Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities Part 36

The period from the accession of Elizabeth to the Restoration (1558-1660) is the most brilliant in the literary history of England. The literature a.s.sumes its most varied forms, expatiates over the most distant regions of speculation and investigation; and its intellectual chiefs, while they breathe the spirit of modern knowledge and freedom, speak to us in tones which borrow an irregular stateliness from the chivalrous past. But this magnificent panorama does not meet the eye at once; the unveiling of its features is as gradual as the pa.s.sing away of the mists that shroud the landscape before the morning sun.

The first quarter of the century was unproductive in all departments of literature. Of the great writers who have immortalized the name of Elizabeth, scarcely one was born five years before she ascended the throne, and the immense and invaluable series of literary works which embellished the period in question may be regarded as beginning only with the earliest poem of Spenser, 1579.

"There never was anywhere," says Lord Jeffrey, "anything like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles nor the age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., or of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison. In that short period we shall find the names of almost all the very great men that this nation has ever produced."

Among the influences which made the last generation of the sixteenth century so strong in itself, and capable of bequeathing so much strength to those who took up its inheritance, was the expanding elasticity, the growing freedom of thought and action. The chivalry of the Middle Ages began to seek more useful fields of adventure in search of new worlds, and fame, and gold. There was an increasing national prosperity, and a corresponding advance of comfort and refinement, and mightier than all these forces was the silent working of the Reformation on the hearts of the people.

The minor writers of this age deserve great honor, and may almost be considered the builders of the structure of English literature, whose intellectual chiefs were Spenser, Shakspeare, and Hooker.

Spenser and Shakspeare were both possessed of thoughts, feelings, and images, which they could not have had if they had lived a century later, or much earlier; and, although their views were very dissimilar, they both bear the characteristic features of the age in which they lived. Spenser dwelt with animation on the gorgeous scenery which covered the elfin land of knighthood and romance, and present realities were lost in his dream of antique grandeur and ideal loveliness. He was the modern poet of the remote past; the last minstrel of chivalry, though incomparably greater than his forerunners.

Shakspeare was the poet of the present and the future, and of universal humanity. He saw in the past the fallen fragments on which men were to build anew--august scenes of desolation, whose ruin taught men to work more wisely. He painted them as the accessory features and distant landscape of colossal pictures, in whose foreground stood figures soaring beyond the limits of their place, instinct with the spirit of the time in which the poet lived, yet lifted out of it and above it by the impulse of potent genius prescient of momentous truths that lay slumbering in the bosom of futurity.

By the side of poetry contemporary prose shows poorly, with one great exception. In respect to style, Hooker stands almost alone in his time, and may be considered the first of the ill.u.s.trious train of great prose writers. His "Ecclesiastical Polity" appeared in 1594. Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" had been written before 1587. Bacon's Essays appeared in 1596, and also Spenser's "View of Ireland," But none of these are comparable in point of style to Hooker.

The reign of Elizabeth gave the key-note to the literature of the two succeeding reigns, that of James I. (1603-1625), and Charles (1625-1649), and the literary works of this period were not only more numerous, but stand higher in the ma.s.s than those which closed the sixteenth century.

But Spenser remained un-imitated and Shakspeare was inimitable; the drama, however, which in this as in the last generation monopolized the best minds, received new developments, poetry was enriched beyond precedent, and prose writing blossomed into a harvest of unexampled eloquence. But although, under the rule of James, learning did good service in theology and the cla.s.sics, English writing began to be infected with pedantic affectations. The chivalrous temper of the preceding age was on the wane, coa.r.s.eness began to pa.s.s into licentiousness, and moral degeneracy began to diffuse its poison widely over the lighter kinds of literature. Bacon, the great pilot of modern science, gave to the world the rudiments of his philosophy. Bishop Hall exemplified not only the eloquence and talent of the clergy, but the beginning of that resistance to the tendencies by which the church was to be soon overthrown. The drama was headed by Ben Jonson, honorably severe in morals, and by Beaumont and Fletcher, who heralded the licentiousness which soon corrupted the art generally, while the poet Donne introduced fantastic eccentricities into poetical composition.

Some of the most eloquent prose writings of the English language had their birth amidst the convulsions of the Civil War, or in the strangely perplexed age of the Commonwealth and protectorate (1649-1660), that stern era which moulded the mind of one poet gifted with extraordinary genius.

