 ... St. Francis of Assisi's Song to the Sun.
1225-35?. . The Bestiary.
1230-40 (cir.) King Horn.
1 2 35-53 Robert Grossetete (Bp. of Lincoln). Chastel
d'amour.
1250 (cir.) . Genesis and Exodus.
1258 . . . Provisions of Oxford, Proclamation of King's
adhesion to them in English as well as French.
1262 . . . Miracle plays acted by the Town Guilds.
1264 . . . Battle of Lewes Ballad.
1264 . . . Corpus Christi Day appointed; fully observed, 1311.
1268 . . . Roger Bacon's Opus Majus.
After Lewes and its war-ballad, the Love Lyric begins in such
verse as the Throstle and the Nightingale and the Cuckoo Song.
Also the religious lyric in such verse as the Sorrows of Christ and
the Lullaby, and the Love Song of Thomas de Hales, a Franciscan.
Also the satirical lyric, such as the Land of Cockayne. In this
reign Adam Marsh (De Marisco) has a famous Franciscan school
at Oxford. The Harrowing of Hell, first dramatic piece in English,
belongs to this reign. Northumbria begins again to write in second
half of century.
7.27.2 . . . Edward I.
The Alexander Romance in English in this reign.
The Tristan Story is also widely spread.
Romances arise in Northumbria. Many war-ballads.
1280-87 Guido delle Colonne's (a poet of Sicily, born 1250)
Historia Destructionis Trojae. Visited England
and wrote Historia de regibus et rebus Angliae.
1290-93 . . Dante's Vita Nuova.
1300 (cir.) . Gesta Romanorum.
328 ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
1300 (cir.) . Havelok the Dane.
1303 . . . Robert Manning of Brunne's Handlyng Synne.
His Chronicle finished 1338.
1300-05 . . Roman de la Rose (Part II.), by Jean de Meung.
1307 . . . Edward II.
1303-21 . . Dante's Divine Comedy.
1324 . . . Court of Love at Toulouse.
1320-30 . . Cursor Mundi (Northumbrian). William Shore-
ham's Poems (Kentish). A Cycle of Homilies,
Legend Cycle (both Northumbrian) are now
worked at. Sir Tristrem; Sire Otuel; Guy of
Warwick; Bevis of Hampton; all now in English.
1327 . . . Edward III.
1330 . . . Pilgrimage of Human Life, a French poem by
Guillaume de Delguileville. Legenda Aurea,
by Jacobus a Voragine, Bishop of Genoa.
Guillaume de Machault.(B. I282(cir.); d. I37o(cir.).)
1340 (cir.) . Richard Rolle of Hampole's Pricke of Conscience.
1340 . . . Dan Michel of Northgate's Ayenbite of Inwyt.
1341 . . . Petrarca crowned laureate at Rome.
1345 . . . Death of Richard Aungerville, Bishop of Durham,
writer of Philobiblion ; leaves library to Oxford.
1333-52 . . Songs of Laurence Minot on King Edward's wars.
1350, et seq. . Collections of books, and University foundations in
England now begin to serve literature.
1350-53 . . Decameron of Boccaccio. 1341, LaTeseide. 1348,
Filostrato.
1350 (cir.) . Romances are now written on the Welsh marches
in alliterative Old English verse ; subject and
mise-en-scene French, verse and diction national.
Among first of these, Joseph of Arimathie and
two fragments of an Alexander Romance.
1355 William of Palerne. 1350? Tale of Gamelyn.
1355 (cir.) . Anturs of Arthur at the Tarnawathelan.
1360-70 (cir.) Sir Gawayne and the Grene \ Perhaps by the
Knight, Pearl, Cleanness > "philosophical
and Patience. J Strode."
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 329
A.D.
1 362-63 . . Langland's Vision of Piers the Plowman. (A-Text.)
1366-70 . . Chaucer's first poems. Book of the Duchess, 1369.
1373 Petrarca's Griselda.
1375 . . . Harbour's Bruce.
*377 Richard II.
1377 . . . B-Text of Piers the Plowman.
1378? . . . Wyclif's Summa in Theologia.
1379 . . . New College, Oxford; Latin School at Winchester
founded by William of Wykeham.
1380 . . . Wyclifs translation of the Bible.
1 380-83 . . Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida.
1382-85 . . Chaucer's Parlement of Foules, Hous of Fame,
Legend of Good Women.
1383 (cir.) . Wyclif's Trialogus. (Died 1384.)
1385-89 . . Chaucer's Prologue and many of the Canterbury
Tales.
1393? Gower's Confessio Amantis.
1395 Chrysoloras comes to Florence to teach Greek.
Guarino Guarini teaches Greek at Venice, Florence,
Ferrara. (Born 1370; died 1460.)
1398? . . . C-Text of Piers the Plowman.
From Boccaccio to the middle of the i6th century a great mass of
Italian Novelle were produced ; used in England for plays, stories, &c.
/j>99 . . . Henry IV.
1400 . . . Death of Chaucer and Langland.
1411-12 . . Hoccleve's Gouvernail of Princes.
1413 . . . Henry V.
1415 . . . Eustache Deschamps dies. Alain Chartier and
Christine de Pisan, his contemporaries.
1421 . . . Lydgate's Troy Book. 1424-25, Story of Thebes.
1422 . . . Henry VI.
1422 . . . James I. of Scotland : The King's Quair.
1422 . . . Paston Letters begin ; end 1509.
1423 . . . John Aurispa brings from Greece to Italy more than
200 MSS.
1424-25 . . Lydgate's Falles of Princes.
330 ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
1427 . . . Filelfo, laden with MSS., returns from Greece to
Florence.
Pletho, Bessarion, Gaza have diffused the spirit of ancient learn-
ing in Italy by 1440. Universities at Pavia, Turin, Ferrara, Flor-
ence, &c. Eight hundred MSS. left by Niccolo Niccoli to Florence,
in 1436; cradle of the Laurentian Library.
1449 . . . Pecock's Represser of Overmuch blaming of the
Clergy.
1453 . . . Fall of Constantinople.
1450 (cir.) . Invention of Printing.
1460-80 . . Poems of Robert Henryson.
1461 . . . Ed-ward IV.
1470 . . . Malory's Morte Darthur.
1474-76 . . Caxton sets up printing press at Westminster.
1481 . . . Luigi Pulci's Morgante Maggiore.
1483 . . . Edward V. Richard IIL
1483 . . . Henry VII.
1495? . . . Boiar do's Orlando Inamorato begun.
1501 . . . Gawin Douglas' Palace of Honour.
1503 . . . Dunbar's Thistle and Rose.
1504 . . . Sannazaro's Arcadia.
1506 . . . Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure.
1507 . . . Skelton's Bowge of Court; Boke of Phyllip
Sparowe.
1507-08 . . Dunbar's Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins.
7/09 . . . Henry VIII.
1509 . . . Erasmus: Praise of Folly.
1513 . . . Gawin Douglas : Translation of the ^Eneid.
1513? . . . Sir Thos. More's Life of Edward V. and History
of Richard III. written.
1515 . . . Trissino's Sofonisba; first use of blank verse in
Italy.
1516 . . . Ariosto's Orlando Furioso begun; the rest in 1532.
1516 . . . Sir Thos. More's Utopia, written in Latin.
1518? . . . Skelton's Colin Clout.
1518? . . . Amadis de Gaul translated into English.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
331
A.D.
