CASSELL'S LIBRARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. INTRODUCTION. ENGLAND'S place in the world has been earned by faithful thought and faithful work of many generations. "Through Wisdom is an house builded; and by Understanding it is established; and by Knowledge shall the chambers thereof be filled with all precious and pleasant riches." The Literature of each nation shows the form of thought within the outer body of its History; and only by coming fairly into contact with this inner life of our country can we know through what wisdom our house was built, approach to the understanding by which it was established, and in so doing acquire the knowledge that shall fill it with true riches. Attention is being now paid to that study of the outside world which is the province of Science. It is exalted in orations, subsidised by governments, because it adds material wealth to the state. Honour and help be to it, let us rather say, because it trains the minds of men to faithful observation and pure search for truth, because it sets them to increase wisdom and power by drawing light from the mind of God revealed in His creation. No man, no people, lives by bread alone; and it is no wise statecraft that seeks only to beget a commonwealth of bakers. The mistake of those who encourage a one-sided culture—no matter which the side-brings its revenges. Already we are suffering in many ways from our too long neglect of the fit means of strengthening all that is best in a nation's character which would be found in a right study of its Literature. I mean no mere learning by rote of dates and names and second-hand opinions; nor even cultivation of a fine sense of the beauty of detached thoughts, when a reader looks chiefly to these. Right study of our Literature is a firm endeavour to get from the soul of England in her writers an interpretation of her work among the nations, by generous apprehension of the best aims of the best of our forerunners; and it leads to the raising of our hearts, in national fellowship, by the desire to at least try how far we can aid the life of our own day with aim as high, with words as apt, with work as strenuous. The purpose of this work is to provide a compact and comprehensive library of English thought, from the earliest times to our own day. The arrangement will be chronological. Characteristics of our Celtic and Teutonic forefathers; the days of transition, after the Conquest, through the time of Chaucer, with the rising spirit of the Reformation, to the England of Elizabeth; the conflicts of opinion by which England advanced from the days of her first Stuart king to the Revolution of 1688; and the course of thought and action by which we have been brought to the England of to-day-not without illustration of the character of our own time, by selections from the works of our chief living writers, where we have leave to introduce them;—all these should be found here represented in such order as to make this Library of use to the student of the History and Literature of our country. Each piece of prose or verse will be set in a brief narrative showing when and by whom it was written, as far as that can be told, with here and there such information as may serve to secure fuller enjoyment of some part of the mind of a people "not slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, subtle and sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that human capacity can soar to." So Milton described his countrymen, and the readers of these volumes will see that he spoke truth. The work has been planned to contain in a few volumes-(1) A series selected from all the best and most characteristic of those poems which are short enough to be given in full; (2)--but fourth in order of issue-a corresponding series of the best of our prose works; (3) a series of pieces in prose and verse illustrating from first to last the religious life of England; and (4) a series of plays by the best dramatists, from the time of the miracle-plays downward. We propose also to supplement the plan already sketched by giving a section to our longer poems and another to our longer prose works. In reproducing these it will become unavoidable that parts should represent the whole; but each will be so described that whatever passages are given may be read with knowledge of their context and of their relation to the main design. These volumes will gain much by rigid avoidance of disconnected extracts. A mere book of cuttings out of finished pieces is handiwork like that of the degenerate courtiers of the days of Louis XV., who snipped single figures from engravings of the works of the best masters, and stuck them confusedly on screens. Every true work of art has its own point of unity, and blends its harmonies into a perfect round. No healthy sense of Literature can be acquired, and where any exists it can only be stupefied, by the use of "elegant extracts." A fair selection from its riches ought to bring a large and happy sense of the true meaning of our Literature home into many a room where books must needs be few, and ought to make the wit and wisdom of our country pleasant to young and old wherever English books are read. If sometimes a good work contains a word or passage that, through change of manners, could not now be read aloud in every household, I remove the stumbling-block. But wherever change is made, square brackets [ ] or notes show the extent of it. In giving pieces of our early Literature, writers before the Conquest will be represented by translation. In what was written after that time, spelling of words still current will be brought