Although Milton would not, in all likelihood, have conceived the "Paradise Lost" had he not felt and acted with the Puritans, yet it would have been less the consummate work of art which it is, had he not fed his fancy with the courtly pomp of the last days of the monarchy.

The prose writers of this time are represented by Bishop Hall and Jeremy Taylor, among the clergy, and Selden and Camden among the laymen. The roughness of speech and manners of Elizabeth's time, followed, in the next reign, by a real coa.r.s.eness and lowness of sentiment, grew rapidly worse under Charles, whose reign was especially prolific in poetry, the tone of which varied from grave to gay, from devotion to licentiousness, from severe solemnity to indecent levity; but no great poet appeared in the crowd. The drama was still rich in genius, its most distinguished names being those of Ford, Ma.s.singer, and s.h.i.+rley; but here depravity had taken a deeper root than elsewhere, and it was a blessing that, soon after the breaking out of the war, the theatres were closed, and the poets left to idleness or repentance.

The Commonwealth and Protectorate, extending over eleven years (1649- 1660), made an epoch in literature, as well as in the state and church.

The old English drama was extinct, and poetry had few votaries. Cowley now closed with great brilliancy the eccentric and artificial school of which Donne had been the founder, and Milton was undergoing the last steps of that mental discipline that was to qualify him for standing forth the last and all but the greatest of the poetical ancients. At the same time, the approach of a modern era was indicated by the frivolity of sentiment and ease of versification which prevailed in the poems of Waller.

In philosophy, Hobbes now uttered his defiance to const.i.tutional freedom and ecclesiastical independence; Henry More expounded his platonic dreams in the cloisters of Cambridge; and Cudworth vindicated the belief in the being of the Almighty and in the foundations of moral distinctions. The Puritans, the ruling power in the state, became also a power in literature, n.o.bly represented by Richard Baxter. Milton, like many of his remarkable contemporaries, lived into the succeeding generation, and he may be accepted as the last representative of the eloquence of English prose in that brilliant stage of its history which terminated about the date of the Restoration.

The aspect of the last forty years of the seventeenth century--the age of the Restoration and the Revolution--is far from being encouraging, and some features marking many of their literary works are positively revolting. Of the social evils of the time, none infected literature so deeply as the depravation of morals, into which the court and aristocracy plunged, and many of the people followed. The drama sunk to a frightful grossness, and the tone of all other poetry was lowered. The reinstated courtiers imported a mania for foreign models, especially French, literary works were anxiously moulded on the tastes of Paris, and this prevalence of exotic predilections lasted for more than a century. But amidst these and other weaknesses and blots there was not wanting either strength or brightness.

The literary career of Dryden covers the whole of this period and marks a change which contained many improvements. Locke was the leader of philosophical speculation; and mathematical and physical science had its distinguished votaries, headed by Sir Isaac Newton, whose ill.u.s.trious name alone would have made the age immortal.

The Nonconformists, forbidden to speak, wrote and printed. A younger generation was growing up among them, and some of the elder race still survived, such as Baxter, Owen, and Calamy. But greatest of all, and only now reaching the climax of his strength, was Milton, in his neglected old age consoling himself for the disappointments which had darkened a weary life, by consecrating its waning years, with redoubled ardor of devotion, to religion, to truth, and to the service of a remote posterity.

In England, as elsewhere in Europe, the temper of the eighteenth century was cold, dissatisfied, and hypercritical. Old principles were called in question, and the literary man, the statesman, the philosopher, and the theologian found their tasks to be mainly those of attack or defence. The opinions of the nation and the sentiments which they prompted were neither speculative nor heroic, and they received adequate literary expression in a philosophy which acknowledged no higher motive than utility,--in a kind of poetry which found its field in didactic discussion, and sunk in narrative into the coa.r.s.e and domestic. In all departments of literature, the form had come to be more regarded than the matter; and melody of rhythm, elegance of phrase, and symmetry of parts were held to be higher excellences than rich fancy or fervid emotion. Such an age could not give birth to a literature possessing the loftiest and most striking qualities of poetry or of eloquence; but it increased the knowledge previously possessed by mankind, swept away many wrong opinions, produced many literary works, excellent in thought and expression, and exercised on the English language an influence partly for good and partly for evil, which is shown in every sentence which we now speak or write.

