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OUTLINES OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE

AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CHIEF WRITERS OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA,
TO THE BOOKS THEY WROTE,
AND TO THE TIMES IN WHICH THEY LIVED

BY

WILLIAM J. LONG

This is the wey to al good aventure.--CHAUCER

TO MY SISTER "MILLIE" IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF A LIFELONG SYMPATHY

[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

After the Chandos Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London, which
is attributed to Richard Burbage or John Taylor. In the catalogue of the
National Portrait Gallery the following description is given:

"The Chandos Shakespeare was the property of John Taylor,
the player, by whom or by Richard Burbage it was painted.
The picture was left by the former in his will to Sir
William Davenant. After his death it was bought by
Betterton, the actor, upon whose decease Mr. Keck of the
Temple purchased it for 40 guineas, from whom it was
inherited by Mr. Nicoll of Michenden House, Southgate,
Middlesex, whose only daughter married James, Marquess of
Caernarvon, afterwards Duke of Chandos, father to Ann
Eliza, Duchess of Buckingham."

The above is written on paper attached to the back of the canvas.
Its authenticity, however, has been doubted in some quarters.

Purchased at the Stowe Sale, September 1848, by the Earl of
Ellesmere, and presented by him to the nation, March 1856.

Dimensions: 22 in. by 16-3/4 in.

This reproduction of the portrait was made from a miniature copy on ivory
by Caroline King Phillips.]

PREFACE

The last thing we find in making a book is to know what to put
first.--Pascal

When an author has finished his history, after months or years of happy
work, there comes a dismal hour when he must explain its purpose and
apologize for its shortcomings.

The explanation in this case is very simple and goes back to a personal
experience. When the author first studied the history of our literature
there was put into his hands as a textbook a most dreary catalogue of dead
authors, dead masterpieces, dead criticisms, dead ages; and a boy who knew
chiefly that he was alive was supposed to become interested in this
literary sepulchre or else have it said that there was something hopeless
about him. Later he learned that the great writers of England and America
were concerned with life alone, as the most familiar, the most mysterious,
the most fascinating thing in the world, and that the only valuable or
interesting feature of any work of literature is its vitality.

To introduce these writers not as dead worthies but as companionable men
and women, and to present their living subject as a living thing, winsome
as a smile on a human face,--such was the author's purpose in writing this
book.

The apology is harder to frame, as anyone knows who has attempted to gather
the writers of a thousand years into a single volume that shall have the
three virtues of brevity, readableness and accuracy. That this record is
brief in view of the immensity of the subject is plainly apparent. That it
may prove pleasantly readable is a hope inspired chiefly by the fact that
it was a pleasure to write it, and that pleasure is contagious. As for
accuracy, every historian who fears God or regards man strives hard enough
for that virtue; but after all his striving, remembering the difficulty of
criticism and the perversity of names and dates that tend to error as the
sparks fly upward, he must still trust heaven and send forth his work with
something of Chaucer's feeling when he wrote:

O littel booke, thou art so unconning,
How darst thou put thy-self in prees for drede?

Which _may_ mean, to one who appreciates Chaucer's wisdom and humor,
that having written a little book in what seemed to him an unskilled or
"unconning" way, he hesitated to give it to the world for dread of the
"prees" or crowd of critics who, even in that early day, were wont to look
upon each new book as a camel that must be put through the needle's eye of
their tender mercies.

In the selection and arrangement of his material the author has aimed to
make a usable book that may appeal to pupils and teachers alike. Because
history and literature are closely related (one being the record of man's
deed, the other of his thought and feeling) there is a brief historical
introduction to every literary period. There is also a review of the
general literary tendencies of each age, of the fashions, humors and ideals
that influenced writers in forming their style or selecting their subject.
Then there is a biography of every important author, written not to offer
another subject for hero-worship but to present the man exactly as he was;
a review of his chief works, which is intended chiefly as a guide to the
best reading; and a critical estimate or appreciation of his writings based
partly upon first-hand impressions, partly upon the assumption that an
author must deal honestly with life as he finds it and that the business of
criticism is, as Emerson said, "not to legislate but to raise the dead."
This detailed study of the greater writers of a period is followed by an
examination of some of the minor writers and their memorable works.
Finally, each chapter concludes with a concise summary of the period under
consideration, a list of selections for reading and a bibliography of works
that will be found most useful in acquiring a larger knowledge of the
subject.

In its general plan this little volume is modeled on the author's more
advanced _English Literature_ and _American Literature_; but the
material, the viewpoint, the presentation of individual writers,--all the
details of the work are entirely new. Such a book is like a second journey
through ample and beautiful regions filled with historic associations, a
journey that one undertakes with new companions, with renewed pleasure and,
it is to be hoped, with increased wisdom. It is hardly necessary to add
that our subject has still its unvoiced charms, that it cannot be exhausted
or even adequately presented in any number of histories. For literature
deals with life; and life, with its endlessly surprising variety in unity,
has happily some suggestion of infinity.

WILLIAM J. LONG

STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT

CONTENTS

ENGLISH LITERATURE

CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE

What is Literature? The Tree and the Book. Books of Knowledge and Books of
Power. The Art of Literature. A Definition and Some Objections.

CHAPTER II. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

Tributaries of Early Literature. The Anglo-Saxon or Old-English Period.
Specimens of the Language. The Epic of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Songs. Types of
Earliest Poetry. Christian Literature of the Anglo-Saxon Period. The
Northumbrian School. Bede. Cadmon. Cynewulf. The West-Saxon School. Alfred
the Great. _The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._

The Anglo-Norman or Early Middle-English Period. Specimens of the Language.
The Norman Conquest. Typical Norman Literature. Geoffrey of Monmouth. First
Appearance of the Legends of Arthur. Types of Middle-English Literature.
Metrical Romances. Some Old Songs. Summary of the Period. Selections for
Reading. Bibliography.

CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF CHAUCER AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING

Specimens of the Language. History of the Period. Geoffrey Chaucer.
Contemporaries and Successors of Chaucer. Langland and his _Piers
Plowman_. Malory and his _Morte d' Arthur_. Caxton and the First
Printing Press. The King's English as the Language of England. Popular
Ballads. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.

CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN AGE

Historical Background. Literary Characteristics of the Period. Foreign
Influence. Outburst of Lyric Poetry. Lyrics of Love. Music and Poetry.
Edmund Spenser. The Rise of the Drama. The Religious Drama. Miracle Plays,
Moralities and Interludes. The Secular Drama. Pageants and Masques. Popular
Comedies. Classical and English Drama. Predecessors of Shakespeare.
Marlowe. Shakespeare. Elizabethan Dramatists after Shakespeare. Ben Jonson.
The Prose Writers. The Fashion of Euphuism. The Authorized Version of the
Scriptures. Francis Bacon. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.

