HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. Periods of English History. I. THE ROMAN PERIOD:-B. C. 55-A. D. 449. IV. MODERN TIMES:-A. D. 1509-A. D. 1852. 1. The Four Great Periods of English History.-2. The Roman Period.3. The Dark Ages-The Anglo-Saxon Period.-4. The Middle AgesThe Normans-Feudalism-The Romish Church-Aspect of Mediæval Literature.-5. Languages used in the Middle Ages-French-EnglishLatin.-6. Other Features of Literature in the Middle Ages-Its Sectional Character-The Want of Printing.-7. Modern Times-Contrast of Modern Literature with Medieval.-8. Lessons Taught by the Study of Literary Works-Lessons Taught by the Study of Literary History. 1. THE Literature of our native country, like that of every other, is related, intimately and at many points, to the History of the Nation. The great social epochs are thus also the epochs of intellectual cultivation; and, accordingly, our literary annals may be arranged in Four successive Periods. The Roman Period, which is the first of these, is much shorter for England than for some nations of the continent. It begins only with the landing of Julius Cæsar; and it closes with the year which is usually supposed to have been the date of the earliest Germanic settlements in the island. It thus embraces five centuries. Next comes our Anglo-Saxon Period, which, after enduring about six centuries, was brought to an end by the invasion of William the Conqueror. It corresponds with that tumultuous stage in European History, which we know by the name of the Dark Ages. Our Third Period, beginning with the Norman Conquest, may be set down as ending with the Protestant Reformation, or at the accession of Henry the Eighth. It has thus a length of about four centuries and a half; and these, the Dark Ages having already been set apart, are the Middle Ages of England as of Europe. From the dawn of the Reformation to the present day, there has elapsed a Period of three centuries and a half, which are the Modern Times of all Christendom. Let us take, at the opening of these studies, a bird's-eye view of the regions thus laid down on our historical map. The first of our four periods, having bequeathed no literary remains native to our soil, will afterwards drop out of sight. To the other three, in their order, are referable all the shorter stages into which the history of our literary progress will be subdivided; and the particular features of each of these will be comprehended the more readily, if we remember the general character of the great historical division to which it belongs. 2. A hasty glance over the Roman Period teaches two facts which we ought to know. In the first place, the only native inhabitants of England, certainly with few exceptions, and perhaps without any, belonged to the great race of Celts. Another Celtic tribe occupied Ireland, and was spread extensively over Scotland. None of these were the true founders of the English nation: but the state of the English Celts under the Romans affected in no small degree the events which next followed. Secondly, Rome introduced into our island many changes; yet these were fewer and less extensive than the revolutions which she worked elsewhere. In some continental countries, of which Gaul was an instance, the Romans, forming close relations with the vanquished, diffused almost universally their institutions, habits, and speech. Their position among us was quite unlike this. It rather resembled that which, in the earliest settlements of the Europeans in India, a few armed garrisons of invaders held amidst the surrounding natives, from whom, whether they were submissive or rebellious, the foreign troops stood proudly apart. Nowhere, even when the Roman conquerors were most powerful, did there take place, between them and the Britons, any union extensive enough to alter at all materially the nationality of the people. Nowhere, accordingly, did the Latin language permanently displace the native tongues. Still, besides the thinly scattered hordes who continued to hunt in the marshy forests, and to build their log-villages in the wilderness for rude shelter and defence, there were a few large civic communities, to whom their military masters taught successfully both the useful arts and many of the luxuries of the south. The knowledge and tastes thus introduced among the British Celts were not uncommunicated to those vigorous invaders, whose occupation of the island speedily followed the retirement of the imperial armies. 3. The Ages which succeeded the Fall of the Roman Empire, do, in many points, well deserve their name of Dark. But the gloom which covered them was that which goes before sunrise; and bright rays of light were already breaking through. The great event was that vast series of emigrations, which planted tribes of Gothic blood over large tracts of Europe, and established that race as sovereigns in other regions, where the population suffered but little change. The earliest stages of formation were then undergone by all the languages now spoken in European countries. Christianity, which had been made known in some quarters during the Roman Times, was professed almost universally before the Dark Ages reached their close. Our Anglo-Saxon invaders were Goths of the Germanic or Teutonic stock. Their position in Britain was quite unlike that which had been held by the Romans. Instead of merely stationing garrisons to overawe, they planted colonies, large and many, which poured in an immense stream of population. They continued to emigrate from the continent for more than a hundred years after their first appearance; and by the end of that period they had established settlements covering a very large proportion of the island, as far northward as the shores of the Forth. Before many generations had passed away, their language, and customs, and national character, were as generally prevalent, throughout the provinces which they had seized, as the modern English tongue and its accompaniments have become in the United States. We do not look with much hope for literary cultivation