our\( PR ■ 85 dH)5 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 105 235 513 WW Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924105235513 GEOFFREY CHAUCER A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND'S LITERATURE BY EVA MARCH TAPPAN, Ph. D. Head of the English Department, English High School, Worcester, Mass.; Author of "England's Story," "OurtCountry's Story," " Robin Hood His Book," " Old Ballads in Prose;' " The Christ Story!' etc. BOSTON, NEW YORK, AND CHICAGO HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY ^lie BitetiJitre fceis^, CamStitiBe A. <\\ I, COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN * CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PREFACE This book is based upon the following convictions : — 1. That the prime object of studying literature is to develop the ability to enjoy it. 2. That in every work of literary merit there is some- thing to enjoy. 3. That it is less important to know the list of an au- thor's works than to feel the impulse to read one of them. 4. That it is better to know a few authors well than to learn the names of many. To select those few authors with due regard to what is good in itself and what is historically of valiie, to choose from the hundreds whose writings have made for literary excellence, is under no circumstances an easy task. It is especially difficult — and especially delightful — for one who can echo most honestly the words of the French critic, "En littdrature j'aime tout.'' EVA MARCH TAPPAN. Worcester, Massachusetts, January, 1905. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Centuries V-XI THE EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD PAGE Our English ancestors — The scop — Growth of the epic — Beo- wulf; effect of Christianity on the poem — Form of early English poetry — Widsith — Dear's Lament — Exeter Book — Vercelli Book — Caedmon — Cynewulf ; runes ; Dream of the Rood — Early English poetry as a whole — Bede ; Ecclesiastical His- tory; his English writings — Alcuin — Danish invasions — Alfred the Great ; his translations ; his language ; Anglo-Saxon Chronicle — The kingdom at Alfred's death — Literature during the tenth and eleventh centuries — Cause of degeneracy — Ho- milies of jElfric — Re-writing of old poems — Other writings — Influence of the Celts — Difference between Celts and Teutons — Needs of English literature i CHAPTER II Centuries XII and XIII THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD Advantages of the Conquest — The Normans — Struggle between the two languages — The new English — New influences ; Nor- man intellectual tastes ; opening of the universities ; crusades — Chronicles — Ormulum — Ancren Riwle — Four cycles of ro- mance — History of the Arthur cycle — The Chronicle ends — French romances ; King Horn — Lyrics — Robin Hood ballads — Value of the Norman-English writings 25 VI CONTENTS CHAPTER III Century Xr7 Chaucer's century Beginning of English thought — Feudal system — Changed condi- tion of the peasants — Discontent with the church — Peasants' Revolt — " Sir John Mandeville " — Langland ; Piers Plow- man— V^ycMi; his translation of the Bible; persecution — Chaucer ; plan of Boccaccio and of Chaucer ; pilgrimages ; Can- terbury Tales ; Chaucer's style ; his characters ; his love of na- ture; his death; his influence on the language . . • • 35 CHAPTER IV Century XT THE people's century The imitators of Chaucer ; James I ; The King's Quair — Sir Thomas Malory; Morte d" Arthur ■ — Lack of good literature — Gain of the " common folk " — Ballads ; marks of a ballad ; com- position of the ballads — Mystery plays ; cycles ; seeming irrev- erence ; comical scenes ; tenderness ; Moralities ; Everyman — Introduction of printing; effect on price of books; effect on England — Foreign discoveries — Progress of the people 52 CHAPTER V Century XVI Shakespeare's century Literary position of Italy — The Renaissance — Increased know- ledge of the Western Continent — Teachings of Copernicus — Henry VIII and the Renaissance — John Skelton ; Phyllyp Sparrow ; influence of Skelton — Sir Thomas More; Utopia — religious questioning — Tyndale ; translation of the New Tes- tament — Separation of Church of England from Church of Rome — Death of More — Sir Thomas Wyatt — The Earl of Surrey ; the sonnet ; blank verse ; The yEneid — Totters Mis- CONTENTS vii cellany — Masques — Interludes; The Four e P's ; John Hey- wood — The first English comedy — The first English tragedy ; difference between them in form — Increasing strength of Eng- land — Literary boldness — Early Elizabethan drama — Need of form — John Lyly ; Euphues j advantages of euphuism — Pas- torals — Edmund Spenser ; Shepherd' s Calendar j Spenser goes to Ireland — The pastoral fashion — Sir Philip Sidney ; Arcadia — The miscellanies — Later Elizabethan drama ; songs in the dramas ; need of a standard verse — Christopher Marlowe ; Tam- burlaine; triumph of blank verse — Events from 1580 to 1590 — The Faerie Qiieene — Decade of the sonnet ; Astrophel and Stella — Richard Hooker ; Ecclesiastical Polity — William Shake- speare ; in Stratford ; in London ; his plays and poems before i6oo 68 CHAPTER VI Century XVII PURITAKS AND ROYALISTS Shakespeare's later plays ; sonnets ; his genius ; Shakespeare as a man — Sir Walter Raleigh ; his History of the World — Francis Bacon; Essays; public life; philosophy — King James version of the Bible — Ben Jonson ; Every Man in His Humour ; the unities ; Shakespeare and Ben Jonson ; Jonson's excellence ; his masques ; Oberon ; The Sad Shepherd ; the Tribe of Ben — Beaumont and Fletcher — The First Folio — Closing of the thea- tres — Decadence of the drama ; causes thereof — Literature of the conflict — John Donne; conceits — John Milton; shorter poems ; pamphlets ; marriage ; Milton as Latin secretary ; De- fence of the English People ; sonnets — George Herbert ; The Temple — Richard Crashaw; Steps to the Altar — Henry Vaughan; Silex Scintillans ; \o\e. of nature — Thomas Fuller; Holy and Profane State ; The Worthies of England — Jeremy Taylor ; Holy Living and Holy Dying — Richard Baxter ; The Saints' Everlasting Rest — " Cavalier Poets " — Thomas Carew — Sir John Suckling — Richard Lovelace — Robert Herrick ; Hesperides ; Noble Numbers — I zaak Walton; The Compleat Angler — The Restoration — Samuel Butler; Hudibras — Mil- ton's later work ; Paradise Lost ; Paradise Regained ; Samson iii CONTENTS Agonisies — John Bunydin; persecution; The Pilgrim's Progress — John Dryden ; the drama of the Restoration ; Dryden's plays ; his satire ; theological writings ; translations ; odes — Prose literature of the seventeenth century 103 CHAPTER VII Oentnry XVIII THE CENTURY OF PROSE Coffee drinking — Alexander Pope ; .Essay on Criticism; The Rape of the Lock; translations ; life ; The Dunciad ; Essay on Man — Joseph Addison and Richard Steele ; The Tatter; The Spec- tator; Sir Roger de Cover ley; Cato; Addison's hymns — Jona- than Swift ; The Tale of a Tub; The Battle of the Books; A Mod- est Proposal; Gulliver's Travels; Swift's character — Daniel De- foe ; The Shortest Way with Dissenters; result ; Essay on Pro- jects; Robinson Crusoe; Journal of the Plague Year — The Age of Queen Anne — The novel — Samuel Richardson; Pamela — Henry Fielding; Joseph Andrews — Clarissa Harlowe — Tom Jones — Tobias Smollett; Roderick Random — Laurence Sterne; Tristram. Shandy; The Sentimental Journey — Samuel John- son ; the Dictionary; patronage ; The Rambler; Rasselas; John- son's pension; James Boswell; Johnson's conversation; his Shakespeare; Jozirney to the Hebrides; Lives of the Poets — Oliver Goldsmith ; earlier works ; The Vicar of Wakefield; The Traveller; The Good-Natured Man; The Deserted Village; She Stoops to Conquer — Edmund Bvirke ; On the Sublime afid Beau- tiful; On Conciliation with America; On the French Revolution — William Robertson; his work — David Hume; History of England — Edward Gibbon; Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — New qualities in literature — Thomas Gray; "Gray's Elegy " — Percy's Reliques — William Cowper ; his hymns ; John Gilpin; The Task — Robert Burns; early work and models; first volume ; visit to Edinburgh; disappointment; songs; Tarn O'Shanter; The Cotter's Saturday Night 153 CONTENTS IX CHAPTER VIII Century XIX THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL The "Lake Poets" — William Wordsworth — S. T. Coleridge; Lyrical Ballads; Rime of the Ancient Mariner — Robert Southey; his works — Coleridge's poetry; its incompleteness — Wordsworth's life ; slow appreciation of his poems — Walter Scott ; boyhood ; early literary work ; Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border ; Abbotsford ; failure of publishers ; the historical novel — Lord Byron ; Hours of Idleness; English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; Childe Harold; Byron's later life and poems ; two subjects that interested him ; attempts to aid the Greeks — Percy Bysshe Shelley; best poems; poetic qualities; death — John Keats ; Endymion and its reviews ; later poems ; Ode to a Grecian Urn — Charles Lamb ; his friends ; poems ; play ; Tales from. Shakespeare; Specimens of Dramatic Poets, etc.; Essays of Elia ; freedom — Thomas De Quincey ; first literary work ; Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ; dependence ; two of his best known essays ; his style ; Edinburgh Review — Quarterly Review — Blackwood'' s Magazine — Jane Austen; her novels; their excellence — 1832 a natural boundary — Charles Dickens ; early struggles; The Pickwick Papers; later work; qualities of his characters ; method of caricature ; hard work — W. M. Thackeray; slowness of general appreciation; Vanity Fair; Thackeray and Fielding ; lectures; burlesques; best novels — "George Eliot ;" character of her first work; first fiction; The Mill on the Floss; Silas Marner; character of her later books ; her work contrasted with Scott's ; her seriousness of purpose — T. B. Macaulay; precocity ; memory; first great essay; in poli- tics ; Lays of Ancient Rome ; History of England — Thomas Carlyle ; his indecision ; failures ; marriage ; Sartor Resartus ; History of the French Revolution ; Heroes and Hero-Worship ; Frederick the Great; final honors — John Ruskin ; Modern Painters; interest in workingmen ; industrial ideas; poetical titles; style — Matthew Arnold ; The Forsaken Merman; Greek restraint; prose criticism — Robert Browning; Miss Barrett and her poems; Browning's marriage; his dramas; Pippa Passes ^ X CONTENTS Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh and Sonnets from the Portu- guese; Browning's later volumes; growth of his fame; how to enjoy Browning — Alfred Tennyson; early poems and their reception ; recognition of his genius ; The Princess; In Memo- riam; as Laureate ; The Idylls of the King; Enoch Arden; dramas — The Age of the Pen — Progress of literature — The novel of to-day . . 197 REFERENCES 256 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Geoffrey Chaucer. From the National Portrait Gallery. Painter unknown Frontispiece Portion of the First Page of Beowulf. Folio i 29 r of MS. Cott. Vitellius A. XV in the British iVIuseum ... 5 The Ruins of Whitby Abbey. From a photograph . . 9 Monk at Work on the Book of Kildare. From a MS. in the British Museum 13 Medieval Author at Work. From a MS. in the library at Soissons in Cutts's Scenes and Characters of the Middle Ages IS King Alfred. From an engraving by Vertue in Annates rerum gestarum A Ifredi Magni by Ass&dvs M.tnt\tnsis . 17 Dedication of a Saxon Church. From a MS. in the li- brary at Rouen used in Knight's Popular History of England 20 Sir Launcelot and a Hermit. From an illuminated MS. of 1316 copied in Cutts's Middle Ages 29 A Band of Minstrels. From a fourteenth century MS. in Cutts's Middle Ages 33 Sir John Mandeville on his Voyage to Palestine. From a MS. in the British Museum copied in Cutts's Mid- dle Ages 38 John Wyclif. From the South Kensington National Por- traits 41 The Prioress. From the EUesmere MS. ... ■ M The Wife of Bath. From the Harleian MS 46 The Squire. From the EUesmere MS -47 The Parson. " " " " . . . . .48 Chaucer. u " " " 45 A Mystery Play at Coventry. From an old print . . 58 A Scene from "Everyman." From a photograph of the reproduction given by the Ben Greet Company 61 Caxton presented to Edys^ard IV. From Strutt's Ec- clesiastical and Regal Atitiquities 63 XU . LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Eakliest known Representation of a Printing-Press. From Blade's William Caxton 65 Sir Thomas More. From Holbein's Court of Henry VIII 72 A Masquer. From John Nichol's Progress of James / . . 76 Edmund Spenser. From South Kensington National Por- traits 85 Sir Philip Sidney 87 The Red Cross Knight. From the third edition of the Faerie Queene, 1598 93 Shakespeare's Birthplace at Stratford. From a pho- tograph 97 William Shakespeare. From the Chandos Portrait . 99 Ben Jonson. From a painting by Gerard Honthorst . . .111 John Milton. From a crayon drawing at Bayfordbury . .119 Printing Office of 161 9. From the title-page of a book printed by William Jones in 1619 ... 123 George Herbert 125 John Bunyan. After a drawing from Ufa in the British • Museum ... 143 John Dryden 147 Alexander Pope. From a portrait by Richardson . . .154 Joseph Addison •. . 159 Jonathan Swift 165 Daniel Defoe 169 Samuel Richardson 172 Samuel Johnson. After Sir Joshua Reynolds 175 Oliver Goldsmith i8i Robert Burns. From the painting by Alexander Nasmyth in the National Portrait Gallery 191 William Wordsworth. From an engraving by F. T. Stuart IQ7 Samuel Taylor Coleridge 201 Sir Walter Scott in 1820. From the Chantry Bust . . 204 John Keats ... 212 Charles Lamb ...... 215 Thomas De Quincey 219 Charles Dickens. After a crayon drawing by Sol Eytinge, J'' 224 William Makepeace Thackeray 227 Lord Macaulay 231 Robert Browning 240 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiu Lord Tennyson 243 Cardinal Newman at 44 249 Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. From a photograph 251 MAP Places mentioned in English Literary History (indexed double-page colored map) Facing i SIGNIFICANT DATES IN ENGLISH LITER- ATURE 680. Death of Casdmon. 735. Death of Bede. 901. Death of Alfred. 1066. Norman Conquest. 1 1 54. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tnAs; death of Geoffrey of Monmouth. . 1205-25. Layamon's Brut, the Ormulum, the Ancren Riwle. 1346. Battle of Cr^cy. 1362. Piers Plowman. English becomes the official lan- guage of the courts. 1380. Wyclif's translation of the Bible. 1400. Death of Chaucer. 1453. Capture of Constantinople by the Turks. 1470. Malory's Morte d^ Arthur. 1476. Printing introduced into England. 1 525. Tyndale's translation of the New Testament. Before 1 547. Blank verse introduced by Surrey, the Sonnet and Italian attention to form introduced by Surrey and Wyatt. 1 552 or 53 (?). Ralph Roister Bolster, the first English comedy. 1564. Birth of Shakespeare. 1579. Euphues ; The Shepherd^s Calendar. 1587-93. Marlowe shows the power of blank verse. 1590. Arcadia J Books i-iii of the Faerie Queene. 1 590-1600. Decade of the Sonnet. 1594. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, Books i-iv. 161 1. " King James version " of the Bible. 1616. Death of Shakespeare. 1623. First Folio. 1632-38. Milton's n Allegro, II Penseroso, Comus, and Ly- cidas. 1642. Closing of the theatres. SIGNIFICANT DATES XV 1660. The Restoration. 1662. Hudibras. i(£f. Paradise Lost. 1678. The Pilgrim's Progress. 1700. Death of Dryden. 1 709-1 1. The Tatler. 1711-13. The Spectator. 1740. Pamela, the first English novel. 1751. Gray's Elegy. 1765. Percy's Reliques. 1798. Lyrical Ballads, by Wordsworth and Coleridge. 1802-17. Reviews established. 181 1. Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility. 1 81 2. First part of Byron's Childe Harold. 1 8 14. Scott's Waverley. 1819-21. Best work of Keats and Shelley. 1830. Tennyson's Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. 1836-37. Dickens's Pickwick Papers. 01843. First volume of Ruskin's Modern Painters. 1848. First volume of Macaulay's History of England. 1857. " George Eliot's " first fiction. 1868-69. Browning's The Ring and the Book. A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND'S LITERATURE CHAPTER I OBNTUKIES V-XI EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD I . Poetry 1. Our English ancestors. About fifteen hundred years ago, our English ancestors were Uving in Jutland and the northern part of what is now Germany. They were known as Saxons, Angles, and Jutes, all different tribes of Teutons. They were bold and daring, and de- lighted in dashing through the waves wherever the tem- pest might carry them, burning and plundering on what- ever coast they landed. If a man died fighting bravely in battle, they believed that the. Valkyries bore him to the Valhalla of Odin and Thor, where the joys of fight- ing and feasting would never end. Yet these savage warriors loved music ; they were devoted to their homes and their families ; and, independent as they were, th.ey would yield to any one whom they believed to be their rightful ruler. They were honest in their religion, and they thought seriously about the puzzling questions of life and death. They were sturdy in body and mind, the best of material to found a nation. About the mid- dle of the fifth century, they began to go in large num- bers to Britain, and there they remained, either slaying 2 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [4th-sth Cent. or driving to the west and north the Celts who had pre- viously occupied the country. The Angles were one of the strongest Teutonic tribes, and gradually the island became known as the land of the Angles, then Angle- land, then England. However rough the Teutons might be, there was one person whom they never forgot to treat with special honor, and that was the "scop," the maker, e scop. ^^ former. It was his noble oiifice to chant the achievements of heroes at the feasts of which the Teutons were so fond. Imagine a rude hall with a raised platform at one end. A line of stone hearths with blazing fires runs down the room from door to door. Between the hearths and the side walls are places for the sleeping-benches of the warriors. In the fires great joints of meat are roasting, and on either side of the hearths are long, rude tables. On the walls are shields and breastplates and helmets, and coats of mail made of rings curiously fastened together. Here and there are clusters of spears standing against the wall. The burnished mail flashes back the blazing of the fires, and trembles with the heavy tread of the thegns, with their merriment and their laughter, for the battle or the voyage is over, and the time of feasting has come. On the platform is the table of the chief, and with him sit the women of his family, and any warriors to whom he wishes to show special honor. After the feasting and the drinking of mighty cups of "mead," gifts are pre- sented to those who have been bravest, sometimes by the chief, ^nd sometimes — an even greater honor — by the wife of the chief herself. These gifts are horses, jewelled chains for the neck or golden bracelets for the arms, brightly polished swords, and coats of mail and helmets. The scop sits on the platform by the side 5th-6th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD , 3 of the chief. When the feasting is ended, he strikes a heavy chord on his harp and begins his song with " Hwaet ! " that is, " Lo ! " or " Listen ! " 2. Growth of the epic. — Beowulf. These songs chanted by the scops were composed many years before they were written, and probably no two singers ever sang them exactly alike. One scop would sing some exploit of a hero ; another would sing it differently, and perhaps add a second exploit greater than the first. Little by little the poem grew longer. Little by little it became more united. The heroic deeds grew more and more marvellous, they became achievements that affected the welfare of a whole people ; the poem had a hero, a J)eginning, and an end. The simple tale of a single ad- venture had become an epic. After a while it was writ- ten ; and the manuscript of one of these epics has come down to us, though after passing through the perils of fire, and is now in the British Museum. It Beownlt. is called Beowulf because it is the story of the exploits of a hero by that name. The scene is appar- ently laid in Denmark and southern Sweden, and it is probable that bits of the poem were chanted at feasts long before the Teutons set sail for the shores of Eng- land. The story of the poem is as follows : — Hrothgar, king of the Danes, built a more beautiful hall than men had ever heard of before. There he and his thegns enjoyed music and feasting, and divided the treasures that they had won in many a hard-fought battle. They were very happy together ; but down in the marshes by the ocean was a monster named Grendel, who envied them and hated them. One night, when the thegns were sleeping, he came up stealthily through the mists and the darkness and dragged away thirty of the men and devoured them. Night after night the slaughter went on, for Hrothgar was 4 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [sth-6th Cent. feeble with age and none of his thegns were strong enough to take vengeance. At length the young hero, Beowulf, heard of the monster, and offered to attack it. When night came, Grendel stalked up through the darkness, seized a warrior, and devoured him. He grasped another, but that other was Beowulf ; and then came a struggle, for the monster felt such a clutch as he had never known. No sword could harm Grendel. Whoever overcame him must win by the strength of his own right arm. Benches were torn from their places, and the very hall trembled with the contest. At last Grendel tore himself away and fled to the marshes, but he left his arm in the unyielding grasp of the hero. Then was there great rejoicing with Hrothgar and his thegns. A lordly feast was given to the champion ; horses and jewels and armor and weapons were presented to him, while scops sang of his glory. The joy was soon turned into sorrow, however, for on the following night, another monster, as horrible as the first, came into the hall. It was the mother of Grendel come to avenge her son, and she carried away one of Hrothgar's favorite liegemen. When Beowulf was told of this, he set out to punish the murderer. He followed' the footprints of the fiend through the wood-paths, over the swamps, the cliffs, and the fens ; and at last he came to a precipice overhanging water that was swarming with dragons and sea serpents. Deep down among them was the den of Grendel and his mother. Beowulf put on his best armor and dived down among the horrible crea- tures, while his men kept an almost hopeless watch on the cliff above him. All day long he sank, down, down, until he came to the bottom of the sea. There was Grendel's mother, and she dragged him into her den. Then there was another terrible struggle, and as the blood burst up through the water, the companions of Beowulf were sad indeed, for they felt sure that they should never again see the face of their beloved leader. While they were gazing sorrowfully at the water, the hero appeared, bearing through the waves the 5th-6th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 5 head of Grendel. He had killed the mother and cut off the head from Grendel's body, which lay in the cavern. Beowulf's third exploit took place many years later, after he had ruled his people for fifty years. He heard of a vast treasure of gold and jewels hidden away in the earth, and although it was guarded by a fire-breathing dragon, he deter- mined to win it for his followers. There was a fearful encounter, and his thegns, all save one, proved to be cowards and deserted him. He won the victory, but the dragon had wounded him, and the poison of the wound soon ended his life. Then the thegns built up a pyre, hung with helmets and coats of mail ; and on it they burned the body of their dead leader. After this, they raised a mighty mound in his honor, and placed in it a store of rings and of jewels. Slowly the greatest among them rode around it, mourning for their leader and speaking words of love and praise, — Said he was mightiest of all the great world-kings, Mildest of rulers, most gentle in manner. Most kind to his liegemen, most eager for honor. This is the story of Beowulf as it has come down to us in a single ragged and smoke-stained manuscript. This (5i P/ETPEEARD] bjwm ^epfifxinon htrSa, ce]>erlw^aj[ elle ^eme-ioTi. ope fey lb fcepn? fcecuWi A PORTION OF THE FIRST PAGE OF THE BEOWULF MANUSCRIPT manuscript was probably written in the eighth or ninth century, and the poem must differ greatly from the original version, especially in its religious allusions. In earlier times, the Celts had learned the Christian faith 6 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [5th-6th Cent. from the Irish ; but it was not preached to the Teutons BHectoi in southern England until 597, when mission- ohrisuan- ^^j f^^jj^ jj^^jj^e j^ade their way to Kent. At Ity on tne •' i t 1 poem. first they were allowed to preach on the little island of Thanet only and in the open air ; for the wary Teutons had no idea of hearing strange teachings under roofs where magic might easily overpower them. Soon, however, large numbers became earnest converts. Bits of the teachings of the missionaries were dropped into Beowulf. Instead of "Fate," the poets said "God;" Grendel is declared to be a descendant of Cain; and the scop interrupts his story of Grendel's envious hatred by singing of the days when God made the heavens and the earth ; the ceremonies at the burning of Beowulf are heathen, but the poem says that it was God, the true King of Victory, who led him to the fire-dragon's treasures. 3. Form of early English poetry. Many words in Old English are like words in present use, but Old Eng- lish poetry was different in several respects from the poetry of to-day. The following lines from Beowulf are a good illustration : — Tha com of more under mist-hleothum Then came from the moor under the misty-hillside Grendel gongan, Godes yrre baer ; Grendel going, God's wrath he bore ; mynte se man-scatha manna cynnes intended the deadly foe of men to the race surane besyrwan in sele tham hean. some 'one to ensnare in hall that lofty. To-day we like to hear rhyme at the end of our lines ; our ancestors enjoyed not rhyme, but alliteration. In every line there were four accented syllables. The third, 5th-6th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 7 the "rime-giver," gave the keynote, for with whatever letter that began, one of the preceding accented syllables must begin and both might begin. The fourth never alliterated with the other three. In the iirst line quoted, the accented syllables are com, mor, mist, and hie. Mist is the rime-giver. In the second line, God is the rime- giver, while Gren, gon, and bar are the other accented syllables. The Teutons were very fond of compound words. Some of these words are simple and childlike, such as ban-hus (bone-house), body ; ban-loca (bone- locker), flesh. Some, especially those pertaining to the ocean, are poetical, such as mere-strset (sea-street), way over the sea ; yth-lida (wave-sailer) and famig-heals (foamy-necked), vessel. 4. Other Old English poems. A number of shorter poems have come down to us from the Old English. Among them are two that are of special in- terest. One of these is Widsith (the far- wanderer), and this is probably our earliest English poem. It pictures the life of the scop, who roams about from one great chief to another, everywhere made wel- come, everywhere rewarded for his song by kindness and presents. The poem ends : — Wandering thus, there roam over many a country The gleemen of heroes, mindful of songs for the chanting, Telling their needs, their heartfelt thankfulness speaking. Southward or northward, wherever they go, there is some one Who values their song and is liberal to them in his presents, One who before his retainers would gladly exalt His achievements, would show forth his honors. Till all this is vanished, Till life and light disappear, who of praise is deserving Has ever throughout the wide earth a glory unchanging. The second of these songs is Dear's Lament. Deor is 8 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [5th-6th Cent. in sorrow, for another scop has become his lord's favor- ]jj„.g ite. The neglected singer comforts himself Lament by recalling the troubles that others have met. Each stanza ends with the refrain, — That he endured ; this, too, can L Widsith and Dears Lament were found in a manu- script volume of poems collected and copied more than TteBxetei eight hundred years ago. It is known as the Book. Exeter Book because it belongs to the cathe- dral at Exeter. Another volume, containing both poe- Thever- ^ry and prose, was discovered at the Monastery oeiiiBook. of Vercelli in Italy. These two volumes and the manuscript of Beowulf coxiizxn almost all that is left to us of Anglo-Saxon poetry. 5. Csedmon [d. 680]. The happy scop and the un- happy scop are both forgotten. No one knows who wrote either the rejoicing or the lament. The first English poet that we know by name is the monk Csed- mon, who died in 68o. The introduction of Christianity made great changes in the country, for though the sturdy Effect of Englishmen could not lay aside in one century. Christian- or two, or three, all their confidence in charms and magic verses, and in runic letters cut into the posts of their doors and engraved on their swords and their battle-axes, yet they were honest believers in the God of whom they had learned. Churches and con- vents rose throughout the land, and one of these convents was the home of Caedmon. It was founded by Irish mis- sionaries, and was built at what is now called Whitby, on a lofty cliff overlooking the German Ocean. There men and women prayed and worked and sought to live lives of holiness. At one of their feasts the harp passed from one to another, that each might sing in turn. Csedmon 7th Cent] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 9 had not been educated as a monk, and therefore he had never learned to make songs. As the harp came near him, he was glad to slip out of the room with the excuse that he must care for the cattle. In the stable Cffidmon's he fell asleep ; and as he slept a vision appeared vision, to him and said, " Csedmon, sing some song to me." " I cannot sing," he replied, " and that is why I left the feasting." "But you shall sing," declared the vision. y^^:^^^^^^^m^'"-^ THE RUINS OF WHITBY ABBEY "Sing the beginning of created beings." Then Caed- mon sang. He sang of the power of the Creator, of his glory, and of how He made the heavens and the earth. In the morning he told the steward of the mysterious gift that had come to him while he slept, and the stew- ard led him joyfully to Hilda, the royal maiden who was their abbess. Many learned men came together, and Csedmon told them his dream and repeated his verses. Another subject was given him, and he made verses on that also. "It is the grace of God," said the council rev- lO ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [8th Cent. erently. The habit of a monk was put upon him, he was carefully taught the word of God, and as he learned, he composed poem after poem, following the Bible story from the creation to the coming of Christ, his resurrec- tion and his ascension. 6. Cynewulf, born about 750. The name of one more poet, Cynewulf, is that of the greatest of the au- thors whose words have come down to us from the early days of England. He, too, was probably of Northum- bria, and he must have written about a century after the time of Csedmon. Hardly anything is known of him except his name ; but he interwove that in some of his poems in such a way that it could never be forgotten. For this purpose he made use of runes, the earliest of the northern alphabets. Each rune represented not only a letter, but also the word of which it was the initial ; for instance : — C — Cene, the courageful warrior. Y =Yfel, wretched. N = Nyd, necessity. W=Wyn, joy. U = Ur, our. L = Lagu, water. F =Feoh, wealth. With these runes Cynewulf spelled out his name : — Then the Courage-hearted cowers when the King he hears Speak the words of wrath — Him the wielder of the heavens Speak to those who once on earth but obeyed him weakly, While as yet their Fearning pain, and their Weed, most easily Comfort might discover. Gone is then the ff^insomeness Of the earth's adornments ! What to l/s as men belon*tJ'»K«''4- with gems and with gold, and around it stood the angels of God. From it there flowed forth a stream of blood ; and while the dreamer gazed in wonder, the cross spoke to him. It told him of the tree being cut from the edge of the forest and made into the cross. Then followed the story of the crucifixion, of the three crosses that 12 . ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [7th-8th Cent. Stood long on Calvary sorrowing, of the burial of the cross of Christ deep down in the earth, of its being found by servants of God, who adorned it with silver and with gold that it might bring healing to all who should pay it their reverence. 7. Early English poetry as a whole. Such was the Early English poetry, beginning with wild exploits of half-fabulous heroes and gradually changing under the touch of Christianity into paraphrases of the Bible story, into legends of saints, and accounts of heavenly vi- sions. It contains bold descriptions of sea and tempest, intermingling, as the years passed, with pictures of more quiet and peaceful scenes. The names of but two poets, Csedmon and Cynewulf, are known to us ; but throughout all these early poems there is an earnest- ness, an appealing sincerity, and an honest, childlike love of nature, that bring the writers very near to us, and make them no unworthy predecessors of the poets that have followed them. 2. Prose 8. Bade, 673-735. About the time of the death of Csedmon, a boy was born in Northumbria who was to write one of the most famous pieces of Early English prose. His name was Bede, or Bseda, and he is often called the Venerable Bede, venerable being the title next below that of saint. When he was a little child, he was taken to the convent of Jarrow, and there he remained all his life. A busy life it was. The many Hiseduoa- hours of prayer must be observed; the land «»"■ must be cultivated ; guests must be enter- tained, no small interruption as the fame of the convent and of Bede himself increased. Moreover, this convent was a great school, to which some six hundred pupils. 8th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 13 plea- not only from England but from various parts of Europe, came for instruction. Bede enjoyed it all. He was happy in his religious duties. He "always took delight," as he says, "in learning, teaching, and writing." He found real sure in the. outdoor work ; and, little as he tells us of his own life, he does not forget to say that he especially liked winnowing and threshing the grain and giving milk to the young lambs and calves. He was keenly alive to the affairs of the world, and though li- braries were his special de- light, he was as ready to talk with his stranger guests of distant kingdoms as of books. In the different monasteries of England there were collec- tions of valuable manuscripts, and Jarrow had one of the most famous of these collections. The abbot loved books, and from each one of his numerous journeys to Rome he returned with a rich store of volumes. Much of Bede's time must have been given to teach- ing, and yet, in the midst of all his varied occupations, this first English scholar found leisure to Bejj.g write an enormous amount. Forty-five different ■»"itings. works he produced, and they were really a summary of the knowledge of his day. He wrote of grammar, rhet- oric, music, medicine ; he wrote lives of saints and com- mentaries on the Bible, — indeed, there is hardly a subject that he did not touch. He even wrote a vol- ume of poems, including a dainty little pastoral, resem- MONK AT WORK ON BOOK OF KILDAHE 14 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [8th Cent. bling the Latin pastorals, a contest of song between summer and winter, which closes with a pretty picture of the coming of springtime and the cuckoo. "When the cuckoo comes," he says, "the hills are covered with happy blossoms, the flocks find pasture, the meadows are full of repose, the spreading branches of the trees give shade to the weary, and the many-colored birds sing their joyful greeting to the sunshine." One day the king of Northumbria asked Bede to write a history of England, and the busy monk began the work as simply as if he were about to prepare a lesson for his pupils. He sent to Rome for copies of letters and reports written in the early days when the Romans ruled the land ; he borrowed from various convents their treasures of old manuscripts pertaining to the early times ; and he talked with men who had preserved the Bede'sBc- ^"^i^"*^ traditions and legends. So it was that oiesiasUoai Bede's Ecclesiastical History, the first history * '"'■ of England, was written. When it was done, he sent it to the king, together with a sincere and dig- nified little preface, in which he asked for the prayers of whoever should read the book, — a much larger num- ber than the quiet monk expected. With the difficulty of collecting information, no one could expect Bede's work to be free from mistakes, al- though he was careful from whom his information came, and he often gives the name of his authority. Bede knew well how to tell a story, and the Ecclesiastical History, sober and grave as its title sounds, is full of tales of visions of angels, lights from heaven, myste- rious voices, and tempests that were stilled and fires that were quenched at the prayers of holy men. Here is the legend of Casdmon and his gift of song. Here, too, is the famous statement that there are no snakes in Ire- 8th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD IS land. " Even if they are carried thither from Britain," says Bede, "as soon as the ship comes near the shore and the scent of the air reaches them, they die." All these books were written in Latin. That was the tongue of the church and of all scholars of the day. It was a universal language, and an educated man might be set down in any monastery in England or on the Continent, and feel perfectly at home in its book-room or in conversation with the monks. Bede was so thor- oughly English, however, in his love of nature, his frankness and earnestness, and his devotion to the peo- ple of his own land that, although he wrote in Latin, most of his works have a purely English atmosphere. He did not scorn his native tongue, and even in „ ^ , his writing he may have used it more than once, Engush though we know the name of one work only. ^" ^'' This was a translation of the Gospel of St. John, and it was his last work. He knew that his life was near its close, but he felt that he must complete this trans- lation for his pupils. Some one of them was always with him to write as the teacher might feel able to dictate. The last day of his life came, and in the morning the pupil said, " Master, there is still one chapter wanting. Will it trouble you to be asked a any more questions } " "It is no trouble," answered and write quickly." MEDIEVAL AUTHOR AT WORK Bede. " Take your pen When evening had come, the boy l6 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [Sth-pth Cent. said gently, " Dear Master, there is yet one sentence not written." " Write quickly," said Bade again. "The sentence is written," said the boy a few minutes later. "It is well," murmured Bede, and with new strength he joyfully chanted the Gloria; and so, in 73S, he passed away, the first English scholar, scientist, and historian. 