CHAPTER V. THE PURITAN AGE AND THE RESTORATION

Historical Outline. Three Typical Writers. Milton. Bunyan. Dryden. Puritan
and Cavalier Poets. George Herbert. Butler's _Hudibras_. The Prose
Writers. Thomas Browne. Isaac Walton. Summary of the Period. Selections for
Reading. Bibliography.

CHAPTER VI. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

History of the Period. Eighteenth-Century Classicism. The Meaning of
Classicism in Literature. Alexander Pope. Swift. Addison. Steele. Johnson.
Boswell. Burke. Historical Writing in the Eighteenth Century. Gibbon.

The Revival of Romantic Poetry. Collins and Gray. Goldsmith. Burns. Minor
Poets of Romanticism. Cowper. Macpherson and the Ossian Poems. Chatterton.
Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. William Blake.

The Early English Novel. The Old Romance and the New Novel. Defoe.
Richardson. Fielding. Influence of the Early Novelists. Summary of the
Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.

CHAPTER VII. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

Historical Outline. The French Revolution and English Literature.
Wordsworth. Coleridge. Southey. The Revolutionary Poets. Byron and Shelley.
Keats. The Minor Poets. Campbell, Moore, Keble, Hood, Felicia Hemans, Leigh
Hunt and Thomas Beddoes. The Fiction Writers. Walter Scott. Jane Austen.
The Critics and Essayists. Charles Lamb. De Quincey. Summary of the Period.
Selections for Reading. Bibliography.

CHAPTER VIII. THE VICTORIAN AGE

Historical Outline. The Victorian Poets. Tennyson. Browning. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. Matthew Arnold. The Pre-Raphaelites. Rossetti. Morris.
Swinburne. Minor Poets and Songs in Many Keys.

The Greater Victorian Novelists. Dickens. Thackeray. George Eliot. Other
Writers of Notable Novels. The Bronte Sisters. Mrs. Gaskell. Charles Reade.
Anthony Trollope. Blackmore. Kingsley. Later Victorian Novelists. Meredith.
Hardy. Stevenson.

Victorian Essayists and Historians. Typical Writers. Macaulay. Carlyle.
Ruskin. Variety of Victorian Literature. Summary of the Period. Selections
for Reading. Bibliography.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

AMERICAN LITERATURE

CHAPTER I. THE PIONEERS AND NATION-BUILDERS

Unique Quality of Early American Literature. Two Views of the Pioneers. The
Colonial Period. Annalists and Historians. Bradford and Byrd. Puritan and
Cavalier Influences. Colonial Poetry. Wiggles-worth. Anne Bradstreet.
Godfrey. Nature and Human Nature in Colonial Records. The Indian in
Literature. Religious Writers. Cotton Mather and Edwards.

The Revolutionary Period. Party Literature. Benjamin Franklin.
Revolutionary Poetry. The Hartford Wits. Trumbull's _M'Fingal_.
Freneau. Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution. Citizen Literature. James
Otis and Patrick Henry. Hamilton and Jefferson. Miscellaneous Writers.
Thomas Paine. Crevecoeur. Woolman. Beginning of American Fiction. Charles
Brockden Brown. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.

CHAPTER II. LITERATURE OF THE NEW NATION

Historical Background. Literary Environment. The National Spirit in Prose
and Verse. The Knickerbocker School. Halleck, Drake, Willis and Paulding.
Southern Writers. Simms, Kennedy, Wilde and Wirt. Various New England
Writers. First Literature of the West. Major Writers of the Period. Irving.
Bryant. Cooper. Poe. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.

CHAPTER III. THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT

Political History. Social and Intellectual Changes. Brook Farm and Other
Reform Societies. The Transcendental Movement. Literary Characteristics of
the Period. The Elder Poets. Longfellow. Whittier. Lowell. Holmes, Lanier.
Whitman. The Greater Prose Writers. Emerson. Hawthorne. Some Minor Poets.
Timrod, Hayne, Ryan, Stoddard and Bayard Taylor. Secondary Writers of
Fiction. Mrs. Stowe, Dana, Herman Melville, Cooke, Eggleston and Winthrop.
Juvenile Literature. Louisa M. Alcott. Trowbridge. Miscellaneous Prose.
Thoreau. The Historians. Motley, Prescott and Parkman. Summary of the
Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.

CHAPTER IV. THE ALL-AMERICA PERIOD

The New Spirit of Nationality. Contemporary History. The Short Story and
its Development. Bret Harte. The Local-Color Story and Some Typical
Writers. The Novel since 1876. Realism in Recent Fiction. Howells. Mark
Twain. Various Types of Realism. Dialect Stories. Joel Chandler Harris.
Recent Romances. Historical Novels. Poetry since 1876. Stedman and Aldrich.
The New Spirit in Poetry. Joaquin Miller. Dialect Poems. The Poetry of
Common Life. Carleton and Riley. Other Typical Poets. Miscellaneous Prose.
The Nature Writers. History and Biography. John Fiske. Literary History and
Reminiscence. Bibliography.

GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

William Shakespeare

Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain

Cadmon Cross at Whitby Abbey

Domesday Book

The Norman Stair, Canterbury Cathedral

Chaucer

Pilgrims setting out from the "Tabard"

A Street in Caerleon on Usk

The Almonry, Westminster

Michael Drayton

Edmund Spenser

Raleigh's Birthplace, Budleigh Salterton

The Library, Stratford Grammar School, attended by Shakespeare

Anne Hathaway's Cottage

The Main Room, Anne Hathaway's Cottage

Cawdor Castle, Scotland, associated with Macbeth

Francis Beaumont

John Fletcher

Ben Jonson

Sir Philip Sidney

Francis Bacon

John Milton

Cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire

Ludlow Castle

John Bunyan

Bunyan Meetinghouse, Southwark

John Dryden

George Herbert

Sir Thomas Browne

Isaac Walton

Old Fishing House, on River Dove, used by Walton

Alexander Pope

Twickenham Parish Church, where Pope was buried

Jonathan Swift

Trinity College, Dublin

Joseph Addison

Magdalen College, Oxford

Sir Richard Steele

Dr. Samuel Johnson

Dr. Johnson's House (Bolt Court, Fleet St.)