among the Anglo-Saxons. It is surprising that they should have left so many monuments of intellectual energy as they have. The fragments which are extant possess a singular value, as illustrations of the character of a very singular people: and most of them are written in that which is really our mother-tongue. During the six hundred years of their independence, the nation made, in spite of wars, and calamities, and obstacles of all kinds, wonderful progress in the arts of life and thought. They learned much from the subdued Britons, not a little from the continent, and yet more from their own practical good-sense, guided wisely by several patriotic kings and churchmen. The pagans accepted the Christian faith: the piratical sea-kings betook themselves to the tillage of the soil, and to the practice of some of the coarser manufactures: the fierce soldiers constructed, out of the materials of legislation common to the whole Teutonic race, a manly and systematic political constitution. 4. The Third of our Periods, here called the Middle Ages, differs strikingly from the Ages described as Dark. The latter were seemingly fruitful in nothing but undecided conflicts: now we reach a state of things quite dissimilar. The painful convulsions in which infant society had writhed, made way for the growing vigour of healthy though undisciplined youth. All the relations of life were thenceforth modified, more or less, by two influences, predominant in the early part of the period, decaying in the latter. The one was that of Feudalism, the other that of the Church of Rome. Literature was especially nourished by the consolidation of the new Languages, which were now successively developed in all countries of Europe. In the general history of European society, the Middle Ages are commonly held as brought to an end by two events which occurred nearly at the same time: the erection of the Great Monarchies on the ruins of Feudalism; and the shattering of the sovereignty of the Romish Church by the Protestant Reformation. These epochs, likewise, come close to the most important fact in the annals of Literature. The Art of Printing, invented a little earlier, became widely available as a means of enlightenment about the beginning of the sixteenth century. The Norman Conquest, which we take as the commencement of the Middle Ages for England, introduced the country, by one mighty stride, into the circle of continental Europe. Not only did it establish intimate relations between our island and its neighbours; but, through the policy which the conquerors adopted, it subjected the nation to both of the ruling mediaval impulses. Feudalism, peremptorily introduced, metamorphosed completely the relation between the people and the nobles: the recognition of the papal supremacy altered not less thoroughly the position of the church. Neither of these changes was unproductive of good in the state of society which then prevailed. But both of them were distasteful to our nation; both of them rapidly became, in reality, injurious both to freedom and to knowledge; and the opposition of opinions in regard to them produced most of those civil broils, in which our kings, our clergy, our aristocracy, and our people, played parts, and engaged in combinations, so shifting and so perplexing. At length, under the dynasty of the Tudors, the ecclesiastical shackles were cast away; while the feudal bonds, not yet ready for unrivetting, began to be gradually slackened. In this long series of revolutions, not a step was taken without arousing a literary echo. They gave birth to a Literature which, growing up through a period of four hundred years, claims, in all its stages and kinds, attentive and respectful consideration. It speaks, when it adopts the living tongue, in a voice which, though rude and stammering, echoes the tones and imparts the meaning of our own; it calls up before us, by an innocent necromancy, the perished world in which our forefathers lived, a world whose ignorance was the seed-bed of our knowledge, whose tempestuous energy cleared the foundations for our social regularity and refinement; it issues from scenes which fancy loves to beautify, from the picturesque cloister and the dim scholastic cell, from the feudal castle blazing with knightly pomp, and the field decked for the tilt and tournament, from forests through which swept the storm of chase, and plains resounding with the shout and clang of battle. Those early monuments of mind possess, likewise, distinguished importance in the history of letters. Imperfect in form and anomalous in spirit, they were the lessons of a school whose training it was necessary for intellect to undergo, and in which our modern masters of poetry and eloquence first studied the rudiments of their art; and among them there are not a few which, still conspicuous through the cloudy distance, are honoured by all whose praise is truly honourable, as illustrious memorials of triumphs achieved by genius over all obstacles of circumstance and time. 5. The Literature of our Middle Ages, thus singularly and variously attractive, is distinguished from that of Modern Times by several strongly marked features. The most prominent of these is derived from its Variety of Languages. In its earliest stages it used three tongues; French, English, and Latin: and it continued to use always the latter two. Our Norman invaders were the descendants of an army of Norwegians, which, a hundred and fifty years before, had conquered a province of Northern France, thenceforth called Normandy. They were thus sprung from the same great Gothic race, another branch of which had sent forth the Anglo-Saxons. But they had long ago lost all vestiges of their pedigree. They had abandoned, almost universally, their own Norse tongue, and had adopted that which they found already used in Northern France, one of those dialects which sprung out of the decaying Latin. This infant language they had nursed and refined, till it was now ready to give expression to fanciful and animated poetry. In other points they had accom B |