into agreement with the present usage, whenever that can be done without injury to rhyme, metre, or sense; and many notes will help the interpretation of the words now obsolete. The notes may contain any kind of information or suggestion that will quicken the enjoyment of the work they illustrate. Now and then some short pieces of old English will be left just as we receive them from our forefathers, and this will be done at intervals frequent enough to make them serviceable to those who care to get what help they can to a closer knowledge of our language. The best use of the study of language is to develop our perception of the finer charms of thought, and if it should be the good fortune of this Library to be well thumbed in many homes, the quiet hours will come when one and another reader will be disposed to get all possible help from notes that were at first passed over. The volumes will be freely illustrated with copies from trustworthy portraits, sketches of places, contemporary illustrations of manners and customs, or of incidents described or referred to in the pieces quoted. Our LIBRARY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE seeks to draw, for rich and poor, for young and old, the healthiest of pleasures from the highest human source. It will illustrate all forms of thought, from the lightest jest that has the true ring in it to the utmost reach of heavenward aspiration. It will put no true man under ban for his opinions, but fairly represent, as far as space permits, the various forms of that endeavour of the English people which is as old as England and alone keeps England young, the firm endeavour to find out the right, and do it for the love of God. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. H. M. THE GAELS AND CYMRY.-A.D. 284 TO A.D. 547. BATING cares and quickening utterance to its emotions, its desires, its best resolves, a strain of music that springs from the souls of men accompanies their actions in the world. There are no records of a humanity without such music. History itself began in song. The life of our own country opens among those Celtic populations who occupied the land before the Scandinavians and Teutons came. There are two branches of Celts: the Gaelic or Erse, still represented among us by the Celts of Ireland, the Scotch Highlands, and the Isle of Man; and the Cymric, called also Cambrian or British, represented among us by the Celts of Wales and Cornwall. Celtic Initial.2 The Celts are by nature artists, Mr. Fergusson has felt this in his own art, and said in his "History of Architecture," "The true glory of the Celt in Europe is his artistic eminence. It is perhaps not too much to assert that without his intervention we should not have possessed in modern times a church worthy of admiration, or a picture or a statue we could look at without shame." It would be far too much to assert this of books; but certainly Teutonic England could not have risen to the full grandeur and beauty of that expression of all her life in all her literature, which these volumes will make some attempt to illustrate, without a wholesome blending of Teutonic with Celtic blood. The Celts are a vital 1 Found in the Ardakillan Crannoge, near Strokestown, County Roscommon. From the figure, natural size, in the Catalogue of Antiquities in the Royal Irish Academy, by Sir W. R. Wilde, M.R.I.A. 2 From the Book of Kells, a Latin Vellum MS. of the Gospels, said to be as old as the sixth century. From the copy of it in the same Catalogue of Antiquities as preceding. part of our country, and theirs were the first songs in the land. There are certain characteristic differences in the music of the two great branches of the Celtic race. Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales), who went to Ireland as secretary to Prince John, rightly expressed them when he praised, in 1187, the musical skill of the Irish Gaels, and said, "Their modulation on these instruments" (the harp and tabor), "unlike that of the Britons" (Cymry) "to which I am accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid, while the harmony is both sweet and gay." The musical instruments of the Cymry were the harp, the pipe, and the crowd, which was a threestringed fiddle. In both Gael and Cymry there was bold play of imagination, frequent use of simile; but while the Gael poured out his song with great animation, was quick in suggestion, delighted in images bright with colour and the stir of life, the Cymry indulged rather in plaintive repetition, and their songs, more laden than those of the Gael with pathetic thought, wound their way often slowly onward in the minor key. The verse system of the Celts was founded not on quantity, and not on rhyme in the modern sense, but upon agreement in the sound of initial and final letters, alliteration and assonance, with frequently an exact correspondence of final syllables in several successive lines. Each Each of the two branches of our Celtic population has an ancient literature, of which some fragments have come down to us by popular tradition. of these literatures was chiefly the utterance of feeling stirred by a great struggle for independence; and each has at the heart of it a battle disastrous to the men whose wrestle with an over-mastering power is the chief theme of their bards. I. The earlier of these two literatures was that of the Gaels, and the battle at the heart of it is that of Gabhra (pronounced Gavvhra or Gawra), said to have been fought A.D. 284. I 4 viet of two syllables, HUL a la Garlic on the wad Geetie co the first This grauiken of at the temple of But of Corte MacArt. The King of Ireland was