James Boswell

Edmund Burke

Edward Gibbon

Thomas Gray

Stoke Poges Churchyard, showing Part of the Church and Gray's Tomb

Oliver Goldsmith

"The Cheshire Cheese," London, showing Dr. Johnson's Favorite Seat

Canonbury Tower (London)

Robert Burns

"Ellisland," the Burns Farm, Dumfries

The Village of Tarbolton, near which Burns Lived

Auld Alloway Kirk

Burns's Mausoleum

William Cowper

Daniel Defoe

Cupola House

William Wordsworth

Wordsworth's Desk in Hawkshead School

St. Oswald's Church, Grasmere

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somersetshire

Robert Southey

Greta Hall, in the Lake Region

Lord Byron

Newstead Abbey and Byron Oak

The Castle of Chillon

Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Keats

Leigh Hunt

Walter Scott

Abbotsford

The Great Window, Melrose Abbey

Scott's Tomb in Dryburgh Abbey

Mrs. Hannah More

Charles Lamb

East India House, London

Mary Lamb

The Lamb Building, Inner Temple, London

Thomas De Quincey

Dove Cottage, Grasmere

Tennyson's Birthplace, Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire

Alfred Tennyson

Summerhouse at Farringford

Robert Browning

Mrs. Browning's Tomb, at Florence

The Palazzo Rezzonico, Browning's Home in Venice

Piazza of San Lorenzo, Florence

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Matthew Arnold

The Manor House of William Morris

William Morris

Charles Dickens

Gadshill Place, near Rochester

Dickens's Birthplace, Landport, Portsea

Yard of Reindeer Inn, Danbury

The Gatehouse at Rochester, near Dickens's Home

William Makepeace Thackeray

Charterhouse School

George Eliot

Griff House, George Eliot's Early Home in Warwickshire

Charlotte Bronte

Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell

Richard Doddridge Blackmore

Robert Louis Stevenson

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Carlyle

Carlyle's House, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London

Arch Home, Ecclefechan

John Ruskin

Entrance to "Westover," Home of William Byrd

Plymouth in 1662. Bradford's House on Right

William Byrd

New Amsterdam (New York) in 1663

Cotton Mather

Jonathan Edwards

Benjamin Franklin

Franklin's Shop

Philip Freneau

Thomas Jefferson

Alexander Hamilton

Monticello, the Home of Jefferson in Virginia

Charles Brockden Brown

William Gilmore Simms

John Pendleton Kennedy

Washington Irving

"Sunnyside," Home of Irving

Rip Van Winkle

Old Dutch Church, Sleepy Hollow

William Cullen Bryant

Bryant's Home, at Cummington

James Fenimore Cooper

Otsego Hall, Home of Cooper

Cooper's Cave

Edgar Allan Poe

West Range, University of Virginia

The Building of the _Southern Literary Messenger_

"The Man" (Abraham Lincoln)

Birthplace of Longfellow at Falmouth (now Portland) Maine

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The Taproom, Wayside Inn, Sudbury

Longfellow's Library in Craigie House, Cambridge

John Greenleaf Whittier

Oak Knoll, Whittier's Home, Danvers, Massachusetts

Street in Old Marblehead

James Russell Lowell

Lowell's House, Cambridge, in Winter

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Old Colonial Doorway

Sidney Lanier

The Village of McGaheysville, Virginia

Whitman's Birthplace, West Hills, Long Island

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Emerson's Home, Concord

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Old Customhouse, Boston

"The House of the Seven Gables," Salem (built in 1669)

Hawthorne's Birthplace, Salem, Massachusetts

Henry Timrod

Paul Hamilton Hayne

Harriet Beecher Stowe

John Esten Cooke

Louisa M Alcott

Henry D Thoreau

Francis Parkman

Bret Harte

George W. Cable

Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

William Dean Howells

Mark Twain

Joel Chandler Harris

Edmund Clarence Stedman

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Joaquin Miller

John Fiske

Edward Everett Hale

OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE

(_Not a Lesson, but an Invitation_)

I sleep, yet I love to be wakened, and love to see
The fresh young faces bending over me;
And the faces of them that are old, I love them too,
For these, as well, in the days of their youth I knew.

"Song of the Well"

WHAT IS LITERATURE? In an old English book, written before Columbus dreamed
of a westward journey to find the East, is the story of a traveler who set
out to search the world for wisdom. Through Palestine and India he passed,
traveling by sea or land through many seasons, till he came to a wonderful
island where he saw a man plowing in the fields. And the wonder was, that
the man was calling familiar words to his oxen, "such wordes as men speken
to bestes in his owne lond." Startled by the sound of his mother tongue he
turned back on his course "in gret mervayle, for he knewe not how it myghte
be." But if he had passed on a little, says the old record, "he would have
founden his contree and his owne knouleche."

Facing a new study of literature our impulse is to search in strange places
for a definition; but though we compass a world of books, we must return at
last, like the worthy man of _Mandeville's Travels_, to our own
knowledge. Since childhood we have been familiar with this noble subject of
literature. We have entered into the heritage of the ancient Greeks, who
thought that Homer was a good teacher for the nursery; we have made
acquaintance with Psalm and Prophecy and Parable, with the knightly tales
of Malory, with the fairy stories of Grimm or Andersen, with the poetry of
Shakespeare, with the novels of Scott or Dickens,--in short, with some of
the best books that the world has ever produced. We know, therefore, what
literature is, and that it is an excellent thing which ministers to the joy
of living; but when we are asked to define the subject, we are in the
position of St. Augustine, who said of time, "If you ask me what time is, I
know not; but if you ask me not, then I know." For literature is like
happiness, or love, or life itself, in that it can be understood or
appreciated but can never be exactly described. It has certain describable
qualities, however, and the best place to discover these is our own
bookcase.

[Sidenote: THE TREE AND THE BOOK]

Here on a shelf are a Dictionary, a History of America, a text on
Chemistry, which we read or study for information; on a higher shelf are
_As You Like It_, _Hiawatha_, _Lorna Doone_, _The Oregon
Trail_, and other works to which we go for pleasure when the day's work
is done. In one sense all these and all other books are literature; for the
root meaning of the word is "letters," and a letter means a character
inscribed or rubbed upon a prepared surface. A series of letters
intelligently arranged forms a book, and for the root meaning of "book" you
must go to a tree; because the Latin word for book, _liber_, means the
inner layer of bark that covers a tree bole, and "book" or "boc" is the old
English name for the beech, on whose silvery surface our ancestors carved
their first runic letters.

So also when we turn the "leaves" of a book, our mind goes back over a long
trail: through rattling printing-shop, and peaceful monk's cell, and gloomy
cave with walls covered with picture writing, till the trail ends beside a
shadowy forest, where primitive man takes a smooth leaf and inscribes his
thought upon it by means of a pointed stick. A tree is the Adam of all
books, and everything that the hand of man has written upon the tree or its
products or its substitutes is literature. But that is too broad a
definition; we must limit it by excluding what does not here concern us.

[Sidenote: BOOKS OF KNOWLEDGE AND OF POWER]

Our first exclusion is of that immense class of writings--books of science,
history, philosophy, and the rest--to which we go for information. These
aim to preserve or to systematize the discoveries of men; they appeal
chiefly to the intellect and they are known as the literature of knowledge.
There remains another large class of writings, sometimes called the
literature of power, consisting of poems, plays, essays, stories of every
kind, to which we go treasure-hunting for happiness or counsel, for noble
thoughts or fine feelings, for rest of body or exercise of spirit,--for
almost everything, in fine, except information. As Chaucer said, long ago,
such writings are:

For pleasaunce high, and for noon other end.