1524 . . . Ronsard born. (Died 1586.)
1527 . . . Tyndale's translation of the New Testament.
1528 . . . Lyndsay's Dreme.
1520-40 . . Heywood's Interludes.
1532, et seq. , Rabelais' Gargantua, &c.
1535 . . . Lyndsay's Satire of the Three Estates.
1540 . . . Cranmer's Bible.
1541? . . . Ralph Roister Doister, first English comedy, printed
1566.
1545 . . . Ascham's Toxophilus.
1547 . . . Ed-ward VI.
1549 . . . Latimer's Sermon on the Ploughers.
1549-52 . . English Prayer Book.
1551 . . . Ralph Robinson's translation of More's Utopia into
English.
1553 . . . Mary.
1553 . . . Lyndsay's Monarchic.
1557 . . . To ttel's Miscellany ; poems by Wyatt and Surrey.
1558 . . . Elizabeth.
1559 . . . Sackville's Mirror for Magistrates.
1561-62 . . Gorboduc, the first English Tragedy. Printed as
Ferrex and Porrex, 1571.
1562 . . . Phaer's Virgil. Many other translations of the
classics before 1579.
1563 . . . Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
1563 . . . Sackville's Induction to Mirror for Magistrates.
1570 . . . Ascham's Scholcmaster.
1571 . . . R. Edward's Damon and Pithias printed.
1575 . . . Comedy of Gammer Gurton's Needle printed. Play
of Apius and Virginia printed.
1576 . . . Paradise of Dainty Devices; 1578, Gorgeous Gal-
lery of Gallant Inventions; 1584, Handfull of
Pleasant Delights all Poetical Miscellanies.
1576 . . . Three theatres built in London ; Blackfriars, the
Curtain, the Theatre.
1576 . . . Gascoigne's Steele Glas. (First verse satire.)
1577 . Holinshed's Chronicle.
332
A.D.
1579-So
^579
1580-81 .
1580-88 .
1581 . .
1582? . .
1583-1625?
1584-92 .
1584-98 .
1586 . .
1587 . .
1588-90 .
1588-90 .
1588-90? .
1589
1590 . .
1593
1593
1594
1593-96 .
^595
1596, et sfq.
1594-96 .
1597 . .
1597-98 .
1598 . .
1598-99 .
1596-98 .
1599 . .
1600 . .
1600
ENGLISH LITERATURE
Lyly's Euphues. 1580-1601 (cir.) his dramas.
Spenser's Shepheards Calendar.
North's Plutarch's Lives.
Sidney's Arcadia and Apologie for Poetric.
Montaigne's Essaies.
Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.
Watson's Hecatompathia or Passionate Century.
Pamphleteers : Greene, Lodge, G. Harvey, Nash,
Dekker, Breton.
Dramas of Greene. 1583, et sej., Tales in prose.
Dramas of Peele.
Warner's Albion's England.
Marlowe's Tamburlaine acted. (Printed 1590.)
Marlowe's Faustus, Jew of Malta, Edward II.
Series of Martin Marprelate Tracts.
Love's Labour's Lost.
Hakluyt's Voyages.
Spenser's Faerie Queene (Books i.-iii. I596,iv.-vi.).
Harrington's translation of Ariosto's Orlando.
Donne's Satires (died 1626).
Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis.
Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity (Bks. i.-iv. 1597, v.).
Many collections of Sonnets.
Daniel's Hist, of Civil Wars of York and Lancaster.
Ben Jonson's Dramas. (Died 1637.)
Merchant of Venice.
Bacon's Essays. (First set.)
Hall's Satires.
Chapman's Homer (First part). Sylvester's trans-
lation of Du Bartas.
Marston's Satires.
Drayton's Barons' Wars and England's Heroical
Epistles.
The Globe Theatre built.
England's Helicon; England's Parnassus; Belve-
dere; all poetical Miscellanies.
Fairfax's translation of Tasso.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 333
A.D.
1600 . . . Lope de Vega began his dramas about 1590, and
continued writing till his death in 1635.
1600-81 . . Calderon, who had a large influence on the French
Drama of the xyth and i8th centuries, on the
English Restoration Drama, and on the Italian,
German and English poetry of i8th and igth
centuries.
1603 (cir.) ? . The Return from Parnassus.
1603 . . . Florio's translation of Montaigne's Essays.
1603 . . . James I.
1603 . . . Knolles' History of the Turks.
1604 . . . Authorised Version of the Bible.
1605 . . . Bacon's Advancement of Learning (Books i. and iL).
1 606-16 . . Cervantes' Don Quixote.
1609 . . . Shakespeare's Sonnets published.
1610-25 (cir.) Dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher.
1610 . . . Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victory.
1611 . . . Speed's History of Great Britain.
1612 . . . Webster's first drama, The White Devil (printed).
1612-20 . . T. Shelton's Translation of Don Quixote.
1613-14 . . Drayton's Polyolbion.
1613-16 . . Browne's Britannia's Pastorals; 1614, The Shep-
herd's Pipe.
1613 . . . Purchas his Pilgrimage.
1613 . . . Wither's Abuses Stript and Whipt.
1613 . . . Drummond of Hawthornden's first poem. (D. 1649.)
1614 . . . Raleigh's History of the World.
1615 . . . Sandys' Travels.
1615 . . . Wither's Shepherd's Hunting.
1616 . . . Chapman's Homer finished. Shakespeare dies.
1621 . . . Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
1622 . . . Massinger's Virgin Martyr. (Died 1639.)
1623 . . . Webster's Duchess of Malfi (printed).
1623 . . . Waller's first poems.
1623 . . . The " First Folio " of Shakespeare.
Chapman, Tourneur, Middleton, and other drama*
lists wrote during this reign.
334 ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
1625 . . . Charles I.
1628 . . . Harvey's De Motu Sanguinis.
1629 . . . Milton's Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity.
1631 . . . George Herbert's Temple.
1635? . . . Sir Thos. Browne's Religio Medici (pub. 1642).
1632-37 . . Milton's Allegro, Penseroso, Comus, Lycidas.
1633 . . . Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island.
1634 . . . Ford's historical play of Perkin Warbeck.
1636 . . . Corneille's first tragedy, the Cid. His last play, 1675.
1636 . . . French Academy founded.
1640 . . . Thomas Carew's poems.
1641 . . . Milton's first pamphlet.
1641 . . . Evelyn's Diary begins (ends 1697; published 1818).
1642 . . . Theatres closed.
1642 . . . Fuller's Holy and Profane state.
1642 . . . Denham's Cooper's Hill.
1642 . . . Hobbes' De Give.
1644 . . . Milton's Areopagitica.
1645 Waller's poems.
1645 Meetings held which lead to formation of the
Royal Society.
1646 . . . Crashaw's Steps to the Temple.
1647 . . . Jeremy Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying.
1647 . . . Cowley's Mistress. Davideis, 1 641(7).
1647-48 . . Herrick's Noble Numbers; Hesperides.
1648 . . . J. Beaumont's Psyche or Love's Mystery.
1648 . . . Suckling's Fragmenta Aurea.
1649 Lovelace's Lucasta.
7649 . . . Common-wealth.
1650 . . / Baxter's Saints' Rest.
1650 . . . Milton's Defensio pro Populo Anglicano.
1650-52 . . MarvelPs Garden poems written.
1650-56 . . Vaughan's Silex Scintillans.