9. Alcuin, 7357-804. In the very year of Bede's death, if we may trust to tradition, Alcuin was born, the man who was to carry on English scholarship, though not on English soil. He was a monk of the convent of York, and was famous for his knowledge. Perhaps some of the English churchmen thought that he was too famous, when they knew that King Charlemagne had heard of his learning, and had persuaded him to leave his own country and come to France to teach the royal children and take charge of education in the Frankish kingdom. For fourteen years, from 782 to 796, he spent nearly all his time at the court of Charlemagne. Moreover, he persuaded many other men of York training to leave England and assist him in teaching the French. He little knew how grateful the English would be in later years that this had been done. 10. Alfred the Great, 848-901. During those years of Alcuin's absence in France, there was dire trouble in Danisii Northumbria. King after king was slain by Invasions, rebels ; and finally the Danes, coming from the shores of the Baltic, made their first attacks on the coasts of Northumbria. This was the beginning. Year after year the savage pirates fell upon the land. For more than three quarters of a century the Northum- brians were either fighting or dreading the coming of their heathen foes. At the end of that time, when peace was made with the terrible invaders, Northumbria 9th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 17 was a desert so far as literature was concerned. The Danes had struck especially at the monasteries because of the gold and silver vessels and ornaments that were collected in them ; and not one monastery remained standing in all the land from the Tyne to the Humber. Li- braries famous over Europe had been burned ; smoked and bloodstained ruins were alone left to show where men had been taught who had be- come the teachers of Europe. South of the Humber mat- . ters were little bet- ter ; for there, too, the heathen Danes had swept through and through the country. Priests pronounced the words in their Latin mass books, but very few could under- stand the language and put a Latin letter into English. The only hope of England lay in her king. It was happy for her that her king was Alfred the Great, and that this sovereign who could fight battles of swords and spears was of equal courage and wisdom in iu„a's the warfare against ignorance. In his child- oharaoter. hood he had visited Rome, perhaps spent several years in that city. He had paid a long visit at the Prankish court of Charlemagne's son. He had seen what know- ledge could do, and he meant that his own people should KING ALFRED l8 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [9th Cent. have a chance to learn. Then it was that France repaid England for the loan of Alcuin, for priests taught in the schools which he had founded were induced to cross the Channel and become the teachers of the Eng- lish. There were few English books, however, and there was no one to make them but this busy king ; and just ijjjgj.s as simply as Bede had taken up his pen to write transia- a history of the land, so Alfred set to work to Upns. translate books for his kmgdom. Among the books that he translated were two that must have been of special interest to the English, Bede's Ecclesiastical History and a combined history and geography of the world, written five hundred years before Alfred's day by a Spanish monk called Orosius. The latter had long been a favorite school-book in the convents ; but, natu- rally, a geography that was five hundred years old was in need of revision, and Alfred became not only a trans- lator but a reviser. He never forgot that he was writing . for his people, and whenever he came to an expression that would not be clear to them, he either explained it, or omitted it altogether. Whenever he could correct a mistake of Orosius's, he did so. 11. The language of Alfred's time. In one way Al- fred had not only his translations to make, but his very language to invent. Latin is a finished, exact, accurate language ; the English of the ninth century was rude, childish, and awkward, and it was no easy task to in- terpret the clean-cut wording of the Latin into the loose, clutnsy English phrases. Nevertheless, Alfred had no thought of imitating the Latin construction. The fol- lowing is a literal translation of part of the preface to one of his books that he sent to Waerferth, bishop of Worcester : — 9th Cent.] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD IQ Alfred the King bids to greet Waerferth the bishop with loving words and in friendly wise ; and I bid this be known to thee that it very often comes into my mind what wise men there were for- merly, both clergy and laymen ; and what blessed times there were then throughout England ; and how kings who had power over the nation in those days obeyed God and his ministers, and they both preserved peace, order, and authority at home and also increased theif territory abroad ; and how they throve both in war and in wisdom ; and also the holy orders how zealous they were both in teaching and in learning, and in all the services that they ought to give to God ; and how people from abroad sought wisdom and teaching in this land ; and how we must now get them from with- out if we are to have them. Confused as this is, the king's earnestness shows in every word. He knows just what he means to say, and, language or no language, he contrives to say it. Bede's translation of the Gospel of Saint John disappeared centuries ago, and this preface of King Alfred's is the first bit of English prose that we possess. Literature had vanished from the north and was making its home in the south. 12. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Another piece of literary and historical work we owe to Alfred, and that is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. In almost every con- vent the monks were accustomed to set down what seemed to them the most important events, such as the death of a king, an attack by the Danes, an unusually high tide, or an eclipse of the sun. One of these lists of events was kept in the convent at Winchester, Alfred's capital city, and the idea occurred to him of revising this table, adding to it from Bede's Ecclesiastical His- tory and other sources, and making it the beginning of a progressive history of his kingdom. It is possible that Alfred himself did this revising, and it can hardly be doubted that he wrote at least the accounts of some of his own battles with the Danes. 20 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [loth Cent. 13. Death of Alfred. In 901, it was written in the Chronicle, "This year died Alfred, the son of Ethel- wulf." King Alfred left England apparently on the way to literary progress, if not greatness. The kingdom was at peace ; the Danes of the north and the English of the south were under one king, and were, nominally at least, ruled by the same laws ; churches had arisen over the kingdom ; convents had been built and endowed ; schools were increasing in number and in excellence ; books of practical worth had been trans- lated, probably more than have come down to us ; the people had been encouraged to learn the lan- guage of scholars, yet their own na- tive tongue had not been scorned, but rather raised to the rank of a literary language. There seemed every reason to expect national progress in all directions, and especially in matters intellectual. 14. Literature during the 10th and 11th centuries. The contrary was the fact. For this there were two rea- sons : I. Alfred's rule was a one-man power. His sub- jects studied because the king required study. Learned men came to England because the king invited them and rewarded them. At Alfred's death a natural reaction set in. The strong will and the generous hand were gone, the watchful eye of the king was closed. 2. The DEDICATION OF A SAXON CHURCH From an old manuscript loth-iith Cent] EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD 21 Danes renewed their attacks. It almost ceased to be a question of any moment whether England should ad- vance ; far more pressing was the question whether England should exist. The church was in a low state. The monks did not obey th'e rules of their orders, and many of the secular clergy were not only ignorant but openly wicked. About the middle of the tenth century, the monk Dunstan became abbot of Glastonbury, and he preached reforms so earnestly that both priests and people began to mend their ways. Moreover, the year looo was approaching, and there was a general feeling that in that year the world would come to an end. A nat- ural result of this feeling was that the church became more active, and that great numbers of lives of saints appeared, and sermons, or homilies, as they were called. These homilies were not so uninteresting as their name sounds. To hold the attention of the people, the preachers were forced to be picturesque, and they gave in minute detail most vivid descrip- tions of places, saints, and demons about which they knew absolutely nothing. The saints were pictured as of fair complexion, with light hair and blue eyes. Satan was described as having dark, shaggy hair ^u^j^ hanging down to his ankles. Sparks flew from 955?-io20. his eyes and sulphurous flames from his mouth. The most famous writer of these homilies was Mliric, abbot of Ensham. In the first two centuries after Alfred, the old poems composed in the north were rewritten in the form in which they have come down to us, that is, in Reciting the language of the south, of the West Saxons; of old but little was produced that could be called '°™^' poetry. The Chronicle was continued, and one or two bold battle-songs were inserted. A few rude ballads were 22 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [nth Cent. composed, with little of the old alliteration, and with only a beginning of appreciation of rhyme. One of these was the work of a king, Canute the Dane, who became ruler of England in 1017 : — Merie sungen the munaches binnan Ely Canute's Tha Cnut ching reuther by : poem. " Rotheth cnites noer the land And here ye thes Munaches sseng." Joyously sang the monks in Ely When Canute the king rowed by. '' Row, knights, nearer the land. And hear ye the song of the monks.'' Glancing back over the literature of England, we can see that it had been much affected by the influence of Influence oi ^^^ Celts. From the sixth century to the ninth the Celts, the Christian schools of Ireland were famous throughout Europe, and the Irish missionaries taught the religion of Christ to the Northumbrians. The Teutons and the Celts were not at all alike. The Teu- tons thought somewhat slowly. They were given to pondering on difficult subjects and trying to explain puzzling questions. The Celts thought and felt swiftly ; a word would make them smile, and a word would arouse their sympathy. The Teutons liked stories of brave chiefs who led their thegns in battle and shared with them the treasures that were won, of thegns who were faithful to their lord, and who at his death heaped up a great mound of earth to keep his name in lasting re- membrance. The Celts, too, were fond of stories, but stories that were full of bright and beautiful descriptions, of birds of brilliant coloring, of marvellous secrets, and of mysterious voices. They liked battle scenes wherein strange mists floated about the warriors and weird phan- toms were dimly seen in the gathering darkness. irthCent.] EARLY ENGLI'SH PERIOD 23 To say just when and where the Celtic influence touched English literature is not easy ; but, comparing the grave, stern resolution of Beowulf, with the imagi- native beauty, the graceful fancy, and the tender senti- ment of the Dream of the Rood, and the picturesque and witty descriptions of the homilies, one can but feel that there is something in the literature of the English Teutons which did not come from themselves, and which can be accounted for in no other way than by their con- tact with the Celts. 15. William the Norman conquers England. The be- ginnings of a noble literature had been made in England, but the inspiration had become scanty. The English writer needed not only to read something better than he had yet produced, but even more he needed to know a race to whom that " something better " was familiar. In 1066, an event occurred that brought him both mfeil and models : William the Norman conquered England and became its king. Centuries V-XI the early english period 1. Poetry i. Prose Beowulf. Bede. Widsith. Alfred. Dear's Lament. Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Cjedmon. Lives of saints and homilies. Cynewulf. SUMMARY ^ I. Poetry Our English ancestors lived in Jutland and the northern part of what is now Germany. They were savage warriors, but loved song and poetry. After their feasts the scop, or 24 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [jth-iith Cent. poet, sang of the adventures of some hero. Little by little these songs were welded together and became an epic. One epic, Beowulf, has been preserved, though much changed by the teachings of the missionaries who came to England in 597. Anglo-Saxon verse was marked by alliteration instead of rhyme. Besides Beowulf, little remains of the Anglo-Saxon poetry except what is contained in the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book. The first poet whom we know by name was the monk Caedmon (seventh century), whose chief work was a paraphrase of the Scriptures. The greatest of the early poets was "Cynewulf (eighth century). 2. Prose One of the most famous pieces of English prose, a translation of the Gospel according to St. yohn, was written by the monk Bede (seventh and eighth centuries). He wrote on many sub- jects, but his most valuable work is his Ecclesiastical History. Alcuin (eighth century) carried on English scholarship in France. England was harassed by the Danes, but after King Alfred (ninth century) had brought about peace, Alcuin's pupils became teachers of the English. King Alfred made several valuable translations. The pre- face of one of them is the earliest piece of English prose that we still possess. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was formally begun in his reign. ^ The death of Alfred and the renewed attacks of the Danes retarded the literary progress of England. The preaching of Dunstan and the near approach of the year 1000 called out lives of saints, and homilies written by M\ix\c and others. Old poems were rewritten, and rude ballads were composed. The influence of .the Celts for beauty, fancy, and wit may be seen in both poetry and prose. English literature had made a good beginning, but needed better models. CHAPTER II OENTUEIES XII AND XHI THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD 16. Advantages of the conquest. Nothing better could have happened to England than this Norman con- quest. The Englishmen of the eleventh century wer£ courageous and persistent, but the spark of inspiration that gives a people the mastery of itself and the leader- ship of other nations was wanting. England was like a great vessel rolling in the trough of the sea, turning broadside to every wave. The country must fall into the hands of either the barbaric north or the civilized south. Happily for England, the victor was of the south. The Normans were Teutons, who had fallen upon France as their kinsmen had fallen upon England ; but the invaders of France had been thrown among j],^ a race superior to them in manners, language, wormms. and literature. These northern pirates gave a look about them, and straightway they began to follow the customs of the people whom they had conquered. They embraced the Christian religion and built churches and monasteries as if they had been to the manner born. They forgot their own language and adopted that of France. They intermarried with the French ; and in a century and a half a new race had arisen with the brav- ery and energy of the Northmen and an aptitude for even more courtly manners and even wider literary cul- ture than the French themselves. 26 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [I2th-I4th Cent. 17. The struggle between the French and English languages. Such were the Norman conquerors of Eng- land. How would their coming affect the language and the literature of the subject country ? It was three hun- dred years before the question was fully answered. At first the Norman spoke French, the Englishman spoke English, and both nations used Latin in the church ser- vice. Little by little, the Norman found it convenient to know something of the language spoken by the masses of the people around him. Little by little, the Englishman acquired some knowledge of the language of his rulers. Words that were nearly alike in both tongues were con- fused in pronunciation, and as for spelling, — a man's mode of spelling was his private property, and he did with his own as he would. It is hard to trace the history of the two languages in England until we reach the fourteenth century, and then there are some few land- marks. In 1300, Oxford allowed people who had suits at law to plead in "any language generally understood." Fifty years later, English was taught to some extent in the schools. In 1362, it became the official language of the courts. In 1385, John of Trevisa wrote, "In all the grammar schools of England children give up French and construe and learn in English, and have thereby advantage on one side and disadvantage on another. Their advantage is that they learn their grammar in less time than children were wont to do ; the disadvantage is that now grammar-school children know no more French than their left heel knows." In 1400, the Earl of March offered his aid to the king and wrote his let- ter in English, making no further apology for using his native tongue than the somewhat independent one, " It is more clear to my understanding than Latin or French." I2th-I3th Cent] THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD 2/ In this contest, three centuries long, English had come off victor, but it was a different English from that of earlier times. Hundreds of new nouns, verbs. The now and adjectives had entered it, but they had ^"bUsh- been forced to wear the English garb. To speak broadly, verbs had adopted English endings; adjectives had adopted English comparisons ; nouns had given up their case-endings and also their gender in great degree, for the simplest remedy for the frequent conflict between the English and French gender was to drop all distinc- tions of gender so far as inanimate objects were con- cerned. How did the coming of the Norman affect the litera- ture of England ? As soon as the shock of conquest was somewhat past, the English unconsciously began, in the old Teutonic fashion, to look about them and see what ways worthier than their own they could adopt. They had refused to become a French-speaking people, but was there anything in Norman literature and literary methods worthy of their imitation, or rather assimilation ? 18. Opening of the universities and. the crusades. The Normans had a taste for history, they were a reli- gious people, and they thoroughly enjoyed story-telling. Two other influences were brought to bear upon the English : the opening of the universities and the cru- sades. The first made it possible for a man to obtain an education even if he had no desire to become a priest. The second threw open the treasures of the world. Thousands set out on these expeditions to rescue the tomb of Christ from the power of the unbelievers. Those who returned brought with them a wealth of new ideas. They had seen new countries and new manners. They had learned to think new thoughts. The opening of the universities made it possible for 28 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [13th Cent. chronicles to be written, not only by monks in the mon- asteries, but by men who lived in the midst of the events that they described. Chronicles were no longer mere annals; they became full of detail, vivid, interesting. 19. Devotional books. The religious energy of the Normans and the untiring zeal of the preachers strength- ened the English interest in religious matters. The sacred motive of the crusades intensified it, and books of devotion appeared, not in Latin, like the chronicles, but in simple, every-day English. One of the best known The of these was the Ormtihim, a book which gives oimuium, ^ metrical paraphrase of the Gospels as used 1215-1220. in the church service, each portion followed by a metrical sermon. Its author kept a sturdy hold upon his future fame in his couplet, — Thiss boc iss nemmnedd Orrmulum Forrthi thatt Orm itt worhhte. He was equally determined that his lines should be pro- nounced properly, and so after every short vowel he doubled the consonant. He even gave advance orders to whoever should copy his work : — And whoso shall will to write this book again another time, I bid him that he write it correctly, so as this book teacheth him, en- tirely as it is upon this first pattern, with all such rhymes as here are set with just as many words, and that he look well that he write a letter twice where it upon this book is written in that wise.' Another of these books of devotion was the Ancren „^ . Riwle, a little prose work whose author is un- Tne Anoren ^ Riwie, known. Its object was to guide three sisters aiiouti225. ^j^Q wished to withdraw from the world, though without taking the vows of the convent. It is almost ' Translated in Morley's English Writers, iii. I2th Cent.] THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD 2g Sternly strict, but so pure and natural and earnest that it was deeply loved and appreciated. 20. Romances. The Norman delight in stories and the new ideas given by the crusades aroused in the Eng- lish a keen love of romance. The conquest itself was romantic. The chivalry introduced by the Normans was ~~ ^<^^M M ir I m wfWs ( mi^M m ^U!tb SIR LAUNCELOT AND A HERMIT From an illuminated MS. of 13 16 picturesque. It adorned the stern Saxon idea of duty with richness and grace. Simple old legends took form and beauty. Four great cycles of romance were produced ; that is, four groups of stories cycles oi told in metre, each centred about some one "°'^''*' hero. One was about Charlemagne, one about Alexan- der the Great, one told the tale of the fall of Troy, and one pictured King Arthur and his knights. This last cycle had a curious history. Before the middle ^^^jj^^ ^ of the twelfth century, one Geoffrey of Mon- Monmoutii, mouth, a Welsh bishop, wrote in Latin an ex- ^"-1164. ceedingly fanciful History of the Kings of Britain. It 30 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [13th Cent. was translated into French by a clerk named Wace ; was carried to France ; wandered over the Continent, where it was smoothed and beautified, and gained the stories of Launcelot and the Holy Grail ; then returned to England, and was put into English verse by the English priest Layamon. He called it the Layamon's or j Brut, about Brut, or story of Brutus, a fabled descendant ^^°^' of ^neas, who was claimed to have landed on the shores of England in prehistoric times. This cycle was the special favorite of the English. The marvellous adventures of King Arthur's knights interested those who had been thrilled by the stories of returning cru- saders ; and the quest of the knights for but one glance of that Holy Thing, the Grail, was in full accord with the spirit of the crusades, an earthly journey with a spiritual gain as its object and reward. The Chronicle came to an end in 1 1 54. The Ormulum, the Ancren Riwle, and the Brut all belong to the early part of the thirteenth century. They are English in Frenoii their feeling; but as the years passed, French romances, romances were sung throughout the land, — in French where French was understood, in English trans- lation elsewhere. One of the best liked of these was King Horn. Its story is : — The kingdom of Horn's father is invaded by the King Horn, Saracens, who kill the father and put Horn proDaiiiy and his companions to sea. King Avlmar re- altor 1250. . ,, 1 , ^, , ceives them, and orders them to be taught various duties. Of Horn he says : — And tech him to harpe With his nayles fcharpe, Bivore me to kerve And of the cupe lerve, — the usual accomplishments of the page. The king's 1 3th Cent.] THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD 3 1 daughter, Rymenhild, falls in love with Horn ; and no wonder, if the description of him is correct.. He was bright fo the glas, . He was whit fo the flur, Role red was his colur, In none kinge-riche Nas non his iliche. He goes in quest of adventures, to prove himself worthy of Rymenhild. The course of their love does not run smooth. King Aylmar presents a most eligible king as his daughter's suitor ; Horn's false friend tries to win her ; she is shut up in an island castle ; but Horn, in the disguise of a gleeman, makes his way into the castle and wins his Rymenhild. He kills his false friend ; he finds that his mother still lives ; he regains his father's kingdom ; and so the tale ends. This story is thoroughly French in its treatment of woman. In Beowulf, the wife of the lord is respected and honored, she is her lord's friend and helpmeet ; but there is no romance about the matter. To picture the smile of woman as the reward of valor, and her hand as the prize of victory, was left to the verses of those poets who were familiar with the glamour of knighthood. 21. The Norman-English love of nature. This new race, the Norman-English, enjoyed romance, they liked the new and the unwonted, but there was ever a warm corner in their hearts for nature. The dash of the waves, the keen breath of the northern wind, the coming of spring, the song of the cuckoo, the gleam of the daisy, — they loved them all; and in the midst of the romances of knights .and Saracens and foreign Natme countries, they felt a tenderness toward what ^'^°'' was their very own, the world of nature. Simple, tender, graceful little lyric poems slipped in shyly among the ♦ 32 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [13th Cent. more pretentious histories, religious handbooks, and paraphrases. Here are bits from them : — Sumer is icumen in, Llude sing cuccu ! Groweth sed, and bloweth med, And springth the wude nu, Sing, cuccu! or this : — Dayes-eyes in the dales. Notes sweete of nightingales, Each fowl song singeth, or this, which has a touch of the French love ro- mance : — Blow, northern wind, Send thou me my suetyng. Blow, northern wind, Blow, blow, blow ! 22. The Robin Hood ballads. Not only love of na- ture but love of freedom and love of justice inspired the ballads of Robin Hood, many of which must have origi- nated during this period, though probably they did not take their present form till much later. They are crude, simple stories in rhyme of the exploits of Robin Hood and his men, and they come straight from the heart of the Englishman, that bold, defiant heart which always beat more fiercely at the thought of injustice. Robin and his friends are exiles because they have dared to shoot the king's deer, and they have taken up their abode in " merry Sherwood." There they waylay the sheriff and the "proud bishop," and force them to open their well-filled purses and count out the gold pieces that are to make life easier for many a poor man. These ballads were not for palaces or for monasteries, they were for the English people ; and the ballad-singers I3th Cent.] THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD 33 went about from village to village, singing to one group after another, adding a rhyme, or a stanza, or an adventure at every repetition. Gradually the tales of the "cour- teous outlaw " were forming themselves into a cycle of romance, but the days of the printing-press came too soon for its completion. Whether Robin was ever a "real, live hero " is not of the least con- sequence. The point of interest is that the ballads which picture his adventures are the free, bold expres- sion of the sincere feelings of the Englishman in the early years of his forced submission to Norman rule. 23. Value of the Norman-English writings. The writings of the first two centuries after the Norman con- quest are, as a whole, of small worth. With the increas- ing number of translations, such a world of literature was thrown open to the English that they were dazzled with excess of light. Daringly, but half timidly, they ventured to step forward, to try one thing after another. No one could expect finish and conipleteness ; the most ■ that could be looked for was some beginning of poetry that should show imagination, of prose that should show power. So ended the thirteenth century, in a kind of morning twilight of literature. The fourteenth was the time of the dawning, the century of Chaucer. ■ A BAND OF MINSTRELS From a fourteenth-century MS. 34 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i2th-i3th Cent. Centuries XII and XIII THE NORMAN-ENGLISH PERIOD Ormulum. King Arthur. Ancreii Riwle. Lay anion's Brut. Cycles of romance. French romances. Charlemagne. King Horn. Alexander. Nature lyrics. Fall of Troy. Robin Hood ballads. SUMMARY The Norman Conquest affected both language and litera- ture. English, French, and Latin were used in England ; but English gradually prevailed, until in 1362 it became the official language of the courts. Many new words had been added and its grammar simplified. The literary influence of the Normans was for history, re- ligious writings, and story-telling. Two other influences helped to arouse the English to mental activity, — the opening of the universities and the crusades. The chief immediate literary results of this intellectual stimulus were the chronicles, now written by men who were not monks, and books of devotion. Among the latter was the Ormulum and the Ancren Riwle. Love of story-telling manifested itself in four cycles of ro- mance, centring about Charlemagne, Alexander the Great, the fall of Troy, and King Arthur. This last cycle went through the hands of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, Layamon, and others. French romances were popular, especially King Horn. Love of nature inspired simple, sincere lyrics j love of free- dom and justice inspired the Robin Hood ballads. The writings of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries are of little intrinsic value, but foreshadow better work to come. • CHAPTER III CENTURY XIV CHAUCER'S CENTURY 24. England in the fourteenth century. The four- teenth century was not only the dawning of modern English literature, but it was the dawning of Thebogin- English thought. Before this time kings had ^^^°i thought how to keep their thrones ; barons had tJionght. thought how to prevent kings from becoming too power- ful ; priests and monks had thought, sometimes how to teach the people, sometimes how to get the most possible from them ; but the masses of the English people never seemed to think of anything that was of interest to them all until about the middle of the fourteenth century. One special reason for this beginning of English thought was that many thousands of Englishmen had become more free than ever before. England had long been controlled by what is known as the feu- Tteioudai dal system ; that is, a tenure of land on condi- system, tion of service. The cultivated portions of England were divided into great manors, or farms, and each was held by some rich man on condition of giving his service to the king. On these manors lived the masses of the people, the villeins, or peasants. They were obliged as part of their duty to work for their lord a cer- tain number of days every year, and they were forbid- den to leave the manor. During the crusades, the lords who went to the Holy Land needed a great deal of money, and they often allowed their tenants to give 36 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [14th Cent. them money instead of service. Sometimes they sold them land. These crusades came to an end in the thir- teenth century, and even during the early years of the fourteenth the peasants were beginning, to feel some- what independent. In 1338, the Hundred Years' War broke out between England and France. In 1346, an important battle Changed was won at Cr^cy, not by English knights condition q^ horseback with swords and lances, but by of the ^ . ' peasants. English peasants on foot with no weapons ex- cept bows and arrows. Then the peasants began to say to one another, " We can protect ourselves. Why should we remain on manors and depend upon knights in armor to fight for us .'' " Following close upon this bat- tle was a terrible disease, called the Black Death, which swept over England. When it had gone, half of the people of the land were dead. Many of those peasants who survived ran away from the manors, for now that there were so few workmen, they could earn high wages anywhere. Moreover, weaving had been introduced, and if they did not wish to do farm-work, they could sup- port themselves in any city. The king and his counsel- lors made severe laws against this running away ; but they could not well be enforced, and they only made the peasants angry with all who were richer or more power- ful than themselves. They began to question, " How are these lords any greater folk than we .' How do they deserve wealth any more than we .' They came from Adam and Eve just as we did." The masses of the people, then, were angry with the Discontent nobles and the other wealthy men. They were with the also discontented with the church. After the Black Death there was hardly a person in Eng- land who was not mourning the loss of dear friends. Es- i4th Cent.] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 37 pecially the poor longed for the comfort that the church should have given them ; but the church paid little atten- tion to their needs. Many of the clergy who received the income from English benefices lived in Italy, and had no further interest in England than to get as much from the land as possible. While the peasants were in such poverty, vast sums of money were being sent to these Italian priests, for fully half the land was in the hands of the church. The church did less and less for men, while the vision of what it might do was growing clearer. Thousands of these unhappy, discontented pea- sants marched up to London to demand of the Tte king their freedom and other rights and privi- Revolt. ' leges. This was the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. i38i. Their demands were not granted, and the revolters were severely punished. In this century of unrest and change there were four authors whose writings are characteristic of j.^^^ the manner in which four classes of people re- prominent , , , . ~, autbors. garded the state of matters. They were: I. " Sir John Mandeville," who simply accepted things as they were ; 2. William Langland, or Langley, who criti- cised and wished to reform ; 3. Wyclif, who criticised and wished to overthrow ; and 4. Chaucer, the good-humored aristocrat, who saw the faults of his times, but gently ridiculed them rather than preached against them. 25. The Voyages and Travels of Sir John Mande- ville, Kt. This account of distant countries and strange peoples purports to have been written by Sir John him- self. He claims to be an English knight who has often journeyed to Jerusalem, and who puts forth this volume to serve as a guide-book to those wishing to make the pilgrimage. The introduction seems so " real " that it is a pity to be obliged to admit that the work is prob- 38 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [14th Cent. ably a combination of a few travellers' stories and a vast amount of imagination, and that, worse than all, there never was any " Sir John." It was first written in French, and then translated into English either in SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE ON HIS VOYAGE TO PALESTINE From an old MS. in the British Museum the fourteenth century or the early part of the fifteenth. The traveller has most marvellous experiences. He finds that in the Dead Sea iron will float, while a feather will drop to the bottom. " And these be things against kind [nature]," says Sir John. He sees in Africa people who have but one foot. "They go so fast that it is marvel," he declares, "and the foot is so large that it shadow- eth all the body against the sun when they will lie and rest themselves." Sometimes he brings in a bit of science. From his observations of the North Star he i4th Cent.] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 39 reasons that" Men may go all round the world and return to their country ; and always they would find men, lands, and isles, as well as in our part of the world." When he touches on religious customs, he becomes especially in- teresting, for in the midst of the unrest and discontent of his age he has no fault to find with the laws or the church ; and with all his devotion to the church, he has no blame for those whose belief differs from his own. " They fail in some articles of our faith," is his only criticism of the Moslems. 