They aim to give us pleasure; they appeal chiefly to our imagination and
our emotions; they awaken in us a feeling of sympathy or admiration for
whatever is beautiful in nature or society or the soul of man.

[Sidenote: THE ART OF LITERATURE]

The author who would attempt books of such high purpose must be careful of
both the matter and the manner of his writing, must give one thought to
what he shall say and another thought to how he shall say it. He selects
the best or most melodious words, the finest figures, and aims to make his
story or poem beautiful in itself, as a painter strives to reflect a face
or a landscape in a beautiful way. Any photographer can in a few minutes
reproduce a human face, but only an artist can by care and labor bring
forth a beautiful portrait. So any historian can write the facts of the
Battle of Gettysburg; but only a Lincoln can in noble words reveal the
beauty and immortal meaning of that mighty conflict.

To all such written works, which quicken our sense of the beautiful, and
which are as a Jacob's ladder on which we mount for higher views of nature
or humanity, we confidently give the name "literature," meaning the art of
literature in distinction from the mere craft of writing.

[Sidenote: THE PASSING AND THE PERMANENT]

Such a definition, though it cuts out the greater part of human records, is
still too broad for our purpose, and again we must limit it by a process of
exclusion. For to study almost any period of English letters is to discover
that it produced hundreds of books which served the purpose of literature,
if only for a season, by affording pleasure to readers. No sooner were they
written than Time began to winnow them over and over, giving them to all
the winds of opinion, one generation after another, till the hosts of
ephemeral works were swept aside, and only a remnant was left in the hands
of the winnower. To this remnant, books of abiding interest, on which the
years have no effect save to mellow or flavor them, we give the name of
great or enduring literature; and with these chiefly we deal in our present
study.

[Sidenote: THE QUALITY OF GREATNESS]

To the inevitable question, What are the marks of great literature? no
positive answer can be returned. As a tree is judged by its fruits, so is
literature judged not by theory but by the effect which it produces on
human life; and the judgment is first personal, then general. If a book has
power to awaken in you a lively sense of pleasure or a profound emotion of
sympathy; if it quickens your love of beauty or truth or goodness; if it
moves you to generous thought or noble action, then that book is, for you
and for the time, a great book. If after ten or fifty years it still has
power to quicken you, then for you at least it is a great book forever. And
if it affects many other men and women as it affects you, and if it lives
with power from one generation to another, gladdening the children as it
gladdened the fathers, then surely it is great literature, without further
qualification or need of definition. From this viewpoint the greatest poem
in the world--greatest in that it abides in most human hearts as a loved
and honored guest--is not a mighty _Iliad_ or _Paradise Lost_ or
_Divine Comedy_; it is a familiar little poem of a dozen lines,
beginning "The Lord is my Shepherd."

It is obvious that great literature, which appeals to all classes of men
and to all times, cannot go far afield for rare subjects, or follow new
inventions, or concern itself with fashions that are here to-day and gone
to-morrow. Its only subjects are nature and human nature; it deals with
common experiences of joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure, that all men
understand; it cherishes the unchanging ideals of love, faith, duty,
freedom, reverence, courtesy, which were old to the men who kept their
flocks on the plains of Shinar, and which will be young as the morning to
our children's children.

Such ideals tend to ennoble a writer, and therefore are great books
characterized by lofty thought, by fine feeling and, as a rule, by a
beautiful simplicity of expression. They have another quality, hard to
define but easy to understand, a quality which leaves upon us the
impression of eternal youth, as if they had been dipped in the fountain
which Ponce de Leon sought for in vain through the New World. If a great
book could speak, it would use the words of the Cobzar (poet) in his "Last
Song":

The merry Spring, he is my brother,
And when he comes this way
Each year again, he always asks me:
"Art thou not yet grown gray?"
But I. I keep my youth forever,
Even as the Spring his May.

A DEFINITION. Literature, then, if one must formulate a definition, is the
written record of man's best thought and feeling, and English literature is
the part of that record which belongs to the English people. In its
broadest sense literature includes all writing, but as we commonly define
the term it excludes works which aim at instruction, and includes only the
works which aim to give pleasure, and which are artistic in that they
reflect nature or human life in a way to arouse our sense of beauty. In a
still narrower sense, when we study the history of literature we deal
chiefly with the great, the enduring books, which may have been written in
an elder or a latter day, but which have in them the magic of all time.

One may easily challenge such a definition, which, like most others, is far
from faultless. It is difficult, for example, to draw the line sharply
between instructive and pleasure-giving works; for many an instructive book
of history gives us pleasure, and there may be more instruction on
important matters in a pleasurable poem than in a treatise on ethics.
Again, there are historians who allege that English literature must include
not simply the works of Britain but everything written in the English
language. There are other objections; but to straighten them all out is to
be long in starting, and there is a pleasant journey ahead of us. Chaucer
had literature in mind when he wrote:

Through me men goon into that blisful place
Of hertes hele and dedly woundes cure;
Through me men goon unto the wells of grace,
Ther grene and lusty May shal ever endure:
This is the wey to al good aventure.

CHAPTER II

BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

Then the warrior, battle-tried, touched the sounding glee-wood:
Straight awoke the harp's sweet note; straight a song uprose,
Sooth and sad its music. Then from hero's lips there fell
A wonder-tale, well told.

_Beowulf_, line 2017 (a free rendering)

In its beginnings English literature is like a river, which proceeds not
from a single wellhead but from many springs, each sending forth its
rivulet of sweet or bitter water. As there is a place where the river
assumes a character of its own, distinct from all its tributaries, so in
English literature there is a time when it becomes national rather than
tribal, and English rather than Saxon or Celtic or Norman. That time was in
the fifteenth century, when the poems of Chaucer and the printing press of
Caxton exalted the Midland above all other dialects and established it as
the literary language of England.

[Sidenote: TRIBUTARIES OF LITERATURE]

Before that time, if you study the records of Britain, you meet several
different tribes and races of men: the native Celt, the law-giving Roman,
the colonizing Saxon, the sea-roving Dane, the feudal baron of Normandy,
each with his own language and literature reflecting the traditions of his
own people. Here in these old records is a strange medley of folk heroes,
Arthur and Beowulf, Cnut and Brutus, Finn and Cuchulain, Roland and Robin
Hood. Older than the tales of such folk-heroes are ancient riddles, charms,
invocations to earth and sky:

Hal wes thu, Folde, fira moder!
Hail to thee, Earth, thou mother of men!