The First Generation is named from Queen Anne (1702-1714), but it includes also the reign of her successor. Our notion of its literary character is derived from the poetry of Pope and the prose of Addison and his friends.

In its own region, which, though not low, is yet far from the highest, the lighter and more popular literature of Queen Anne's time is valuable; its lessons were full of good sense and correct taste, and as literary artists, the writers of this age attained an excellence as eminent as can be attained by art not inspired by the enthusiasm of genius nor employed on majestic themes. In its moral tone, the early part of the eighteenth century was much better than that of the age before it.

The Second Generation of the century may be reckoned as contained in the reign of George II. (1727-1760). It was more remarkable than the preceding for vigor of thinking and often for genuine poetic fancy and susceptibility, though inferior in the skill and details of literary composition. Samuel Johnson produced his princ.i.p.al works before the close of this period. Among the novelists, Richardson alone had anything in common with him. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are equally distant from the dignified pomp of his manner and the ascetic elevation of his morality. In contrast to the looseness of the novels and the skepticism of Hume, the reasoning of Butler was employed in defense of sacred truth, and the stern dissent of Whitefield and Wesley was entered against religious deadness. Poetry began to stir with new life; a n.o.ble ambition animated Young and Akenside, and in Thomson, Gray, and Collins a finer poetic sense was perceptible.

The Third Generation of the eighteenth century, beginning with the accession of George III. (1760), was by no means so fertile in literary genius as either of the other two. But the earliest of its remarkable writers, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, produced works which have rarely been exceeded as literary compositions of their cla.s.s. In ethics, there were Paley and Adam Smith; in psychology and metaphysics, Reid and the founders of the Scottish school; and in the list of poets who adorned these forty years were Goldsmith, Cowper, and Burns.

The nineteenth century, for us naturally more interesting than any other period of English literature, is, in its intellectual character, peculiarly difficult of a.n.a.lysis, from its variety and novelty. For the reason that we have been moulded on its lessons, we are not favorably placed for comprehending it profoundly, or for impartially estimating the value of the monuments it has produced.

It has been a time of extraordinary mental activity more widely diffused than ever before throughout the nation at large. While books have been multiplied beyond precedent, readers have increased in a yet greater proportion, and the diffusion of enlightenment has been aimed at as zealously as the discovery of new truths. While no other time has exhibited so surprising a variety in the kinds of literature, none has been so distinguished for the prevalence of enlightened and philanthropic sentiment.

In point of literary merit, the half century presents two successive and dissimilar stages, of which the first or opening epoch of the century, embraced in its first thirty years, was by far the most brilliant. The animation and energy which characterized it arose from the universal excitation of feeling and the mighty collision of opinions which broke out over all Europe with the first French Revolution, and the fierce struggle so long maintained almost single-handed by England against Napoleon I. The strength of that age was greatest in poetry, but it gave birth to much valuable speculation and eloquent writing. The poetical literature of that time has no parallel in English literature, unless in the age of Shakspeare.

A marked feature in the English poetry of the nineteenth century is the want of skill in execution. Most of the poets not only neglect polis.h.i.+ng in diction but also in symmetry of plan, and this fault is common to the most reflective as well as the most pa.s.sionate of them. Byron, in his tales and sketches, is not more deficient in skill as an artist than Wordsworth in his "Excursion," the huge fragment of an unfathomable design, cherished throughout a long and thoughtful lifetime.

Another feature is this, that the poems which made the strongest impression were of the narrative kind. That and the drama may be said to be the only forms of representation adequate to embody the spirit or to interest the sympathies of an age and nation immersed in the turmoil of energetic action.

Among the prose writings of this period, two kinds of composition employed a larger fund of literary genius than any other, and exercised a wider influence; these were the novels and romances, and the reviews and other periodicals. Novel-writing acquired an unusually high rank in the world of letters, through its greatest master, and was remarkable for the high character imprinted on it. By Scott and two or three precursors and some not unworthy successors, the novel was made for us nearly all that the drama in its palmy days had been for our fore-fathers, imbibing as much of its poetic spirit as its form and purpose allowed, thoughtful in its views of life, and presenting pictures faithful to nature.

In the beginning of the present century was founded the dynasty of the reviews, which now began to be chosen as the vehicles of the best prose writing and the most energetic thinking that the nation could command.