1650-57 . . Pascal's Provincial Letters.
1651 . . . Hobbes' Leviathan.
1653 . . . Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler.
1653 . . . Moliere's first play.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 335
A.D.
1656 . . . Harrington's Oceana.
1659 . . . Dryden's Stanzas on the Death of Cromwell.
1659 . . . Corneille's Essay on the Three Unities.
1659-60 . . Pepys' Diary begins (finished 1669; published 1825).
1660 . . . Boileau's first satire.
/66o . . . Charles II.
1660 . . . Re-opening of the theatres by Davenant and
Killigrew.
1662 . . . Royal Society incorporated.
1663 . . . Dryden's first play, the Wild Gallant.
1663 . . . Butler's Hudibras (Part I.).
1663 . . . Algernon Sidney's Discourses concerning Govern-
ment, published 1698.
1663 . . . The London Public Intelligencer. (Becomes the
London Gazette, 1666.)
1663-67 . . Playsof Racine. Esther, 1689 (?),Athalie, 1 690(?).
1664 ... La Fontaine's first book of Contes.
1667 . . . Dryden's Annus Mirabilis; Essay on Dramatic Poesy.
1667 . . . Cowley's Essays.
1667 . . . Milton's Paradise Lost.
1667 . . . Petty 's Treatise on Taxes.
1668 . . . La Fontaine's first book of Fables. (Died 1695.)
1670 . . . Izaak Walton's Lives.
1670 . . . Pascal's Les Pensees.
1671 . . . Paradise Regained. Samson Agonistes.
1671-77 . . Dramas of Wycherley.
1672 . . . Dryden's Essay on Heroic Plays.
1674 . . . Boileau's Art of Poetry.
1678 . . . Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. (Part I.)
1678 . . . Dryden's All for Love. (In blank verse.)
1678 . . . Cud worth's Intellectual System of the Universe.
1680 . . . Filmer's Patriarcha.
1 68 1 . . . Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel. (First part.)
1682 ... Dryden's Medal, MacFlecknoe, Religio Laici.
1684 . . . Pilgrim's Progress. (Part II.)
Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion written
during this reign. (Published 1707.)
336 ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
1683 . . . James II.
1687 . . . Newton's Principia.
1687 . . . Defoe's first tract.
1687 ... La Bruyere's Les Caracteres.
i688-Sg . . The Revolution. William III.
1690 . . . Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding.
1692 ... Sir Win. Temple's Miscellanea, Vol. ii.
16931700 . Congreve's dramas.
1694 . . . Dryden's Last Play.
1697-1705 . Dramas of Vanbrugh.
1698 . . . Collier's Short View of the Immorality of the Stage*
1698-1707 . Dramas of Farquhar.
1700 . . . Dryden's Fables. (Nov. 1699.)
1700 . . . Prior's Carmen Seculare.
1702 . . . Anne.
1702 . . . Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana.
1702-05 . . Steele's Plays. (1722. Comedy of the Conscious
Lovers, his last play.)
1704 . . . Swift's Tale of a Tub, Battle of the Books. (Writ-
ten by 1596-97.)
1704 ... Addison's Campaign. Rosamond (opera), 1706.
1704-13 . . Defoe's Review.
1709 . . . Mat Prior's Poems.
1709-11 . . TheTatler.
1 709-44 . . Writings of Bishop Berkeley.
1709 . . . Pope's Pastorals. (Written 1704-05.)
1711-12-14 . The Spectator.
1712 . . . Pope's Rape of the Lock. (Final form 1714.)
1713 . . . Addison's Cato.
1714 . . . Gay's Shepherd's Week.
77/4 . . . George I.
1715-20 . . Pope's Homer's Iliad.
1715, et seq. . Le Sage's Gil Bias.
1719 . . . Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. 1720-25, Other novels.
172434 . . Bp. Burnet's History of my own Times published.
1725 . . . Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd. (First form 1723.^
1726-30 . . Thomson's Seasons.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE
337
AD.
1 726-27
1727 .
1728 .
1728 .
1730 .
1732-34
1 732-48
1 735
1736 .
1737 .
1738 .
*739
1 740 .
1741 .
1740-41
1742 .
1742-69
1 744 .
1 744 .
1746 .
1748 .
1748 .
1748 .
1749 .
1749 .
1750-52
1751-52
1754 .
1754 .
1754-61
1755 .
1756 .
1757 .
1758 .
Swift's Gulliver's Travels.
George II.
Gay's Fables. 1728, Beggar's Opera.
Pope's Dunciad. (First form. Others in 1729-42-43.)
Voltaire's Henriade.
Marivaux: Lejeudel'amour etduhasard. (D. 1763.)
Pope's Essay on Man. Moral Essays, 1732-35.
Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac.
Johnson's Translation of Lobo's Voyage to Abys-
sinia. (His first work.)
Butler's Analogy of Religion.
Shenstone's Schoolmistress. (Final form, 1742.)
Johnson's London.
Hume's Treatise of Human Nature.
Richardson's Pamela. 1 748, Clarissa Harlowe.
Warburton's Divine Legation.
Hume's Essays.
Fielding's Joseph Andrews. 1749, Tom Jones.
Gray's Poems. (Collected edition 1768.)
Johnson's Life of Savage.
Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination.
Collins' Odes.
Smollett's Roderick Random.
Thomson's Castle of Indolence.
Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois.
Diderot's Encyclopedic begun.
Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes; Irene.
Johnson's Rambler.
Hume's Principles of Morals and Political Discourses.
Richardson's Sir Chas. Grandison.
Edwards' Freedom of the Will.
Hume's History of England.
Johnson's Dictionary.
Burke's Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful; Vin-
dication of Natural Society.
Hume's Natural History of Religion.
Robertson's History of Scotland. 1769, Charle V.
338
ENGLISH LITERATURE
1758 . . . Lessing's Litteraturbriefe.
*759 Johnson's Rasselas.
1759 . . . Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments.
1759 . . . Sterne's Tristram Shandy. (Vols. I and 2.)
1 7S9-9 Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses on Art.
7760 . . . George III.
1760 . . . Rousseau's Nouvelle Helolse.
1760 . . . Sterne's Tristram Shandy. (2 vols.; finished 1765.)
1760-65 . . Macpherson's Ossian.
1761-64 . . Poems of Churchill.
1762 . . . Falconer's Shipwreck.
1764-70 . . Chatterton's Poems.
1765 ... Goldsmith's Traveller.
1765 . . . Bishop Percy's Reliques of English Poetry.
1 765 . . . H. Walpole's Castle of Otranto.
1766 . . . Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. (Written 1762?)
1766 . . . Lessing's Laokoon.
1768-78 . . Plays of Goldsmith and Sheridan.
1769 ... Burke's Present State of the Nation.
1769-72 . . Letters of Junius.
1770 . . . Burke's Thoughts on the Present Discontents.
1770 . . . Goldsmith's Deserted Village.
1771-74 . . Beattie's Minstrel.
1773 . . . Ferguson's Poems.
1774 . . . Burke's Speech on American Taxation.
1774 . . . Goethe's Werther.
*775 Beaumarchais : Le Mariage de Figaro.
1775 . . . Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America.
1776 . . . Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.
7776 . . . Declaration of Independence.
1776 . . . Paine's Common Sense.
1777-81 . . T. Warton's History of English Poetry.
1 776-88 . . Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
1 777 . . . Robertson's History of America.