With these pagan spells are found the historical writings of the Venerable
Bede, the devout hymns of Cadmon, Welsh legends, Irish and Scottish fairy
stories, Scandinavian myths, Hebrew and Christian traditions, romances from
distant Italy which had traveled far before the Italians welcomed them. All
these and more, whether originating on British soil or brought in by
missionaries or invaders, held each to its own course for a time, then met
and mingled in the swelling stream which became English literature.

[Illustration: STONEHENGE, ON SALISBURY PLAIN
Probably the ruins of a temple of the native Britons]

To trace all these tributaries to their obscure and lonely sources would
require the labor of a lifetime. We shall here examine only the two main
branches of our early literature, to the end that we may better appreciate
the vigor and variety of modern English. The first is the Anglo-Saxon,
which came into England in the middle of the fifth century with the
colonizing Angles, Jutes and Saxons from the shores of the North Sea and
the Baltic; the second is the Norman-French, which arrived six centuries
later at the time of the Norman invasion. Except in their emphasis on
personal courage, there is a marked contrast between these two branches,
the former being stern and somber, the latter gay and fanciful. In
Anglo-Saxon poetry we meet a strong man who cherishes his own ideals of
honor, in Norman-French poetry a youth eagerly interested in romantic tales
gathered from all the world. One represents life as a profound mystery, the
other as a happy adventure.

* * * * *

ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD (450-1050)

SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. Our English speech has changed so much in the
course of centuries that it is now impossible to read our earliest records
without special study; but that Anglo-Saxon is our own and not a foreign
tongue may appear from the following examples. The first is a stanza from
"Widsith," the chant of a wandering gleeman or minstrel; and for comparison
we place beside it Andrew Lang's modern version. Nobody knows how old
"Widsith" is; it may have been sung to the accompaniment of a harp that was
broken fourteen hundred years ago. The second, much easier to read, is from
the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was prepared by King Alfred from an older
record in the ninth century:

Swa scrithende
gesceapum hweorfath,
Gleomen gumena
geond grunda fela;
Thearfe secgath,
thonc-word sprecath,
Simle, suth oththe north
sumne gemetath,
Gydda gleawne
geofam unhneawne.

So wandering on
the world about,
Gleemen do roam
through many lands;
They say their needs,
they speak their thanks,
Sure, south or north
someone to meet,
Of songs to judge
and gifts not grudge.

Her Hengest and Aesc, his sunu, gefuhton wid Bryttas on thaere
stowe the is gecweden Creccanford, and thaer ofslogon feower
thusenda wera. And tha Bryttas tha forleton Cent-lond, and mid
myclum ege flugon to Lundenbyrig.

At this time Hengist and Esk, his son, fought with the Britons at
the place that is called Crayford, and there slew four thousand
men. And the Britons then forsook Kentland, and with much fear fled
to London town.

BEOWULF. The old epic poem, called after its hero Beowulf, is more than
myth or legend, more even than history; it is a picture of a life and a
world that once had real existence. Of that vanished life, that world of
ancient Englishmen, only a few material fragments remain: a bit of linked
armor, a rusted sword with runic inscriptions, the oaken ribs of a war
galley buried with the Viking who had sailed it on stormy seas, and who was
entombed in it because he loved it. All these are silent witnesses; they
have no speech or language. But this old poem is a living voice, speaking
with truth and sincerity of the daily habit of the fathers of modern
England, of their adventures by sea or land, their stern courage and grave
courtesy, their ideals of manly honor, their thoughts of life and death.

Let us hear, then, the story of _Beowulf_, picturing in our
imagination the story-teller and his audience. The scene opens in a great
hall, where a fire blazes on the hearth and flashes upon polished shields
against the timbered walls. Down the long room stretches a table where men
are feasting or passing a beaker from hand to hand, and anon crying _Hal!
hal!_ in answer to song or in greeting to a guest. At the head of the
hall sits the chief with his chosen ealdormen. At a sign from the chief a
gleeman rises and strikes a single clear note from his harp. Silence falls
on the benches; the story begins:

Hail! we of the Spear Danes in days of old
Have heard the glory of warriors sung;
Have cheered the deeds that our chieftains wrought,
And the brave Scyld's triumph o'er his foes.

Then because there are Scyldings present, and because brave men
revere their ancestors, the gleeman tells a beautiful legend of how
King Scyld came and went: how he arrived as a little child, in a
war-galley that no man sailed, asleep amid jewels and weapons; and
how, when his life ended at the call of Wyrd or Fate, they placed
him against the mast of a ship, with treasures heaped around him
and a golden banner above his head, gave ship and cargo to the
winds, and sent their chief nobly back to the deep whence he came.

So with picturesque words the gleeman thrills his hearers with a
vivid picture of a Viking's sea-burial. It thrills us now, when the
Vikings are no more, and when no other picture can be drawn by an
eyewitness of that splendid pagan rite.

[Sidenote: THE STORY OF HEOROT]

One of Scyld's descendants was King Hrothgar (Roger) who built the
hall Heorot, where the king and his men used to gather nightly to
feast, and to listen to the songs of scop or gleeman. [Footnote:
Like Agamemnon and the Greek chieftains, every Saxon leader had his
gleeman or minstrel, and had also his own poet, his scop or
"shaper," whose duty it was to shape a glorious deed into more
glorious verse. So did our pagan ancestors build their monuments
out of songs that should live in the hearts of men when granite or
earth mound had crumbled away.] "There was joy of heroes," but in
one night the joy was changed to mourning. Out on the lonely fens
dwelt the jotun (giant or monster) Grendel, who heard the sound of
men's mirth and quickly made an end of it. One night, as the thanes
slept in the hall, he burst in the door and carried off thirty
warriors to devour them in his lair under the sea. Another and
another horrible raid followed, till Heorot was deserted and the
fear of Grendel reigned among the Spear Danes. There were brave men
among them, but of what use was courage when their weapons were
powerless against the monster? "Their swords would not bite on his
body."

For twelve years this terror continued; then the rumor of Grendel
reached the land of the Geats, where Beowulf lived at the court of
his uncle, King Hygelac. No sooner did Beowulf hear of a dragon to
be slain, of a friendly king "in need of a man," than he selected
fourteen companions and launched his war-galley in search of
adventure.

[Sidenote: THE SAILING OF BEOWULF]

At this point the old epic becomes a remarkable portrayal of daily
life. In its picturesque lines we see the galley set sail, foam
flying from her prow; we catch the first sight of the southern
headlands, approach land, hear the challenge of the "warder of the
cliffs" and Beowulf's courteous answer. We follow the march to
Heorot in war-gear, spears flashing, swords and byrnies clanking,
and witness the exchange of greetings between Hrothgar and the
young hero. Again is the feast spread in Heorot; once more is heard
the song of gleemen, the joyous sound of warriors in comradeship.
There is also a significant picture of Hrothgar's wife, "mindful of
courtesies," honoring her guests by passing the mead-cup with her
own hands. She is received by these stern men with profound
respect.