26. William Langland, 1332-1400. William Lang- land wrote the Vision of Piers Plowman. Very little is known of Langland save that he was proba- The vision bly a clerk of the church. He knew the lives °'^'"* of the poor so well that it is possible he was first the son of a peasant living on a manor, and be- x362-° came free on declaring his intention to enter i363- the service of the church. His Vision comes to him one May morning when, as he says — in the alliterative verse of Beowidf, but in words much more like modern English : — I was wery forwandred ' and went me to reste Under a brode banke bi a bornes ^ side, And as I lay and lened and loked in the wateres, I slombred in a slepyng ; it sweyned ^ so merye. In his dream he sees " a faire felde full of folke." There are plowmen, hermits, men who buy and sell, minstrels, jugglers, beggars, pilgrims, lords and ladies, a king, a jester, and many others. They are all absorbed in their own affairs, but Repentance preaches to them so ear- nestly about their sins that finally they all vow to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Truth. No one can tell them where to find the shrine. At last they ask Piers ' weary with wandering. ^ brook's. ' sounded. 40 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [14th Cent. the Plowman to go with them and show them the way. " If I had plowed and sowed my half-acre, I would go with you," he replied. The pilgrims agree to help him, and he sets them all to work. While they are working, God sends a pardon for them ; but a priest who sees it declares, that it is no pardon, for it says only that if men do well, they shall be saved. This ends the vision, but Piers dreams again. " Do well, do better, do best," is the keynote of this dream. "Doweu ^^^ '^^^^ ^^^^ ^^° '® moral and upright; he 40 Setter, does better who is filled with love and kind- ness ; he does best who follows most closely the life of the Christ. Finally, Piers is seen in a halo of light, for this leader who works and loves and strives to save others represents the Christ himself. This work is the last important poem written in the old alliterative metre of Beowulf. It is an allegory, and there are in it such characters as Lady Meed (bribery). Holy Church, Conscience; Sir Work-well-with-thine- hand. Sir Goodfaith Gowell, Guile, and Reason. Rea- son's two horses are Advise-thee-before and Suffer-till- I-see-my-time. The liking for allegories came from the French, but the puzzling over hard questions of life and destiny was one of the characteristics of the early Teu- tons. Langland saw the trouble and wrong around him ; he saw the hard lives of the poor and the laws that oppressed them ; he saw just where the church failed to teach and to comfort them ; yet this fourteenth-century Puritan never thought of revolt. Some few changes in the laws, more earnestness and sincerity in the church, and above all, an effort on the part of each to "do best," — and the eager reformer believed that happiness would smile upon the world of England. In 1361, only one year before this poem was written, the Black Death I324-I384] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 41 had for the second time swept over the land. For the second time a great wave of hopeless sorrow and help- lessness had overwhelmed the hearts of the people. Langland had put into words what was in every one's thoughts. It is no wonder that his poem was read by thousands; that men saw more clearly than ever the "<)>:' ii \ ^■fni ir I 7 JOHN WYCLIF evils of the times; that they began to look about them for strength to bear their lives, for help to make them better. 27. John Wyclif, 1324-1384. The strength and help were already on the way, for while Lang- wycui's ^ , . iT^' ii- translation land was planning some additions to his poem, oithoBiDie. a learned clergyman named John Wyclif was "so. translating the Bible into the language of the people. 42 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1364-1384 Wyclif was a very interesting man. Until he was about forty, he was a quiet student and preacher. Suddenly he appeared in public as the opponent of the pope him- self. The pope claimed that England had not paid him his proper tax for many years. " We need the money," declared Wyclif, "and surely a people has a right to self-preservation." The king and the clergy supported the bold patriot, and they were not at all annoyed while he preached against the sins of the monks ; but when he was not satisfied with calling for the purification of the church, and for better lives on the part of the clergy and the monks, but began to preach and write against tran- substantiation and other doctrines, they were indignant. The authorities in England tried to arrest him, and the pope commanded that he be brought to Rome ; but still he sent his tracts over the length and breadth of the country. He wrote no more in Latin, but in simple, straightforward English that the plain people could understand. Such is the English of his translation of the Scriptures. The following is a specimen of its lan- guage : — Blessid be pore men in spirit: for the kyngdom of hevenes is herum. Blessid ben mylde men : for thei schulen weelde the erthe. Blessid ben thei that mournen : for thei schal be coumfortid. Blessid be thei that hungren and thirsten after rigtwisnesse : for thei schal be fulfillid. Blessid ben merciful men : for thei schal gete mercy. Blessid ben thei that ben of clene herte : for thei schulen se god : Blessid ben pesible men : for thei schulen be clepidgoddis children. Blessid ben thei that sufEren persecucioun for rightwisnesse : for the kyngdom of heavens is hern. Many churchmen honestly believed that it was wrong to give the Bible to those who were not scholars, lest they should not understand it aright ; and even more were either shocked or angry at Wyclif's daring to crit- 1340-1400] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 43 icise the teachings of the church and the lives of the clergy. Persecution arose against the preacher peisoonuon and his followers. He was protected by power- "'^y"'- ful friends ; but, forty years after his death, his grave was opened, his bones burned, and the ashes tossed scornfully into the river Swift. It was easier, however, for his opponents to fling away his ashes than to destroy his influence upon the people and upon the language. His Bible was in manuscript, of course, because printing had not yet been invented ; but it was read and reread by thousands, and the plain, strong words used by him- self and his assistants became a part of the every-day language. Moreover, this translation showed that an English sentence need not be loose and rambling, but might be as clear and definite as a Latin sentence; that English as well as Latin could express close reasoning and keen argument. 28. Geoffrey Chaucer, 13409-1400. While Wyclif was preaching at Oxford and Langland had not yet begun to work on his Vision, a young page was grow- ing up in the house of the Duke of Clarence who was destined to become the prince of story-tellers in verse. This young Geoffrey Chaucer was the son of a wine merchant of London. He lived like.other courtiers ; he went to France to help fight his king's battles, was taken prisoner, was ransomed and set free. He wrote some love verses in the French fashion and translated some French poems, but he would have been somewhat amazed if any one had told him that he would be known five hun- dred years later as the " Father of English Poetry." By 1 372, the young courtier had become a man " of some respect," and the king sent him on diplomatic mis- sions to various countries, twice at least to Italy. The literature of Italy was far in advance of that of England, 44 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1372-1400 and now the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio were open to the poet diplomat. Finally, Chaucer was again in England ; and when he wrote, he wrote like an Englishman, but like an Englishman who was familiar with the best that France and Italy had to give. 29. The Canterbury Tales. A collection of stories written by Boccaccio was probably what suggested to Chaucer the writing of a similar collection. Boccaccio . , , , - and Boccaccio s stories are told by a company 01 Chaucer. friends who have fled from the plague-stricken city of Florence to a villa in the country. Chaucer made a plan that allowed even more variety,' for his stories are told by a company who were going on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury. Boc- caccio's people were of nearly the same rank ; but on a pilgrimage all sorts of folk were sure to meet, and therefore Chaucer was perfectly free to introduce any kind of person that he chose. Making a pilgrimage was a common thing in those Fiigiim- days, and people went for various reasons : some ages. |.Q pray and make offerings to the saint that they believed had helped them in sickness or trouble, some to petition for a favor, some for the pleasure of making a journey, ^d some simply because others were going. Travelling alone was not agreeable and not always safe, therefore these pilgrims often set out in com- panies, and a merry time they made of it. Some even took minstrels and bagpipes to amuse them on the road. The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer's best work. It be- gins on a bright spring morning, when he had gone to the Tabard Inn in Southwark for the first stage in his pilgrimage to Canterbury. Just at night a party of twenty-nine rode up to the door of the inn, and the solitary traveller was delighted to find that they, too, 1372-1400] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 45 had set out on the same errand. There was nothing shy or unsocial about this pilgrim, and before bedtime came, he had made friends with them all, and had agreed to join their party. A very cheerful party it was, and these good-natured travellers were pleased with the rooms, the stables, the supper, the wine, and especially with the landlord, Harry Bailey, whom the poet calls "a merry man." After supper the host tells them that he never before saw so cheerful a company together at his inn. Then he talks about their journey. He says he knows well that they are not planning to make a gloomy time of it. For trewely confort ne myrthe is noon To ride by the weye doumb as a stoon, he declares ; and he proposes that each one of them shall tell two stories going and two more returning, and that when they have come back, a supper shall be given to the one who has told the best story. This pleases the pilgrims, and they are even more pleased when the cheery landlord offers to go with them, to be their guide and to judge the merit of the tales. Then come the stories themselves. There are only twenty-five of them, and three of those are incom- plete, for Chaucer never carried out his full plan. They are of all kinds. There are stories of knights and monks ; of giants, fairies, miracles ; of the crafty fox who THE PRIORESS From the EUesraere MS., which is the best as well as one of the oldest of the Chau- cer MSS. 46 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1372-1400 ran away with Chanticleer in his bag, but was persuaded by the no less crafty rooster to drop the bag and make a speech of defiance to his pursuers. There are sto- ries of magic swords that would cut through any kind of armor, and there is a tale of " faire Eme- lye," the beloved of two young knights, one of whom was in prison and could gaze upon her only from afar, while the other was forbidden on pain of death to enter the city wherein she dwelt. After the fashion of his day, Chaucer took the plots of his tales from wherever he might find them, but it is his way of tell- oiauoer's ing the stories that is so fascinating. We can- *'^'*- not help fancying that he is talking directly to us, for he drops in so many little confidential "asides." " I have told you about the company of pilgrims," he says, " and now it is time to tell you what we did that night, and after that I will talk about our journey." At the end of a subject he is fond of saying, "That is all. There is no more to say." He is equally con- fidential when he describes his various characters, as he does in the Prologue before he begins his story- telling. It was no easy task to describe each one of a large company so accurately that we can almost see them, and so interestingly that we are in no haste to come to the stories ; but Chaucer was successful. He describes the knight, who had just returned from a jour- THE WIFE OF EATH From the Harleian MS. I 372-1400] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 47 ney, and was so eager to make his grateful pilgrimage that he had set out with his short cassock chancor'a still stained from his coat of mail ; the dainty "''"a"**"- young prioress, who had such perfect table-manners that she never dipped her fingers deep in the gravy — an important matter to table-mates before forks were in use — or let a drop fall on her breast ; the sailor, whose beard had been shaken by many a tempest ; the phy- sician, who had not his equal in the whole world ; the woman of Bathe, with her "scarlet red" stockings, her soft new shoes, and her hat as broad as a buckler ; and the gay young squire, whose gown " with sieves longp and wyde" was so richly em- broidered that it looked like a meadow " al ful of fresshe floures whyte and reed e. " C h aucer gives us a picture of the merry company, but more than that, he shows us what kind of people they were. He tells us their faults in satire as keen as it is good-natured. The monk likes hunting better than obeying strict convent rules, and Chaucer says of him slyly that when he rode, men could hear the little bells on his bridle jingle quite as loud as the bell of the chapel. The learned physician was somewhat of a miser, and Chaucer whispers cannily, — For gold in phisik is a cordial, Therefore he lovede gold in special. THE SQUIRE From the EUesmere MS. 48 ENGLAND^S LITERATURE [1372-1400 THE PARSON From the Ellesmere MS. The two characters for whom the poet has most sym- pathy are the thin and threadbare Oxford student, who would rather have books than gorgeous robes or musical instruments ; and the earnest, faithful par- ish priest, who " Christes Gospel trewely wolde preche," and who never hired some one to take charge of his parish while he slipped away to live an easy life in a brotherhood. This keen - eyed poet, with his warm- sympathy, could hardly have helped loving nature, and he can picture a bright, dewy May morning so clearly that we can almost see ChflllCBT S loveoi "the silver dropes hangyng on the leves." natuie. -^^ \iked May and sunshine and birds and lilies and roses. He liked the daisy, and when he caught sight of the first one, he wrote : — And down on knees anon right I me set, And as I could this freshe flower I grette, Kneeling always till it inclosed was Upon the small and soft and sweete grass. 30. Death of Chaucer, 1400. Chaucer's life was not all sunshine, but he was always sunny and bright. He writes as if he knew so many pleasant things that he could not help taking up his pen to tell us of them. His death occurred in 1400, and that date is counted as the end of the old literature and the beginning of the new. Chaucer well deserves the title, " Father of English Poetry;" but when we read his poems, we forget his 1372-1400] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 49 titles and his learning, and think of him only as the best of story-tellers. We owe gratitude to Chaucer not only because he left us some delightful poems, but because he broke away from the old Anglo-Saxon metre and because he wrote in English. The Canterbury Tales begins : — Whan that Aprille with hise shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Cbaacer'a Of which vertu engendred is the flour ; language. Whan Zephi'rus eek with his swete breeth Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne, And smale foweles maken melodye That slepen al the nyght with open eye, — So priketh hem Nature in hir corages, — Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages. This is written in the 5- beat line, which gives more freedom than the 4-beat line of Beowulf. Alliteration is not em- ployed to mark the ac- cented syllables, but only to ornament the verse. Chaucer used many French words and often retained the French end- ings ; but he used them so easily and so appropri- ately that they seemed to become a part of the lan- guage. Another service ° ° CHAUCER and an even greater one From the Eiusmere ms. so ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [14th Cent. he rendered to the English tongue. People in different parts of England spoke in English, to be sure, but in widely differing dialects. Chaucer wrote in what was known as the Midland dialect, and his work was so good and so well liked that it had a powerful influence to Jix the language ; that is, to make his writings and his vocabulary models for the authors who succeeded him. Century XIV CHAUCER'S CENTURY "Sir John Mandeville.'' John Wyclif. William Langland. Geoffrey Chaucer. SUMMARY The weakening of the feudal system brought about the dawning of English thought. The causes of this weakening were : — 1. The lords, wishing to become crusaders, often accepted money instead of work. 2. In the Hundred Years' War the peasants discovered their power. 3. The Black Death lessened the number of workers, and enabled men to find farm-work where they chose and to de- mand what wages they liked. 4. The introduction of weaving made it possible for pea- sants to support themselves without working on the land. Harsh laws aroused discontent with the government ; the negligence of the clergy aroused discontent with the church. This discontent showed itself finally in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. Four writers are typical of the four chief classes of people : — 1. " Sir John Mandeville," who accepted things as they were. 2. William Langland, who in jPiers Plowman showed his wish to bring about reforms. i4thCent.] CHAUCER'S CENTURY 51 3. John Wyclif, who wished to overthrow rather than to reform. He and his assistants translated the Bible into English. Its clear, strong phrasing became a part of the every-day speech, and did much to fix the language by show- ing its powers. 4. Geoilrey Chaucer, who good-naturedly ridiculed the faults of his times. Chaucer's great work is the Canterbury Tales, which was probably suggested by Boccaccio's Decameron. Chaucer abandoned the early Anglo-Saxon metre and wrote in rhymed heroic verse. His work was so excellent that it fixed the Midland dialect as the literary language of England. CHAPTER IV OENTUHY XV THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 31. The imitators of Chaucer. Chaucer's poetry was so much better than any that had preceded it that the poets who lived in the early part of the fifteenth cen- tury made many attempts at imitation. They were not very successful. Chaucer wrote, for instance : — The bisy larke, messager of day, Salueth in hirsong the morwe gray; And fiery Phcebus riseth up so brighte That al the orient laugheth of the lighte. And with his stremes dryeth in the greves The silver droppes hangyng on the leves. One of Chaucer's imitators wrote : — Ther he lay to the larke song With notes newe, hegh up in the ayr. The glade morowe, rody and right fayr, Phebus also casting up his bemes, The heghe hylles gilt with his stremes, The syluer dewe upon the herbes rounde, Ther Tydeus lay upon the grounde. The best of these imitators was a king, James I James I of Scotland, who was captured by the Eng- 1395°*'""*' ^'sh when he was a boy of eleven, and was 1437. kept a prisoner in England for nineteen years. During his captivity he fell in love with the king's niece, and to her he wrote the tender verses of 1400-1425] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY S3 The Kings Quair.^ He describes his loneliness as fol- lows : — Bewailing in my chamber thus allone, Despeired of all joye and remedye, For-tiret of my thought and wo-begone, And to the wyndow gan I walk in hye, To see the warld and folk that went forbye, As for the tyme though I of mirthis fude Mycht have no more, to luke it did me gude. He catches sight of the princess walking in the garden, The fairest or the freschest younge floure That ever I sawe, methought, before that houre. He gazes at her; then. And in my hede I drew rycht hastily, And eft sones I lent it out ageyne, And saw hir walk that verray womanly, With no wight mo, bot only women tueyne, Than gan I studye in myself and seyne, . Ah ! suete, are ye a warldly creature, Or hevinly thing in likeness of nature ? So it is that the captive king wrote his love, with a frank, admiring imitation of Chaucer, but so simply and so naturally that he is more than a name on a printed page; and it is really a pleasure to know that the course of his love ran smooth, and that he was finally allowed to return to his kingdom with the wife whom he had chosen. This seven-line stanza was not original with him by any means, but because a king had used it, it became known as "rhyme royal." 32. Sir Thomas Malory. This century began and ended with royalty, for in its early years King James wrote its best poetry, and toward its end Sir Thomas Malory — of whom little is known — wrote its best prose, ' Book. 54 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1470-1485 the Morte d' Arthur, the old stories of King Arthur Morte grown more full, more simple, and more beauti- a'Arthui, ful than ever. "Thys noble and Joyous book," about 1470. (3^xton called it when he put it into print. At the close of Arthur's life he bids, according to Malory, " Syr Bedwere " to throw the sword Excalibur into the lake. Syr Bedwere obeys. Then says the author : — He threwe the swerde as farre in to the water as he myght, & there cam an arrae and an hande aboue the water and matte it, & caught it and so shake it thryse and braundysshed, and then vanysshed awaye the hande wyth the swerde in the water. . . . Than syr Bedwere toke the Kyng vpon his backe and so wente wyth hym to that water syde, & whan they were at the water syde euen fast by the banke houed a lytyl barge wyth many fayr ladyes in hit, & emange hem al was a quene, and al they had blacke hoodes, and al they wepte and shryked whan they sawe Kyng Arthur. " Now put me in to the barge," sayd the kyng, and so he dyd softelye. 33. The age of arrest. The fifteenth century is sometimes called the " age of arrest " because it is not No great niarked by any great literary work like that of uterature Chaucer. There are good reasons why no such work should have been produced. F"irst, the greater part of the century was full of warfare. The Hundred Years' War did not close until 1453, and there was hardly time to sharpen the battle-axes and put new strings to the bows before another war far more fierce than the first broke out, and did not come to an end until 1485. This was the War of the Roses, which was fought between the supporters of rival claimants to the English throne. Sometimes one side had the advan- tage and sometimes the other ; and whichever party was in power put to death the prominent men of the oppos- ing party. Second, there was not only no rest or quiet in the kingdom for great literary productions, but at iSth Cent.] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 55 least half of the nobles, the people of leisure, were killed in the terrible slaughter. Third, the church, which paid no taxes, owned so much of the land that the whole burden of taxation had to be borne by only a part of the people. Poor in literature as this century of fighting was, there were two reasons why it was good for the " com- mon folk." In the first place, knighthood was (jjij,oftiiB becoming of less and less value, partly because common of the increasing use of gunpowder, but even ''*'*°' more because the English' had at last learned that a man encased in armor so heavy that he could hardly mount his horse without help was not so valuable a sol- dier as a man on foot with a bow or a battle-axe. In the second place, war could not be carried on without money, and money must come by vote of the House of Commons, which represented, however poorly and un- fairly, the masses of the people. If the king and his counsellors wished to obtain money, they were obliged to pay more attention than ever before to the desires of the people. 34. Ballads. It was from the common folk that the most interesting literature of the century came, the ballads. An age of turmoil and unrest was, as has been said, no time for elaborate literary work, but the flashes of excitement, the news of a battle lost or a battle won, the story of some brave fighter returning from the war, — all these inspired short, strong ballads. Of course there had been many ballads before then, especially those of Robin Hood, but the fifteenth was the special century of the ballad, the time when the strong undercurrent of this poetry of the people came most conspicuously to the surface. No one knows who composed these ballads, but the wording shows that many of them came from S6 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [isth Cent. Scotland, and were inspired by the wild forays that were continually taking place between the Scotch and Chevy the English who dwelt near the border line of ciaso. the two countries. The most famous of all the border ballads is that of Chevy Chase, which be- gins : — The Persd out of Northomberlonde, and a vowe to God mayd he That he wold hunte in the mountayns off Chyviat within days thre In the magger of doughty Dogles, and all that ever with him be. The marks A ballad is not merely a story told in rhyme ; of a ballad, j^ ha.s several distinctive marks : — 1. It plunges into the tale without a moment's delay. There is not a shade of Chaucer's leisurely description. Chevy Chase does not even stop to explain who the two heroes, Percy and Douglas, may be. 2. It does something and says something. Every word counts in the story. We know from their deeds and words what the ballad people think, but " He longed strange countries for to see," or he "fell in love with Barbara Allen," is about as near a description of their thoughts as the ballad ever gives. 3. It is very definite. If people are bad, they are very bad ; and if they are good, they are very good. "Alison Gross" is "the ugliest witch in the north countrie." The bonny maiden is the fairest flower of all England. Colors are bright and strong : — O bonnie, bonnie was her mouth And cherry were her cheeks ; And clear, clear was her yellow hair, Whereon the red blude dreeps. Comparisons are of the simplest ; the maiden has a milk- I5th Cent] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 5/ white hand, her cheeks are red as a rose, and her eyes are blue as the sky. 4. The metre is almost always 4, 3, 4, 3 ; that is, the first and third lines contain four accented syllables, the second, and fourth contain three. The second and fourth lines rhyme, sometimes the first and third also. The final syllable often receives an accent even when there would be none in prose. 5. Most of the ballads show the touch of the Celt. There are weird stories of the return of ghostly lovers ; there are fascinating little gleams of fairyland, of beauty and of happiness, but often with a shade of sadness or loneliness, the unmistakable mark of the Celtic nature, that could turn from smiles to tears in the flashing of a moment. O sweetly sang the blackbird That sat upon the tree ; But sairer grat Lamkin When he was condemned to die. We do not know who composed the older ballads. Indeed, each one seems to have grown up almost like a little epic. The gleeman wandered from vil- lage to village, singing to groups of listeners, of the whose rapt eagerness was his inspiration. He * * ^• sang his song again and again, each time adding to it or taking from it, according to whether his invention or his memory was the better. Moreover, there was no pri- vate owrlership in ballad land. Any ballad was welcome to a line or a stanza from any other. Little by little the song grew, until finally its form was fixed by the coming of the printing-press. 35. Mystery plays. The fifteenth century was the time when the mystery or miracle play was at its best. This kind of play originated in the attempts of the clergy 58 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [15th Cent. to teach the people, and was common on the Continent long before the coming of the Normans to England. There were few books and few who could read. There- fore the clergy conceived the idea of acting in the church short plays presenting scenes from the Bible. To give room for more people to hear, the play was soon per- formed on a scaffold in the churchyard. Gradually the acting was given up by the priests and fell into the hands of the parish clerks ; then into those of the guilds. A MYSTERY PLAY AT COVENTRY From an old print or companies of tradesmen, for long before the fifteenth century the men of each craft had formed themselves into a guild. Slowly the plays became cycles, each cycle following the Bible story from Gen- esis to the end of the Gospels, sometimes to the resur- Cydes. I5th Cent.] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 59 rection. Each guild had in charge the presentation of one story or more. The acting was no longer in the churchyards, but at different convenient stations in the town. The stage was a great two-story or three-story wagon called, a pageant. An important part of the scenery was "hell mouth," represented by a pair of widely gaping jaws full of smoke and flames, into which unrepentant sinners were summarily hurled and from which Satan issued to take his part in the drama. The plays were always acted in the biblical order. When one play was ended, the pageant moved on, leaving the place free for the next play, so that a person remaining at any one station could see the whole cycle. To modern ideas there are some things in these plays that seem irreverent ; for instance, the repre- seemingu- sentation of God the Father on the stage. In "'«"""• one of the plays of the creation he is made to say famil- iarly : — Adam and Eve, this is the place That I have graunte you of my grace To have your wonnyng ' in ; Erbes, spyce, frute on tree, Beastes, fewles,^ all that ye see, Shall bowe to you, more and myn.^ This place hight paradyce, Here shall your joys begynne, And yf that ye be wyse, From thys tharr'' ye never twynne.* Again, when the angels appear to the shepherds to sing of peace on earth, one of the shepherds says, " I can sing it as well as he, if you will help ; " and he tries to imitate the heavenly song. ' dwelling. ^ fowls, 3 great and small. ■> need. = depart. 6o ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [15th Cent. The makers of the mystery plays knew as well as the writers of homilies that if the attention of the people Comical was to be retained, there must be amusement scenes. ^g .^^g]j ^g instruction, and therefore they did not hesitate to introduce comical scenes. The antics of Satan were made to provide a vast amount of amusement ; and even more respectable scriptural characters were impressed into the service of making fun to gratify the demands of the spectators. After Noah has built his ark, he requests his wife to come into it, but she objects. Noah ought not to have worked on that ark one hundred years before telling her what he was doing, she says ; at any rate, she must go home to pack her belongings ; she does not believe it will rain long, and if it does, she will not be saved without her cousins and her friends. She is finally persuaded to enter the ark. At last the door is closed, and Noah might well offer up a prayer of grati- tude or sing a hymn of praise for the safety of himself and his family ; but, instead, he proceeds to give most prosaic directions to his sons to take good care of the cattle, and to his daughters-in-law to be sure to feed the fowls. With all their crudeness^ these plays are often gentle ■ and sympathetic. Joseph watches over Mary most lov- Teniierness ingly. " My daughter," he tenderly calls her. oithepiays. ^^ the cruciiixion John's words of comfort to the sorrowing mother are very touching. " My heart is gladder than gladness itself," says Mary Mag- dalene at the resurrection. Such were the plays that pleased the people ; for they were simple, childlike, warm- hearted, ready to be amused, satisfied with the rudest jesting, and accustomed to treat sacred things with famil- iarity, but with no conscious irreverence. Going to a mystery play, like going on a pilgrimage, was a religious I5th Cent.] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 6i A SCENE FROM EVERYMAN This is a photograph of the reproduction of the play given by the Ben Greet Company in 1903. It represents Everyman on his pilgrimage, followed by Beauty, Strength, Dis- cretion, and Five Wits. Good Deeds and Knowledge are in the background duty ; but the mediaeval mind saw no reason why duty and amusement should not be agreeably united. 36. Miracle plays and moralities. In England these plays were more frequently called miracle plays, though this name was applied elsewhere only to dramas based not upon biblical scenes, but upon legends of saints or martyrs. Often one kind of play blended with another; for instance, Mary Magdalene introduces scenes from the life of Christ:, like a mystery; it follows out the le- gends of the heroine, like a miracle ; it also leads to a third variety of play, the morality, in that it introduces abstract characters, such as Sloth, Gluttony, Wrath, and Envy, for in the morality the characters were the virtues and vices. What amusement was in them was made by the Devil and a new character, the Vice, who played 62 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [15th Cent. tricks on Satan in much the fashion of the clown or fool of later days. At first sight, the morality seems dreary reading, especially when compared with the liveliness and rapid action of the mystery. There is no dreari- ness, however, to one who reads between the lines and is mindful of how intensely real the story was to those who listened to it in the earlier ages. One of ' the best of the moralities is Everyman, which was taken from the Dutch. In this play. Death, God's messenger, is sent to bid the merry young Everyman to make the long journey. Everyman pleads for a respite, he offers a' bribe, he begs that some one may go with him. "Ye, yf ony be so hardy," Death replies. Then Everyman in sore distress appeals to Fellowship to keep him company. For no man that is lyvynge to daye I will not go that lothe journaye, replies Fellowship. Kindred refuse the petition. Good Deeds would go with him, but Everyman's sins ;have. so weighed her down that she is too weak to stand. At. last Knowledge leads him to confession. He does pen- ance and starts on his lonely pilgrimage. One by one. Beauty, Strength, Honor, Discretion, and his Five Wits forsake him. Good Deeds alone stands as his friend, and says sturdily with renewed strength, " Fere not, I wyll speke for the." Everyman descends fearfully but trust- fully into the grave. Knowledge cries, " Nowe hath he suffred that we all shall endure;" and the play ends with a solemn prayer, — And he that hath his accounte hole and sounde, Hye in heven he shall be crounde, Unto whiche place God brynge us all thyder That we may lyve body and soule togyder. 1476] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 63 This is not entertaining, but it is far from being dull. With the simple stage setting of four centuries ago, the realistic grave, and the ghastly, ashen gray figure of Death, it must have thrilled and solemnized the hushed listeners as neither play nor sermon could do in later generations. 37. Introduction of printing into England, 1476. In the last quarter of the century there were two not- able events that were destined to do more for the masses of the people than anything that had preceded. CAXTON PRESENTED TO EDWARD IV Earl Rivers giving the book to the king, while Caxton kneels beside him The first of these events was the introduction of print- ing into England. Through these centuries of the beginning of literature, plays, homilies, poems, and 64 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1476 lengthy books of prose had all been copied by the pen on parchment or vellum. Cheap picture books were printed on a coarse, heavy paper from wooden blocks, and some of these "block books" contained text also; but to print with movable types was a German invention of the middle of the century. Fortunately for English wuuam book lovers, an Englishman named William i«2°?- Caxton, who was then living in Germany, was 1491. interested in the wonderful new art, and paid well for lessons in typesetting and all the other details of t'he trade. He was not only a keen business man, who thought money could be made by printing, but he was also a man of literary taste and ability, and the first Tie first English book that he printed was a translation printoa of his own, called The Recuyell of the Historyes look, prob- of Troye. He wrote triumphantly to a friend ably 1474. (-jjat his book was "not written with pen and ink as other books be." This was in 1474. Two years later, he and his press came to England, and there he printed volume after volume. The Canterbury Tales, Malory's Morte d' Arthur, .^sop's Fables, and nearly one hundred other volumes came from his press. In the simple, primitive fashion of the fifteenth cen- tury,* which ascribed to Satanic agency whatever was new or mysterious, there were many people in England who looked upon Caxton's magical output of books as Decrease unquestionably the work of the devil ; but the price oi press was still kept busy, and the price of books. books became rapidly less. Before Caxton began to print, they were enormously expensive. A hbrary of twenty or thirty volumes was looked upon as a rare collection ; and it was no wonder, for the usual rate for copying was a sum equal to-day to nearly fifty cents a page. Caxton's most expensive book could be iSth Cent] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY 65 purchased for about ^^30. How amazed he would have been if he could have looked forward to 1885 and seen one of his earlier and less perfect volumes sold for nearly ^10,000! 