1778 . . . Frances Burney's Evelina.
1779-81 . . Johnson's English Poets.
1781 . . . Schiller's Die Rauber.
339
A.0.
1783 ... Crabbe's Village.
1783 . . . Blake's Poetical Sketches.
1785 . . . Cowper's Task.
1786 . . . Samuel Rogers' Poems.
1786 . . . Burns' first Poems.
1789 . . . Blake's Songs of Innocence. 1794, Songs of
Experience.
1789 . . . White's Natural History of Selborne.
1790 . . . Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France.
1791-92 . . Paine's Rights of Man. 1 794-95, Age of Reason.
1791 . . . Boswell's Life of Johnson.
1792-94 . . Arthur Young's Travels in France.
1793 . . . Godwin's Enquiry concerning Political Justice.
1793 . . Wordsworth's Evening Walk ; Descriptive Sketches.
1794 . . . Coleridge and Southey's Fall of Robespierre.
1796 . . . Poems; by Coleridge and Lamb.
1796 . . . Scott's translation of Burger's Lenore.
1796-97 . . Burke's Letters on a Regicide Peace.
1 797 ... Poems by Coleridge, Lamb, and Lloyd.
1797 . . . Poetry of the Anti- Jacobin.
1798 . . . Lyrical Ballads; by Coleridge and Wordsworth.
1798 . . . Malthus' Essay on the Principles of Population.
1798 . . . Landor's Gebir and other Poems.
1798 . . . Ebenezer Elliott's Vernal Walk.
1 799 . . . Scott's translation of Gotz von Berlichingen.
1799 . . . Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.
1800 . . . Coleridge's translation of Schiller's Wallenstein.
1801 . . . Southey's Thalaba. (He continued writing till 1 843.)
1802 ... Scott's Border Minstrelsy.
1802 . . . The Edinburgh Review.
1805 ... Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.
1807 . . . Byron's Hours of Idleness.
1807 . . . Wordsworth's Poems in 2 vols.
1807 . . . T. Moore's Irish Melodies begun.
1807-08 . . Lamb's Specimens of Dramatic Poetry.
1808 . . . Scott's Marmion. 1 8 10, Lady of the Lake.
1809 . . . The Quarterly Review.
34O ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
1809 . . . Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
1810 . . . Allan Cunningham's first published poems. (0.1842.)
1811-18 . . Novels of Jane Austen.
1812-18 . . Byron's Childe Harold.
1813 . . . Shelley's Queen Mab. 1816, Alastor.
1814 . . . Scott's Waverley. (His novels continue till 1831.)
1814 . . . Wordsworth's Excursion.
1814 . . . H. Gary's Translation of Dante.
1816 . . . Coleridge's Christabel ; Kubla Khan.
1816? . . . Leigh Hunt's Story of Rimini.
1817 . . . Byron's Manfred. i8i8,Beppo; 1819-23, Don Juan.
1817 . . . Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.
1817 . . . Keats' first poems.
1817 . . . Bryant's Thanatopsis.
i8i7,etseg. . Hazlitt's Dramatic and Poetical Criticisms. (Died
1830.)
1818 . . . Hallam's View of the State of Europe during the Mid-
dle Ages. 1827, Constitutional Hist, of England.
1819 . . . Irving's The Sketch-Book.
i8ao . . . George IV.
1820 . . . Keats' Hyperion and other Poems.
1820 . . . Shelley's Prometheus Unbound.
1821 . . . Byron's Cain and other dramas.
1821 . . . DeQuincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater.
1821 . . . Shelley's Adonals and Epipsychidion.
1821 . . . Cooper's The Spy.
1821-23 . . Lamb's Essays of Elia.
1822 . . . T. L. Beddoes' Bride's Tragedy.
1822 . . . Rogers' Italy.
1822-33 Prof. Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianae. (In Blackwood.)
1824 . . . Carlyle's translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.
1825 . . . Macaulay's Essay on Milton.
1826 . . . Poems by Two Brothers. (Chas. and Alfd. Tennyson.)
1827 . . . Disraeli's Vivian Gray.
1827 . . . Keble's Christian Year.
1827 . . . Bulwer Lytton's Pelham.
1827 . . . Poe's Tamerlane and other Poems.
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 34!
A.D.
1830 . . . William IV.
1830 . . . Alfred Tennyson : Poems.
1830 . . . Moore's Life of Byron.
1830 . . . Mrs. Hemans' Songs of the Affections.
1831, et seq. . Ebenezer Elliott's Corn Law Rhymes.
1831 . . . Robert Browning's Pauline; published 1833.
1832 . . . Death of Sir Walter Scott. Death of Goethe.
1834 . . . Carlyle's Sartor Resartus.
1836 . . . Dickens' Pickwick.
1836 . . . Emerson's Nature.
1836 . . . Holmes' Poems.
183? . . . Victoria.
1837 . . . Carlyle's French Revolution.
1837 . . . Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales.
1838 . . . Whittier's Poems.
1838 . . . Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
1839 . . . Longfellow's Voices of the Night.
1841 . . . Newman's Tracts for the Times, No. xc.
1842 . . . Browning's Dramatic Lyrics.
1843 . . . Ruskin's Modern Painters. (Vol. i.)
1847 C. Bronte's Jane Eyre.
1848 . . . Arnold's Strayed Reveller and other Poems.
1848 . . . Macaulay's History of England. (Vol. I.)
1848 . . . Thackeray's Vanity Fair.
1848 . . . Lowell's Biglow Papers (first series).
1848 . . . Thoreau's Week on the Concord and Merrimac
Rivers.
1849 . . . Parkman's California and Oregon Trail.
1850 . . . Mrs. Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese.
1850 . . . Tennyson's In Memoriam.
1852 . . . Mrs. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
1855 . . . Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
1856 , . . Froude's History of England. (Vol. I.)
1856 . . . Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic.
1858 . . . George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life.
1858 . . . Morris' Defence of Guinevere and other Poems.
1858 . . . Tennyson's Idylls of the King.
342 ENGLISH LITERATURE
A.D.
1858 . . . Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.
1858 . . . Fitzgerald's Translation of Omar Khayyam.
1859 . . . Darwin's Origin of Species.
1859 . . . Mill's On Liberty.
1862 . . . Spencer's First Principles.
1863 . . . Huxley's Man's Place in Nature.
1864 . . . Lowell's Fireside Travels.
1865 . . . Meredith's Rhoda Fleming.
1865 . . . Arnold's Essays in Criticism (first series).
1866 . . . Swinburne's Poems and Ballads.
1866 . . . Whittier's Snow-Bound.
1869 . . . Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad.
1870 . . . Rossetti's Poems.
1870 . . . Bret Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp.
1872 . . . Howells' Their Wedding Journey.
1873 . . . Pater's Studies in the Renaissance.
1875 . . . James' A Passionate Pilgrim.
1882 . . . Stevenson's New Arabian Nights.