When the feast draws to an end the fear of Grendel returns.
Hrothgar warns his guests that no weapon can harm the monster, that
it is death to sleep in the hall; then the Spear Danes retire,
leaving Beowulf and his companions to keep watch and ward. With the
careless confidence of brave men, forthwith they all fall asleep:

Forth from the fens, from the misty moorlands,
Grendel came gliding--God's wrath he bore--
Came under clouds until he saw clearly,
Glittering with gold plates, the mead-hall of men.
Down fell the door, though hardened with fire-bands,
Open it sprang at the stroke of his paw.
Swollen with rage burst in the bale-bringer,
Flamed in his eyes a fierce light, likest fire.

[Sidenote: THE FIGHT WITH GRENDEL]

Throwing himself upon the nearest sleeper Grendel crushes and
swallows him; then he stretches out a paw towards Beowulf, only to
find it "seized in such a grip as the fiend had never felt before."
A desperate conflict begins, and a mighty uproar,--crashing of
benches, shoutings of men, the "war-song" of Grendel, who is trying
to break the grip of his foe. As the monster struggles toward the
door, dragging the hero with him, a wide wound opens on his
shoulder; the sinews snap, and with a mighty wrench Beowulf tears
off the whole limb. While Grendel rushes howling across the fens,
Beowulf hangs the grisly arm with its iron claws, "the whole
grapple of Grendel," over the door where all may see it.

Once more there is joy in Heorot, songs, speeches, the liberal
giving of gifts. Thinking all danger past, the Danes sleep in the
hall; but at midnight comes the mother of Grendel, raging to avenge
her son. Seizing the king's bravest companion she carries him away,
and he is never seen again.

Here is another adventure for Beowulf. To old Hrothgar, lamenting
his lost earl, the hero says simply:

Wise chief, sorrow not. For a man it is meet
His friend to avenge, not to mourn for his loss;
For death comes to all, but honor endures:
Let him win it who will, ere Wyrd to him calls,
And fame be the fee of a warrior dead!

Following the trail of the _Brimwylf_ or _Merewif_
(sea-wolf or sea-woman) Beowulf and his companions pass through
desolate regions to a wild cliff on the shore. There a friend
offers his good sword Hrunting for the combat, and Beowulf accepts
the weapon, saying:

ic me mid Hruntinge
Dom gewyrce, oththe mec death nimeth.
I with Hrunting
Honor will win, or death shall me take.

[Sidenote: THE DRAGON'S CAVE]

Then he plunges into the black water, is attacked on all sides by
the _Grundwrygen_ or bottom monsters, and as he stops to fight
them is seized by the _Merewif_ and dragged into a cave, a
mighty "sea-hall" free from water and filled with a strange light.
On its floor are vast treasures; its walls are adorned with
weapons; in a corner huddles the wounded Grendel. All this Beowulf
sees in a glance as he turns to fight his new foe.

Follows then another terrific combat, in which the brand Hrunting
proves useless. Though it rings out its "clanging war-song" on the
monster's scales, it will not "bite" on the charmed body. Beowulf
is down, and at the point of death, when his eye lights on a huge
sword forged by the jotuns of old. Struggling to his feet he seizes
the weapon, whirls it around his head for a mighty blow, and the
fight is won. Another blow cuts off the head of Grendel, but at the
touch of the poisonous blood the steel blade melts like ice before
the fire.

Leaving all the treasures, Beowulf takes only the golden hilt of
the magic sword and the head of Grendel, reenters the sea and
mounts up to his companions. They welcome him as one returned from
the dead. They relieve him of helmet and byrnie, and swing away in
a triumphal procession to Heorot. The hero towers among them, a
conspicuous figure, and next to him comes the enormous head of
Grendel carried on a spear-shaft by four of the stoutest thanes.

[Sidenote: THE FIREDRAKE]

More feasting, gifts, noble speeches follow before the hero returns
to his own land, laden with treasures. So ends the first part of
the epic. In the second part Beowulf succeeds Hygelac as chief of
the Geats, and rules them well for fifty years. Then a "firedrake,"
guarding an immense hoard of treasure (as in most of the old dragon
stories), begins to ravage the land. Once more the aged Beowulf
goes forth to champion his people; but he feels that "Wyrd is close
to hand," and the fatalism which pervades all the poem is finely
expressed in his speech to his companions. In his last fight he
kills the dragon, winning the dragon's treasure for his people; but
as he battles amid flame and smoke the fire enters his lungs, and
he dies "as dies a man," paying for victory with his life. Among
his last words is a command which reminds us again of the old
Greeks, and of the word of Elpenor to Odysseus:

"Bid my brave men raise a barrow for me on the headland,
broad, high, to be seen far out at sea: that hereafter
sea-farers, driving their foamy keels through ocean's mist,
may behold and say, ''Tis Beowulf's mound!'"

The hero's last words and the closing scenes of the epic, including
the funeral pyre, the "bale-fire" and another Viking burial to the
chant of armed men riding their war steeds, are among the noblest
that have come down to us from beyond the dawn of history.

Such, in brief outline, is the story of _Beowulf_. It is recorded on a
fire-marked manuscript, preserved as by a miracle from the torch of the
Danes, which is now one of the priceless treasures of the British Museum.
The handwriting indicates that the manuscript was copied about the year
1100, but the language points to the eighth or ninth century, when the poem
in its present form was probably composed on English soil. [Footnote:
Materials used in _Beowulf_ are very old, and may have been brought to
England during the Anglo-Saxon invasion. Parts of the material, such as the
dragon-fights, are purely mythical. They relate to Beowa, a superman, of
whom many legends were told by Scandinavian minstrels. The Grendel legend,
for example, appears in the Icelandic saga of Gretti, who slays the dragon
Glam. Other parts of _Beowulf_ are old battle songs; and still others,
relating to King Hygelac and his nephew, have some historical foundation.
So little is known about the epic that one cannot safely make any positive
statement as to its origin. It was written in crude, uneven lines; but a
rhythmic, martial effect, as of marching men, was produced by strong accent
and alliteration, and the effect was strengthened by the harp with which
the gleeman always accompanied his recital.]

ANGLO-SAXON SONGS. Beside the epic of _Beowulf_ a few mutilated poems
have been preserved, and these are as fragments of a plate or film upon
which the life of long ago left its impression. One of the oldest of these
poems is "Widsith," the "wide-goer," which describes the wanderings and
rewards of the ancient gleeman. It begins:

Widsith spake, his word-hoard unlocked,
He who farthest had fared among earth-folk and tribe-folk.

Then follows a recital of the places he had visited, and the gifts he had
received for his singing. Some of the personages named are real, others
mythical; and as the list covers half a world and several centuries of
time, it is certain that Widsith's recital cannot be taken literally.