38. Signs of progress. England was not so wildly enthusiastic over literature that every tradesman or even every noble who could command a few pounds hastened to purchase a book; but the mere fact that there were „„ . , Effect of books for sale printing on at a price ="^'^*- lower than had been dreamed of before was a hope and an inspira- tion. It was easier to see books, to borrow them, to know about them ; and little by little the knowledge filtered down through the various classes of people, until that one printing-press at Westminster had given new thoughts and new hopes to thousands. New thoughts were coming from yet another source. Columbus had discovered what was supposed to be a shorter way to India ; Vasco da Gama had poieign rounded Africa ; hundreds had gazed with wide- ^'sMTeiiea. open eyes upon the ship of the Cabots as it sailed from the English wharfs, and had followed the " Grand Ad- miral" as he walked about the streets on his return, with all the glory of his discoveries about him. No one EARLIEST KNOWN REPRESENTATION OF PRINTING-PRESS 66 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [isth Cent. yet suspected that he had landed on the shores of a con- tinent, but it was enough to hear the sailors' stories of strange plants and animals and people. Who could say what other marvels might be discovered } Then came the end of the century. The homes of the masses of the people had made small addition of comfort ; the noble treated the peasants who The people ' ^ andtiie Still lived On his land with perhaps small in- century. crease of respect ; but for all that, the fifteenth century was marked by the increasing importance of the common people. They had shown their prowess in fighting ; they held more firmly the money-bags of the kingdom ; the ballads were theirs ; the mystery plays were theirs ; the new art of printing would benefit them rather than the wealthy nobles ; the discovery of Amer- ica would be to their gain, and it was already a stimulus to their intellect and their imagination. The sixteenth century was at hand, and men had a right to expect from it such a display of universal intellectual ability as Eng- land had never known. Century XV THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY James L of Scotland. Mystery plays. Sir Thomas Malory. Moralities. Ballads. SUMMARY The poets of the early part of the century tried to imitate Chaucer. Of these imitators, King James I of Scotland was the best. Toward the end of the century, Sir Thomas Malory wrote the best prose, the Morte (T Arthur. Only a small amount of good literature was produced be- cause : — I. The Hundred Years' War and the Wars of the Roses filled the age with fighting. iSth Cent] THE PEOPLE'S CENTURY ^J 2. A large number of the nobles were slain. 3. The people were heavily taxed. The common people gained in power because, first, the use of gunpowder made knighthood of decreasing value ; and, sec- ondly, the money needed for this warfare could be obtained only by vote of the House of Commons. From the common folk came the most interesting literature of the time, the ballads. They have no introduction ; they are definite ; their metre is usually 4, 3, 4, 3 ; they generally show a Celtic touch. A ballad is often the work of many hands. The miracle plays were at their best. They were acted first by the clergy ; then by members of guilds. They were followed by the moralities, of which Everyman is the best example. Toward the end of the century, there were two notable events which aroused and stimulated the people. They were : — 1. The introduction of printing into England by William Caxton, followed by a decrease in the price of books and a much more general circulation of them. 2. Foreign discoveries by Columbus, Da Gama, the Cabots, and others. The distinguishing mark of the age was the increasing im- portance of the common people. CHAPTER V CENTURY XVI SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 39. Revival of learning in Europe. For three hun- dred years after the Norman Conquest, English writers were inclined to follow French models. Then came Chaucer, who, thoroughly English as he was, retold Italian stories, and was for some years greatly influenced The liter- ^^ Italian literature. Italy was looked upon as aryposiuon the land of knowledge and light, and it was ° '■ the custom for Englishmen who wished for better educational advantages than Oxford or Cam- bridge could afford, to go to that country to study in some one of the great universities. Italian scholars were deeply interested in the writings of the Greeks and Romans. For many years they had The Re- been collecting ancient manuscripts, and in naissanoe. 1453 an event occurred which brought more of them to Italy than ever before. This event was the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. Constantino- ple had been the home of many Greek scholars, who now fled to Italy and brought the priceless manuscripts with them. Then there was study of the classics in- deed. More and more students went from other coun- tries to Italy. ■ More and more copies of those manu- scripts were carried to different parts of Europe. Among the ancient writings was clear, concise prose, so care- fully finished that every word seemed to be in its own i6th Cent.] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 69 proper niche ; there were beautiful epics and much other poetry ; there were essays, histories, biographies, and orations. Printing had come at just the right time to spread this new ancient knowledge over the Conti- nent and England. All western Europe was aroused. People felt a new sense of boldness and freedom. They felt as if in the years gone by they had been slow and stupid. Now they became daring and fearless in their thought. They were eager to learn, to do, to under- stand. This movement was so marked that a name was given to it, the Renaissance, or new birth, for people felt as if a new life had come to them. The Renais- sance did not affect all countries alike. In Italy, the minds of men turned toward sculpture and painting ; in Germany, to a bold investigation of religious teachings ; in England, toward religion and literature. A second influence that helped to arouse and inspire was the increased knowledge of the western increased world. Columbus died in 1506, but now that unowieage ol tlie the way had been pointed out, one explorer western after another crossed the western seas. South '"'"*i"6"'' America was rounded and found to be a vast continent. North America was a group of islands, people thought ; and men set out boldly to find a channel through them, to discover a "Northwest Passage." Finally, Magellan's ship went around the world ; and, behold, the world was much larger than had been supposed. Before the wonder of this had faded from the minds of men, there came another amazing discovery, for Coperni- ^y^^i^^^j^. cus declared, " The earth is not the centre of inga oi the universe ; it is only a satellite of the sun." °"° This was not accepted at once as truth, but the mere suggestion of it broadened men's thoughts. There was good reason why the world should begin to awake. 70 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1509-1529 40. Henry VIII and the men about him. The in- fluence of the Renaissance was not strongly felt in England before the time of Henry VIII, who came to the throne in 1 509. Around him centred the literature of the early part of the century. Indeed, he himself attempted verse more than once. Pastime with Good Company is ascribed to him. Pastime with good company I love, and shall until I die, Gruche so will," but none deny, So God be pleased, so live will L For my pastance,^ Hunt, sing, and dance. My heart is sett ; All goodly sport To my comfort, Who shall me let ? ^ Henry VIII was no great poet, but he liked litera- joim skei- ture, and he liked to appear as its patron. His ton, asout early tutor was one of the most prominent 1460-1529. . ■' ^ liteiary men of the day, the poet John Skelton. Skelton says : — The honor of Englond I lernyd to spelle In dygnite roialle that doth excelle. Skelton was a fine classical scholar, and was perfectly able to write smooth, easily flowing verses, but he de- liberately chose a rough, tumbling, headlong metre. He hated Cardinal Wolsey, and of him he wrote : — So he dothe vndermynde. And suche sleyghtes dothe fynde, That the Kynges mynde By hym is subuerted. And so streatly coarted ' grudge whoso will. ^ pastime. ' hinder. 1480-1535] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY Jl In credensynge his tales, That all is but nutshales That any other sayth : He hath in him suche fayth. Little wonder is it that Wolsey cordially returned the poet's dislike. This harsh, scrambling metre Skelton knew how to adapt to more poetical thoughts. His best known poem is on " Phyllyp Sparowe," the pet bird of a young school- girl. It is of the mistress that he writes : — Soft and make no din, For now I will begin To have in remembrance Her goodly dalliance And her goodly pastaunce So sad and so demure. Behaving her so sure, With words of pleasure She would make to the lure And any man convert To give her his whole heart. Skelton was a witty man, and many of the "good stories " of his day were ascribed to him. It innuenos is easy to see how Henry VIII would be in- "' sueiton. fluenced even as a child by the careless boldness, poeti- cal ability, and rollicking good nature of this man who was as brilliant as he was learned. No one knows how much of Henry's interest in poetry was due to the guidance of his tutor. Elizabeth closely resembled her father, and must have been influenced by his love of lit- erature. It may be that we owe some generous part of the literary glory of the Elizabethan age to the half-for- gotten John Skelton with his "jagged" rhymes. 41. Sir Thomas More, 1480-1535. Another friend of Henry VIII was Sir Thonjas More, Sir Thomas 72 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1480-1535 was so learned that when he was hardly more than a boy he could step upon the stage in the midst of a Latin play and make up a part for himself ; and he was so witty that his improvised jests would set the audience into peals of laughter. The year that Henry came to the throne More wrote the lives of Edward V and of Rich- ard III, and this was the first English historical work that was well arranged and written in a dignified style. The little book by which he is best known was writ- ntopia ^^^ ^^ Latin and had a Greek title, Utopia, or 1516. "nowhere." This describes a country as More thought a country ought to be. In that marvellous land everything was valued according to its real worth. Gold was less useful than iron ; therefore the chains of criminals were made of gold. Kings ruled, not for their own glory, but for the sake of their people. No one was idle, and no one was overworked. War was undertaken only for self-defence, or to aid other nations against invasion. This book is interest- ing not only because it pictures what so brilliant a man as Sir Thomas More thought a country should be, but because it proves that people were thinking with a boldness and freedom that SIR THOMAS MORE, 14SC1-1535 From Holbein's Court of Henry VIII I52S] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 73 would not be suppressed. In many respects More proved to be a true prophet, for some of the laws that he sug- gested became long ago a part of the British constitu- tion. 42. Religious questioning. In Utopia every man was allowed to follow whatever religion he thought right. This question of religion, whether to obey the church implicitly or to decide matters of faith for one's self, was dividing Germany into two parties, and was arousing a vast amount of thought and discussion in England. Many held firmly to the old faith ; but many others were inclined to investigate the teachings of the church, and to wish to compare them with the words of the Bible. English had changed greatly since Wyclif's day, and an English scholar named William wiiiiam Tyndale was determined that the Bible should 1^5^'!' be given to the people in the language of their isae. own time. " If God spare my life," he said to a cler- gyman who opposed him, "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall kpow more of the Scripture than thou dost." There was "no room" in England to make his translation, as he said, and there- fore Tyndale went to Germany, and in 1525 TTiaaie's printed with the utmost secrecy an English translation version of the New Testament. Some English Testament, merchants paid for the printing, and the books ^^^b. found their way over the country in spite of the king's opposition. The Old Testament was afterward trans- lated under his direction and partly by himself. , Not more than two years after Tyndale's New Testa- ment was printed, Henry became bent upon securing a divorce from his wife, but the pope refused. Then Henry declared that he himself was the head of the church in England. Parliament was submissive, the 74 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1534 English clergy were submissive, and in 1534 the Church of England separated from the Church of Rome. Who- sepaiation ever believed that the authority of the pope of England ^^^ Superior to that of the king was declared iiom a traitor. Prominent men were not suffered of Rome. to hold their own opinions in quiet; and among 1534. those who were dragged forward and com- pelled to say under oath whether they accepted Henry as the head of their church was Sir Thomas More. He was too honorable and truthful to assent to what he did not believe ; and King Henry, who had Sir Thomas claimed to feel great admiration and affection """■ for him, straightway gave the order that he should be executed. Tyndale, too, Henry had pursued even after his withdrawal to the Continent. Such was the treatment that this patron of literature bestowed upon two of the three or four best writers of English prose that lived during his reign. 43. Sir Thomas "Wyatt, 1503-1542, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, about 1517-1547. At King Henry's court there were two men in whom every one who met them was interested. The elder was Sir Thomas Wyatt. He was a learned man, he spoke sev- eral languages, he wa« a skilful diplomatist and states- man. He was also a man of most charming manners, and was exceedingly handsome. The younger was the Earl of Surrey. These two men were warm friends, and they were both interested in poetry. Both knew well the Greek and Latin and Italian literatures ; and they appreciated not only the freedom of thought and fancy brought in by the Renaissance, but also the carefulness with which the Italian poetry as well as the classical was written. Why should not that same carefulness, that same love for not only saying a good thing but '5S3-I557] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 75 saying it in the best way, be followed in English, they questioned. They were especially pleased with the Italian sonnet, a form of verse that needs the great- , r , . ., The sonnet, est care and accuracy of arrangement m its rhymes, the number of lines and of accents, the ending of the octave, the first eight lines, its connection with the sestet, the last six, and the summing up of the thought at the end." They brought to England, not the glow and brilliancy of the Renaissance, but the realiza- tion that literary composition had definite requirements, that the thought was not enough, but that the form in which the thought was presented was also of importance. Surrey introduced another form of verse to the Eng- lish, blank verse, or, as the Italians called it, suney's "free verse." It was in this style that he trans- pabuaiiea lated two books of the ^neid, smoothly and i553. easily, and with a sincere appreciation not only of the classical beauty of form, but of the beauty of thought and description. These two men could not be long among Henry's courtiers without feeling both his favor and his disfavor. Wyatt was imprisoned on some trivial charge more than once, and Surrey was beheaded on a groundless accusa- tion of treason. For years their writings were passed from one to another in manuscript, for it would have been thought great lack of taste and delicacy to allow one's poems to be printed ; and not until ten years after Surrey's death did they come out in print. The book in which they appeared is known as Tottel's Mis- j^jtei's cellany, a collection of short poems which was Miscellany, published in 1557. This book is interesting, '' but it is rarely pleasant reading. It has not a touch of ' For a sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney's, see page 94. For one of Milton's, see page 142. 76 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i6th Cent. humor. The poets wrote of the wretchedness and mu- tability of the world. The love -poems were especially doleful. The lover complains — "complains" is the favorite word — of his lady's absence ; he laments " how unpossible it is to find quiet " in his love. Yet even on so lugubrious a subject as " The lover complains of the unkindness of his love," Wyatt is beautiful and grace- ful. He writes : — My lute, awake ! perform the last Labour that thou and I shall waste ; And end that I have now begun : And when this song is sung and past, My lute, be .still, for I have done. 44. Masques and Interludes. While Skelton was preparing the way for satire, while Tyndale and Sir Thomas More were writing excellent prose, while Wyatt and Surrey were teaching English poets not only how to write sonnets and blank verse, but also that the form of a poem should be as carefully watched as the outline and coloring of a pic- ture, the drama was not for- gotten. Mysteries and moral- ities still flourished, but these were not sufficiently entertain- ing for Henry VHI and his merry court. Two kinds of favor, the masques and the interludes. Masques were at first only dumb shows, or pantomimes. In one of them a mock castle was seen, A MASQUER i6th Cent.] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY ^^ from whose windows six ladies in gorgeous raiment looked forth. The king and five knights in even more brilliant attire appeared and besieged the castle. When the ladies could no longer resist, they came down, flung open the gates, and joined their besiegers in a merry dance. At the close of the dance, each maiden led her knight into the castle, which was then drawn swiftly out of sight. There is little to tell about a masque ; but with the opportunity to display gracefulness and beauty , and magnificence and skill in the use of arms, there must have been enough to see to amuse even the merry young king. The second kind of entertainment that was enjoyed by king and nobles was the interludes which were acted between the courses of feasts or at festivals. Interludes. They are a little like real plays because they are in dialogue, and they are a little like moralities because they sometimes introduce the Vice and other abstract characters. Here the resemblance to the mo- rality ends, for they are often full of wild merriment and jest. The one best known is The Foure P's : a very Mery Enterlude of a Palmer, a Pardoner, a Potecary, and a Pedlar. Each one tells such big stories of what he has seen and done that finally the pedlar declares that they are all liars, and that he will give the palm to the one who can tell the biggest lie. Probably the audience listened with roars of laughter as one attempt followed another. The dialogue was rough and sometimes coarse, but it was easy and natural, and it was preparing the way for the graceful wit and the flowing speech of the Elizabethan stage. John Heywood was the , ^^ _ author of The Foure P's. Sir Thomas More wood, died had introduced him to the king, and he re- ^^^^' mained in the royal favor long after More had been put 78 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1547 to death, rising from some humble position in which he served his sovereign for eight pence a day to that of special provider of amusements for the court. 45. The first English comedy, Ralph Roister Dois- ter, • probably 1552 or 1553. Henry VIII died in 1547, and during the six years that the boy Edward VI was on the throne, the first English comedy made its appearance. English scholars were still deeply inter- ested in the classics, and the comedies of Plautus had been played at court many years before. This first Eng- lish comedy was written by an English schoolmaster NiohoUs ^""^ clergyman named Nicholas Udall. He was udaii, died the author of some dignified translations from ^^^®' the Latin, and his play, Ralph Roister Doister, is modelled on the plays of Plautus. The hero, RalpTi himself, is a conceited simpleton, upon whom Merrygreek, a hanger-on, plays tricks without number. Ralph is bent upon marrying "a widow worth a thousand pound," and here Merrygreek plays his worst prank. A scriv- ener has written a love-letter for Ralph, part of which reads : — Yf ye will be my wife, Ye shall be assured for the time of my life, I wyll keep you right well : from good raiment and fare Ye shall not be kept : but in sorrowe and care Ye shall in no wyse Hue : at your owne libertie, Doe and say what ye lust : ye shall neuer please me But when ye are merrie : I will bee all sadde When ye are sorie : I wyll be very gladde When ye seek your heartes ease : I will be vnkinde At no time. In me shall ye muche gentlenesse finde. Merrygreek reads this letter to the widow, and changes the punctuation so as to give it exactly the opposite meaning and arouse the wrath of Dame Custance. It hardly seems possible that instead of such labored jest- 1562] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 79 ing as this we shall have in less than fifty years the light, witty merriment of Shakespeare's Portia ; but the days of Queen Elizabeth were at hand, and in that mar- vellous time all things came to pass. 46. The first English tragedy, Gorboduo, 1562. In 1558, Queen Elizabeth came to the throne. There was much rejoicing on the part of the nation, and yet not all was happiness and harmony in England. The coun- try was poor ; it had few if any friends ; Catholics and Protestants quarrelled bitterly ; supporters of Elizabeth and supporters of Mary Stuart were sometimes almost at swords' points. It was fitting that the first signifi- cant literary work of Elizabeth's reign should owe its origin to a realization of the condition of af- Thomas fairs. This work was a drama, the first Eng- fggg'"^"' lish tragedy. Its authors were Thomas Sack- leos. ville and Thomas Norton, two young men of the Inner Temple. In 1561, the members of the Inner Temple were to have a grand Christmas celebration Thomas twelve days long, and these two young men de- ?™°' termined to write a play to show what disasters i584. might befall a disunited nation. This play was called at first Gorboduc, later Ferrex and Porrex. It was modelled upon the work of the Latin author, Seneca, who was much read in England, but the plot was based upon an old British legend of a kingdom's discord. King Gorboduc divides his kingdom between his two sons, Porrex and Ferrex. Porrex slays his brother. Their mother kills Porrex. The people rise, and kill both Gorboduc and the queen, and the story ends with a long speech on the dangers of such a situation. So many horrors are piled upon horrors that the play seems like a burlesque ; but it was no burlesque in the days of its first appearance. Learned councillors and other great 8o ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1562 folk of the kingdom listened with the utmost serious- ness, and the queen sent a command that it should be repeated at court. Gorboduc is in several ways quite different from Ralph Roister Doister. In the first place, it is connected with DUierenco ^^^ masques in that it has pantomime, for between there is a "dumb show" before each act, fore- andRaipii shadowing what is to come; for instance, be- Roister fQj-g (-hg division of the kingdom between the two sons, the fable is shown of the bundle of sticks which could not be broken until they were sep- arated. Before the murder of Ferrex, a band of mourn- ers clad in black walk solemnly across the stage -three times. At the end of each act a " Chorus," that is, a single actor in a long black robe, appears and moralizes on the events of the act. Again, Ralph Roister Doister was written in rhyming couplets, while the new tragedy was written in the blank verse which Surrey had intro- duced from Italy. It was not very agreeable blank verse, however, as it came from the pens of the two young Templars, for there is a pause at the end of al- most every line, and the monotony is somewhat tire- some ; for instance : — Within one land one single rule is best ; Divided reigns do make divided hearts : But peace preserves the country and the prince. 47. Increasing strength of England. One reason for the popularity of Gorboduc was that Englishmen were beginning to realize more strongly than ever be- fore that the country was theirs. The queen loved her land and her subjects, and the people of England were quick to feel the new sense of harmony between the ruler and the ruled. England became rapidly stronger. i6th Cent.] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 8l Her sea-captains sailed fearlessly into the Arctic and Pacific Oceans. More than this, they sailed straight into Spanish harbors and burned the merchant vessels lying at anchor ; and they lay in wait for Spanish ships coming from the New World, captured them, and bore their vast treasure of gold and silver back to England. There was no enemy to guard against except Spain, and even toward Spain England grew more and more fear- less. All this audacious freedom was reflected in the liter- ature of the time, especially in the boldness with which English writers attempted anything and every- Literary thing. This boldness was something entirely "oidnoss. new in religious writings. Every middle-aged man in England could remember three religious revolutions, three times within the space of less than a quarter of a century when men who had not changed their faith to agree with that of their sovereign had been in danger of death at the stake. Religious poems had been careful and timid, but now they became frank and cheerful. Great numbers of ballads were written, but few of them were as good as the old ones ; for their chief object now was to tell of some recent event, that is, to be news- papers rather than poems, Of translations there seemed no end, translations not only from the Greek and Latin, but also from the Italian, for Italy was still the land of culture and light. The Celtic love for stories could now be satisfied, for there were tales and romances from Italy, from the wonder-book of early English history, and even from the legends of Spain. The stories told by returhing sea-captains were not to be scorned, throb- bing with life as they were, glowing with pictures of the strange new world, and thrilling with wild encounters on the sea 82 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i579 48. The early Elizabethan drama. It was not enough to hear stories told. In that age of action, peo- ple must see things done ; and the drama flourished more and more. Theatres were built, the first in 1576. The queen was very fond of the drama, and this in itself was a great encouragement, for Elizabeth was England, and England was Elizabeth. All kinds of dramas flour- ished. The mystery plays were not yet given up ; mo- ralities, comedies, tragedies, and all sorts of mongrel dramas appeared. The metre employed was in quite as uncertain a state ; for these bold writers of plays were ready to try everything. Sometimes they imitated the blank verse of Gorboduc ; sometimes they followed such metreless metre as these lines from Ralph Roister Doister : — Ye may not speake with a faint heart to Custance, But with a lusty breast and countenance. Sometimes lines of seven accents were tried, sometimes lines of five, sometimes of ten, and sometimes there was no attempt at metre, but the play was written in prose. The years rolled on rapidly. The sixties were past, the seventies were nearly gone. In 1579, the special Theneea i^^^d of English literature was form. Both ofiorm. prose and poetry needed the finish and care- fulness of which Wyatt and Surrey had been the apos- tles. In 1579 and 1580, three new writers arose, who laid before the lovers of poetry fresh and winning exam- ples of what might be accompHshed by poetic thought united with careful form. These three writers were John Lyly, Edmund Spenser, and Sir Philip Sidney. 49. John Lyly, 15547-1606. Hardly anything is known of John Lyly before 1579 save that he was a uni- versity man and attached to the court. His first book. 1579] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 83 Enphues, that is, "the well endowed by nature," was long looked upon as a model for polite conversation, and affected the style of writing of all literary Eng- Eupiines, land for many years.. It has a slender thread of ^"a. story whereon are hung various moral and educational ideas. So far there is nothing unusual in it. Its pecul- iarity lay in its style. Lyly uses the balanced sentence to excess, stiffens it with alliteration, and loads it down with similes, a large proportion of them drawn from a half-fabulous natural history. One of his sentences is : — If Trauailers in this our age were ... as willing to reap profit by their paines as they are to endure perill for their pleasure, they would either prefer their own soyle before a strange Land or good counsell before their owne conceyte. Another sentence declares : — As the Egle at euery flight looseth a fether, which maketh hir bald in hir age : so the trauailer in euery country looseth some fleece, which maketh him a beggar in his youth. This affected manner of talking and writing fell in with the whim of the age, and was soon the height of the fashion. Foolish and unnatural as it seems, it ^jvantagos brought to English prose precisely what that of eupha- ■ prose needed, that is, a plan for each sentence. Far too many a writer, not only in King Alfred's time but long afterward, had plunged into his sentences with the utmost audacity, trusting to luck to bring him out ; but whoever wrote in euphuistic fashion was obliged to plan his sentences and choose his words. Euphuism was only one of the little affectations of style that influenced the literature of Elizabethan times. Throughout the rest of the century and far into the next one poetic disguise after another was welcomed. 50. Edmund Spenser, 1552-1599. One of the most popular of these disguises was the pastoral, wherein the 84 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i579 characters are spoken of as shepherds and shepherdesses. They have the sheep and the crook, but in their thought they are anything but simple shepherds. The first of these pastorals was written by Edmund Spenser, and is called The Sliepherd' s Calendar. Spenser was a London boy, who began to write herd's cai- poetry in his school-days, but almost nothing ar. 1579. gjgg jg jj^Q^j^ Qf jjjj^ until he wrote this poem. Before it was quite completed, he met one of the most interesting young men of the age, Sir Philip Sidney, and was invited to his home at Penshurst. From the first the two young men were very congenial. Tradi- tion says they spent day after day under the beech- trees, reading the works of the old Greek philosophers and talking of poetry. When The Shepherd 's Calendar was published, it was dedicated to Sidney, — To him that is the president Of noblesse and of chevalree. The Calendar is a collection of poems, one for each month of the year. They are not at all alike. One, of course, was in praise of the queen ; but there were fables, satires, and allegory, besides the five poems that pertain strictly to country life. For February there is a story of a "bragging brere," or briar rose, who takes it upon him to scold a grand old oak for being in his way, and appeals to the husbandmen to cut it down, for he says it is Hindering with his shade my lovely light, And robbing me of the swete s6nnes sight. The oak is hewn down ; but when winter is come, the brere, too, meets his death, for now he has not the shelter and support of the oak that he scorned. For August there is a merry little roundelay about the meet- 1579] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 85 ing of shepherd "Willie" with shepherdess " Perigot." So it is that Spenser describes his heroine : ^- Well decked in a frocke of gray, Hey ho gray is greete, And in a kirtle of greene say, The greene is for maidens meete. A chapelet on her head she wore, Hey ho chapelet. Of sweete violets therein was store, She sweeter than the violet. My sheep did leave theyr wonted foode. Hey ho seely sheepe. And gazed on her, as they were wood,' Woode as he, that did them keepe. These poems of Spenser's were so much better than any others written since Chaucer's day that TiiB"new all the lovers of poetry were interested, and '"'■" Spenser was often spoken of as the " new poet." He was without means, and by in- fluence of his friends a govern- ment position was obtained for him in Ireland. A few months before he went on board the vessel that was to bear him across the Irish Sea, he wrote to an old school friend to return a little pack- age of manuscript which had been lent him to read, and " whyche I pray you heartily send me with al expedition," he said. The little package was to return to England some ten years later, but much was to happen in the literary world before that came to pass. ' mad. EDMUND SPENSER I552-I599 86 , ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1580 In the first place, pastorals became so much the fash- ion that there was even a rewriting of old poems, so The pastoral that "youths and maidens " might appear as iasMon. "swains and nymphs" or as "shepherds and shepherdesses." Euphues was not a pastoral, but its smoothness and careful attention to sound were in full accord with this mode of writing. Soon after Spenser had gone to Ireland, his friend. Sir Philip Sidney, wrote a book that was almost equally smooth. It was written merely for amusement and to please the Countess of Pembroke, his favorite sister, but for more than three hundred years it has pleased almost every one who has read it. 51. Sir Philip Sidney, 1554-1586. Sir Philip be- longed to a noble family ; he received every advantage of education and travel ; he was of so singularly sweet a nature and so brilliant an intellect that he was loved and admired by every one who knew him. Yet he was not at all spoiled, he felt only the more eager to prove himself worthy of this love and admiration. When only twenty-three, he was sent to Prague as the ambassador of his country. He was even thought to be a fit candi- date for the throne of Poland, but here Queen Elizabeth .said no. " I will not brook the loss of the jewel of my dominions," declared this autocratic sovereign. Sir Philip's book was named Arcadia, or as it was usually called. The Countess of Pembroke s Arcadia. It Arcadia, is a kind of pastoral romance, wherein young written ^en and maidens wander about in a beautiful 1580-81, pubiisiea forest. They fall in love with one another ; 1590. (.jjgy jjjjj jjQjjg . (.j^gy carry on war with the Helots of Greece ; they are taken by pirates and have encounters with bears ; and all this occurs in a fabulous country, a wilderness of faerie. The very story is a iS8o] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 87 wilderness. There is no especial plot, and the charac- ters are not drawn like real men and women. But why should they be so drawn ? They are half-enchanted wanderers roaming on happily through a magical forest. Page after page Sid- ney wrote, never stopping for revi- sion, rambling on wherever his fancy led ; with the loved sister beside him slipping away each leaf, as his pen traced the bottom line, to see what had come next in the fascinating tale of faerie. Even the sound of the words is charming. The sentences are often long, but clear and graceful and musi- cal. There is more than mere pleasant- ness of sound in the Arcadia, however, for it is full of charming bits of description, and of true and noble thoughts. Here is the merry little shepherd boy, "pip- ing as though he should never grow old." Here is "a place made happy by her treading." Here, too, "They laid them down by the murmuring music of certain waters." It is but a picture of himself when Sidney writes, " They are never alone that are accompanied with noble thoughts," and "Keep yourself in heart with joyful- SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 1554-1586 88 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1590 ness." One of his friends said long after the author's death that Sidney had intended to rewrite his book and make it into an English romance with King Arthur for its hero; but it is so graceful and charming in its present form that no one could wish to have it made over. The Arcadia was handed about in manuscript from one friend to another. Wherever it was read, it was Themis- praised and imitated, but it was not printed oeiiajiies. till ISQO. Printing was for common folk, not for nobles and courtiers ; and the lovers of poetry were in the habit of making manuscript books of their favor- ite poems. Before the end of the century, however, some of these books did come to the printing-press. As if to console them for their humiliation, most high- sounding titles were given them, and we have The Para- dise of Dainty Devices, Brittons Bower of Delights, The Phenixs Nest, England's Helicon, etc. 52. Later Elizabethan drama. It was the time of the pastoral, but hundreds of sonnets were being written and passed about in manuscript. Besides this, the drama was almost ready to burst forth with a magnificence of which no one could have dreamed who had seen only the crude attempts of less than half a century earlier. Scores of plays had been written. They were good plays, too, wonderfully far in advance of the previous attempts. Many of them were well worth acting, and are well worth reading to-day ; even though the writers had not yet adopted a standard verse, and had not mas- tered the art of making their characters live, that is, of making a character show just such changes at the end of the play as a human being' would show if he had been through such experiences as those delineated. This was the greatest lack in these dramas. Their greatest beauty lay in the little songs scattered through the 1579-1603] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 89 scenes. In the Elizabethan days everybody loved music and everybody sang. Servants were chosen gongs in with an ear to their voices, that they might be 'te oramas. able to join in a glee or a catch. The words of the songs must be musical ; but the Elizabethans demanded even more than this. Poetry was plentiful, and the songs must be real poetry. Therefore it was that such dainty little things appeared as Apelles' Song : — Cupid and my Campaspe played At cards for kisses, — Cupid paid ; He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows, Sone°^ His mother's doves and team of sparrows : Loses them too ; then down he throws The coral of his lip, the rose Growing on 's cheek (but none knows how); With these the crystal of his brow, And then the dimple of his chin : All these did my Campaspe win. At last he set her both his eyes ; She won, and Cupid blind did rise. O Love, has she done this to thee ? What shall, alas ! become of me .' This song is in Lyly's play of Alexander and Cam- paspe, for the famous euphuist wrote a handful of plays which were presented before the queen. He uj.j.. , wrote in prose, but some makers of plays standard employed rhyme, some blank verse, and some a mingling of all three. There was great need of a stand- ard verse suited to the requirements of the drama, a line not so short as to suggest doggerel, and not so long as to be cumbersome and unwieldy. Blank verse was perhaps slowly gaining ground, but before it could be generally accepted as the most fitting mode of dramatic expression, some writer must use it so skilfully as to show its power, its music, and its adaptability. 