INDEX
BORN. DIKD
1672 Addison, Joseph, 182, 183, 187, 191, 193, 195. . . . 1719
849 JElfred, King, 3, 15, 19, 23, 24, 27 901
Fl. 1006 .ffilfric (Grammaticus), 29
Fl. 1005 JElf tic (Bata) ,29
908? /Ethelwold, Bishop, 28 984
1721 Akenside, Mark, 214, 219 1770
735 Alcuin, 27 804
Alexander, Sir W. (see Stirling, Earl of)
Fl. 1420 Andrew of Wyntoun, 91
1555 Andrewes, Lancelot, 153, 154 1626
1667 Arbuthnot, Dr. John, 185 1735
1822 Arnold, Matthew, 248, 271, 279 1888
1515 Ascham, Roger, 84, 99 1568
1775 Austen, Jane, 210 1817
1561 Bacon, Sir Francis, 104, 108, 109, 123, 144, 152. . 1626
673 Baeda, 3, 7, 14, 15, 25, 26 735
1826 Bagehot, Walter, 272 1877
1816 Bailey, Philip, 247
1316? Barbour, John, 91 1395
1475? Barclay, Alexander, 88 1552
1820 Barnes, William, 246 1886
1630 Barrow, Isaac, 179 1677
1615 Baxter, Richard, 154 1691
1735 Beattie, James, 216, 220 1803
1584 Beaumont, Francis, 144-145 1616
1616 Beaumont, Joseph, 159 1699
1803 Beddoes, Thomas, 244 1849
1640 Behn, Aphra, 194 1689
343
344 ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORN. DIED.
628? Benedict, Biscop, 26 690
1748 Bentham, Jeremy, 208 1832
1662 Bentley, Richard, 182, 190 1742
1685 Berkeley, Bishop, 188, 190 1753
1388? Berners, Juliana, 75
1467 Berners, Lord, 83 1532
1650? Blackmore, Sir Richard, 187 1729
1699 Blair, Robert, 213 1746
1757 Blake, William, 222-224 ^27
Fl. 1470-1492 Blind Harry, 91
1766 Bloomfield, Robert, 225 1823
1545 Bodley, Sir Thomas, 154 1613
1678 Bolingbroke, Lord, 185, 190, 199 1751
1803 Borrow, George, 260 1881
1740 Boswell, James, 199 1795
1627 Boyle, Robert, 151 1691
1816 Bronte, Charlotte, 260 1855
1554 Brooke, Lord (Pulke Greville) ,123 1628
Broome, Richard, 148 1652?
1689 Broome, William, 185 1745
1778 Brown, Thomas, 208 1820
1771 Brown, Charles Brockden, 291 1810
1605 Browne, Sir Thomas, 154 1682
1591 Browne, William, 157 1643
1809 Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 278 1861
i8ia Browning, Robert, 224, 244, 247, 277 1889
1730 Bruce, James, 209 1794
1746 Bruce, Michael, 221, 222 1767
1794 Bryant, William Cullen, 311 1878
1628 Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 176,
193 1687
1822 Buckle, Henry Thomas, 270 1862
1628 Bunyan, John, 168 1688
1729 Burke, Edmund, 199, 205 1797
1643 Burnet, Bishop, 179, 182 1715
1752 Burney, Prances (Madame D'Arblay), 202 1840
1759 Burns, Robert, 90, 222, 226, 243 1796
1577 Burton, Robert, 154 1640
1692 Butler, Bishop, 190 1752
1612 Butler, Samuel, 174, 181 1680
1788 Byron, Lord, 236, 237, 243, 244 1824
INDEX 345
BORN. DIED.
Fl. 670 Caedmon, 3, 12-19
1831 Calverley, Charles Stuart, 279 1834
1551 Camden, William, 151 1623
1777 Campbell, Thomas, 207, 235 1844
Temp. Hen. VI . .Campeden, Hugh de, 75
Campion, Thomas, 108 1619
1770 Canning, George, 207 1827
1393 Capgrave, John, 75 1464
1598? Carew, Thomas, 158 1639?
1795 Carlyle, Thomas, 206, 268 1881
1422? Cazton, William, 77, 78, 86, 87 1491?
1748 Cecil, Richard, 208 1810
1667? Centlivre, Susannah, 194 1723
1780 Chalmers, Dr., 208 1847
1559? Chapman, George, 117, 141-143 1634
1619 Charleton, Walter, 181 1707
1752 Chatterton, Thomas, 217 1770
1340 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 34, 52, 61-70, 78, 86, 88, 90,
91, 94, 216 1400
1514 Cheke, Sir John, 82 1557
Fl. 1430 Chestre, Thomas, 75
1602 Chillingworth, William, 150, 153, 179 1644
1731 Churchill, Charles, 214 1764
1671 Cibber, Colley, 185, 195 1757
1609 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, 150, 153 1674
1675 Clarke, Samuel, 190 1729?
1835 Clemens, Samuel L. (Mark Twain), 307
1819 Clough, Arthur Hugh, 248 1861
1772 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 122, 166, 206-208,227,
229, 230 1834
1467? Colet, John, 82, 104 1519
1650 Collier, Jeremy, 194 1726
1676 Collins, Anthony, 190 1729
1721 Collins, William, 157, 214, 220 1759
1732 Colman, George (elder), 195 1794
1762 Colman, George (younger), 195 1836
1670 Congreve, William, 194, 195 1729
1562 Constable, Henry, 119, 156 1613
1789 Cooper, James Penimore, 293 1851
1577? Coryat, Thomas, 152 1617
1630 Cotton, Charles, 117, 191 1687
ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORM.
1571 Cotton, Sir Robert, 154 1631
1488 Coverdale, Miles, 85 1568
1618 Cowley , Abraham, 159, 172, 173, 182, 191 1667
1731 Cowper, William, 90, 213, 222-225, 243 l8o
1754 Crabbe, George, 222, 225 1832
1489 Cranmer, Thomas, 85 1556
1613? Crashaw, Richard, 7, 157, 158 1649
1617 Cudworth, Ralph, 179 1688
1732 Cumberland, Richard, 195 1811
Fl. 8th century. . Cynewulf , 5-7, 12, 15, 19, 21, 22, 48, 49
1562 Daniel, Samuel, 108,119, 121,152 1619
I79S Barley, George, 244 1846
1809 Darwin, Charles, 274 1882
1606 Davenant, Sir William, 148, 174, 193 1668
Fl. 1623 Davenport, Robert, 148
1569 Davies, Sir John, 123 1636
Fl. 1606 Day, John, 143
1661? Defoe, Daniel, 183, 187-189 1731
1570? Dekker, Thomas, 141, 142 1641?
1615 Denham, Sir John, 172, 173 1669
1785 De Quincey, Thomas, 207 1859
1812 Dickens, Charles, 261 1870
1804 Disraeli, Benjamin, 259 1881
1840 Dobson, Austin, 279
1573 Donne, John, 124, 157 1631
1637 Dorset, Charles Sackville, Earl of, 177 1706
1474? Douglas, Gawin, 90, 93 1522
1795 Drake, Joseph Rodman, 311 1820
1563 Drayton, Michael, 119, 121, 123 1631
1585 Drummond, of Hawthornden, William, 124, 157. 1649
1631 Dryden, John, 68, 159, 168, 172-174, 178, 181,
184, 193, 198, 216, 238 1700
Do Jon, Francis (see Junius)
1465? Dunbar, William, 90, 92-94 1530?
924 Dunttan, Archbishop, 28 988
1700? Dyer, John, 219 1758
640? Ealdhelm, Abbot of Malmesbury, 3, 18 709
1601? Earle, John, 153 1665
Kcgberht, Archbishop, 27 766
INDEX 347
BOM. DIED.