Ma.s.ses of valuable knowledge have been laid up, and streams of eloquence have been poured out in the periodicals of our century by authors who have often left their names to be guessed at. But the best writers have not always escaped the dangers of this form of writing, which is unfavorable to completeness and depth of knowledge, and strongly tempting to exaggeration of style and sentiment. This evil has worked on the ranks of inferior contributors with a force which has seriously injured the purity of the public taste. The strong points of periodical writers are their criticism of literary works and their speculation in social and political philosophy, which have nowhere been handled so skillfully as in the Reviews. After poetry, they are the most valuable departments in the literature of the first age.

Since the Anglo-Saxon period, English literature has derived much of its materials and inspiration from the teaching of other countries. In the Middle Ages, France furnished the models of chivalrous poetry and much of the social system; the Augustan age of French letters, the reign of Louis XIV., ruled the literary taste of England from the Restoration to the middle of the eighteenth century; and from Germany, more than from any other foreign nation, have come the influences by which the intellect of Great Britain has been affected, especially during the last thirty years.

Within this time, the study and translation of German literature have become fas.h.i.+onable pursuits, and on the whole, highly beneficial. The philology of Germany and its profound poetical criticism have taught much: the philosophical tendency of German theology has engaged the attention of teachers of religion, and had its effect both for good and evil, and the accurate study of the highest branches of German philosophy has tended decidedly to elevate the standard of abstract speculation.

The most hopeful symptom of English literature in the last thirty years is to be found in the zeal and success with which its teachings have been extended beyond the accustomed limits. Knowledge has been diffused with a zeal and rapidity never before dreamed of, and the spirit which prompted it has been worthily embodied in the enlarged and enlightened temper with which it has been communicated. In the midst of much error, there are many features prominent which presage the birth of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any that has ever yet pervaded society.

The present age possesses no poetry comparable to that of the preceding, and few men who unite remarkable eloquence with power of thought. Among the thinkers, there is greater activity of speculation in regard to questions affecting the nature and destiny of man; and problems have been boldly propounded, but the solutions have not been found, and amidst much doubt and dimness, the present generation seems to be struggling toward a new organization of social and intellectual life.

The literature of England may be divided into three periods: the first, extending from the departure of the Romans to the Norman Conquest (448- 1066), comprises the literature in the Celtic, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon tongues.

The second period, extending from the Norman Conquest to the accession of Henry VIII. (1066-1509), contains the literature of the Norman period from 1066 to 1307, in the Latin, Norman-French, and Anglo-Saxon tongues, the transition of the Anglo-Saxon into English, and the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The third period, extending from 1509 to 1884, includes the literature of the age of the Reformation, that of the age of Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon, and Milton, of the Restoration and Revolution, and of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

2. THE LANGUAGE.--The English language is directly descended from the Anglo-Saxon, but derives much from the Norman-French, and from the Latin.

Although the Celtic in its branches of Cymric and Gaelic still continues to be the speech of a portion of the inhabitants of Great Britain, it has never exercised any influence on the language of the nation.

The origin of the Anglo-Saxon tongue is involved in obscurity. It most nearly resembles the Frisic, a Low German dialect once spoken between the Rhine and the Elbe, and which is the parent of modern Dutch.

Before the battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon tongue had been spoken in England for at least six hundred years, during which time it must have undergone many changes and dialectic variations. On the subjugation of the conflicting states by the kings of Wess.e.x, the language of the West Saxons came to be the ruling one, and its use was extended and confirmed by the example of Alfred, himself a native of Berks. But it does not necessarily follow that this dialect is the parent of the English language. We must look for the probable ground-work of this in the gradual coalescence of the leading dialects.

The changes by which the Anglo-Saxon pa.s.sed into the modern English a.s.sumed in succession two distinct types, marking two eras quite dissimilar. First came the Semi-Saxon, or transition period, throughout which the old language was suffering disorganization and decay, a period of confusion, perplexing alike to those who then used the tongue, and to those who now endeavor to trace its vicissitudes. This chaotic state came to an end about the middle of the thirteenth century, after a duration of nearly two hundred years. The second era, or period of reconstruction, follows, during which the language may be described as English.

A late critic divides the Old English Period, extending from 1250 to 1500, into the Early English (1250-1330) and the Middle English (1330-1500). The latter was used by Chaucer and Wickliffe, and is in all essentials so like the modern tongue, except in the spelling, that a tolerable English scholar may easily understand it. A great change was effected in the vocabulary by the introduction and naturalization of words from the French. The poems of Chaucer and Gower are studded with them, and the style of these favorite writers exercised a commanding influence ever after.