attacked IL T bare bar defended by his son mie Uwas his death-wound before Liten dad by the dying warrior. The vig lure Afro a clatit of di Gaele T James Muregor, Dean of 1 the bending of the sixteenth century. Vuelved 1502 as The Dean of vizi & translation and notes by the "..mus I Laucian and an introduction and s ir Kr. Wam F. Skene. Mr. De Wint #ut answerable for the attempt I lete mibär to represent the song of the chief DATE 7. IN ears by a rade blen ing of rhyme Ferras Finnblecil is supposed to anger to guestions from his father Fionn Kaithal the slaughter of his Feinn, or Fenians. at the battle of Gal Lra, and the death of Oscar. Cans sun, the old man's grandson. A Gaelle pot dises usually with repetition of its first word ve phrase. That repetition here serves also to sug-1 gest the land, who was the historian of ancient times, passing from tribe to tribe, and answering in each place the demand for full detail of the great deeds whereof it was he only who kept the reconi and maintained the fame, - Hard were it. Firm, tomber, Grief of grits, drove its point through our Oscar, Through all lands saying how went the story II. The later of our two old Celtic literatures was that of the Cymry, and the battle at the heart of it is that of Cattraeth, sud to have been fought A.D. 570. When the Celts of Britain were resisting the occupation of their lands by those Teutonic immigrants who gave to the country afterwards its name of England, a great northern chief called Urien became His contest was famous for his patriotic struggle. against those Angles who first landing under Ida, in the year 347, battled their way inland from the coasts now known as those of Durham and Northumberland, and Scotland from the Tweed up to the Forth. The bands of Urien represented by their energy of song the fervour of this contest. The same struggle was maintained in other parts of Britain by another chief, that Arthur who in after time became the great mythical hero of the British story. In the traces of old Cymric song which seem to have been left from a time earlier than the twelfth century, when Arthurian romance arose, it is Urien who appears as the great chief; and his bards were Llywarch Hen, prince and bard; Aneurin, warrior and bard; and Taliesin, a bard only; while Merddhin, or Merlin, seems to have been at the same time a bard in the service of Arthur, In those days Mynyddawg, the Lord of Eiddin (Eiddin means, I suppose, not Edinburgh, but the region of the river Eden that flows through Westmoreland and Cumberland to the Solway Frith), formed a league of Cymric chiefs to contest the possession of their land by the Teutonic settlers, who had occupied the coasts of the Deivyr and Bryneich, known as the land of Ododin. The people of Deivyr and Bryneich had blended themselves with the immigrants, and were therefore branded as traitors by the other Celts. The words Deivyr and Bryneich were transformed by the Romans into Deira and Bernicia. This part of our coast, belonging to Durham and Northumberland, had a name common to both Deivyr and Bryneich, that was Latinised as the land of the Otadini; and Ododin (without the prefix of an unessential G, that makes the word Gododin) is the name given to the district whence marched the foemen with whom the leagued Cymry endeavoured to contest the occupation of their land. Among the British warriors were tribes gathered apparently from between the Clyde and Solway Frith. The Novanta were from Wigtown, Kirkcudbright, and Ayr; Aeron probably stands for modern Ayr; Breatan has its name extant in Dumbarton by the Clyde. Assembling among the hills by the source of the river Eden, which is only two or three miles from the source of the Swale, the Cymry seem to have marched down Swaledale towards the advancing Teutons, whom they encountered at Cattraeth. A march of five-and-twenty miles along the valley of the Swale would bring the Cymry to Cattraeth, if that be Catterick, the Roman Cataractoneum. A tributary stream there flows into the Swale, and part of the fight is said to have been at the confluence of rivers. The churchyard of Catterick village is within an ancient camp, and near it are ancient burial-grounds, Cattraeth, then, we may perhaps identify with Catterick, about five miles from Richmond, in Yorkshire. The battle of Cattraeth began on a Tuesday, lasted for a week, and ended with great slaughter of the Britons, who fought desperately till they perished on the field. The warrior bard Aneurin was among the combatants, and a lament for the dead is ascribed to him that, under the name of The Gododin, is the most important fragment of what may represent the oldest Cymric literature. The story of the battle runs in this fragment through a series of ninety-seven stanzas, each usually devoted to the celebration of some one of the many chiefs who fell. The ninety-seven stanzas record in various measures praise of ninety of the fallen Cymric chiefs. One of them was put into verse by Gray, who had found literal translations in Evans's "Specimens of Welsh Poetry." I have followed an edition of the Gododin, published in 1852, by the Rev. John Williams ab Ithel,' with a literal prose translation, in the following attempt to give metrical form to the successive stanzas as far as the twentyfirst, which is the one known to modern readers, by Gray's version of it, as "The Death of Hoel." Here since a version of the ninety seven stanzas would still only represent a fragment-I break off, that my own ruder attempt in the rest of the piece to rhyme the Gododin may have the advantage of a poet's close. THE GODODIN, I. A man in thought, a boy in form, |