1767 Edgeworth, Maria, 210 1849
1703 Edwards, Jonathan, 288 1758
1490? Elyot, Sir Thomas, 83 1546
1803 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 303, 316 1882
1467 Erasmus, 82, 87 1536
1635? Etherege, Sir George, 194 1691
1819 Evans, Marian (George Eliot), 263 1880
1620 Evelyn, John, 182 1706
Fairfax, Edward, 116 1635
1678 Farquhar, George, 194 1707
1683 Fenton, Elijah, 185 1730
1750 Fergusson, Robert, 222 1774
1782 Ferrier, Susan, 210 1854
1707 Fielding, Henry, 195, 201 1754
Filmer, Sir Robert, 180 1653
1459? Fisher, Bishop, 82 1535
1809 Fitzgerald, Edward, 247, 279 1883
Flecknoe, Richard, 176 1678?
Flemming, Robert, 80 1483
1588? Fletcher, Giles, 157 1623
1579 Fletcher, John, 139, 144, 145, 161 1625
1582 Fletcher, Phineas, 157 1650
Florence of Worcester, 39 1118
1553? Florio, John, 117 1625
1720 Foote, Samuel, 195 1777
Fl. 1639 Ford, John, 147
1394? Fortescue, Sir John, 77 1476?
1516 Foze, John, 101 1587
1706 Franklin, Benjamin, 289 1790
1823 Freeman, Edward Augustus, 270 1892
1818 Froude, James Anthony, 269 1894
1608 Fuller, Thomas, 153, 154 1661
Fl. 1140? Gaimar, Geoffrey, 41
1717 Garrick, David, 195, 216 1779
1661 Garth, Sir Samuel, 187 1719
1525? Gascoigne, George, 99, 124 1577
1810 Gaskell, Mrs., 264 1865
1685 Gay, John, 185, 187, 195, 222 1732
mo? Geoffrey of Monmouth, 40, 44, 71 1154
348 ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORN. Dim
1737 Gibbon, Edward, 203 1794
Fl. 1639 Glapthorne, Henry, 148
Gloucester, Humphrey, Duke of , 79 1446
1756 Godwin, William, 210 1836
1536? Golding, Arthur, 100 1605?
1728 Goldsmith, Oliver, 195, 199, 202, 206, 220, 221. .. .1774
1540 Googe, Barnaby, 101 1594
1555 Gosson, Stephen, 108 1624
1325? Gower, John, 58, 59, 69, 79 1408
Grafton, Richard, 102, 152 1572?
1716 Gray, Thomas, 157, 174,215-216,219-221,235. ..1771
1837 Green, John Richard, 269 1883
1696 Green, Matthew, 187 1737
1560? Greene, Robert, no, 131, 132, 134 1592
Greville, Fulke (see Brooke, Lord)
Grey, William, Bishop of Ely, 80 1478
2519 Grimoald, Nicholas, 97 1562
1446? Grocyn, William, 82 1519
1794 Grote, George, 270 1871
Gunthorpe, John, Dean of Wells, 80 1498
1605 Habington, William, 159 1654
1552? Hakluyt, Richard, 109 1616
1584 Hales, John, 153, 179 1656
1651 Halifax, Charles Montague, Lord, 177 1715
1574 Hall, Joseph, Bishop of Norwich, 124, 153 1656
1764 Hall, Robert, 208 1831
1777 Hallam, Henry, 209 1859
1790 Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 311 1867
1757 Hamilton, Alexander, 291 1804
1677 Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 216 1746
1378 Harding, John, 75 1465?
i$6i Harington, Sir John, 116 1612
1611 Harrington, James, 123, 180 1677
1839 Harte, Francis Bret, 297, 322
1705 Hartley, David, 203 1757
1545? Harvey, Gabriel, 101, 108, no 1630
1578 Harvey, William, 151 1657
Hawes, Stephen, 86 1523?
1804 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 295 1864
1745 Hayley, William, 209 1820
INDEX 349
BORK. DIBD.
1778 Hazlitt, William, 207 1830
1793 Hemans, Felicia, 244 1835
1084? Henry of Huntingdon, 40 1155
1430? Henryson, Robert, 92 1506?
IS93 Herbert, George, 157, 158 1633
1591 Herrick, Robert, 157-160, 219 1674
1497? Heywood, John, 128 1580?
Heywood, Thomas, 100 1650?
Higden, Ranulf, 70 1364
1588 Hobbes, Thomas, 123, 150, 153, 180 1679
1370? Hoccleve, Thomas, 73 1450?
1745 Holcroft, Thomas, 210 1809
Holinshed, Raphael, 192 1580?
1809 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 305, 317 1894
1799 Hood, Thomas, 225 1845
1554? Hooker, Richard, 109 1600
1770? Hope, Thomas, 210 1831
1837 Howells, William Dean, 297
1711 Hume, David, 202-205, 2 8 *77 6
Hunnis, William, 120 1597
1784 Hunt, Leigh, 241, 242 1859
1694 Hutcheson, Francis, 203 1746
1825 Huxley, Thomas, 275 1895
1753 Inchbald, Elizabeth, 210 1821
1783 Irving, Washington, 292, 299 1859
1394 James I. of Scotland, 91 1437
1843 James, Henry, 297
1743 Jefferson, Thomas, 290 1826
1773 Jeffrey, Francis, 207 1850
Fl. 1387 John of Trevisa, 70, 78
1709 Johnson, Samuel, 197, 198, 205, 213, 216 1784
1573? Jonson, Ben, 109, 133, 141, 142, 144, 157, 160. . . . 1637
1589 Junius (Francis du Jon), 16 1677
i8th century " Junius " (writer of the "Letters," 1769-1772),
I97.20S
1795 Keats, John, 117, 228, 240-244 1821
1792 Keble, John, 247 1866
1637 Ken, Thomas, Bishop, 177 1711
35O ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORN.
1819 ............ Kingsley, Charles, 247, 265, 279 ............... 1875
1550? ........... Knolles, Richard, 152 ......................... 1610
1557? ........... Kyd, Thomas, 131 ............................ 1595?
............ Lacy, John, 194 .............................. i58i
1775 ............ Lamb, Charles, 123, 148, 207, 208 .............. 1834
1802 ............ Landon, Letitia Elizabeth (" L. E. L."), 244. . . 1838
1775 ............ Landor, Walter Savage, 207, 208 .............. 1864
1735 ............ Langhorn, Dr. John, 221 ...................... 1779
1330? ........... Langland, William, 49, 52-58, 101 ............. 1400
1842 ............ Lanier, Sidney, 322 .......................... 1881
1485? ........... Latimer, Hugh, Bishop of Worcester, 86 ...... 1555
Fl. 1200 ......... Layamon, 33, 34,41-43,48 ....................
1757 ............ Lee, Harriet, 210 ............................. 1851
1653? ........... Lee, Nat, 194 ................................ 1692
1750 ............ Lee, Sophia, 210 ............................. 1824
1506? ........... Leland, John, 83 .............................. 1553
............ Leofric, Bishop of Exeter, 3 .................. 1072
1616 ............ L'Estrange, Sir Roger, 180 ................... 1704
1806 ............ Lever, Charles, 259 ........................... 1872
............ Lichfield, William, 75 ........................ 1447
1468? ........... Lilly, William, 82 ............................ 152*
1809 ............ Lincoln, Abraham, 298 ....................... 1865
1771 ............ Lingard, John, 209 ........................... 1851
1633 ............ Locke, John, 123, 180 ......................... 1704
1821 ............ Locker-Lampson , Frederick, 279 .............. 1895
1794 ............ Lockhart, John Gibson, 209, 210 ............... 1854
1558? ........... Lodge, Thomas, no, 120, 124 ................. 1625
1807 ............ Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, 312 ........... 1882
1618 ............ Lovelace, Richard, 158 ........................ 1658
1819 ............ Lowell, James Russell, 306, 318 ............... 1891
1370? ........... Lydgate, John, 47, 72, 73, 78, 99, 101 ........... 1451?