90 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1587-1592 53. Christopher Marlowe, 1564-1593. Such a writer was Christopher, or "Kit," Marlowe, one of the "uni- versity wits," as one group of playwrights was called, because nearly all of them had been connected with one or the other of the great universities. He is thought to have lived in somewhat Bohemian fashion, but little is certainly known of his life save that he took his degree at Cambridge. His Tamburlaine was acted in 1587 or 1588. Five years later, Marlowe died; but in those five years he wrote at least three plays, the Jew of Malta, the Tragical History of Doctor Faustus, and Edward II, which showed what magnificent use could be made of blank verse. In his prologue to Tamburlaine he promises to lead his audience " from jigging veins of rhyming mother Tamimr- wits," and he keeps his promise nobly. The 1587 or° ° Scythian hero, Tamburlaine, is a shepherd who 1688. becomes the conqueror of sovereigns. One scene was the laughing-stock of the time, that in which Tamburlaine enters, drawn in his chariot by two captive kings with bits in their mouths. Marlowe had no sense of humor to keep him from such an absurdity ; his mis- Triumpii 01 ^^""^ ^^^ '•° Si^^ ^^^ poets some idea of what Wank might be done with blank verse ; and those who laughed loudest listened with admiration to such lines as these : — Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend The wondrous architecture of the world, And measure every wandering planet's course, Still climbing after knowledge infinite, And always moving as the restless spheres, Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, Until we reach the ripest fruit of all. That perfect bliss and sole felicity, The sweet fruition of an earthly crown; 1580-1590] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY, 91 Remembering that the speaker is Tamburlaine, the hea- then shepherd, to whom a throne is the loftiest glory that imagination can reach, there is no bathos in the closing line. The only fault is in the use of the word "earthly." Marlowe knew well how to use proper names in his verse ; and Queen Elizabeth, with her love of music and her equal love of the magnificence of the royal estate, must have enjoyed : — And ride in triumph through Persepolis ? Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles ? Usumcasene and Theridamas, Is it not passing brave to be a king, And ride in triumph through Persepolis ? Marlowe could write lightly and gracefully, as in his " Come live with me and be my love." Then he is charming, but it is his power rather than his grace that lingers in the mind. More than once there are such lines as, — Weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, Goes to discover countries yet unknown, — lines that might well have come from the pen of Shake- speare. These are from the closing scene of Edward II, Marlowe's last and finest play. 54. Events from 1580 to 1590. So the years passed in England from 1580 to 1590, but one poet, Spenser, was shut away from the literary life of his countrymen,* which was becoming every day more glorious. A castle and a vast tract of land in Ireland had been given him, and there he dwelt and wrote ; but all the time he felt like a prisoner, and he called his Irish home " that waste where I was quite forgot." When he came from Ireland in 1589 or 1590 to pay a visit to England, he found sev- eral changes. Mary Queen of Scots had been beheaded, 92 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1590 and the most timid Protestant no longer feared revolu- tion and a Roman Catholic sovereign. The Spanish Armada had been conquered by the bravery of English captains and the tempests of the heavens ; England was mistress of the seas, and her bold mariners were free to go where they would. The thoughts of many were turn- ing toward the New World, and Sir Walter Raleigh had even attempted to found a colony across the seas. One note of sadness mingled with the joy of the nation. Sir Death oi Philip Sidney was dead, and was mourned by a sirPhiup whole kingdom. The bravery with which he °°''' met the enemy in the fatal battle of Zutphen, the self-forgetful courtesy with which he, refused, until another should have drunk, the water that would have eased his suffering, the gentle patience with which he bore the long weeks of agony before the coming of the end, — all this touched the English heart as it had never before been touched. So enduring was the love which he inspired that Fulke Greville, one of his boyhood com- panions, who outlived him by twenty-two years, asked that on his own tomb might be written, " Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, and Friend to Sir Philip Sidney." Sidney requested that his Arcadia should be destroyed, but his sister could not bear to fulfil such a wish, and in 1590, while Spenser was in England, it was printed. 55. The Faerie Queene. Spenser brought with him Books I- from Ireland the little package that he had car- m, 1590. . , 1° 1 C-- -ITT 1 Books IV- ried away, now grown much larger. Sir Wal- VI, 1B96. ter Raleigh had visited him, and as they sat under the alders by the river, Spenser had read aloud the iirst three books of the Faerie Queene, for these were in the precious little package. The poem was published in 1 590. It begins : — IS90] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 93 A gentle Knight was pricking pn the plaine, Ycladd in mightie armes and silver shielde, Wherein old dints of deepe woundes did remaine, The cruell tnarkes of many a bloody fielde ; Yet armes till that time did he never wield : His angry steede did chide his foming bitt, As much disdayning to the curbe to yield : Full ioUy knight he seemd, and faire did sitt, As one for knightly giusts and fierce encounters fitt. This " gentle knight " represented Holiness, who was riding forth into the world to contest with Heresy. Spenser planned to write twelve books, each of which was to celebrate the victory of some vir- tue over its contrary vice. At the end of the twelfth book the knights were to return to the land of Faerie. King Arthur was then to re- present the embodiment of all these virtues, and he was to wed the Queen of Faerie, who was the Glory of God. Together with this was a very ma- terial allegory, if it may be so called, in which Elizabeth is the Queen of Faerie, Mary of Scot- land is Error, etc. So far even the double allegory is reasonably clear ; but as the poem goes on, it wanders away and away, and is so mingled with other allegories and changes of char- THE RED CROSS KNIGHT From the Faerie Queene 94 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1590-1600 acters that it is impossible to trace a connected story through even the six books that were written of the twelve that Spenser planned. Tracing the story is a small matter, however. One need not read an imaginative poem with a biographical dictionary and a gazetteer. The allegory of the strug- gle of evil with good is beautiful ; but one need not trouble himself about the allegory. Read the poem simply for its exquisite pictures, its wonderfully rich and varied imagery, and the ever-changing music of its verse, and you will share in some degree the pleasure which for three hundred years Spenser has given to all true lovers of poetry. 56. The decade of the sonnet, 1590-1600. From 1590 to 1600 the sonnet was the prevailing form of the lyric. Sonnets were written in sequences, as they were called, that is, in groups, each group generally telling the story of the author's love for some lady fair who was either real or imaginary. Spenser wrote beautiful, Astropiiei musical sonnets, but Sidney's Astrophel and pubUsLa' Stella, a sequence which was not published till 1591. 1591, gives one such a feeling that it must be sincere that to read it seems almost like stealing glances at his paper as he wrote. One of his best sonnets is : — With how sad steps, O Moon, thou climb'st the skies! How silently, and with how wan a face ! What, may it be that even in heavenly place That busy archer his sharp arrows tries ! Sure, if that long-with-love-acquainted eyes Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case, I read it in thy looks ; the languisht grace, To me, that feel the like, thy state descries : Then, even of fellowship, O Moon, tell me. Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit ? IS94] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 95 Are beauties there as proud as here they be ? Do they above love to be lov'd, and yet Those lovers scorn whom that love doth possess ? Do they call virtue there ungratefulness ? 57. Richard Hooker, 1554 7-1600. During this decade an important piece of prose was written by a clergyman named Richard Hooker. He was a man of much learning, but so shy that when he was lecturing at Oxford he could hardly look his students in the face. Even his shyness could not hide his merits, and he was appointed to a prominent position in London. It was not long, however, before he wrote an earnest appeal to the archbishop to give him instead some hum- ble village parish. London was full of controversies, sometimes very bitter ones, between the Church of England and the Puritans. Hooker was far too gentle to meet disagreement and discord, but in his later and more quiet home he produced a clear, strong book called the Ecclesiastical Polity, which defended the Eooiesiasti- position of the church, giving the reasons why boohsi-iv he believed it to have the right to claim men's ism. obedience. Prose in plenty had been written for some special purpose, but this was something more than a mere putting of words together to express a thought; it was not only an argument, it was literature, and even those who were not interested in its subject read it for the grave harmony of its style and the dignity of its phrasing. 58. "William Shakespeare, 1564-1616. It was in this same decade that the full glory of the drama was to burst forth. In 1564, the year of Marlowe's birth, a child was born in the village of Stratford on the river Avon who was to become the greatest of poets. His father, John Shakespeare, was a well-to-do man, and 96 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1564-1583 held various offices in the village. This boy, William, grew up much as did other boys of the place. He went to school, studied Latin and possibly a little Greek. Coventry was near, and there mystery plays were per- formed. Kenilworth Castle was only fifteen miles away ; and when Shakespeare was eleven years old. Queen Elizabeth was its guest. No bright boy would let such chances go by to see a mystery play or to have a glimpse of his country's queen and the entertainments given in her honor. In 1568, a company of London actors came to Stratford. John Shakespeare as bailiff gave them a formal welcome to the village ; and it is probable that among, the earliest memories of his son were the sound of their drums and trumpets, the beating of hoofs, and the sight of banners and riders, of gorgeous costumes flashing in the sun and gayly caparisoned horses pran- cing down the street to the market-place. More than a score of times the prancing steeds and their riders visited Stratford ; and the country boy, living quietly beside the Avon, must have had many thoughts of the great world of London that was the home of those fascinating cavalcades. He would not have been a real boy if he had not determined to see that marvellous city before many years should pass. Not long after the festivities of Kenilworth, John Shakespeare began to be less successful in his business affairs. Thirteen or fourteen was not an early age for a boy to be taken from school who did not intend to go to the university; and it is probable that the boy Wil- liam left school at that age and began to earn his own living. For some years from that time the only thing known of him is that he often crossed the fields by a narrow lane that led to Shottery and the cottage of Anne Hathaway, and that before he was nineteen she became 1586-1588] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 97 his wife. In 1 586, the young man of twenty-two, with no trade, with himself and wife and three children to sup- port, with only dreams and courage and genius for capi- SHAKESPEARE'S birthplace at STRATFORD tal, made his way to London, possibly on horseback, but more probably on foot. 1586 was the year of Sidney's death. There could hardly be a greater ihspiration toward honor and uprightness for a young man on his first visit to London than to see the whole city grieving for the death of one but ten years older than himself simply because he whom they had lost was pure and true and noble. Just what Shakespeare did during those first two years in London is not known, but he must have been con- nected in some way with the theatre and have giake- won the confidence of those in control, for as spoaro in early as 1588 he was trusted to "retouch" at least one play. This retouching was regarded as per- 98 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1590-1594 fectly allowable. There was no copyright law, and as soon as a play had been printed, any theatre had a right to use it, and any author had a right to alter it as he chose. Two years later, the unknown young man from the country had made a place for himself, and in 1590, the year in which Spenser brought the first Love's La- •' J^ ° 01 i tour's Lost, part of the Faerie Queene to London, bhake- aotod 1590. speare's merry little comedy. Love's Labour 's Lost, was acted. This play does not reach the heights of tragedy, of course, or even of his later comedies, but it is freely and lightly drawn; it is full of fun and frolic, and fairly sparkles with witty repartee. Shakespeare had caught the fashion of euphuism, and he made fun of it so merrily that its greatest devotees must have been amused. Play followed play : comedy, tragedy, history. It was no idle life that he led, for the writing of five or six plays is generally ascribed to the years 1590-1592 ; and it must be remembered, too, that he was actor as well as author. It was in 1592 that the dramatist Chettle wrote of his excellent acting, and said, moreover, that he had heard of his uprightness of dealing and his grace in writing. Shakespeare was no longer an unknown actor. Venus ani He was recognized as a successful playwright, Adonis. and also as a poet, for his Venus and Adonis Lucrece. and Lucrece had won a vast amount of admira- 1593-94. j-Jqjj u -pj^g mellifluous and honey-tongued Shakespeare," one of the critics called him, and spoke with praise of his " sugerd sonnets " that were passed about among his friends. 59. Historical Plays. After some merry, sparkling comedies, such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Comedy of Errors, there came a time when the poet seemed fascinated by the history of his own land. In 1596] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY 99 writing historical drama Shakespeare was never a stu- dent-author ; Elizabethan life moved too rapidly for much searching of old manuscripts and records. Shakespeare's special power as a dramatist of history lay in his sympa- thetic imagination by which he understood the men of bygone days. He read their motives, he pictured them as he could imagine himself to have been in their cir- cumstances and with their qualities ; and more than WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 1564-T616 The Chandos Portrait once his interpretation of some historical character, opposed as it was to the common belief of his time, has been proved by later investigation to be correct. Then came the Merchant of Venice and a group of comedies, some of which have touches of boisterous lOO ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1596-1600 rant, while some are happy, romantic, and charmingly The Met- graceful. In the Merchant of Venice perhaps chant oi quite as much as in any other play, Shake- 15967 speare shows his power to make us hold a char- acter in the balance. Shylock is cruel and miserly, but we cannot help seeing with a tauch of sympathy that he is oppressed and lonely ; Bassanio is a careless young spendthrift, but so boyish and so frank that we forget to be severe ; Portia is perfectly conscious of the value of her wealth and her beauty, but at love's command she is ready to drop both lightly into the hands of Bassanio. Shakespeare's writing extended over a space of about twenty years, half of which time belonged to the six- teenth century and half to the seventeenth. If he had died in 1600, we should think of him as a dramatist of great skill in writing comedy, whether refined and merry or rough and somewhat boisterous, and in writing historical plays presenting the history of his own coun- try ; but, save for some hint that Romeo and Jicliet might give, we should have no idea of his unrivalled power in writing tragedies. Those as well as his deeper come- dies belonged to the following century. Century XVI SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY John Skelton. Thomas Norton. Sir Thomas More. John Lyly. WilHam Tyndale. Edmund Spenser. Sir Thomas Wyatt. Sir Philip Sidney. Earl of Surrey. The Elizabethan Miscellanies. Toilers Miscellany. Christopher Marlowe. John Heywood. Richard Hooker. Nicholas Udall. William Shakespeare. Thomas Sackville. i6th Cent] SHAKESPEARE'S CENTURY lOI SUMMARY The minds of the English people and also their literature were strongly affected, first, by the Renaissance; second, by increased knowledge of the western world ; and, third, by the discovery that the earth is not the centre of the universe. During the reign of Henry VIII, English literature centred around him. John Skelton was his tutor ; Sir Thomas More one of his courtiers. Religious questions were much discussed. William Tyn- dale translated the New Testament. Henry's disagreement with the pope led to the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome. About the middle of the century, the courtiers Wyatt and Surrey introduced the Italian sonnet and the carefulness of Italian poetry. Surrey introduced blank verse. Their poems were published in TotteVs Miscellany. The drama progressed step by step. Mysteries and moral- ities still flourished. Masques and interludes came into favor. John Heywood wrote the most successful interludes. The first English comedy was Ralph Roister Doister, written by Nicholas Udall. The first English tragedy was Gorboduc, written by Sackville and Norton. In the reign of Elizabeth the power of England increased ; literature manifested greater boldness. Religious writings, translations, apd stories appeared in great numbers, but the glory of the latter half of her reign was the drama. All species of drama flourished ; all kinds of metre and also prose were employed. The pressing needs were, first, carefulness of form ; and, second, an appropriate and generally accepted metre. A strong influence in favor of carefulness of form was exerted by the Euphues of Lyly, by The Shepherd's Calendar of Spenser, and succeeding pastorals, and by Sidney's Ar- cadia and also his sonnets circulated in manuscript. The drama now increased rapidly in excellence, but still had no standard metre and did riot attain to the highest suc- cess in the delineation of character. It contained, however, 102 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i6th Cent. beautiful little songs. Finally, Marlowe showed the capabili- ties of blank verse, and this became the accepted metre. In 1590, the first three books of the Faerie Queenewere pub- lished. During the following decade the sonnet flourished. Hooker wrote his Ecclesiastical Polity, and the glory of the drama burst forth in the works of Wilham Shakespeare, who solved the great dramatic problem, how to make the charac- ters seem like real people. CHAPTER VI CENTURY XVII PURITANS AND ROYALISTS 60. Shakespeare in the seventeenth century. In 1603, Queen Elizabeth died and James of Scotland be- came the sovereign of England. The inspiration of the age of Elizabeth lingered for some years after her death, and the work of Shakespeare, its greatest glory, ex- tended far into the reign of James. His genius broad- ened and deepened, and he gave to the new century his deeper comedies and a superb group of tragedies, Hamlet, King Lear, and others. His plays grow more intense, more powerful. Sometimes he uses bitter irony. Stern retribution is visited upon both weak and wicked. There is a touch of gloom. Magnificent as these dramas are, it is good to come away from them to the ripple of the sea, to the breeze of the meadow land, to his last group of plays, the joyous and beautiful romantic dramas, such as the Winters Tale, Cymbeline, and, last of all, it may be. The Tempest, that marvellous production in which a child may find a fairytale, a philosopher sugges- tion and mystery and that " solemn vision " of life that comes in the midst of the wonders of the magic island. When Shakespeare's sonnets were written and to whom they were written is not known. If the ^,5 whole aim of their author had been to puzzle sonnets, his readers, he could not have succeeded better. Some seem to have been written to a man, others to a woman. I04 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [17th Cent. Some are exquisitely beautiful, some are fairly rollicking in boyish mischievousness. Some express sincere love, some are apparently trying to see how far a roguish mock devotion can be concealed by charm of phrase and rhythm. Here are such perfect lines as Bare, ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.' Here is his honest My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun. Coral is far more red than her lips' red, — wherein he makes fun of the poetic rhapsodies of Eliza- bethan lovers. Here, too, is his mischievous sonnet, which pictures — though in most musical language — a woman chasing a hen, while her deserted lover begs her to come back and be a mother to him ! These sonnets were published without their author's permission, and he took no step to explain them. Every student of the poet's work has his own interpretation. Which is cor- rect, Shakespeare alone could tell us. Shakespeare is the world's greatest poet. His genius consists, first, in reading men and women better than Shake- ^.ny One else has ever read them, in knowing speare's what a person of certain traits would do under certain circumstances, and how the scenes through which that person passed would affect his char- acter; second, in his ability to express that knowledge with such perfection of form and such brilliancy of im- agination as has never been equalled ; third, in the fact that his power both to read and to express was sus- tained. The dramatists who preceded him and those who worked by his side often had flashes and gleams of insight and momentary powers of expression that were worthy of him ; but the power to see clearly throughout the five acts of a play and to express with equal excel- l597-i6ii] PURITANS AND ROYALISTS 105 lence and consistency the character of the clown and of the king was not theirs. WilHam Shakespeare was no supernatural being; he was a very human man. Certainly he never thought of himself as sitting on a pinnacle manufacturing English classics. He threw himself into his speare as poetry, but he never forgot that he was writing *""*"■ plays for people to act and for people to see. No really good work of literature flows from the pen without thought. Shakespeare worked very rapidly, but the thinking was done at some time, either when he took up his pen or beforehand. He was a straightforward busi- ness man, who paid his debts and intended that what was due to him should be paid. He loved his early home and planned, perhaps from the time that he left it, to return to Stratford. Money came to him rapidly, especially after 1599, when the Globe Theatre was built, in which he seems to have owned a generous share. Two years earlier he had been able to buy New Place in Stratford, and about 161 1 he returned to his native town. A vast change it must have been to the man whose dramas had won the admiration of the people and of their queen, to come to a quiet village now grown so puritanical that its council had solemnly decreed that the acting of plays within its limits should be regarded as an unlawful deed. He was away from his London friends and their brilliant meetings at the Mermaid Inn, of which one of them, Francis Beaumont, wrote : — What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid ! heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame. As if that everyone from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. And had resolved to live a fool the rest Of his dull life. I06 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1552-1618 No word of complaint or of loneliness has come down to us. In Stratford were his wife, his two daughters, and the little granddaughter, Elizabeth. There are tra- ditions of visits from his old friends. He had wealth, fame, the home of his choice. In the village of his birth the poet died in i6i6, and was buried in the church that still stands beside the river Avon. 61. Sir "Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618. Wonderful peo- ple were those Elizabethans ; for every one seemed to be able to do everything. Perhaps the best example of the man of universal ability is Sir Walter Raleigh, an explorer, a colonizer, the manager of a vast Irish estate, a vice-admiral, a captain of the guard, and a courtier whose flattery could delight even so well flattered a woman as Queen Elizabeth. Moreover, when King James imprisoned him under a false charge of treason, this soldier and sailor and colonizer became an author Raleigh's and produced among other writings a History toewTrid °f^''^^ World. He tells the story clearly and 1614. pleasantly. Sometimes he is eloquent, some- times poetical ; e. g. he speaks of the Roman Empire as a tree standing in the middle of a field. " But after some continuance," he says, " it shall begin to lose the beauty it had ; the storms of ambition shall beat her great boughs and branches one against another ; her leaves shall fall off, her limbs wither, and a rabble of barbarous nations enter the field and cut her down." Several of the literary giants who began their work in the days of Queen Elizabeth are counted as of the times of James. The greatest of these were the philosopher Francis Bacon and the dramatist Ben Jonson. 62. Francis Bacon, 1561-1626. Francis Bacon seems to have been " grown up " from his earliest childhood. He was the son of Elizabeth's Lord Keeper, and it is said 1561-1597] PURITANS AND ROYALISTS 107 that as a boy his dignity and intelligence delighted her Majesty so much that she often questioned him on all sorts of subjects to see what he would answer. One day when she asked how old he was, he replied with all the readiness of an experienced courtier, " I am two years younger than your Majesty's happy reign." When he was little more than a youth, he declared gravely that he had " taken all knowledge " for his province. In most young men this would have been an absurd speech, but in view of what Bacon actually accomplished it seems hardly more than the truth. He was only thirteen when he en- tered the university, but during his three years of resi- dence, this boy put his finger on the weak spot in the teaching and study of the day. The whole aim seemed to be, he declared, not to discover new truths, but to go over and over the old ones. Nothing would have pleased him better than to have means enough to live comfortably while he thought and wrote, but he had no fortune. " I must think how to live," he said, "instead of living only to think." The young man of eighteen looked about him, and concluded to study law and try to win the patronage of the queen. In his legal studies he was so successful that his reason- ing and eloquence were equally pleasing ; but the queen's patronage was beyond his reach, for she would give him only just enough favor to keep him ever hoping for more. In the midst of his disappointments he wrote ten essays, which were published in 1597. They were on such subjects as Study, Expense, Followers Essays, and Friends, Reputation, etc., and they seemed 1697. in many respects more like the reflections of a man of ^ixty-three than one of thirty-six. They are so full of wisdom, and the wisdom is expressed so clearly and I08 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1603-1621 definitely, that some parts of them seem almost like a sequence of proverbs. Among the sentences most quoted are these : — Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested ; that is, some books are to be read only in parts ; others to be read, but not curiously ; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. . . Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man. After James came to the throne, Bacon was raised from one position to another, until at last he became Bacon Lord High Chancellor. He lived with the ut- LorOHfgii ™ost magnificence ; he had fame, wealth, rank, Chancellor, and the favor of his sovereign. He had also enemies, and before three years had passed, a charge of accepting bribes was brought against him. He was declared guilty ; but his real guilt was far less than that of such a deed if done two centuries later ; for the ac- ceptance of bribes, or gifts, by men in high legal posi- tions was a custom of long standing. No attempt was made to show that these gifts had made him decide even one cause unjustly. Bacon's public life was ended, but it is quite possible that the few years which remained to him were his happi- est, for, living quietly wit"h his family, he had at last the leisure for thought for which he had longed. Sometime before this he had published more essays, and he had instauratio already begun the great work of his life, the In- '"*^*- stauratio Magna, that is, the "great institution " of true philosophy. This undertaking was the outgrowth of his boyish criticism of Oxford. He planned that the work should give a summary of human knowledge in all branches and should point out a system by which advance- ment might be made. The philosophers of the day were i6ll-i62o] PURITANS AND ROYALISTS IO9 satisfied with words rather than things ; in seeking for knowledge of nature, for instance, it seemed to them the proper scholastic method, not to study nature herself but to reason out what seemed to be a fitting law. jj^^^^ In Bacon's Novum Organum, or " new instru- Organnm. ment," he taught that in the study of nature, or in the study of the action of the human mind, men ought, first, to notice how nature and the mind worked, and from this knowledge to derive general laws. The former way of reasoning was called deductive, i. e., first make the rule and then explain the facts by it. Bacon's philosophy was inductive, i. e., first collect examples and from them form a rule. Inductive reasoning was not original with Bacon by any means. His glory lies in his eliminating all inac- curate, worthless notions, and in his firm belief that all reasoning should lead to advancement of knowledge and to practical good. He said, " I have held up a light . . . which will be seen centuries after I am dead ; ' and he was right, for it is according to his system that all pro- gress in laws, in commerce, and in science has been made. 63. The "King James version" of the Bible, 1611. Bacon wrote in Latin because he believed that; while English might pass away, Latin would live forever ; but in 161 1, while he was coming to this decision, the Bible was again translated, and the translation was so excellent and later events made its reading so universal, that this one book alone would almost have saved the English lan- guage, if there had been any possibility of its being for- gotten. This version was the one which is now in gen- eral use, the " authorized version," or the " King James version," as it is called. Simply as a piece of literature, it is of priceless value. The sonorous rhythm of the Psalms, the dignified simplicity of the Gospels, the no ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [iS73-iS97 splendid imagery of the Revelation, — all these are ex- pressed in clear, concise, and often beautiful phrase, whose influence on the last three hundred years of English literature cannot be too highly esteemed. 64. Ben Jonson, 1573 9-1637. When Shakespeare returned to Stratford he left London full of playwrights. Many of them had great talent in some one line. Ford and Webster had special power in picturing sorrow and suffering ; Beaumont and Fletcher, who worked to- gether, constructed their plots with unusual skill and wrote most exquisite little songs ; Chapman has many graceful, beautiful passages ; Dekker, as Charles Lamb said, had " poetry enough for anything : " but there was no second Shakespeare. He stood alone, better than all others in all respects. The playwright who stood nearest to him in greatness was Ben Jonson. He was nine years younger than Shakespeare. He was a Lon- don boy, and knew little of the simple country life with which Shakespeare was so familiar. His stepfather taught him his own trade of bricklaying, much to the boy's disgust, for he was eager to go on in school. This privilege came to him through the kindness of strangers, and, as one of his friends said later, he "barrelled up a great deal of knowledge." For a while he served as a soldier in the Netherlands. All this was before he was twenty, for at that age he had found his way to the thea- tre and was trying to act. As an actor, he was not a great success, but he soon showed that he could suc- ceed in that " retouching " of old plays which served young writers as a school for the drama. The next Every Man thing known of him is that in 1597, when he Humour. ^^^ twenty-four years of age, he wrote a play 1597. called Every Man in His Humour, which was presented at the theatre with which Shakespeare was IS97-I637] PURITANS AND ROYALISTS III connected. There is a tradition that Shakespeare was much interested in the young writer, that he persuaded the managers that the play would be a success, and that he himself took part in it. This maker of plays who had " bar- relled up a great deal of knowledge " was most profoundly interested in the clas- sic drama. The an- cient dramatists be- lieved that in every play three laws should be carefully observed. The first was that every part of a drama should help to develop one main story ; this was the unity of plot, and was obeyed by Shakespeare as well as Jonson. The Theiuu- second was that the time required by the inci- *'*^' dents of a drama should never be longer than a single day ; this was the unity of time. The third was that the whole action should occur in one place ; this was the unity of place. In the romantic drama, like Shakespeare's plays, the characters develop, and the reader sees at gj^^ _ the end of a play that they have been changed speare and by the experiences that they have met with. In "'''"^'"'• Jonson's plays, the characters have only one day's life, and they are the same at the end as at the beginning. Shakespeare's characters seem alive, and we discuss BEN JONSON 112 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1597-163? them, their deeds, and their motives, as if they were men and women of history. We may talk of Jonson's plots, but no one thinks of his characters as ever having lived. The law of unity of place prevented the writer from moving his scene easily and naturally as in real life, and this adds to their unrealness. Another respect in which the two writers were quite unlike was that Shakespeare seems to mingle with his characters and to sympathize with every one of them, no matter how unlike they are, while Jonson stands a little one side and manufactures them ; for instance, both wrote plays whose scenes were laid in Rome. Shakespeare shows us the thoughts and feelings of his Romans, but he is careless in regard to manners and customs ; Jonson is exceedingly accurate in all such details, but he forgets to put real people into his Roman dress. The result is that, while Shake- speare's Romans are men and women like ourselves, Jonson's are hardly moi;e than lay figures. Shakespeare treats a Roman " like a vera brither ; " Jonson treats even his English characters as persons whose faults he is free to satirize as much as he chooses. In his first comedy he takes the ground that every one has some one special " humour," or whim, which is the governing power of his life. He names his characters according to this theory, and his Kno'well, Cash, Clement, Down- right, Wellbred, etc., recall the times of the morality plays. Why is it, then, that with this unrealness, this lack of human interest, such excellence should have been Jonson's found in the plays of Jonson .? It is because he excellence, observed SO closely, because he was so learned and strong and manly, and especially because his fancy was so dainty and beautiful that no one could help being charmed by it. He wrote a number of plays. Every i6io] PURITANS AND ROYALISTS II3 one of them is worth reading ; but really to enjoy Jon- son, one must read what he wrote when he forgot that the faults of his time ought to be reformed, that is, his masques, which he composed to please the king; for somehow James discovered that this pedant could for- get his pedantry, that this wilful, satirical, overbear- ing, social, genial, warm-hearted author of rather chilly plays could write most exquisite masques. In jongon's masques Jonson saw no need of observing the masques, unities ; it was all in the land of fancy, and here his fancy had free rein. Of course he praised King James with the utmost servility ; but to give such praise in a masque to be acted before the king was not only good policy but it was a custom, and almost as much a literary fashion as writing sonnets or pastorals. In the masque most elaborate scenery was employed, and every device of light and dancing and music. Masque of In the Masque of Oberon, for instance, the sat- Pgjn""' yrs "fell suddenly into an antick dance full leii. of gesture and swift motion." The crowing of the cock was heard, and, as the old stage directions say, " The whole palace opened, and the nation of Faies were dis- covered, some with instruments, some bearing lights, others singing," — and Jonson knew well how to write graceful song that was perfectly adapted to jjiesaa these fascinating scenes. He is rarely ten- shephora. der, but in his Sad Shepherd, an unfinished play, there are the exquisite lines : — Here she was wont to go, and here, and here ! Just where those daisies, pinks, and violets grow ; The world may find the spring by following her ; For other print her airy steps ne'er left : Her treading would not bend a blade of grass, Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk. 114 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1606-1616 Scattered through Jonson's plays are such beautiful bits of poetry as this ; and when we read them, we for- give him his Downright and Wellbred and his affection for the unities. 