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FIRST AND SECOND EPOCHS

OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

LITERATURE AT THE TIME OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS, THE DANES, AND DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

OF THE ANGLO-SAXONS UNDER WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR

THE BRITONS.

TACITUS-ERSE POEMS.

LET us now enter upon the different epochs of the English language and literature. The reader will easily place, upon the sketch which I am about to give, the authors and their works, as I make them pass successively before him. It begins with the Anglo-Saxon epoch; but, before we turn to that, let us see whether there are not traces left of the language of the Britons during the domination of the Romans.

Cæsar treats only of the manners of those islanders. Tacitus has preserved some speeches of British chiefs. Passing over the harangue of Caractacus to Claudius, I shall only quote some passages of the speech delivered by Galgacus in the mountains of Caledonia.

"The day of your liberty dawns. Deprived of our land and prevented by the Roman fleet from seeking refuge on the sea, nothing is left to us but arms. In the most remote corner of our deserts, out of sight even of the subjugated country, our eyes have not been shocked by the contact with foreign domination. Placed at the extremities of the earth and of liberty, hitherto the renown of our solitude and its fastnesses has defended us now the limits of Britain are

perceptible. Whatever is unknown is magnificent; but beyond Caledonia there is no nation to seek, nothing but waves and rocks, and the Romans are upon us....

"In the family of slaves, the last comer is the drudge of his companions. We, the latest and consequently the most despised in this universe of ancient servitude, we have nothing to expect but death, for we have neither lands, nor mines, nor ports, where they can keep us to labour. Courage then, ye, who cherish life or

glory! The wives of the Romans have not followed them; their fathers are not there to make them ashamed of flight they look trembling at this sky, this sea, these forests, which they never before beheld. Cooped up and already conquered, they are delivered into our hands by our gods... Here your chief, here your army-there, tribute, labour, the sufferings of slavery. Eternal misery or revenge await you on this field of battle. March to the fight; think of your ancestors, think of your posterity."

After Tacitus, who has paraphrased a few expressions of Galgacus, preserved by tradition in the Roman camps, an abyss opens. Fifteen centuries pass before we again hear of the genius of the Britons, and then how! Macpherson, transporting Ossian, the Irish bard, to Scotland, disfiguring the true history of Fingal, tacking three or four tatters of old ballads to a fiction, represents to us a poet of Caledonia with as much reality as Tacitus has represented a warrior. Since, after all, we have nothing but Ossian; since the fragments, which might be given as compositions of the bards, belong rather to different kinds of minstrels whom I shall notice presently; I am forced to avail myself of Macpherson's work. But as the poems which

VOL. I.

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John Smith added to those published by the first editor of the Scottish bard are less known, I shall extract, in preference, a few passages from them.

"Crimoina heard the tale of the tomb, she saw her Dargo brought home as dead. Silent and pale she stood, as the pillar of ice that hangs in the season of cold from the brow of Mora's rock. At length she took the harp and touched it soft in praise of her love. Dargo would rise, but we forbade till the song should cease, for it was sweet as the voice of the wounded swan, when she sings away her soul in death, and feels in her breast the fatal dart of the hunter. Her companions flock mournful around: they assuage her pain with their song, and bid the souls of swans convey her to the airy lake of the clouds. Its place is above the mountains of Morven.

"Bend,' she said, from your clouds, ye fathers of Dargo; bend and carry him to the place of your rest. And ye, maids of Trenmor's airy land, prepare the bright robe of mist for my love. O Dargo, why have I loved, why was I beloved, so much! Our souls were one, our hearts grew together, and how can I survive when they are now divided?-We were two flowers that grew in the cleft of the rock; and our

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dewy heads amidst sun-beams smiled. flowers were two, but their root was one. The virgins of Cona saw them and turned away their foot. They are comely, they said, but lovely. The deer in his course leaped over them; and the roe forbore to crop them. But the wild boar relentless came, he tore up the one with his deadly tusk. The other bends over it his drooping head, and the beauty of both, like the dry herb before the sun, is decayed.

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My sun on Morven now is set and the darkness of death dwells around me in all its smiling beauty. But, ere evening, it is set to rise no more; and leaves me in one cold, eternal night. Alas! my Dargo! why art thou so soon to set? Why is thy late smiling face overcast with so thick a cloud? Why is thy warm heart so soon grown cold, and thy tongue of music grown so mute! Thy hand, which so lately shook the spear in the battle's front, there lies cold and stiff: and thy foot, this morning the foremost in the fatal chace, there lies dead as the earth it trod. From afar, over seas, hills, and dales, have I followed till this day, my love thy steps. In vain did my father look for my return; in vain did my mother mourn my absence. Their eye was often on the sea; the rocks often heard their cry. But I have

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