1554? ........... Lyly, John, 106, 131 .......................... 1606
1490 ............ Lyndsay, Sir David, 94, 95, 22r ............... 1555
1803 ............ Lytton, Edward G. E. L. Bulwer, 278 ......... 1873
1800 ............ Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 267, 279 ....... 1859
1765 ............ Mackintosh, Sir James, 206 ................... 1832
1697 ............ Macklin, Charles, 195 ........................ 1797
1736 ............ Macpherson, James, 217 ...................... 1796
1772. .... ....... McCrie, Thomas, 209 ......................... 1835
INDEX 351
Bonn. DIBD.
1705? Mallet, David, 216 1765
Fl. 1470 Malory, Sir Thomas, 77
1766 Malthus, Thomas, 209 1834
1670? Mandeville, Bernard, 190 1733
Fl. 1288-1388 Mannyng, of Brunne, Robert, 38, 51
Fl. 1200 Map, Walter, 45
1564 Marlowe, Christopher, 119, 120, 131, 133, 143,
222 1593
1792 Marryat, Frederick, 259 1848
1575? Marston, John, 124, 141, 142 1634
1621 Marvell, Andrew, 157, 161, 174, 175, 219 1678
1583 Massinger, Philip, 146 1640
1663 Mather, Cotton, 287, 299 1728
Matthew Paris, 39 1259
i4th century . . . . Maundevile, Sir John, 70
1595 May, Thomas, 153 1650
1828 Meredith, George, 265
1808 Merivale, Charles, 270 1893
1735 Mickle, William, 221 1788
1570? Middleton, Thomas, 146 1627
1773 Mill, James, 209 1836
1806 Mill, John Stuart, 274 1873
1791 Milman, Henry Hart, 270 1868
1608 Milton, John, 16, 90, 96, 144, 155, 161-168, 171,
173, 219, 224 1674
1300? Minot, Laurence, 51 1352?
1744 Mitford, William, 209 1827
Montague, Charles (see Halifax, Lord)
1779 Moore, Thomas, 209, 236 1853
1614 More, Henry, 159 1687
1478 More, Sir Thomas, 40, 82, 83 1535
1834 Morris, William, 279-280 1896
1814 Motley, John Lothrop, 300 1877
1649 Mulgrave, John Sheffield, Earl of, 177 1721
1727 Murphy, Arthur, 195 1805
Fl. 1638 Nabbes, Thomas, 148
1567 Nash, Thomas, 108, 131 1601
Fl. 1375 Nassington, William of , 75
1620 Nerile, Henry, 180 1694
7801 Newman, John Henry, 273 1890
352 ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORM. DIED.
1642 Newton, Sir Isaac, 178 1727
1725 Newton, John, 208 1807
Fl. 1250 Nicholas of Guildford, 50
Fl. 1390 Nicholas of Hereford, 57
1535? North, Sir Thomas, 117 1601?
1532 Norton, Thomas, 75, 129 1584
1653 Oldham, John, 177 1683
1769 Opie, Amelia, 210 1853
1075 Ordericus Vitalis, 39 "43?
Fl. 1200 Orrmin, 42
Oswald of Worcester, 28 972
1652 Otway, Thomas, 194 1685
1581 Overbury, Sir Thomas, 153 1613
1737 Paine, Thomas, 206, 291 1809
1540? Painter, William, 102 1594
1743 Paley, William, 208 1805
1504 Parker, Archbishop, 151 1575
1823 Parkman, Francis, 300 1893
1679 Parnell, Thomas, 185 1718
1839 Pater, Walter, 272 1894
1823 Patmore, Coventry, 246 1896
1791 Payne, John Howard, 311 1852
1395? Pecock, Reginald, 77 1460?
1558? Peele, George, no, 131, 135 *597?
1633 Pepys, Samuel, 182 1703
1729 Percy, Thomas, Bishop, 216, 223 1811
1623 Petty, Sir William, 151, 180 1687
1510? Phaer, Thomas, 100 1560
1675 Phillips, Ambrose, 187 1749
1676 Phillips, John, 187 1709
Phreas, John, 80 1465
1809 Poe, Edgar Allan, 294, 318 1849
1667 Pomfret, John, 187 1702
1500 Pole, Reginald, 104 1558
1688 Pope, Alexander, 173, 175, 176,181, 184-188,
190, 198, 200, 213, 216, 219, 222 1744
1802 Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 279 1839
1796 Prescott, William Hickling, 300 1859
1664 Prior, Matthew, 177, 185, 187 1725
INDEX 353
BORN. DIED.
1600 Prynne, William, 155 1669
1577 Purchas, Samuel, 152 k 1626
Fl. i5th century. Purvey, John, 57 After 1427
1530? Puttenham, George, 107 1600?
1592 Quarles, Francis, 159 1644
1764 Radcliffe, Ann, 210 1823
1552 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 114, 115, 152 1618
1686 Ramsay, Allan, 187, 221, 222 1758
1605 Randolph, Thomas, 148 1634
1814 Reade, Charles, 264 1884
1710 Reid, Thomas, 203 1796
1723 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 199 1792
1772 Ricardo, David, 209 1823
1689 Richardson, Samuel, 200 1761
Ripley, George, 75 1490
Fl. 1295 Robert of Gloucester, 44
1721 Robertson, William, 202 1793
Fl. 1551 Robinson, Ralph, 83
1647 Rochester, John Wilmot, Earl of, 177 1680
1509? Rogers, John, 85 1555
1763 Rogers, Samuel, 228, 235 1855
Rolle, of Hampole, Richard, 38 1349
1634 Roscommon, Dillon Wentworth, Earl of, 177. . 1684
1828 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 249, 279 1882
1830 Rossetti, Christina, 249, 279 1894
1674 Rowe, Nicholas, 195 1718
Fl. I7th century.. Rowley, William, 148
Roy, William, 85 1531
1819 Ruskin, John, 270 1900
1836 Russell, Lady Rachel, 182 1723
1536 Sackville, Thomas, Lord Buckhurst, 95, 96, 99,
ico, 129 1608
St. John, Henry (see Bolingbroke, Lord)
1577 Sandys, George, 152 1644
1697 Savage, Richard, 214 1743
Savile, George (see Halifax, Lord)
1747 Scott, Thomas, 208 1821
1771 Scott, Sir Walter, 90, 206, 210-212, 216, 328, 234. 1832
1639 Sedley, Sir Charles, 177, 194 1701
2A
354 ENGLISH LITERATURE
BOMC. DIED.