65. The Tribe of Ben. Jonson became Poet Lau- reate, the first poet regularly appointed to hold that position ; but his courtly honors can hardly have given him as much real pleasure as the devotion of the younger literary men, the " Tribe of Ben," as they were called, who gathered around him with frank admiration and liking. The romantic plays that most resembled the drama of Shakespeare were written in partnership by two men, ^ , Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. Hardly Francis •' ■ ■' Beaumont, anything is known of their lives except that 1 RflA 1 fil R ■ John" ' they were warm friends and kept bachelor's hall pietciier, together. Beaumont was twenty and Fletcher twenty-seven when their partnership began ; and it lasted for ten years, or until the death of Beau- mont, after which Fletcher continued alone. Working together was a common practice among the dramatists, and sometimes we can trace almost with certainty the lines of a play written by one man and those written by his fellow-worker ; but in the case of Beaumont and Fletcher, the closest study has resulted in little more than elaborate guesswork. These two come nearest to Shakespeare on his own lines, that is, they can read men well, and they can put their thoughts into beautiful verse ; but in the third point of Shakespeai-e's greatness they are lacking ; Shakespeare could sustain himself, Beaumont and Fletler, a. periodical made up of essays written after the fashion of Addison's, but lacking Addison's light touch Hammer, and graceful humor. Neither these nor the 1760-17B2. dictionary added any large amount to the author's finances; and when, in 1759, the death of his mother occurred, he. had not money for the funeral expenses. To raise it, he wrote in the evenings of one Basseias, week, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia. This is ^^J^ggj^^ usually called a story, but the characters serve 1759. only as mouthpieces for the various reflections of the author. " Abyssinia " is simply a convenient name for an imaginary country. Three years after the publication of the dictionary the government offered Johnson a pension of ;^300. Even in his poverty the independent lexicographer jojmson's hesitated to accept it ; and well he might, for pension, in his dictionary he had defined a pension as " pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country ; " but he was finally made to see that the offered gift was not a bribe but a reward for what he had already accom- plished. He accepted it, and then life became easier. 107. James Boswell, 1740-1795. It was about this 178 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1763-1784 time that he met a Scotchman named Boswell, who be- came his humble worshipper. Wherever Johnson went, Boswell followed. Boswell asked all sorts of questions, both useful and idle, just to see what reply his oracle would make. The great man snubbed the little man, and the little man hastened home to write in his jour- nal what a superb snub it was. Mrs. Boswell was not pleased. " I have seen a bear led by a man," she said, "but never before a man led by a bear." Johnson once wrote her, " The only thing in which I have the honour to agree with you is in loving him ; " for the young wor- shipper had at last won a return of affection from his idol. For twenty years he wrote at night every word that he could remember of Johnson's conversation through the day. It was well worth noting, for Johnson was the best talker of the age. Now that his Johnson's _ ° oonversa- pension relieved him of want, he had little in- °°' clination to make the effort required by writ- ing, but he was ever ready to talk. Much of his best talking was done at the famous Literary Club, which he. Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Edmund Burke founded. He always seemed to feel that literary composition required the use of long words and a ponderous rolling up of phrases ; but his conversation was direct and simple. He argued, he spoke of history, of biography, of liter- ature or morals. His scholarship, his powerful intel- lect, and his colloquial powers gave value to whatever he said. When a new book came out, the first question asked by the public was, " What does the Club say of it.'" Johnson was the great man of the Club, and for years he was really, as he has so often been called, the literary dictator of England. 108. Johnson's later work. During the last twenty years of his life he did a comparatively small amount of 1765-1784] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 179 literary work. He edited Shakespeare, an undertaking for which his sHght knowledge of the six- Edition oi teenth century drama had given him but an shaite- -' _ ° speare. ill preparation. He journeyed to Scotland, i765. and was treated so kindly that much of his prejudice against the Scotch melted away. His letters about this journey, written to a friend, were easy and THeJour- natural ; but when he made them into a book, "°^*V''* ' ' Hebrides. TAe Journey to the Hebrides, they were trans- 1775. lated into the ceremoniously elaborate phraseology which alone he regarded as worthy of print. His best work was his Lives of the Poets, a series of The Lives sketches prepared for a collection of English ofthePoets, ^ ^ => 1779 ; en- poetry. These were intended to be very short, larged in but Johnson became interested in them, and ^'^^^ did far more than he had agrefed. The result is not only brief "lives " of the authors but criticisms of their writings. These criticisms are not always just, for sometimes Johnson's strong prejudices and sometimes his lack of the power to appreciate certain qualities stood in the way of fairness ; but, fair or unfair, they are the honest expression of an independent, powerful mind, and every one is well worth reading. This was Johnson's last work. He died in 1784. 109. Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774. One of John- son's special friends at the Club was the poet Oliver Goldsmith, a genial, gay-hearted Irishman, a boy all his lifd. What to do with him was always a puzzling ques- tion to his friends. His bishop would not accept him as a clergyman, either because of his pranks at the university or because of the scarlet breeches which he insisted upon wearing. A devoted uncle sent him to London to study law ; but on the way he was beguiled into gambling and did not reach the city. He began to l8o ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1760-1766 Study medicine at Edinburgh ; made his way to Leyden for further instruction ; borrowed money to go to Paris, but spent it on rare tulip bulbs for his uncle ; and finally set out to travel over the Continent "with but one spare shirt, a flute, and a single guinea." He took his degree probably at Padua, went to London, read proof for Richardson, acted as tutor in an academy, wrote chil- dren's books — possibly Goody Two Shoes. He thought of going to India as a physician, of exploring central Letters Asia, of journeying to Aleppo to study the fcomaOit- arts of the East. He had no special longing Izenoltlie , , . , ^ , ... , , , , World. to become a knight of the quill, but he needed 1760-1761. money and he wrote. Letters from a Citizen of the World brought him a small sum ; an agreeable History of little History of England brought more; but England. Goldsmith had no more providence than a spar- ' ■ row, and soon Johnson, like his early friends in Ireland, began to wonder what to do with " Noll." His careless fashion of living was entirely different from Johnson's sturdy uprightness ; but Johnson's heart was big enough to sympathize with him, and when a mes- sage came one morning that Goldsmith was in great trouble, Johnson guessed what the matter was and sent him a guinea, following it himself as soon as possible. Goldsmith had not paid his rent, and his landlady had arrested him. The two men discussed what could be done, and Goldsmith produced the manuscript of a novel Thevioar ready for the press. Johnson carried it to a otwake- bookseller and sold it for £,60. This was the ■ manuscript of the Vicar of Wakefield ; but the publisher did not realize what a prize he had won, and ThoTrav- was in no haste to bring the book out. In the eiier. 1764. mean time. Goldsmith's Traveller appeared. Then there was a sensation at the Club ; for, save 1764-1766] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 181 by Johnson, Reynolds, Burke, and perhaps a few others. Goldsmith has been looked upon as a mere literary drudge. He had felt the unspoken contempt, and had been awkward and ill at ease. Now that the Club and 11 .«-«.»*. , «. 1 v|^ vv^.' ■^.;S|-« l^'l-::;^;;'':'' ■■'■■ ■':-:!■; 'rv'il'' 1^ !^ 4' ,/ OLIVER GOLDSMITH I 728-1 774 the other literary folk of the day declared that the Traveller was the best poem that had appeared since the death of Pope, Goldsmith's peculiarities were no longer called awkwardness, but the whims of a man of genius. Then came out the Vicar of Wakejield with its ridiculous plot, its delightful humor, its gentleness, its comical situations, and the exquisite grace of style that marked the work of Goldsmith's pen, whether poem or novel or history. Again the literary world was delighted ; 1 82 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1768-1773 but the £,60 received for the manuscript had long ago ThoGooa- ^^^" spent. His next work was a comedy, The Natured Good-Natured Man. This gave him ;£500 ; Man. 1768. ^^^ straightway he began to live as if he were to have ;£500 a month. Soon his pockets were empty, and the much praised Dr. Goldsmith was again at the- beck and call of the booksellers. He wrote history. The Do- natural history, whatever they called for; one serted vii- thing was as easy as another. In 1770 he wrote lage. 1770. j^^^ Deserted Village. Like almost all of Pope's work, this is written in the rhymed heroic couplet, but here the resemblance ends. Pope's writings were pol- ished ; Goldsmith's were marked by an inimitable natu- ral charm, the charm of a graceful style, of a tenderness and delicate humor of which Pope never dreamed. The idea of the poem is pathetic ; but the parts that come to mind oftenest are the sympathetic description of the village pastor who was " passing rich with forty pounds a year," and the picture of the schoolmaster : — In arguing, too, the parson owned his skill. For, even tho' vanquished, he could argue still; While words of learned length and tliundering sound Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around ; And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew, That one small head could carry all he knew. Once more Goldsmith wrote a play. She Stoops to Conquer. This was founded upon his own adventures She stoops ^'^^^ '^'^^'^ possessed of a guinea and a bor- to oouiiuer. rowed horse. " Where is the best house in the place f " he had demanded in a strange village with all the airs that he fancied to be the mark of an experienced traveller. The home of a wealthy gentle- man was mischievously pointed out, and the young fel- low rode up to the door, gave his orders right and left, I756-I77S] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 183 and finally invited his host and family to join him in a bottle of wine. The host had discovered that the con- sequential youngster was the son of an old friend, and he carried on the mistake till the boy was about to take his leave. This play was Goldsmith's last work. His income had become sufficient for comfort; but he had no idea how to manage it, and he was always in debt. He died when not yet forty-six years of age, the same careless, generous, lovable boy to the end. His bust was placed in Westminster Abbey by the Club. Johnson wrote the inscription, which said that he " left scarcely any style of writing untouched, and touched nothing that he did not adorn." 110. Edmund Burke, 1729-1797. This period, al- ready so rich in essays and novels and poetry, was also marked by oratory and history. Its greatest orator was Edmund Burke, an Irishman, who made his way to England and began his literary work by publishing essays about the time when Johnson's die- onthesni)- tionary came out, the most famous being On b"^^„i the Sublime and Beautiful. Johnson admired 1756. him heartily, and felt that in him he had an opponent worthy of his steel. ".That fellow calls forth all my powers," he said. At another time he declared that a stranger could not talk with Burke five minutes in the street without saying to himself, " This is an extraordi- nary man." Burke entered Parliament and was one of the most prominent figures of the House in the stormy days pre- ceding the American Revolution. Then it was speech on that he made his famous Speech on Concilia- ^""^ ^^er" tion with America. On the part of the govern- loa. 1775. ment he was the most prominent prosecutor of Warren l84 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i759-i790 Hastings for abuse of power in India. The Reign of Heiiections Terror in France called forth his Reflections on on the the French Revolutioji.- Burke was not merely volution. a politician ; he was a thinker and orator and 1790. pQgt ^jjQ devoted himself to* politics. The thought is always first with him, but in the expression of the thought he is generous in his use of poetical adornment ; and yet his adornment is vastly more than a inere decoration. In his Conciliation, for instance, no statistics would have given his audience nearly so good an idea of the energy and enterprise of the colonists as his picturesque description of the manner in which they had carried on the whale fishery : — Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold, that they are at the antipodes, and engaged under the frozen Serpent of the north. 111. William Robertson, 1721-1793. The historians of the eighteenth century are represented by William Robertson, David Hume, and Edward Gibbon. Rob- ertson was a Scotch clergyman who wrote of three different countries, A History, of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and James the Sixth, in 1759; then The History of Charles V. of Germany ; and finally, A History of America. 112. David Hume, 1711-1776. David Hume was also a Scotchman, a man of such indomitable perse- verance that his energy was not conquered even by years of unsuccessful effort. At twenty-three he de- termined to devote himself to literature. His first book was a failure, but he struggled on with many failures and small success. He was not the kind of man to be 1754-1787] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 185 discouraged, and with the utmost composure he set to work on a History of Englmid. The first vol- History oi ume failed. He wrote a second. That failed. ^"|^™*' He wrote a third. It was received with some i76i. slight interest. He continued, and at last the reading world began to appreciate what he had done. They discovered that whatever was narrated was told vividly, that Hume recognized a great event when he saw it, and took pains to trace not only its effect but the causes which led up to it ; and that he was interested not only in great events but in the people and their ways. One fault was common to both Hume and Robertson, or possibly in some degree to their age, a lack of historical accuracy, the most unpardonable fault in a writer of history. 113. Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794. No such charge can be made against the writings of Edward Gibbon. He was an Englishman with whom, even as a boy, the love of history was a passion. The idea of History oi writing the History of the Decline and Fall of ^^^^^ the Roman Ejnpire came to him in Rome in the Roman 1 764, but the first volume did not appear until jj^'g"' 1776. The labor involved in preparing this i787. work was enormous. It was not the simple story of a single people, but a complicated narrative involved with the history of all Europe. Merely to collect the neces- sary knowledge was a gigantic task. It demanded a most powerful intellect to arrange the facts, and to show their proper connection ; a remarkable literary ability to pre- sent them clearly and attractively. All this Gibbon did, a little ponderously sometimes, but vividly and eloquently. He is by far the greatest of the eighteenth century his- torians. 114. New qualities in literature. In the literature l86 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1751 of the last quarter of the century certain qualities were seen which were new chiefly in that they were much more strongly manifested than before. First, there was more interest in man simply because he was man, and not because he was rich or of noble birth. The revolution in America and the early part of the revo- lution in France emphasized the idea that every one, no matter of how lowly a position, possessed rights. Second, there was a genuine love of real nature, not nature made into clipped hedges and gravelled walks. Third, there was a certain impatience of restraint, an unwillingness to accept the conclusions of others. Sub- jects were chosen that were of personal interest to the author and were therefore treated with warmth of feeling. 115. Thomas Gray, 1716-1771. These qualities were the marks of what is known as the romantic revival, a revolt against the artificial formality of Pope and his followers. Even while Pope was alive and at the height of his fame, poets in both Scotland and England began to manifest a sincere love for nature and to break away from the rhymed couplet. In 1751, seven years after the death of Pope, a notable poem was produced by Thomas Gray, a quiet, sensitive scholar who spent more than half his life in Cambridge. Here he wrote his , famous Elegy in a Country Churchyard. For Elegy. eight years he kept the Elegy by him, adding, taking away, polishing, and refining, until it had become worthy, even in form, to be named among the great poems of the world. Its fame, however, is due less to its polish than, first, to its genuine interest in the lives of the poor, to its sympathy with their pleasures and realization of their hardships ; and, second, to its observation of the little things of nature, the "moping i76s] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 187 owl," the "droning flight" of the beetle, "the swallow twittering from the straw-built shed." Nature, accord- ing to the school of Pope, was rude and perhaps a little vulgar until smoothed and trimmed and made into lawns and gardens. Pope might have brought a swan or a peacock into a poem, but he would hardly have thought it fitting to introduce beetles or swallows, save the swal- lows that "roost in Nilus' dusty urn." Neither would Pope have thought a ploughman who " homeward plods his weary way" a proper subject for poetry. To Pope a ploughman was simply a part of the world's machinery, and he would no more have written about him than about a bolt or a screw. All Gray's poems can be contained in one thin volume, but their significance, especially that of the Elegy, can hardly be overestimated. 116. Percy's Reliques, 1765. Interest in roman- ticism was greatly strengthened by the appearance in 1765 of a book called The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, but better known as "Percy's Reliques." This was a collection of old ballads made by Bishop Percy. Unfortunately he felt that in their original form they were too rude to be presented to the literary world ; and therefore he smoothed and polished them to some extent, substituting lines of his own for such as were missing or such as appeared to him unworthy. The timid editor was astounded to find that these old ballads received a hearty welcome, and that their very sim- plicity and rude directness were their great charm to people who were tired of couplets and criticism. ___- 117. William Cowpei', 1731-1860. Thus the Elegy, the Reliques, and even Goldsmith's Deserted Village, written in couplets as it was, helped on the new roman- ticism. So did the work of William Cowper, who began to write soon after the death of Goldsmith, and who l88 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1785 resembled Goldsmith in love of nature and in writing straight from the heart. As a boy Cowper was the shyest of children, and it is no wonder that the timid little fellow suffered agonies when at the age of six he was sent to boarding school. From time to time through- out his life his mind was unbalanced, often because the gentle, conscientious man feared that his sins were un- pardonable. His later years were spent in the quiet vil- lages of Weston and Olney ; and he sent to his friends most charming letters about his pets, his garden, his long walks about the country, and the merry thoughts and witty fancies that were continually coming into his mind. Every one knew him and every one loved him. He was as happy as was possible to him. Here it was that he wrote. Many of his hymns, such as God moves in a mysterious way, and Oh ! for a closer walk with God, are familiar ; but equally well known are The Diverting History of John Gilpin with its rollicking fun, and The Task. " What shall I write on .' " the poet once asked his friend Lady Austen. "The sofa," she The Task, replied jestingly. He obeyed, and named his 1785. poem The Task. He wrote first and with mock dignity about the evolution of the sofa. Then he slipped away from parlors and cities and wrote of the country that he loved. God made the country, and man made the town, he said. Here he is at his best. Every season was dear to him. He writes of winter : — I love thee, all unlovely as thou seemest, And dreaded as thou art. He sympathizes with the horses dragging a heavy wagon in the storm ; he notes the robin, -^ 1775] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 189 Flitting light From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes From many a twig the pendant drops of ice That tinkle in the withered leaves below. He says indignantly : — I would not enter on my list of friends (Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility) the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. All this was quite different from the earlier poetry of the century. Pope's influence had not disappeared by any means, and Cowper could write such balanced lines as — Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much ; Wisdom is humble that he knows no more ; but this frank love of nature and simple things was not in the least like Pope ; and there was more and even better poetry of this sort to be done before the close of the century by a Scotchman named Robert Burns. 118. Robert Burns, 1759-1796. Burns was the son of an intelligent, religious farmer. His years of school were few, but he was by no means an ignorant man, for he had a shelf of good books, and he had long evenings of conversation with" his father, a man of no common mould. Another thing was of the utmost value to him who was to become the poet of Scotland, and that was his mother's familiarity with the ballads and songs of the olden time, and the fairy tales and legends with which the mind of one Betty Davidson, a member of the family, was stocked. When Burns was sixteen, he met a pretty girl, and wrote a poem to her. Handsome Nell. This Burns's was the beginning, and from that time until JJ"tpoem, he was twenty-eight, his life was full of song- nou. 1775. writing, of hard work, and of the rather wild merry- making of one or two clubs. He had no model for his igo ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1786 poetry except the poems of Allan Ramsay, who wrote in the early part of the century, and Robert Fergus- son, who wrote about the middle. When Burns dis- covered Fergusson's work, he was delighted, for here was a poet who wrote in Scotch, who loved nature, who had a turn for satire keen and kindly, and 'a touch of humor. Burns felt that he had found a master, and for some time he meekly followed Fergusson's w^ays of writ- ing and imitated his metres without apparently the least idea that he himself was far greater than his predecessor. When Burns was twenty-five, his father died. He and his brother tried hard to make some profit from the farm, but it seemed hopeless. Robert's own wildness had brought him into difficulties, and he determined to go to Jamaica. One thing must be had first, and that was the money for his outfit and his passage. Some of his friends suggested that printing the poems which he Burns's ^^^ written might help to fill his empty purse. first vol- In 1786 the little volume was published, and ume. 1786. , r •* • t • t 1 • xt the poet felt rich with his twenty guineas. He bought his outfit, paid his passage, and wrote what he supposed was the last song he should ever compose in Scotland. The vessel was not quite ready to sail, and while he waited, a letter came which suggested that it might be worth while to publish an edition of his poems visit to i"^ Edinburgh. For the glory and gain of such Eainburgii. a possibility, the poet set out for Edinburgh and the ship sailed without him. He had no letters of introduction to the great folk of the capital city, but none were needed, for his poems had gone before him ; and he, the young peasant fresh from his unsuccessful farming, found himself the social and literary lion of the day. The new edition of his poems came out, and he was f^ted and flattered until many a brain would have turned. 1786-1788] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 191 The farmer poet, however, was perfectly self-possessed. He was not in the least overpowered by the attention shown him. His only mistake was in not re- Disappoint alizing that the people who praised him so me"*- heartily would forget all about him in a month. He hoped that some of those men of rank and wealth who claimed to be his friends and admirers would help to secure for him some position in which he could have part of his time free for poetry. He was disappointed, for nothing came of his visit but a little money, a lit- tle fame, and the rest- less, unhappy feeling that there was a world of in- tellect, of cultivation, of association with the most brilliant men of his country, and that he was shut out from this by nothing but the want of money. He was not strong enough to put the thought away from him. He had one more winter in Edinburgh ; but while there was quite as much admiration of his poems, the novelty was gone, and the lovers of novelty were not so attentive. Burns made no complaint. He secured a position as an excise man, rented a little farm, married Jean Armour, and set out to live on his small income. Scotland's poet was disciplining smugglers, working on a farm, and incidentally writing such poems as Tarn O'Shanter, Bannockburn, and The Banks 0' Doon. The farm was not a success, and he moved to a tiny ROBERT BURNS 1759-1796 192 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1788-1796 house in Dumfries. Tlie years were hard. Burns's readiness to please and be pleased led him into what- ever company chose him, not the company which he should have chosen. He wrote to a friend that he was " making ballads, and then drinking and singing them." He was keenly sensitive to right and wrong, but lacked the power to choose the right and refuse the wrong. The end came very soon, for he was only thirty-seven when he died. X19. Burns's most notable work. The songs of Burns have been sung wherever English is spoken. They are so simple and sincere that they go straight to the heart, so-musical that they almost make their own Songs of melody. Songs of such intense feeling as Bums. " My luve is like a red, red rose," of such ten- derness as "O wert thou in the cauld blast" cannot go out of fashion. Burns's tenderness is not for human beings alone, but for the tiny field mouse whose "wee bit housie " has been torn up by the plough, and whom he comforts, — But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane,* In proving foresight may be vain : The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft a-gley.^ Closely allied to his tenderness is his charity, a charity which is often delightfully combined with humor, as in his Address to the Deil, which closes, — But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben ! ^ O wad ye tak a thought an' men' ! Ye aiblins* might — I dinna ken — Still hae a stake.'' ' not alone. ^ go oft amiss. ' A nickname of Satan. ^ perhaps. ' chance. ter's Satur- day Night. 1785-1790] THE CENTURY OF PROSE 193 Two of Burns's longer poems of contrasting character are, next to his songs, his most famous works, — Tam o Shanter and The Cotter s Saturday Night. The first is one of the most fascinating poems o'Shantoi. ever written. The good-for-nothing Tam, the '^'^°' long-suffering, scolding wife, the night at the inn where "ay the ale was growing better," the furious storm, Tam's setting out for home " fou and unco happy," but with prudent glances over his shoulder " lest bogles catch him unawares," — these are all put before us, sometimes with a touch of humor, sometimes with up- roarious fun ; but always fascinating, always impossible to read without a smile. ; The second poem, The Cotters Saturday TheOot- Night, is' a picture of the poet's own child hood home on Saturday evening when — 1785. The elder bairns come drapping in. At service out, amang the farmers roun'. Everything is simple and homely. The mother, wi' her needle an' her sheers, Gars ' auld claes ^ look amaist as weel 's the new ; The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. We can almost hear the knock of the bashful " neebor lad" who has 'come to call on the oldest daughter. We see them all sitting down to the porridge that forms their supper. We watch the gray-haired father as he takes the Bible, — And " Let us worship God ! " he says with solemn air. A Scotchman asked to read in public said, " Do not ask me to give The Cotter s Saturday Night. A man should read that on his knees as he would read his Bible." ' makes. '^ clothes. 194 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i 8th Cent. Love of his childhood's home, love of country, love of the right were in Burns's heart when he wrote — From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd abroad. Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, " An honest man 's the noblest work of God." The eighteenth century began and ended with poetry, but it produced no poet of the first rank. It was the age of prose, and it is famous for essayists, novelists, writers on ethics and politics, and historians — a proud record for one short century. Century XVIII THE CENTURY OF PROSE Early prose writers : Artificial poet : Joseph Addison. Alexander Pope. Richard Steele. Jonathan Swift. Writers on ethics and politics : Samuel Johnson. Forerunner of the novelists: Edmund B'urke. Daniel Defoe. Historians : Novelists : William Robertson. Samuel Richardson. David Hume. Henry Fielding. Edward Gibbon. Tobias Smollett. Laurence Sterne. Romantic poets ; Oliver Goldsmith (romantic Thomas Gray, poet). Oliver Goldsmith. Robert Burns. SUMMARY Coffee houses became important factors in literature. Pope was the greatest poet of the first half of the century. His influence for correctness, conciseness, and clearness has l8thCent.] THE CENTURY OF PROSE IQS never ceased to affect literature. Even his metre, the heroic couplet, prevailed for many years. The best prose writers of the early part of the century were : — 1. Addison, who won political- success by a couplet. 2. Steele, who founded the Tatkr. These two men wrote the best parts of the Tatkr, the Spectator, famous for the Sir Roger de Coverky papers, and the Guardian ; and this was the beginning of periodical literature. 3. Swift, the many-sided, was famous. for his bitter satire, and the warmth of his friendship. His best known book is Gulliver's Travels. Defoe, too, was a many-sided man. His satire was written with such apparent sincerity that it was more than once taken in earnest. His best work is Robinson Crusoe. The Age of Queen Anne as a whole was marked by the development of literary criticism, by the excellence of its prose, and by the beginning of the periodical. In 1740 prose discovered a new field, the novel. The first, Pamela, was written by Richardson. This was followed by Fielding's jfoseph Andrews, Smolktfs Roderick Random, Sterne's Tristram Sha?idy, and many others. Between 1750 and 1780 the chief place of honor was held by a man of powerful intellect, Johnson, who wrote Lizw oj the Poets and many other works, compiled a dictionary, put an end to " patronage " in literature, was famous for his con- versational ability, and was the literary oracle of his day. His life was written by his admirer Boswell. One of Johnson's special friends was Oliver Goldsmith, to whom the writing of children's books, history, novels, poetry, and plays was equally easy and the results almost equally excellent. The period was also marked by the eloquence of Edmund Burke, and by the work of three historians : Robertson, who wrote of Scotland, Germany, and America ; Hume, who wrote of England ; and Gibbon, who wrote of the Roman Em- pire. 196 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i8th Cent. The "romantic revival," a revolt against the artificial for- mality of Pope, was increasing in power. It was marked by three qualities : interest in man as man, love of nature, inde- pendence of thought. This revolt was apparent in Gray's Elegy and in Goldsmith's poems, was strengthened by the appearance of Percy's Reliques, and was carried on by the works of Cowper ; but its best manifestation was in the writ- ings of Burns, who is famous for poems of such contrasting character as his songs, Tarn O'Shanter, and The Cotter's Sat- urday Night. The eighteenth century is famous for poets, essayists, nov- elists, writers on ethics and politics, and historians. CHAPTER VIII CENTURY XrX THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 120. The " Lake Poets." The three qualities that were so clearly manifested in the poetry of Burns, namely, interest in man, love of nature, and impatience of restraint, become even more apparent in the writ- . ings of the nineteenth century. Individuality in- creased. It is less easy to label writers as belonging to a certain " school." The three poets of the first of the century who are usually classed together as the "Lake School "have little in common except their friendship and the fact that they lived in the Lake Country. These three were William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Cole- ridge, and Robert Southey. When Wordsworth was twenty-one he went to France to study. Those were the Revolutionary days ; and the young student sided with the Girondists so vig- wiiuam orously that he would surely have fallen into ^^' political trouble if his friends had not stopped 1770-186O. his allowance in order to compel him to return. When WILLIAM WORDSWORTH I770-1850 198 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1791-1798 the Revolution became only a wild orgy of slaughter, he was disappointed and doubtful of everything ; but his beloved sister Dorothy came to live with him, and, as he said, gave him an exquisite regard for common things and preserved the poet in him. After three or four years of quiet country life, a bril- liant, sympathetic man became a visitor at the Words- samuei worth cottage. This was Coleridge. He was couiridge. ^ ™^^ who was interested in everything by 1772-1834. turns. His brain was full of visions and schemes. He was in the army for a while. He planned to found a model republic on the Susquehanna. He was a wonderful talker on politics, philosophy, theology, poetry — whatever came uppermost. Together he and Wordsworth discussed,^ what ideal poetry should be. Wordsworth believed that a poet should write on every- day subjects in everyday language. Coleridge believed that lofty or supernatural subjects might be so treated as to seem simple and real. 121. Lyrical Ballads, 1798. The two men agreed to bring out a little book, Lyrical Ballads, and go to Germany with its proceeds ; and this was done. Cole- ridge's chief contribution to the volume was The Rime of TheHime the Ancient Mariner, that weird and marvellous Ancient * ^'^^ °^ ^^^ Suffering that must follow an act not Mariner. in loving accord with nature. This poem is like the old ballads in its simplicity and directness, but very unlike them in the fulness of its harmony. Cole- ridge was a master of sound. Here is his sound picture of a brook : — A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. 1798] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL I99 The breaking up of the ice is thus described : — It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound. The similes of the poem are of the kind that not only adorn a statement but illuminate it ; the mariner passes, " like night," from land to land. The vessel in a calm is As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Wordsworth's contributions to the book were many, and of widely differing value. When he remembered his theories, he was capable of such stuff as — But yet I guess that now and then With Betty all was not so well ; And to the road she turns her ears. And thence full many a sound she hears. Which she to Susan will not tell. Here, too, was his We are Seven. The treatment is quite as simple as in the preceding poem ; but while the first seems like the awkward attempt of a man •vveare to be childlike, the simplicity of the second is seven, appropriate because the poem is a conversation with a child. In this same volume was the beautiful irintem Tintern Abbey, wherein all theories were for- Aiiiiey. gotten. It is hardly colloquial language when the author says, — The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; or when he bids — Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walks ; And let the misty mountain-wind be free To blow against thee. 122. Robert Southey, 1774-1843. After their visit to Germany, both poets settled in the Lake Country. 