The grammar of the English language, in all points of importance, is a simplification of the grammar of the Anglo-Saxon. In considering the sources of the English vocabulary, we find that from the Anglo-Saxon are derived first, almost all those words which import relations; secondly, not only all the adjectives, but all the other words, nouns, and verbs which grammarians call irregular; thirdly, the Saxon gives us in most instances our only names, and in all instances those which suggest themselves most readily for the objects perceived through the senses; fourthly, all words, with a few exceptions, whose signification is specific, are Anglo-Saxon. For instance, we use a foreign, naturalized term when we speak of color, or motion, in general, but the Saxon in speaking of the particular color or motion, and the style of a writer becomes animated and suggestive in proportion to the frequency with which he uses these specific terms; fifthly, it furnishes a rich fund of expressions for the feelings and affections, for the persons who are the earliest and most natural objects of our attachment, and for those inanimate things whose names are figuratively significant of domestic union; sixthly, the Anglo-Saxon is, for the most part, the language of business; of the counting-house, the shop, the street, the market, the farm. Among an eminently practical people it is eminently the organ of practical action, and it retains this prerogative in defiance alike of the necessary innovations caused by scientific discovery and of the corruptions of ignorance and affectation. Seventhly, a very large proportion of the language of invective, humor, satire, and colloquial pleasantry is Anglo-Saxon. In short, the Teutonic elements of our vocabulary are equally valuable in enabling us to speak and write perspicuously and with animation; and besides dictating the laws which connect our words, and furnis.h.i.+ng the cement which binds them together, they yield all our aptest means of describing imagination, feeling, and the every-day facts of life.

From the Latin the English has borrowed more or less for two thousand years, and freely for more than six centuries; but from the time of the Conquest it is difficult to distinguish words of Latin origin from those of French. The Latinisms of the language have arisen chiefly in three epochs. The first was the thirteenth century, which followed an age devoted to cla.s.sical studies, and its theological writers and poets coined freely in the Roman mint. The second was the Elizabethan age, when, in the enthusiasm of a new revival of admiration for antiquity, the privilege of naturalization was used to an extent which threatened serious danger to the purity and ease of speech. In the third epoch, the latter part of the eighteenth century, Johnson was the dictator of form and style, and the pompous rotundity that then prevailed has been permanently injurious, although our Latin words, on the whole, have done much more good than harm.

The introduction of French words began with the Conquest, when the political condition of the country made it imperative that many words should be understood. The second stage began about a century later, when the few native Englishmen who loved letters entered on the study of French poetry. The third era of English Gallicisms opened in the fourteenth century, when the French tastes of the n.o.bles, and the zeal with which Chaucer and other men of letters studied the poetry of France, greatly contributed to introduce that tide of French diction which flowed on to the close of the Middle Ages. By that time the new words were so numerous and so strongly ingrafted on the native stock that all subsequent additions are unimportant. The dictionaries of modern English are said to contain about 38,000 words, of which about 23,000 or five eighths of the whole number, come from the Anglo-Saxon.

The English language, by its remarkable combination of strength, precision, and copiousness, is worthy of being, as it already is, spoken by many millions, and these the part of the human race that appear likely to control, more than any others, the future destinies of the world.

PERIOD FIRST.

FROM THE DEPARTURE OF THE ROMANS TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST (448-1066).

1. CELTIC LITERATURE.--During this period four languages were used for literary communication in the British Islands; two Celtic tongues spoken by nations of that race, who still occupied large portions of the country; Latin, as elsewhere the organ of the church and of learning; and Anglo- Saxon. The first of the Celtic tongues, the Erse or Gaelic, was common only to the Celts of Ireland and Scotland, where it is still spoken. The second, that of the Cymrians or ancient Britons, has been preserved by the Welsh.

The literary remains of this period in Ireland consist of bardic songs and historical legends, some of which are a.s.serted to be older than the ninth century, the date of the legendary collection called the "Psalter of Cashel," which still survives. There exist, also, valuable prose chronicles which are believed to contain the substance of others of a very early date, and which furnish an authentic contemporary history of the country in the language of the people from the fifth century. No other modern nation of Europe is able to make a similar boast.