1584 Selden, John, 151, 152 1654
Sellynge, William, 80
1640 Shadwell, Thomas, 176, 194. . .' 1692
1671 Shaftesbury, Anthony, Earl of, 190 1713
1564 Shakespeare, William, 82, 90, 96, 98, 117-121,
130-142, 161, 170-172, 193, 212, 216, 218 1616
1792 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 22, 228, 236, 238-244. . . 1822
1714 Shenstone, William, 216, 221 1763
1751 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 195 1816
1641 Sherlock, William, 179 1707
1596 Shirley, James, 148, 160 1666
Fl. 1440 Shirley, John, 78
1577 Sibbes, Richard, 154 1635
1622 Sidney, Algernon, 180 1683
1554 Sidney, Sir Philip, 102, 106-108, in, 115, 119. . 1586
Fl. nth and ) ,
,. | ..Simeon of Durham, 39
I2th centuries )
1460? Skelton, John, 79, 87, 88, 95 1528?
1722 Smart, Christopher, 221 1771
1723 Smith, Adam, 204 1790
1512 Smith, Sir Thomas, 82 1577
1771 Smith, Sydney, 207 1845
1721 Smollett, Tobias, 201 1771
1633 South, Robert, 179 1716
1660 Southerne, Thomas, 194 1746
1774 Southey, Robert, 207, 209, 227-229 1843
1560? Southwell, Robert, 118 1595
1552 Speed, John, 151 1629
1562 Spelman, Sir Henry, 151 1641
1820 Spencer, Herbert, 275
1552? Spenser, Edmund, 91, 95,99, 107, 110-117,119,
122, 157, 170, 216, 222 1599
1672 Steele, Sir Richard, 191, 192 1729
1713 Sterne, Laurence, 201, 202 1763
1850 Stevenson, Robert Louis, 266 1894
1753 Stewart, Dugald, 208 1828
1635 Stillingfleet, Edward, T79 1699
1567? Stirling, Sir William Alexander, Earl of, 124,
157 1640
1525 Stow, John, 102, 152 1605
1811 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 295 1896
INDEX 355
BORN. DIED.
1609 Suckling, Sir John, 148, 158 1642
1516? Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, 86, 88, 95-97. .1547
1667 Swift, Jonathan, 183, 185, 188, 189, 198 1745
1837 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 279
1613 Taylor, Jeremy, 153 1667
1628 Temple, Sir William, 182, 191 1699
1809 Tennyson, Alfred, 5, 7, 20, 41, 67, 224, 244, 246,
247, 276 1892
1 8 1 1 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 262 1863
1688 Theobald, Lewis, 185, 216 1744
1797 Thirwall, Connop, 270 1875
1225? Thomas of Erceldoune, 91 1300?
1700 Thomson, James, 94, 157, 188, 219, 235 1748
1817 Thoreau, Henry David, 304 1862
1686 Tickell, Thomas, 187 1740
1891 Ticknor, George, 306 1871
1630 Tillotson, John, Archbishop, 179 1694
1656 Tindal, Matthew, 190 1733
1670 Toland, John, 190 1733
Fl. 1551 Tottel, Richard, 97, 100
Fl. 1600-1613.... Tourneur, Cyril, 143
1815 Trollope, Anthony, 264 i88a
1530? Turbervile, George, 101, 102 1594?
1808 Turner, Charles Tennyson, 246 1879
Turpin, Archbishop, 45
1526? Tusser, Thomas, 97 1580
1484? Tyndale, William, 83, 84 1536
1820 Tyndall, John, 275 1893
1505 Udall, Nicholas, 129 .1556
1580 Ussher, Archbishop, 15 1656
1666? Vanbrugh, Sir John, 194 1726
1621 Vaughan, Henry, 159, 219 1693
1 1 20? Wace, 41 1184?
1822 Wallace, Alfred Russel, 274
1605 Waller, Edmund, 159, 172, 173 1687
1616 Wallis, John, 151 1703
1717 Walpole, Horace, 199 1797
356 ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORN. DIED
1676 Walpole, Sir Robert, 197 1745
1593 Walton, Izaak, 155, 182 1683
1698 Warburton, William, Bishop, 185, 190, 216. . . . 1779
1460 Warham, Archbishop, 82 1532
1558? Warner, William, 121 1609
1722 Warton, Joseph, 220 1800
1728 Warton, Thomas, 207, 216, 220 1790
1732 Washington, George, 290 1799
Fl. i6th century. Webbe, William, 107
1582? Webster, John, 144, 146 1652?
1782 Webster, Daniel, 298 1852
1708 Wesley, Charles, 224 1788
1703 Wesley, John, 208 1791
1714 Whitfield, George, 208 1770
1720 White, Gilbert, 200 1793
1819 Whitman, Walt, 320 1892
1807 Whittier, John Greenleaf, 314 1892
1727 Wilkes, John, 197 1797
1095? William of Malmesbury, 39 1142?
Fl. 1327 William of Shoreham, 38
Fl. 13th century. William of Waddington, 38
1785 Wilson, Professor John (Christopher North),
207 1854
1520? Wilson, Thomas, 97 1581
1588 Wither George 157, 159, 161 1667
1659 Wollaston, William, 190 1724
Worcester, John Tiptoft, Earl of, 79 1470
1770 Wordsworth, William, 92, 118, 207, 221, 223, 225,
227, 230-234, 239, 243 1850
1568 Wotton, Sir Henry, 92, 123, 152 1639
Fl. 1002-1023. . . . Wulfstan, Archbishop, 29
1503 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 86, 88, 95, 96 1542
1640? Wycherley, William, 194 1715
1320? Wyclif, John, 52, 53, 57 1384
1681 Young, Edward, 2x3 1765
INDEX TO FOREIGN AUTHORS
BORN. DIBD.
1474 Ariosto, 1 10, 116 1533
1313 Boccaccio, 61, 62,74, 80,99 1375
1434 Boiardo, no 1494
1636 Boileau, 172 1711
Calprenede, 192 1663
1424 Chalcondylas, 82 1511
Fl. nth century. .Chrestien of Troyes, 44
IO&B.C Cicero, 94, 100 43 B.C.
Contarini, 104 1550
1606 Corneille, 192 1684
1717 D'Alembert, 197 1783
1265 Dante, 61, 62, 70 1321
Dares Phrygius, 47
385 B.C Demosthenes, 100 322 B.C.
Dictys Cretensis, 47
1713 Diderot, 197 1784
1749 Goethe, 198, 206, 211 1832
i3th century Guido delle Colonne, 47
Homer, 117, 143, 186, 224
65 B.C Horace, 163 8 B.C.
1621 La Fontaine, 172 1695
1729 Lessing, 192, 205 1781
1496 Marot, in 1544
1280? Meung, Jean de, 59
357
ENGLISH LITERATURE
BORN. Dixo.
1623 Moliere, 193 1673
1533 Montaigne, 117,191 1593
1689 Montesquieu, 197, 202 1755
43 B.C. Ovid, 94, 100 17 A.D.
1304 Petrarca, 58, 61, 80, 96, 116 1374
427 B.C Plato, 96 347 B.C.
Fl. 50-100 Plutarch, 100
1639 Racine, 193 1699
Fl. i2th century. .Robert of Boron, 44
17 1 2 Rousseau, 197 1778
1458 Sannazaro, 102 1530
1759 Schiller, 198 1805
1 60 1 Scudery, 192 1667
Fl. 930 Skallagrimsson, Egil, 24
45? Statius, 47 96?
1544 Tasso, no, 116 1595
70 B.C. Virgil, 7, 47, 93, 96, 100, 177 19 B.C.
1694 Voltaire, 132, 135, 195, 197, 202 1778
A 000 161 721 6
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
m JUL 21 1971
Form L9-Series 444