200 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1797-1813 Near them was the home of the poet Southey, who had been one of Coleridge's converts to the Susquehanna scheme. These were the three who were best known as poets when the nineteenth century began. Southey wrote The cnise weird, Strange epics : The Curse of Kehama, a oi Kehama. Hindoo tale, and Thalaba, the story of a young Tiaiaba. Arabian who sets out to avenge his father. ^^°^- Southey was always attracted by the strange and distant ; and yet he took delight in the simplest things, and made the best of whatever came. In 181 3 he was chosen Laureate ; but only a few years later he discovered that the public did not care for moi"e poetry from him, and he said with the utmost composure, " I have done enough to be remembered among poets, though my proper place will be among the historians, if I live to complete the works upon yonder shelves." For twenty years longer Southey worked industriously on prose. He LifeoiNei- wrote histories and biographies, an excellent son. 1813. ijfg of Nelson among the latter. Here was his true field, for his prose is charmingly clear and sturdy ; and while making no apparent attempt at formal descrip- tion, he nevertheless contrives to leave a strongly out- lined picture in the mind of the reader. 123. Coleridge's best work. Coleridge's best poetry was written about the time of the publication of Lyrical Chiistabei. Ballads. It was then that he composed Chris- 1797-1800. tabel, the mystic tale of the innocent maiden who is enthralled by the power of magic. Then, too, he Kubia wrote the dazzling fragment, Kubla Khan, part Khan. of a poem which, he said, came to him while he 1797 slept. The rest of it was driven from his mem- ory by an interruption. Whatever Coleridge touched with his poetic gift was rich and splendid ; but nearly 1797-1834] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 20I everything was incomplete. So it was in prose. No one can read a single page of his writings without real- izing that their author was a man of deep and original thought and of rarely equalled ability ; and yet mcom- here, too, all was unfinished. Coleridge said piotonoaa. that he trembled at the thought of the question, " I gave thee so many talents ; what hast thou done with them .? " SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 1772-1834 His excuse was a certain weakness of the will. This was increased by the use of opium, which he began to take to quiet pain, and which was for many years his tyrant. This great man, who influenced every one that heard him speak or that read his written words, was utterly without ability to command his own powers, to govern his own mind. He has left little save fragments, — but they are magnificent fragments. 202 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1802-1830 124. Wordsworth's life. Wordsworth's life was quite unlike that of Coleridge. He married in 1802, and, as he said, was " conscious of blessedness " in his marriage. A sum of money which had been due to his father was at last paid to him, and he lived on happily and tranquilly in his beloved Lake Country, -making many trips abroad or to different parts of the British Isles. He was a keen lover of beauty, but the beauty of nature rather than that of art. He fell asleep before the Venus de Medici, but he wrote one of his best sonnets on the beach at Calais. His finest poems were written during the early years of the century. Appreciation was slow in finding Wordsworth, partly because first Scott and then Byron were coming before the public, and there was nothing in Wordsworth's writ- siow appro- ings to arouse the wild enthusiasm with which Words-"' people welcomed their productions. Another woith. reason was that Wordsworth's utter lack of humor permitted him in pursuit of his theories to put absurd doggerel into poems that were otherwise fine. The critics ridiculed the doggerel and passed by what was really worthy. " Heed not such onset," the poet said to himself, and serenely continued to write. Slowly one after another began to see that no one else could describe the every-day sights of nature like Wordsworth, or could interpret so well the feelings that they aroused in one who loved them. Other poets could write of tem- pests and crags and precipices ; but Wordsworth alone could picture a "common day" and an "ordinary" landscape. He could do more than picture; he could make the reader feel that in nature was a mysterious life, the thought of its Creator, half expressed and half revealed. Long before 1830 Scott had ceased to write poetry, Byron and Shelley and Keats were dead. Men 1800-1842] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 203 began to turn back a score of years, to see that in Words- worth's poems there was an excellence that odeonthe they had overlooked. They passed by the imbe- intimations cilities of Peter Bell, they read the charming taiity. little daffodil poem, they began to appreciate }^^^- the grandeur of the Ode on the Intimations of Immor- tality, with its magnificent sweep of poetry : — There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. Little by little Wordsworth's noble office was recog- nized, and he was known as the faithful interpreter of na- ture and of God in nature. In 1842 a complete edition of his works was called for. On the death of Southey during the following year, he was made Laureate with the good-will of all lovers of true poetry. Those first thirty years of the century were glorious times for literature. Besides the Lake Poets, there were the romantic writers, Scott and Byron ; the lovers of beauty, Shelley and Keats ; the essayists, Charles Lamb and De Quincey ; the magazine critics ; and the realist, Jane Austen. 125. Walter Scott, 1771-1832. The first that we know of Walter Scott, he ^yas a little lame, sickly child who had been sent away from Edinburgh to his grand- father's farm in the hope that he might grow stronger. Fortunately for all that love a good story, this hope was realized, and it was not long before he was galloping wherever a pony could carry him and scrambling wher- ever the pony could not go. The two things that he liked best were this wild roaming over the country and listening to the old ballads and legends that his grand- 204 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1799-1805 Boyhood. mother recited to him by the score. When he was older, he was sent to school in Edinburgh. He was not the leader of his class by any means ; but out of school there was not a boy who would not gladly follow him to some wild, romantic spot to listen to his stories of the bor- der warfare. One day he came across a book half a century old which delighted his heart. It was Bishop Percy's Re- liques. This was hap- piness. The hungry schoolboy forgot his dinner and lay out under the trees read- ing over and over again of Douglas and Percy and Robin Hood and Sir Patrick Spens. This book settled the question of what his life-work should be, though it was some years before he found his place. After leaving the university he studied law and was admitted to the bar. He married, held various public offices, and was financially comfortable. In 1799, when he was twenty-eight, he made his first appear- st. John. ance in literature with some translations from German poetry. A little later he wrote a border ballad, The Eve of St. John. Great numbers of border SIR WALTER SCOTT 1771-1832 iSo8-i8i2] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 205 ballads were still remembered, though they had never been put into print. Scott determined to collect these, and somewhat in the^ fashion of Fuller, he roamed over the country, taking down every scrap of the old balladry, every bit of legend that he could get from any one who chanced to remember the ancient lore. In 1802 he pub- lished Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and ^ ^ in 1805, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Then oithosoot- there was enthusiasm indeed. Men had wan- ^^^ /goa. dered into distant lands for the new, the The Lay of . , , ^ the Last strange, the romantic ; but the Lay revealed MinstreL their own country as its home. Here was a ^^''^• poem which was song, description, dialogue, legend, su- perstition, chivalry, every-day life, — and all blended into a story told by an ideal story-teller. Scott's listeners were as intent as those of his schooldays had been. There was no more thought of courts and law books. The teller of stories had found his place. He planned a romantic novel, but laid it aside. During the next three years he edited various works, and in the third year he published Marmion. Large sums of money Majmion. were coming in from his poems and also from isos. the publishing business, in which he had engaged with some old school friends, and he was free to carry out his dearest wish, to buy the estate of Abbotsford and become one of the "landed gentry." 126. Scott abandons poetry. In 18 1 2, the year of his removal to Abbotsford, Childe Harold, a brilliant poem in a new vein, came out, written by Lord Byron. The crowd had found a new idol, and Scott's next poem, published the following year, had much smaller sales than his previous works. Scott brought out another poem, but evidently the fickle public did not care for more of his poetry, and he began to think about the ro- 206 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1814-1831 mance which he had planned several years earlier. The waveiiey. result of this thinking was that in 18 14 the 1814. reading world went wild with delight over Wa- verley, by an unknown writer ; for Scott, no one knows just why, did not wish to be known as its author. Story after story followed, — one, two, even three, in a single year. " Walter Scott is the only man in the land who could write them," was the general belief ; but the secret was kept for some time. Scott was happy in his home. Abbotsford was the very hearthstone of Scotland for a joyous hospitality. Great folk and little folk, rich and poor, lords AhSOtSfOia. , , ,. . -r ■ , and ladies, scientific men, artists, authors, ad- mirers from across the sea, old school friends, relatives even to the twentieth degree — they were all welcomed to Abbotsford. Sir Walter — for George IV had made him a baronet — usually worked three or four hours be- fore breakfast, which was between nine and ten, and per- haps two hours afterwards ; but when noon had come, he was ready for any kind of amusement, provided it was out of doors, — a long walk or ride with his pet dogs, hunting or fishing, or whatever might suggest itself. It is a pity that this happy life should have been clouded; but in 1826 the publishers with whom Scott Failure oi was connected failed. The romancer might puhUshers. easily have freed himself from all claims; but instead he quietly set to work to pay with his pen the ^650,000 that was due. Novels, histories, a nine-volume life of Bonaparte, editorial work, translations, were un- dertaken in rapid succession. Paralysis attacked him ; still he struggled on. In 1831 the government loaned him a frigate to carry him to Italy for rest and change. The might Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes, 1807-1832] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 207 wrote Wordsworth ; but rest had come too late. In 1832 he returned to Abbotsford, and there he died. "Time and I against any two," he had said bravely when he took the enormous debt upon himself. Time had failed him, but he had paid more than half, and the royalties on his books finally paid the rest. Scott's best work was his Scottish romances, wherein he aimed chiefly at telling a romantic story and laid the scene in the past in order to add to the roman- ihehistor- tic effect. In such stories as Kenilworth, how- ioainoTei. ever, he shows himself the real inventor of the historical novel, that fascinating combination of old and new, of customs and manners that are strange practised by men and women with loves and hates and instincts like our own. His power lies, first, in his knowledge of the past, a knowledge so full and so ready that of whatever age he wrote he seemed to be in his own time ; second, in his imagination, his ability to invent incidents and pic- ture scenes ; third, in his power of humorous perception and characterization, especially in Scottish characters. There have been more profound students than Scott, and there have been better makers of plots ; but no man, either before or after him, has ever combined such familiarity with the past and such ability to tell a story. 127. Lord Byron, 1788-1824. George Gordon, Lord Byron, whose Childe Harold brought Scott's narrative poetry to an end, was the son of a worthless profligate and a mother who sometimes petted him, sometimes abused him, and was capable of flying into storms of anger at a moment's warning. He was so sensitive about his lameness that as a tiny child he struck Hours of fiercely with his whip at a visitor who ventured idleness. 1&07 to express some pity for him. When he was ten years of age, he became Lord Byron, and was so 2o8 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1807-1818 fond of alluding to his rank that the schoolboys called him "the old Enghsh baron." At nineteen he published English his first book of poems, Hours of Idleness. It Baidsand ^as only a boy's work, but the position of this viewers."' boy made it conspicuous, and the Edinburgh 1809. critics reviewed it sharply. Byron was angry, and two years later he blazed out with English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, wherein he not only attacked the reviewers, with his scornful couplet, — A man must serve his time to every trade Save censure — critics all are ready made, — but struck fiercely at his innocent fellow authors. Words- worth he pronounced an idiot, Coleridge the laureate of asses, Scott a maker of stale romance, and the mighty Jeffrey, writer of the article, he declared to be " the great literary anthropophagus." His own critical judg- ments were of small value, and he was afterwards exceed- ingly sorry for his foolish lines ; but evidently this boy was not to be suppressed even by the great folk of the Edinburgh Review. Byron went abroad, and in 181 2 he produced the first part of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, and then, he omide said, " I awoke one morning and found myself Pilgrimage famous." He continued to write. Scott's Lay 1812-1818. of the Last Minstrel and Marmion began to seem tame when compared with the turbulent charac- ters and the novel manners of the 'East, where most of Byron's scenes were laid. England and the Continent bowed down before this new genius. He married, but soon his wife left him, giving no reason for her deser- tion. Public sympathy was with her, and Byron became a wanderer, tossing back to England poems of scorn and satire and affection and pathos ; sometimes living simply 1813-1824] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 209 and quietly, sometimes sinking to the depths of dissipa- tion ; in his writings sometimes low and vulgar, but al- ways brilliant. He wrote wild, romantic tales irhoBrido in poetry, — The Bride of Abydos, The Corsair, oiASydos. and others ; he wrote equally wild and lurid TheCoi- dramas ; and, last of all, Don yuan, the story ^^- ^^^*- of a VICIOUS man and his life ; often revolting, 1819- but, as Scott said, containing "exquisite morsels ■^*^*' of poetry." Byron was capable of tender sympathy with suffering and warm appreciation of heroism, as he shows in The Prisoner of Chillon; but, as a TiiePris- general thing, there were but two subjects that c^°„_ interested him deeply, himself and nature. His 18I6. poems have one and the same hero, a cynical young man, weary of life, scornful and melancholy. This is the poet"s somewhat theatrical notion of himself. He once objected to a bust of himself on the ground that the expression was "not unhappy enough." There is nothing theatrical, however, about his love of nature when he writes such lines as — The big rain comes dancing to the earth. Oh, night And storm and darkness, ye are wondrous strong. Yet lovely in your strength. This stormy cynic could also write, and with most ex- quisite tlelicacy of touch, of a quiet summer evening : — It is the hush of night, and all between Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet clear, Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly seen. Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights appear Precipitously steep ; and drawing near, There breathes a living fragrance from the shore, Of flowers yet fresh with childhood ; on the ear Drops the light drip of the suspended oar, Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night carol more. 2IO ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1792-1823 In 1823 the Greeks were struggling to win their free- dom from the Turks. Byron determined to play a part in the war, and set out for Missolonghi. The misan- thropic poet suddenly became the practical commander ; but before he could take the iield, he died of fever at the age of thirty-six. 128. Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822. The works of two poets of this time, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, are so strongly marked by their love of beauty and their ability to express it as to separate them from the others. Shelley's whole life was a revolt against restraint. After five months at Oxford he wrote a pam- phlet against the Christian religion, and was promptly expelled. At nineteen he married a young girl, three years his junior, because he thought she was tyran- nized over in being required to obey the rules of her school. Shelley loved the world, and he longed to have all things pure and beautiful ; but he fancied that the one change needed to bring about this state of purity and beauty was to abolish the laws and the religion in which men believed. It is hard for ordinary mortals to under- stand his way of looking at matters ; but those who prometiieus knew him best were convinced of his honesty. Unbound. Prometheus Unbound is one of his best lone 1820 poems. He pictures the hero as rebelling against the gods, indeed, but as loving man. The longer The Cloud works are very beautiful, but there are three or four of his shorter poems that every one loves. One is The Cloud, beginning, — I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams ; I bring light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. 1819-1822] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 211 Another favorite is his Ode to the West Wind, oiie'o'ii* . West wind, and yet another is To a Skylark : — To a sty- laik. Hail to thee, blithe spirit — Bird thou never wert — That from heaven or near it Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art. There is a wonderful upspringing in this poem ; it hardly seems to touch the ground, but to be made of light and music. In even so earthly a simile as his com- parison between the lark and a glow-worm, he lightens and lifts it by a single word : — Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden Its aerial hue Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view. Another simile which surely would never have come to the mind of any one but Shelley, or perhaps Donne, was, Like a poet hidden In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden, Till the world ^s wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. Shelley was drowned while yachting in the Bay of Spezzia. The quarantine law required that his body- should be burned, and this was done in the presence of Byron and two other friends. His ashes were laid in the little Protestant burying-ground at Rome, not far from Keats, who had died only a year before. It was in grief for the loss of Keats that he had written his lament, Adonais, in which he had said of the poet, — Peace, peace ! he is not dead, he doth not sleep ! He hath awakened from the dream of life. 212 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1795-1821 A little volume of Keats's poems was with Shelley on the yacht and was washed up with his body. 129. John Keats, 1795-1821. For Keats life was not easy, though he had nothing in him of revolt against the established order of things. At school he was a great favorite and also a great fighter. A small thing made him happy and a small thing made him miserable. JOHN KEATS I795-1S2I At fifteen he was apprenticed to a London surgeon ; but long before then he had begun to dream golden dreams of what had been when the world was younger. His inspiration came from the past, from the Middle Ages as drawn by Spenser, and from the graceful fan- cies and depths of the Greek mythology. i8i8-l82i] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 213 In 1818, when he was twenty-three years of age, Keats published his Endymion. It was sav- Endymion. agely criticised by the Quarterly Review and ^*^8- Blackwood' s Edinburgh Magazine, but the young poet was not to be suppressed. He made no bitter reply, as Byron had done, but he quietly wrote on, and two years later published some of his best work. Here were The Eve of St. Agnes, Lamia, and Agnes, La- others of his longer poems, absolutely over- ™'*'^ ^ ' flowing with beauty and glowing with light and color : — Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory like a saint. If all Keats's poems but one were to be destroyed, most of those who love him would choose the „. . Ode to a Ode to a Grecian Urn to be saved. This poem Grecian is silver-clear, there is not a touch of color. ™' About the urn is a graceful course of youths and maid- ens and gods with pipes and timbrels and leafy boughs. The poet writes : — Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone ; Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare ; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal — yet, do not grieve ; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair. Keats was only twenty-four when he died, in Italy, where he had gone in the hope of saving his life. His ideals were so high that he felt as if what he had done was nothing. "If I should die," he said, "I have left 214 ENGLAND'S LITERATUR [i775-i834 no immortal work behind me ; " but the lovers of poetry have thought otherwise and have ranked him among the first of those who have loved beauty and have created it. 130. Charles Lamb, 1775-1834. While Keats and Shelley were in Italy, while Byron and Scott were at the height of their literary glory, while Wordsworth and Southey and Coleridge were revelling in the beauties of the Lake Country, Charles Lamb, the most charming of essayists, was adding and subtracting at his desk in the East India House, until, as he said, the wood had entered into his soul. When Lamb was a little boy, he was sent to the Blue- Coat School. He longed to go on to the university, but his aid was needed at home. A few years later his sis- ter Mary, in a sudden attack of insanity, killed her mo- ther. The young man of twenty-one, with some literary ambition and a keen appetite for enjoyment, bravely laid aside his own wishes, reckoned up his little income of ;£i20 a year, and took upon him the care of his father and his sister. Mary Lamb recovered, but as the years went on, attacks came with increasing frequency. Yet it was not, save for this constant dread, an unhappy life for either of them. There was never money enough for thoughtless expenditure, but there was enough for their Lamb's simple way of living. Their circle of friends blends. widened ; and what a company it was that used to meet in those little brown rooms ! There were Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Leigh Hunt, De Quin- cey, and others without number. There was the sister Mary in her gray silk gown and white muslin kerchief and quaintly frilled cap. Every one of that brilliant company respected and admired her, valued her opinion, and never failed of her sympathy. In the midst of them all was Charles Lamb, seeing nothing but good in every 1796-1807] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 215 one of them, often pouring out the wildest fun, but al- ways mindful of his sister, lest too eager a discussion or a jest too many might lead on to an attack of insanity. It was when she was " ill," as he tenderly phrased it, that he planned to dedicate to her his little volume of CHARLES LAMB 1 775-1834 poems, because, as he said, people living together " get a sort of indifference in the expression of kindness for each other." The best of his time and strength went to the endless adding and' subtracting, but the evenings were often given to writing, so far as the friends would permit. " I 2l6 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [i797-i833 am never C. L.," Lamb groaned half in jest and half in earnest, "but always C. L. and Co." Yet in the work done in these fragments of his life he has left us a rich legacy. For ten years, from 1797 to 1807, his pen at- Tie Old tempted all sorts of things. He wrote several Faces'" poems, among them The Old Familiar Faces, 1798. with its depth of tender affection and longing ; and Hester, most graceful of all memorials. He wrote a story or two ; he was actually under agreement written to provide six witty paragraphs a day for one "°^' of the papers ; he wrote prologues and epi- logues for his friends' plays, and finally he wrote a play of his own. It was acted ; but it was such an evident failure that the author himself, sitting far up in front, hissed it louder than any one else. In 1807, the Tales from Shakespeare came out, and that was a success. Mary wrote the comedies and Tales from Charles the tragedies, "groaning all the while," speue' ^^'^ sister said, " and saying he can make no- 1807. thing of it, which he always says till he has fin- ished, and then he finds out he has made something of it." During the following year he published Specimens of Dramatic Poets Contemporary with Shakespeare. Here he gives, as he says, " sometimes a scene, some- oJDramaUo times a song, a speech, or a passage, or a poeti- temporary cal image, as they happened to strike me," — Shake- ^^^ ^° know how they struck the mind of apeare. Charles Lamb is the delightful part of it, for 1808. , , ,. , , no one else has ever gone so directly to the heart of a play as this unassuming clerk of the East In- Essaysoi ^^'^ House — and then he talks a little in a Ella. 1822- friendly, informal way. His crowning work is Essays. the Essays of Elia, short, delightful little chats "*^' about whatever came into his mind. He writes 1825-1859] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 21/ about the Blue-Coat School in the days of his boyhood, about Witches and Other Night Fears ; he muses about Dream Children; he complains whimsically of the Z*^- cay of Beggars in the Metropolis ; he presents with a merry mockery of profound learning a grave Dissertation upon Roast Pig ; and describes with pathetic humor the feelings of The Stiperannuated Man who after many years of faithful work is given a pension by his employ- ers, and is at liberty to live his own life. This was a page from Lamb's experience, for in 1825 his employers gave him a generous pension, and at last he was free. This is what he says of his freedom : — " I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct out of them the hours which I have lived to other peo- ple, and not to myself, and you will find me still a young fellow. For that is the only true Time, which a man can properly call his own — that which he has all to himself ; the rest, though in some sense he may be said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 'T is a fair rule-of-three sum. ... I hav,e worked task- work and have all the rest of the day to myself." The " rest of the day " was short, for after only nine years of freedom, the most genial, deHcate, charming of humor- ists passed away. 131. Thomas De Quincey, 1785-1859. ''Charming" is the word that best describes the essays of Charles Lamb, but "fascinating" ought always to be saved for those of Thomas De Quincey. The man himself is in- tensely interesting. As a boy he was a great favorite with the other boys because of his never-failing good- nature and his willingness to help them with their les- 2l8 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1800-1821 sons; and with the teachers because he was such a brilhant scholar. When he was fifteen, he could chatter away in Greek as easily as in English. Two years later he went on a ramble to Wales, then slipped away to London, and came near dying of starvation. After being at Oxford, he visited Wordsworth. They became friends and were neighbors for twenty-seven years. Whoever met De Quincey was delighted with him. To the Words- worth children he was their beloved " Kinsey," and he was equally dear to John Wilson, who was to become the great " Christopher North " of Blackwood's Maga- zine. He was always ready to join in any light chat, but if left to himself, he had a fashion of gliding away in his talk to all sorts of profound and mysterious themes which only he knew how to make delightful. During those years in the Lake Country too great generosity and the failures of others had lessened his First ut- little fortune. He had a wife and children to erarywort. support, and he began to write for the maga- zines ; he even edited a local newspaper at a salary of one guinea a week. In 1821 he went to London. He was thirty-six years old, older than Byron or Shelley or Keats had been when their fame was secure ; but with De Quincey there had been for seventeen years an enemy at court in the shape of opium, which among other efifects weakened his will so that only the pres- sure of necessity could drive him to action. The neces- sity had come. Charles Lamb was writing his essays for the London Magazine, and he introduced De Quin- cey to the editors. Not long after this introduction the Confessions readers of the Magazine were deeply interested ifsh^op^nm- by ^'^ article called Confessions of an English Eator.1821. Opium-Eater. It might well arouse interest, for it was a thrilling account of the experiences that come 1821-1837] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 219 from the use of opium. It sounded so honest that the critics were half decided that it must be a work of im- agination. This was the real beginning of the one hun- dred and fifty magazine articles written by De Quincey. Sorrows came upon him. His wife and two of his THOMAS DE QUINCEY I785-1859 sons died, and he was helpless. In all practical matters he was the most ignorant of men. With a large jjg f^^^_ draft in his pocket, he once lived for a number oey's help- of days in the cheapest lodgings he could find, because he did not know that the draft, payable in 220 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1827-1837 twenty-one days, could be cashed at once. Now with six motherless children, he was more of a child than any of them. His oldest daughter quietly planned for him to have a home at Lasswade, near Edinburgh, and there he was loved and cared for. Caring for this gentle, erratic man must have been somewhat of a"worriment," for he was quite capable of slipping out in the evening for a walk, lying down under a tree or a hedge, and sleeping calmly all night long. His books and papers accumu- lated like drifts in a snowstorrri, and only his daughter's gentle control prevented him from filling room after room with them, and so driving the family out of doors. Two of his best-known essays are The Flight of a Tartar Tribe and Murder Considered as One of the Fine TtePiigM Arts. The inspiration of the first seems to have Trite'"*" been a few sentences in a missionary report. 1837. From these and his own wide reading, he made the flight of the Tartars across Asia as vivid as any actual journey of his readers. The second essay is writ- ten with a delightful air of mock gravity, and with verify- ing quotations from various languages. He declares his Mnider ^"^""^ belief " that any man who deals in murder, Oonsiaerefl must have very incorrect ways of thinking, and the Pino truly inaccurate principles." In a later article Arts. he carries his jest further and declares that " If 1827 once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing ; and from rob- bing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time." So De Quincey goes on. He can be dreamy and gentle. i8o3-i8i7] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 221 strikingly vivid, or whimsical, or he can give a plain, straightforward narrative, and in every case adapt his style perfectly to the mood of the hour. His published works fill sixteen volumes, "full of brain from beginning to end." 132. The Reviews. Almost all of De Quincey's work was done for some one of the magazines that were established in the first twenty years of the century. The earliest was the Edinburgh Review. It began in 1 802 with very decided principles. One was that articles must be written by men of standing ; second, that they must be paid for ; third, that reviews and criticisms „,, ^ ^ should be absolutely independent. Francis Jef- Review, frey soon became its editor, and was its ruling ^®°^" spirit for a quarter of a century. This magazine was so strongly Whiggish in tone that an opposition Tory maga- zine, the Quarterly Review, was soon founded. „ _ , > ^ -^ ' Quarterly Then came Blackwood' s Magazine, whose great Heview. man was John Wilson, or " Christopher North." ^^''®' These periodicals were so partisan and so bent upon being " independent " that many authors, like Keats and Wordsworth, suffered most unfairly at their Biaok- hands ; but, however hard their reviews were JJa" a'*ino for individual writers, they were certainly good 1817. for literature, for the very savageness of their criticism aroused discussion and interest in literary matters. 133. Jane Austen, 1775-1817. In the midst of the poems and romances and essays and reviews, the novel of home hfe held a little place, but an important one. Immediately after the days of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, there was much story-writing, but these stories were generally romances. The best and almost the only real novels of the earliest years of the nineteenth (jen- tury were written by a young girl named Jane Austen, 222 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1811-1817 who lived in a quiet village rectory. In 1 796, when she was twenty-one, she wrote Pride and Prejudice, and Piiae and during the next few years several other works puwishea followed. She kept her authorship a secret, 1813. and, indeed, did not publish a book until 181 1, three years before the coming out of Waverley. In some ways, these novels of the beginning of the century are very different from those written at its end. For one thing, Miss Austen often tells in long conver- sations what in later books is expressed by a hint. Her pictures give the minutest details of thought and feeling and action. In Emma, for instance, it requires puwisiea several pages to make it clear that an elderly 1816. . gentleman is afraid of a drive through the snow, but finally decides to attempt it. The same character in a later novel would glance anxiously out of the window and order his carriage. Miss Austen had a keen but most delicate sense of humor. In her own line she was almost as much of a realist as Defoe. She has a fashion of choosing several characters so nearly alike ton's excel- that we feel sure she "can make nothing of lence. j^. . » ^^j. j^^ j^^^. ^^j^.^ ^j description and her long conversations characteristics come out amazingly well; and suddenly we realize that she "has made some- thing of it," that these monotonous people who seemed to have been created by the dozen have become thor- oughly real and individual and interesting. Miss Austen died in 1817. The romantic poetry of Byron and what Scott called "the big bow-wow strain " of his own novels were filling the minds of readers, and it was not until long after her death that her work received the attention and admiration that it deserved. Occasionally in the history of literature we come to what seems a natural boundary. Such a boundary was 1832] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 223 reached in 1832. Before the close of that year, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Scott were dead ; the literary work of Lamb and Coleridge was practically com- iteyear plete ; Wordsworth wrote little more that was of i832. value ; only De Quincey and Southey were still active. The condition of the country was rapidly changing. In political history, too, 1832 was a natural boundary, for in that year a Reform Bill was passed, giving for the first time to many thousand people in England the right to be represented in Parliament. Education became more general, not only the education of schools, but that of books and papers. Books became cheaper, the circula- tion of papers increased. Cheap magazines were estab- lished. Scientific discoveries and inventions overthrew former ways of living and working and forced people to think, whether they would or not. The audience makes the author, and the author makes the audience. The half-century following 1832 was to see — among other marks of literary progress — a remarkable development of the novel, the essay, and the poem. The three novelists of the Victorian Age whose writ- ings are looked upon as modern classics are Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Mary Ann Evans Cross, or " George Eliot." 134. Charles Dickens, 1812-1870. The first nin6 years of Charles Dickens's life were very, happy ; but his father's salary was cut down, and before long he was imprisoned for debt. The rest of the family established themselves in the prison, and there the little boy spent his Sundays. Through the week he was left to work all day in a cellar and spend his nights in an attic. It is no wonder that throughout his life he had deep sym- pathy for lonely children. After a while came a few years of prosperity, and the boy was sent to school. 