[Sidenote: MEANING OF WIDSITH]

Two explanations offer themselves: the first, that the poem contains the
work of many scops, each of whom added his travels to those of his
predecessor; the second, that Widsith, like other gleemen, was both
historian and poet, a keeper of tribal legends as well as a shaper of
songs, and that he was ever ready to entertain his audience with things new
or old. Thus, he mentioned Hrothgar as one whom he had visited; and if a
hearer called for a tale at this point, the scop would recite that part of
_Beowulf_ which tells of the monster Grendel. Again, he named Sigard
the Volsung (the Siegfrid of the _Niebelungenlied_ and of Wagner's
opera), and this would recall the slaying of the dragon Fafnir, or some
other story of the old Norse saga. So every name or place which Widsith
mentioned was an invitation. When he came to a hall and "unlocked his
word-hoard," he offered his hearers a variety of poems and legends from
which they made their own selection. Looked at in this way, the old poem
becomes an epitome of Anglo-Saxon literature.

[Sidenote: TYPES OF SAXON POETRY]

Other fragments of the period are valuable as indicating that the
Anglo-Saxons were familiar with various types of poetry. "Deor's Lament,"
describing the sorrows of a scop who had lost his place beside his chief,
is a true lyric; that is, a poem which reflects the author's feeling rather
than the deed of another man. In his grief the scop comforts himself by
recalling the afflictions of various heroes, and he ends each stanza with
the refrain:

That sorrow he endured; this also may I.

Among the best of the early poems are: "The Ruined City," reflecting the
feeling of one who looks on crumbling walls that were once the abode of
human ambition; "The Seafarer," a chantey of the deep, which ends with an
allegory comparing life to a sea voyage; "The Wanderer," which is the
plaint of one who has lost home, patron, ambition, and as the easiest way
out of his difficulty turns _eardstappa_, an "earth-hitter" or tramp;
"The Husband's Message," which is the oldest love song in our literature;
and a few ballads and battle songs, such as "The Battle of Brunanburh"
(familiar to us in Tennyson's translation) and "The Fight at Finnsburgh,"
which was mentioned by the gleemen in _Beowulf_, and which was then
probably as well known as "The Charge of the Light Brigade" is to modern
Englishmen.

Another early war song, "The Battle of Maldon" or "Byrhtnoth's Death," has
seldom been rivaled in savage vigor or in the expression of deathless
loyalty to a chosen leader. The climax of the poem is reached when the few
survivors of an uneven battle make a ring of spears about their fallen
chief, shake their weapons in the face of an overwhelming horde of Danes,
while Byrhtwold, "the old comrade," chants their defiance:

The sterner shall thought be, the bolder our hearts,
The greater the mood as lessens our might.

We know not when or by whom this stirring battle cry was written. It was
copied under date of 991 in the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, and is
commonly called the swan song of Anglo-Saxon poetry. The lion song would be
a better name for it.

LATER PROSE AND POETRY. The works we have just considered were wholly pagan
in spirit, but all reference to Thor or other gods was excluded by the
monks who first wrote down the scop's poetry.

With the coming of these monks a reform swept over pagan England, and
literature reflected the change in a variety of ways. For example, early
Anglo-Saxon poetry was mostly warlike, for the reason that the various
earldoms were in constant strife; but now the peace of good will was
preached, and moral courage, the triumph of self-control, was exalted above
mere physical hardihood. In the new literature the adventures of Columb or
Aidan or Brendan were quite as thrilling as any legends of Beowulf or
Sigard, but the climax of the adventure was spiritual, and the emphasis was
always on moral heroism.

Another result of the changed condition was that the unlettered scop, who
carried his whole stock of poetry in his head, was replaced by the literary
monk, who had behind him the immense culture of the Latin language, and who
was interested in world history or Christian doctrine rather than in tribal
fights or pagan mythology. These monks were capable men; they understood
the appeal of pagan poetry, and their motto was, "Let nothing good be
wasted." So they made careful copy of the scop's best songs (else had not a
shred of early poetry survived), and so the pagan's respect for womanhood,
his courage, his loyalty to a chief,--all his virtues were recognized and
turned to religious account in the new literature. Even the beautiful pagan
scrolls, or "dragon knots," once etched on a warrior's sword, were
reproduced in glowing colors in the initial letters of the monk's
illuminated Gospel.

A third result of the peaceful conquest of the missionaries was that many
monasteries were established in Britain, each a center of learning and of
writing. So arose the famous Northumbrian School of literature, to which we
owe the writings of Bede, Cadmon, Cynewulf and others associated with
certain old monasteries, such as Peterborough, Jarrow, York and Whitby, all
north of the river Humber.

BEDE. The good work of the monks is finely exemplified in the life of the
Venerable Bede, or Bada (_cir_. 673-735), who is well called the
father of English learning. As a boy he entered the Benedictine monastery
at Jarrow; the temper of his manhood may be judged from a single sentence
of his own record:

"While attentive to the discipline of mine order and the daily care
of singing in the church, my constant delight was in learning or
teaching or writing."

It is hardly too much to say that this gentle scholar was for half a
century the teacher of Europe. He collected a large library of manuscripts;
he was the author of some forty works, covering the whole field of human
knowledge in his day; and to his school at Jarrow came hundreds of pupils
from all parts of the British Isles, and hundreds more from the Continent.
Of all his works the most notable is the so-called "Ecclesiastical History"
(_Historia ecclesiastica gentis anglorum_) which should be named the
"History of the Race of Angles." This book marks the beginning of our
literature of knowledge, and to it we are largely indebted for what we know
of English history from the time of Casar's invasion to the early part of
the eighth century.

All the extant works of Bede are in Latin, but we are told by his pupil
Cuthbert that he was "skilled in our English songs," that he made poems and
translated the Gospel of John into English. These works, which would now be
of priceless value, were all destroyed by the plundering Danes.

As an example of Bede's style, we translate a typical passage from his
History. The scene is the Saxon _Witenagemot_, or council of wise men,
called by King Edward (625) to consider the doctrine of Paulinus, who had
been sent from Rome by Pope Gregory. The first speaker is Coifi, a priest
of the old religion:

"Consider well, O king, this new doctrine which is preached to us;
for I now declare, what I have learned for certain, that the old
religion has no virtue in it. For none of your people has been more
diligent than I in the worship of our gods; yet many receive more
favors from you, and are preferred above me, and are more
prosperous in their affairs. If the old gods had any discernment,
they would surely favor me, since I have been most diligent in
their service. It is expedient, therefore, if this new faith that
is preached is any more profitable than the old, that we accept it
without delay."

Whereupon Coifi, who as a priest has hitherto been obliged to ride upon an
ass with wagging ears, calls loudly for a horse, a prancing horse, a
stallion, and cavorts off, a crowd running at his heels, to hurl a spear
into the shrine where he lately worshiped. He is a good type of the
political demagogue, who clamors for progress when he wants an office, and
whose spear is more likely to be hurled at the back of a friend than at the
breast of an enemy.