224 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1829-1850 His father became a parliamentary reporter for one of the papers; and when Charles was seventeen, he set out to learn shorthand. He was wise enough to realize that a good reporter must know much more than shorthand ; and he read, read hard hour after hour, when- ever he had the hours. There were two things that the young man liked to do better than all else. One was to act and the other was to write ; and one day he was too happy to keep the tears from his eyes, iox the Monthly Maga- zine had published a paper of his, known afterwards as Mr. Minns and his Cousin in Sketches by Bos. "Boz" was his little sister's pronun- ciation of Moses, a nickname which Charles had given to his brother in memory of "Moses" in The Vicar of Wakefield. Other sketches followed. By and by they came out in book form. Then a publishing firm asked Pickwick if he would write a series of humorous articles. He agreed, and this was the origin of the Pickwick Papers. Dickens was now twenty- his fame and his bank account were increasing rapidly. The following year he wrote Oliver Twist, and his other novels appeared in quick succession. He edited several periodicals, he wrote sketches of travel, and in 1850 he published CHARLES DICKENS 1812-1870 Papers, 1836- 1837. five ; Oliver Twist. 1838. 1850] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 225 David Copperfield, the work that he loved best, and a book that those who love its author cannot help find- ing most pathetic in the pictures that it gives Daviacop- of his own younger days. For twenty years perflau- longer his work went on. The public were more and more charmed with each story ; and well they might have been, for every page was sparkling with merriment or throbbing with a pathos that came so straight from the writer's. own heart that it could not fail to move his readers. When his characters blunder, they blunder delightfully. When they are sad, we sym- pathize with them ; but when they are merry, then comes a full tide of rollicking fun that " doeth good like a medicine." Dickens never seemed happier than when he was acting in amateur theatricals. This taste is evident in his novels. They often lack the drama's completeness of plot, but many of the characters have a touch of "make-up" which sometimes gives the reader a sense of their unreality, a feeling that they are figures on a stage rather than real men and women. Moreover, Dickens almost always fixes upon some special trick of expression or some one prominent quality, and by it he labels the character. Uriah Heep is always Method of "'umble," Mr. Micawber is always "waiting oaricatiure. for something to turn up." This is not character draw- ing; it is caricature. Nevertheless, no one who reads Dickens can help being grateful to the man whose work not only gives us amusement but is all aglow with good will and kindliness. Dickens was an intense and constant worker. " I am become incapable of rest," he said. Not only moijejis j, did he do a vast amount of work, but he threw aworner. his whole self into every book. Little Nell was so real 226 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1811-1848 to her creator that after writing of her death, he walked the streets of London all night, feeling as if he had really lost a beloved child friend. Long lives do not go with such work as this, and Dickens died, almost at his desk, at the age of fifty-eight. 135. William Makepeace Thackeray, 1811-1863. In 1836, when Dickens had just begun the Pickwick Papers, the artist who was to illustrate them died, and a young man offered himself as a substitute, but was not accepted. This was William Makepeace Thackeray, who was to be counted as one of the three great novelists of the Victorian Age. His early life was unlike that of Dickens, for, born in India, he was sent to England to be educated, and had all the advantages of school and university. Just what he should do with himself was not easy to decide ; but he had artistic ability and he concluded to study art. About the time when he came to the decision that he had not the talent to be as great an artist as he had hoped, his fortune was lost. Then he began to contribute to several magazines ; and as if laughing at himself for having even thought of being a famous artist, he signed his articles " Michael Angelo Titmarsh." Thackeray's fame was of slower growth than Dick- ens's. People read his Great Hoggarty Diamond in Tie Great Fraser's Magazine and his Book of Snobs in Dimraa Punch ; they were amused and interested, but 1811. they did not lie awake nights longing for the oi Snobs. "^^t number. Publishers did not contend wildly 1848. for his manuscripts, and he was sometimes asked to shorten those that he presented. Dickens had an unfailing good nature and cheerfulness and a healthy confidence in himself almost from the first that swept his readers along with him. Thackeray was not so 1847-1848] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 227 cheery, and he was not quite so sure of himself or of his audience. Again, people like to be amused. When Dickens made fun of his characters, he laughed at them with the utmost frankness, and every one laughed with him. When Thackeray disapproved, he wrote satiri- cally ; and satire is not so easy to see and not so amus- ing to every one as open ridicule. Dickens's pathos, too, was much more marked than Thackeray's. For these reasons Thackeray's fame grew slowly Y^^tTFair In 1 847-1 848 he wrote Vanity Fair. Now 1847- Thackeray greatly admired Fielding, and oddly ^***" enough, this book had somewhat the same relation to Dickens's novels that Fielding's Joseph An- drews had to Pamela. Dickens always had heroes and heroines, and they were always good. 'They might be thrown among wicked people, but they were never led astray by bad company. Thackeray declared that Vanity Fair had no hero. Its heroine, Becky Sharp, is distinctly bad. Her badness and clever- ness stand out in bolder relief from con- trast with Amelia's goodness and dulness. The book is a satire on social life, but it is a kindly satire. Like Shakespeare, Thackeray has charity for every one ; and even in the case of Becky, he does not fail to let us see WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 1811-1863 228 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1820-1855 how much circumstances have done to make her what she is. Besides novels Thackeray also wrote lectures on The English Humourists and on The Four Georges. He wrote Henry Es- some merry burlesques, one on Ivanhoe called fi=»' Rebecca and Rowena, wherein Rowena marries 1852> . The Wow- Ivanhoe but makes him wretched by her jeal- 1M4- ousy of Rebecca. His best novel is Heiiry 1855. Esmond, a historical romance of the eighteenth century ; but in The Newcomes is the character that comes nearest to every one's heart, the dear old Colonel who loses his fortune and is obliged to live on the char- ity of the Brotherhood of the Gray Friars. If Thack- eray had written nothing else, his picturing of the ex- quisite simplicity and self-respecting dignity with which Colonel Newcome accepts the only life that is open to him, would have been enough to prove his genius. This is the way he describes the Colonel's death : — " Just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said ' Adsum ' and fell back. It was the word we used at school when names were called ; and, lo, he whose heart was as that of a little child had an- swered to his name, and stood in the presence of his Maker." 136. "George Eliot," 1820-1881. Mary Ann Evans Cross, much better known as " George Eliot," was only a few years younger than Dickens and Thackeray ; but the mass of their work was done before she wrote her earliest no.vel. Her first thirty-two years were spent in Shakespeare's country of Warwickshire. She was al- ways a student ; and, although she left school at sixteen, she went on with French and German and music. She also studied Greek and Hebrew. When she was twenty- 1851-1872] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 229 seven years old she translated a German work. This was so well done that it brought her much Transia- praise. She began to write essays, and in 185 1 *'°°" she left the house that had been made lonely by the death of her father and went to London as assistant edi- tor of the Westminster Review. It was six years longer before she attempted fiction ; and even then the attempt was not an idea of her own. She felt very doubtful of her ability to succeed, and probably hesitated longer about sending her Scenes from Clerical Life to scenes Blackwood' s than about forwarding her first ^j^j^J"' essay to a publisher. She could hardly be- 1857. lieve her own eyes when she read the admiring notices that appeared from all directions. There was no ques- tion that she was no longer to be a writer of essays, but of novels ; and two years later Adam Bede came out. Then there was not only increased admiration but a curiosity that was determined to be gratified, for no one knew who was the author of either book. Carlyle was convinced that it was a man, but Dickens was one of the first to believe that it was a woman. Her „^ , .„ The Mill on next volume, The Mill on the Floss, tells us the Floss. 1860 much of her life as a child. Not at all like Maggie of the Mill is the little heroine of her following book, Silas Marner, the story of a miser who gu^g jj^. is brought, back to love and happiness by the ""• i^ei. tiny golden-haired child who made her way into his lonely cottage. George Eliot wrote no more books about her child- hood, and we never again come as near her somoia. own life as in The Mill on the Floss. She ^^^^• Middle- wrote . now a historical novel, Romola ; now a marcii. story of English life, Middlemarch, and other '^'^^7 . works. In one way her novels may be said to have the 230 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1800-1859 same theme ; the chief character longs for a nobler and better life than he has, and at last, after many efforts, he finds it. He who does wrong is punished ; but with all her exactness of justice, she never fails to make us see that the temptations to which one yields are real to him, however feeble they may be to others. " When I had finished it," said Mrs. Carlyle of Adam Bede, "I found myself in charity with the whole human race." George Eliot's characters grow. Scott's Ivanhoe and Rebecca and Rowena are exactly the same at the end of the book as at the beginning ; but Maggie Tulliver and Adam and Silas are altered by years and events. We must admit that her later novels have less freshness and beauty and humor than the earlier ; but the novelist who pictures even one phase of human life as exactly, as thoughtfully, and as sympathetically as George Eliot must ever be counted among the greatest. 137. Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800-1859. The most prominent essayists between 1832 and 1900 were Macaulay, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Arnold. Thomas Babington Macaulay must have been as inter- esting when a small boy as he was when a man. He was hardly more than a baby when he read anything and everything, and his memory was so amazing that he could repeat verbatim whatever he had read. He was the busiest of children ; for before he was eight, he had written an epitome of general history, and an essay on the Christian religion which he hoped would convert the heathen, besides epics, hymns, and various other poems. He was always able to talk in grown-up fashion. The story is told that when he was only four years of age, some hot tea was spilled over his legs. After various remedies had been applied, he was asked if he felt better. "Thank you, madam," the 1804-1825] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 231 little fellow replied gravely, "the agony is abated." The great charm of the wonderful boy was that he never seemed to notice that he was any brighter than other boys. He fan- cied that older peo- ple knew everything, and was inclined to feel humble because he did not know more. He had de- lightful rambles with the other children over a great common broken by ponds and bushes and hillocks and gravel pits, for every one of which he had a name and a legend. To go away to. school and leave all these good times and his eight brothers and sisters was a severe trial, and he begged most piteously to come home for just one day before the vacation. As he grew older, he no longer learned by heart with- out the least effort ; but even then, a man who could recite the whole of Pilgrim s Progress and ^is Paradise Lost had small reason to complain of m»n">ry. a poor memory, and he seemed to read books by simply turning the pages. After taking his degree, he studied law, wrote a few articles for the magazines, and ^ ^ in 1825, when he was just twenty-iive years of Miiton. age, published in the Edinburgh Review his Essay on Milton. Before the next number of the Review LORD MACAULAY 1800-1859 232 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1825-1856 was out, the young contributor was a famous man. He had done something that no one else had succeeded in doing ; he had written in a style that was not only clear and strong and interesting, but was brilliant. Every sentence seemed to' be the crystallization of a thought. Every sentence was so closely connected with what pre- ceded it that the reader could almost feel that he was thinking along with the writer and that his own thoughts were being put into words. Just as in Addison's day, each political party was on the watch for young men of literary talent, and Macaulay soon had an opportunity to enter Parliament. InpoUUos. . , 1 ^ u ■ A few years later he was given a government position in India with a salary that enabled him to return within three years with means sufficient to justify him in devoting himself to literature. Through the years between the publication of his Essay on Milton and 1849, his literary fame was on the increase. He wrote a most valuable work on Indian law, he wrote a number of essays, the famous ones on Johnson and on Warren Hastings among them. He wrote his spirited Lays Lays of of Ancient Rome, and he read, read English, R?me"* Greek, Latin, but especially English history ; 1842. for he had planned no less a work than a his- tory of England from 1688 to the French Revolution. In 1848 his first volume came out, and then Macaulay learned what popularity meant. Novels were forgotten, History oi for every one was reading the History of Eng- 1848*"*' ^"^'^- Edition after edition was issued. Within 1880. a few weeks after its publication in England, six different editions were published in the United States, and one firm alone sold 40,000 copies. As other volumes followed, the sales became even greater. In 1856, his publishers gave him a check for ^20,000, i79S-i8s6] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 233 " part of what will be due me in December," he wrote in his jourrtal. Brilliant as the work is, it is severely criticised, for Macaulay was too intense in his feelings and too " cock-sure of everything," as was said of him, to be impartial ; but it is a wonderful succession of the most vivid pictures and as interesting as a romance. Honors canie to him thick and fast, and soon the queen raised him to the peerage. He worked away indus- triously, hoping to complete his history ; but before the fifth volume had come to its end he died, sitting at his library table before an open book. 138. Thomas Carlyle, 1795-1881. Never were four writers more unlike than our four essayists ; and the second, Thomas Carlyle, was unlike everybody else ; he was in a class by himself. His father was a Scotchman, a sensible, self-respecting stone mason who had high hopes for his eldest son. When the boy had entered the University of Edinburgh, the way seemed to lie open for him to become a clergyman ; but before the time came for him to take his degree, he decided that the pulpit was not the place for him. His friends must have felt a little out of patience, for he seemed to have no very definite idea of what he did want. After teaching a while, he concluded that he did not want that in any case, and set to work to win his living from the world by writing. The world gave no sign of caring particularly for what he wrote or for his transla- tions from the German ; and when he was thirty-one years of age, he seemed little further advanced on the road to literary glory than when he was twenty-five. In his thirty-first year he married Jane Welsh, a witty, clever young lady who was not without literary ability of her own. She had strong confidence in her husband's powers and a vast ambition for him to succeed. There 234 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1833-1837 was little income, and the only course seemed to be to go to her small farm of Craigenputtock ; and there they lived for six years a most lonely life. Out of the soli- Sartor tude and dreariness came Sartor Resartus, Hes«tus. «jj^g -pg^jjQj. Retailored." The foundation of 1834. the book is the notion that as man is within clothes, so the thought of God is within man and nature. The work did not meet a warm reception. " When is that stupid series of articles by the crazy tailor going to end .'' " asked one of the subscribers to Eraser s, the magazine in which it was published ; and many people agreed with him, for while the pages were glowing with poetical feeling and sparkling with satire, the style was harsh and jagged and exasperating. Carlyle manufac- tured new words, and he used old ones in a fashion that seemed to his readers unpardonably ridiculous. It was very slowly that one after another found that the book had a message, a ringing cry to " Work while it is called To-day," and that its earnestness of purpose was arous- ing courage and breathing inspiration. Carlyle decided that it was best for him to live in London, and in 1834 Craigenputtock was abandoned. History of Three years later, his History of the FrcncJi HevoinUon Revolution was published, — not a clear story 1837. by any means, but a series of flashlight pic- tures, so vivid and realistic that at last recognition came to him. For nearly thirty years he continued to write. Such keen, powerful sentences as these came from his pen : — " No man, it has been said, is a hero to his valet ; and this is probably true ; but the fault is at least as likely to be the valet's as the hero's." "No mortal has a right to wag his tongue, much less to wag his pen; without saying something." 1819-1900] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 235 Here are some of his definitions : — " A dandy is a clothes-wearing man, — a man whose trade, office, and existence consist in the wearing of clothes." "Genius means the transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all." These sentences show Carlyle in his simplest style ; but he was capable of such expressions as this : — "The all of things is an infinite conjugation of the verb — 'To do.' " London he called " That monstrous tuberosity of civ- ilized life." His Heroes and Hero-Worship appeared first as lec- tures. Fifteen years of hard labor gave the world his History of the Life and Times of Frederick II, History oi commonly called Frederick the Great. Then n'^^'ggg. came honors that would have rejoiced the heart ises. of the father who had believed in his boy. Carlyle never forgot that father, and of him he wrote, " Could I write my Books as he built his Houses, walk my way so man- fully through this shadow-world, and leave it with so little blame, it were more than all my hopes." What Carlyle looked upon as his greatest honor was his being chosen Lord Rector of the University at Glasgow ; but the joy was taken away from him almost before he had tasted it, for he had barely finished his inaugural address before word was brought of the death of his wife. He lived until 1881, fifteen years after meeting with this loss. During the year before his death, a cheap edition of Sartor Resarius was issued, and thirty thousand copies were sold within a few weeks. Carlyle had found his audience. 139. John Ruskin, 1819-1900. John Ruskin was a quiet, gentle little lad, who was brought up with books 236 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1843-1863 and pictures and travel and comforts of all sorts, watched over by the most loving of parents, but instantly pun- ished for the slightest disobedience. His parents, hke Carlyle's, expected their son to be a clergyman. He grew up with the thought that he should be a preacher, and a preacher he was all his life, though he did not talk Modem ^^ pulpits but in books. His earliest books Fainteis. were about art. Modern Painters was their name, and the first volume came out soon after he had taken his degree at Oxford. His text was the landscape painting of Turner, whom he declared to be "the greatest painter of all time." However that might be, there was no question that the young man of twenty- four was the greatest art critic of his time. For nearly twenty years he worked on the five volumes of Modern Painters, writing also during that time several books on stones oi architecture. He almost always gave fanciful Venice. titles to his writings, and one of his earhest architectural works he called Stones of Venice. Ruskin was eager to have all, even the humblest of the tin workingmen, enjoy art and beauty; but he found working- that it was very hard for a man to produce works °'°"' of art or even to enjoy beauty when he was not sure of his next meal. Such thoughts as these led Ruskin to write Unto This Last and Miinera Pulveris, Unto This wherein he discussed fearlessly the relations Last. 1862. between rich and poor, employer and employed, Pulveris. etc. His ideas were looked upon as revolu- 1863. tionary, and the magazine in which Unto This Last was coming out refused to continue publishing the chapters. In Ru skin's time there were better oppor- tunities to make fortunes than there had been before, and therefore the struggle for wealth was increasingly eager. He preached that not competition but Christian 1865-1889] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 237 thoughtfulness was the proper spirit of trade ; that idle- ness was guilt, but that labor should be made happy by the pleasures of art and the joy that comes from the ability to appreciate nature. These are the thoughts that leaven all his subsequent books, though he wrote on many different subjects, ever giving whimsically poeti- cal titles; for example, Deucalwn treats oi "the Deuoauon. lapse of waves and the life of stones ; " Sesame I875-1883. and Lilies treats of "Kings' Treasuries," by andLiues. 1865 which he means books and reading, and of pjatenta. " Queens' Gardens," that is, the education and i885-i889. rightful work of women. His final book, an autobiog- raphy, is called Prceterita. Even the people who did not agree with Ruskin's theories could not help admiring his style and the wealth of imagination with which he beautified his sim- rusmu's pi est statements. His richness of imagery is **?'»■ not like Spenser's, however, — so overpowering that the thought is lost. With Ruskin the thought is always present, always easy to find, and very often made beau- tiful. All this he accomplishes with the simplest Saxon words, for a generous share of his vocabulary came from the Bible, which in his childhood days he was required to read over and over, and long passages of which he was made to learn by heart. This is the way he describes the river Rhone : — There were pieces of waves that danced all day as if Perdita were looking on to learn ; there were little streams that skipped like lambs and leaped like chamois ; there were pools that shook the sunshine all through them, and were rippled in layers of over- laid ripples, like crystal sand ; there were currents that twisted the light into golden braids, and inlaid the threads with turquoise enamel ; there were strips of stream that had certainly above the lake been mill-streams, and were looking busily for mills to turn again ; there were shoots of streams that had once shot fearfully 238 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1822-1888 into the air, and now sprang up again laughing that they had only fallen a foot or two ; and in the midst of all the gay glittering and eddied lingering, the noble bearing by of the midmost depth, so mighty, yet so terrorless and harmless, with its swallows skim- ming instead of petrels, and the dear old decrepit town as safe in the embracing sweep of it as if it were set in a brooch of sap- phire. People might well admire such a manner of writing ; and Ruskin once said half sadly, " All my life I have been talking to the people, and they have listened, not to what I say, but to how I say it." This is not true, however, for in art, in ethics, even in sociology, he has found a large audience of thoughtful, appreciative lis- teners. 140. Matthew Arnold, 1822-1888. Matthew Ar- nold was the son of Dr. Arnold, Head Master of Rugby, the " Doctor " of Tom Brown at Rugby. Ruskin was free to lead his life as he would. Arnold was a busy pub- lic official, for from his twenty-ninth year till three years before his death he was inspector of schools and could oreek give to literature only the spare bits of his lestiaint. time. Yet from those broken days came forth both poetry and prose that give him a high rank. He loved the Greek literature, and in his poems there is Tie For- "i^ch of the Greek restraint which does for sakenMoi- his poetry what high-bred courtesy does for man. 1849. ^nanners. In his Forsaken Merman, for in- stance, one of his most original and most exquisite poems, there is not a word of outspoken grief ; but all the merman's loneliness and longing are in the oft- repeated line, — Children, dear, was it yesterday? Some readers are chilled by this reserve ; but to those who sympathize, it suggests rather a strength of feeling 1812-1889] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 239 that cannot weaken itself to words. The poem that he wrote in memory of his father after a visit to Rugsy Rugby Chapel fairly throbs with love and sup- ^i^^J; pressed sorrow, but he writes bravely : — 1857. O strong soul, by what shore Tarri est thou now? For that force Surely has not been left vain ! Somewhere, surely, afar. In the sounding labour-house vast Of being, is practised that strength, Zealous, beneficent, firm ! As a writer of prose, Matthew Arnold's special work is criticism of books and of life. His trumpet gives no uncertain sound. As he says, "We must ac- Prosecriu- custom ourselves to a high standard and to a '''^"• strict judgment." It is he who tells us that if we keep in mind lines and expressions of the great masters, they will serve as a touchstone to show us what onthe poetry is real. This he says in his essay On p),"^"' the Study of Poetry, and it shows what clear, 188O. definite, helpful thoughts he has for those who go to him for advice or for pleasure. In this latest age of English literature, many poets have written well, but two only are counted as of the first rank, Robert Browning and Alfred Tennyson. 141. Robert Browning, 1812-1889. One of the most interesting of Robert Browning' s writings is a letter which says, " I love your verses with all my heart, dear tio ory oi Miss Barrett." Miss Barrett was the author of j^m ma. several volumes of poems, many of them full of The Rhyme sympathy, of tender sentiment, and of religious jjaohesa trust, — poems of the sort that sink into the May. hearts of those who love a poem even without knowing why. One of these is The Cry of the Children, meaning 240 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1843-1861 the children who were toiling in mills and in mines. It pictures their sadness and weariness, and closes with the strong lines, — But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath. Another favorite is The Rhyme of the Duchess May, which ends with a good thought expressed with the poet's frequent disregard of rhyme : — And I smiled to think God's greatness flowed around our incom- pleteness, Round our restlessness, His rest. The author had been an invalid for years, and she was able to see only a few people. She replied to Mr. Brown- ing's letter, "Sympa- thy is dear — very dear to me ; but the sympathy of a poet, and of such a poet, is the quintessence of sympathy ! " It was four months be- fore Miss Barrett was able to receive a call from Mr. Browning, but at last they met. Some time later they were married ; and until- the death of Mrs. Browning, in 1861, they made their home in Italy, — a home which was ideal in its love and hap- piness. Mr. Browning had written much poetry, but it ROBERT BROWNING l8l2-l88g 183S-1856] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 241 was not nearly so famous as that of his wife. It was harder to understand ; for some of it was on philosophi- cal subjects, and some of it was dramatic. Sometimes it is not easy to tell how to classify a poem ; paiaooisus. his Paracelsus, for instance, is called a drama, ^^^^• but it is almost entirely made up of monologue. The simplest of his dramas is Pippa Passes. The young girl Pippa is a silk-winder who has but Passes, one holiday in the year. When the joyful morning has come, she names over the " Four Happi- est " in the little town and says to herself, — I will pass each and see their happiness And envy none. She "passes," first, by the house wherein is one of the " Happiest ; " but Pippa does not know that this one and her lover have just committed a murder. As Pippa sings, God 's in his heaven — All 's right with the world, the horror of their crime comes over them, and they re- pent of their evil. So the song of the pure little maiden touches the life of each one of the " Four Happiest ; " but the child goes to sleep wondering whether she could ever come near enough to the great folk to " do good or evil to them some slight way." After their marriage both Mr. and Mrs. Browning continued to write. Mrs. Browning's most . ° Aurora conspicuous work was Aurora Leigh, a novel Leigi. in verse which discusses many sociological questions, — too many for either a novel or a poem, — and her beautiful Sonnets from the Portuguese, sonnets which were in reality not from the Portuguese, po^^gga, but straight from her own heart, and which isso. tell with most exquisite delicacy the story of her love 242 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1850-1869 for her husband. Browning published two volumes be- otristmas fore the death of his wife, Christmars Eve and EastraDay. Easter Day, and Men and Women. In 1868- Men'ana ^9' '^"''^ ^^'^'^ thirty-five years after he began Women. to write, he published The Ring and the Book. The Ring This is the story of an Italian murder, which ana the jjj ^^ course of the poem is related by a num- Book. ^ . , 1868-1869. ber of different persons. It met with a hearty reception, partly because it is not only a poem and a fine one but also a wonderful picturing of the impression made by one act upon several unlike persons ; and partly because in those thirty-five years Browning's Browning's admirers, consisting for a long time of one reader here and another one there, had in- creased until now his audience was ready for him. Indeed, it was growing with amazing rapidity, partly because of his real merit, and partly because he some- times wrotfe in most involved and obscure fashion. People who liked to think were pleased with the resist- ance of the more difficult poems ; -they liked to puzzle out the meaning. People who did not like to think but who did wish to be counted among the thinkers hastened to buy Browning's poems and to join Browning clubs. The best way for most people to enjoy these poems is not to struggle with some obscure and unimportant difficulty of phrase or of thought, but to read enjoy first what they like best, and find little by little ^' what he has said that belongs to them espe- cially. Read some of the shorter lyrics : Prospice, The Lost Leader, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, that weird and fascinating rhyme for children, and Rabbi Ben Ezra, with its magnificent — Grow old along with me ! The best is yet to be. 1809-1892] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 243 Those last two lines are the keynote of Browning's in- spiration, his cheerful courage in looking at life and his robust confidence in the blessedness of the life that lies beyond. One cannot have too much of Browning. . 142. Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892. Neither is it possible to have too much of Tennyson, who, far more ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON than Browning, was the representative poet of the Vic- torian Age. Two stories have been saved from Ten- nyson's childhood. One is of the five-year old child tossing his arms in the blast and crying, " I hear a voice that 's speaking in the wind." The other is of an older brother's reading a slateful of the little Alfred's verses 244 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1830-1842 and declaring judicially, "Yes, you can write." There were twelve of the Tennyson children. " They all wrote verses," said a neighbor ; and when Alfred was seven- teen and one of his brothers a year older, they published a little book of verse. Two years later Alfred entered Poems, college, and while in college he published Lyrical Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. These seem less like 1830. completed works than like the first sketches of an artist for a picture. They are glimpses of the poet's talent, experiments in sound rather than expressions of Poems. thought. In 1832 he brought out a little 1832. volume which ought to have convinced who-- ever glanced at it that a true poet had arisen, for here were not only such poems as The May Queen and Lady Clara Vere de Vere, which were sure to strike the pop- ular' fancy, but also The Dream of Fair Women, The Lotus-Eaters, and The Lady of Shalott. Never- oritioism. theless, the critics were severe ; and this was perhaps the best thing that could have happened to the young poet, for he set to work to study and 1842. think. Ten years later he brought out two of ws " more volumes, and then there was no question genius. ^-|j^(- j^g ^,^g ^-jjg fjj-g^ pQg). q£ j^jg tijyig -j-jje best known of these poems are his thrilling little song, — Break, break, break. On thy cold gray stones, O Sea ! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me, and Locks ley Hall. The latter has been read and re- cited and quoted and parodied, but it is not even yet worn out. Here are the two stanzas that were Tenny- son's special favorites : — Love took up the glass of Time and turn'd it in his glowing hands ; Every moment, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden sands. 1847-1850] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 245 Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might ; Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music out of sight. In these volumes, too, were Morte d'Arthurdcad snatches of poems on Galahad and Launcelot, — enough to show that Tennyson had found old Malory, and that the stories of King Arthur and the Round Table were haunting his mind. When The Princess came out, there was some criticism of the impossible story in a probable -,^ „ ^ setting, of the mingling of the earnest and the ceas, a Mod- burlesque, which the poet had not entirely fore- '°^' ^'*'' stalled by calling the poem a Medley. It is a very beau- tiful medley, however, and the songs which were inter- spersed in the later edition are most exquisite. Here are "Sweet and Low," "The splendor falls on castle walls," and others. The year 1850 was a marked season for Tennyson. It was the year of his marriage to the lady from whom financial reasons had separated him for twelve m Memo- years ; it was the year of publication of In r'a™- 1850. Memoriam and of his appointment as Laureate. In Memoriam was called forth by the death of Arthur Henry Hallam, Tennyson's best-loved college friend, which took place seventeen years earlier. It is a collection of short poems, gleams of his thoughts of his friend, changing as time passed from "large grief," from questioning, " How fares it with the happy dead .' " from tender memories of Hallam's words and ways — from all these to the hour when he who grieved could rest — And hear at times a sentinel Who moves about from place to place, And whispers to the worlds of space, In the deep night, that all is well. 246 ENGLAND'S LITERATURE [1858-1886 The duties of the Laureate have vanished, but there is a mild expectation that he will manifest some interest in the greater events of the kingdom by an occa- Laureate. ^.^^^j ^^^^ Tennyson fulfilled this expecta- tion generously, and his Laureate poems have a clear ring of sincerity. They range all the way from his welcome to the present queen of England, — Sea-kings' daughter from over the sea, to his superb Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellmgton : Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation, Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation. ThDid Us ^°^ °"^y sincerity, but tender respect and oithoKing. sympathy, unite in his dedication of the Idylls 1858-1886. ^y. ^^^ j^^^^ J.Q ^jjg memory of Prince Albert : — These to His IMemory — since he held them dear,- Perchance as finding there unconsciously Some image of himself. To the queen in her sadness he says : — Break not, O woman's heart, but still endure ; Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure. In the Idylls Tennyson had come to his kingdom ; for the "dim, rich " legends were after his own heart. Here was a thread of story which he could alter as he would ; here were love, valor, innocence, faithlessness, treachery, religious ecstasy, an earthly journey with a heavenly recompense. Here were opportunities for the brilliant and varied ornament in which he delighted, for all the beauties of description, and for a character drawing as strong as it was delicate. In the Idylls Tennyson shows his power to present 1864-T892] THE CENTURY OF THE NOVEL 247 the complex in character ; but in Enoch Arden he draws with no less skill a simple fisherman who j^^^j, through no fault of his own meets lifelong sor- Arden. row and loneliness. Enoch is wrecked on a desert island, and his wife, believing him dead, finally yields and marries his friend. After many years Enoch finds his way home, but his home is his no more, and he prays : — Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness A little longer ! aid me, give me strength Not to tell her, never to let her know. Help me not to break in upon her peace. So simply, so naturally is the story told that the whole force of the silent tragedy, of the greatness of the fish- erman hero, is not realized till the triumph of the closing words, — So past the strong, heroic soul away. Yielding to the fascination which the drama has for men of literary genius, Tennyson wrote several Toimyson's historical plays, but this was not his field. The