Then a pagan chief rises to speak, and we bow to a nobler motive. His
allegory of the mystery of life is like a strain of Anglo-Saxon poetry; it
moves us deeply, as it moved his hearers ten centuries ago:

"This present life of man, O king, in comparison with the time that
is hidden from us, is as the flight of a sparrow through the room
where you sit at supper, with companions around you and a good fire
on the hearth. Outside are the storms of wintry rain and snow. The
sparrow flies in at one opening, and instantly out at another:
whilst he is within he is sheltered from the winter storms, but
after a moment of pleasant weather he speeds from winter back to
winter again, and vanishes from your sight into the darkness whence
he came. Even so the life of man appears for a little time; but of
what went before and of what comes after we are wholly ignorant. If
this new religion can teach us anything of greater certainty, it
surely deserves to be followed." [Footnote: Bede, _Historia_,
Book II, chap xiii, a free translation]

CADMON (SEVENTH CENTURY). In a beautiful chapter of Bede's History we may
read how Cadmon (d. 680) discovered his gift of poetry. He was, says the
record, a poor unlettered servant of the Abbess Hilda, in her monastery at
Whitby. At that time (and here is an interesting commentary on monastic
culture) singing and poetry were so familiar that, whenever a feast was
given, a harp would be brought in, and each monk or guest would in turn
entertain the company with a song or poem to his own musical accompaniment.
But Cadmon could not sing, and when he saw the harp coming down the table
he would slip away ashamed, to perform his humble duties in the monastery:

"Now it happened once that he did this thing at a certain
festivity, and went out to the stable to care for the horses, this
duty being assigned him for that night. As he slept at the usual
time one stood by him, saying, 'Cadmon, sing me something.' He
answered, 'I cannot sing, and that is why I came hither from the
feast.' But he who spake unto him said again, 'Cadmon, sing to me.'
And he said, 'What shall I sing?' And that one said, 'Sing the
beginning of created things.' Thereupon Cadmon began to sing verses
that he had never heard before, of this import:

Nu scylun hergan hefaenriches ward ...
Now shall we hallow the warden of heaven,
He the Creator, he the Allfather,
Deeds of his might and thoughts of his mind...."

[Illustration: CADMON CROSS AT WHITBY ABBEY]

In the morning he remembered the words, and came humbly to the monks to
recite the first recorded Christian hymn in our language. And a very noble
hymn it is. The monks heard him in wonder, and took him to the Abbess
Hilda, who gave order that Cadmon should receive instruction and enter the
monastery as one of the brethren. Then the monks expounded to him the
Scriptures. He in turn, reflecting on what he had heard, echoed it back to
the monks "in such melodious words that his teachers became his pupils."
So, says the record, the whole course of Bible history was turned into
excellent poetry.

About a thousand years later, in the days of Milton, an Anglo-Saxon
manuscript was discovered containing a metrical paraphrase of the books of
Genesis, Exodus and Daniel, and these were supposed to be some of the poems
mentioned in Bede's narrative. A study of the poems (now known as the
Cadmonian Cycle) leads to the conclusion that they were probably the work
of two or three writers, and it has not been determined what part Cadmon
had in their composition. The nobility of style in the Genesis poem and the
picturesque account of the fallen angels (which reappears in _Paradise
Lost_) have won for Cadmon his designation as the Milton of the
Anglo-Saxon period. [Footnote: A friend of Milton, calling himself
Franciscus Junius, first printed the Cadmon poems in Antwerp (_cir_.
1655) during Milton's lifetime. The Puritan poet was blind at the time, and
it is not certain that he ever saw or heard the poems; yet there are many
parallelisms in the earlier and later works which warrant the conclusion
that Milton was influenced by Cadmon's work.]

CYNEWULF (EIGHTH CENTURY). There is a variety of poems belonging to the
Cynewulf Cycle, and of some of these Cynewulf (born _cir_. 750) was
certainly the author, since he wove his name into the verses in the manner
of an acrostic. Of Cynewulf's life we know nothing with certainty; but from
various poems which are attributed to him, and which undoubtedly reflect
some personal experience, scholars have constructed the following
biography,--which may or may not be true.

In his early life Cynewulf was probably a wandering scop of the old pagan
kind, delighting in wild nature, in adventure, in the clamor of fighting
men. To this period belong his "Riddles" [Footnote: These riddles are
ancient conundrums, in which some familiar object, such as a bow, a ship, a
storm lashing the shore, the moon riding the clouds like a Viking's boat,
is described in poetic language, and the last line usually calls on the
hearer to name the object described. See Cook and Tinker, _Translations
from Old English Poetry_.] and his vigorous descriptions of the sea and
of battle, which show hardly a trace of Christian influence. Then came
trouble to Cynewulf, perhaps in the ravages of the Danes, and some deep
spiritual experience of which he writes in a way to remind us of the
Puritan age:

"In the prison of the night I pondered with myself. I was stained
with my own deeds, bound fast in my sins, hard smitten with
sorrows, walled in by miseries."

A wondrous vision of the cross, "brightest of beacons," shone suddenly
through his darkness, and led him forth into light and joy. Then he wrote
his "Vision of the Rood" and probably also _Juliana_ and _The
Christ_. In the last period of his life, a time of great serenity, he
wrote _Andreas_, a story of St. Andrew combining religious instruction
with extraordinary adventure; _Elene_, which describes the search for
the cross on which Christ died, and which is a prototype of the search for
the Holy Grail; and other poems of the same general kind. [Footnote: There
is little agreement among scholars as to who wrote most of these poems. The
only works to which Cynewulf signs his name are _The Christ_,
_Elene_, _Juliana_ and _Fates of the Apostles_. All others
are doubtful, and our biography of Cynewulf is largely a matter of pleasant
speculation.] Aside from the value of these works as a reflection of
Anglo-Saxon ideals, they are our best picture of Christianity as it
appeared in England during the eighth and ninth centuries.

ALFRED THE GREAT (848-901). We shall understand the importance of Alfred's
work if we remember how his country fared when he became king of the West
Saxons, in 871. At that time England lay at the mercy of the Danish
sea-rovers. Soon after Bede's death they fell upon Northumbria, hewed out
with their swords a place of settlement, and were soon lords of the whole
north country. Being pagans ("Thor's men" they called themselves) they
sacked the monasteries, burned the libraries, made a lurid end of the
civilization which men like Columb and Bede had built up in
North-Humberland. Then they pushed southward, and were in process of
paganizing all England when they were turned back by the heroism of Alfred.
How he accomplished his task, and how from his capital at Winchester he
established law and order in England, is recorded in the histories. We are
dealing here with literature, and in this field Alfred is distinguished in
two ways: first, by his preservation of early English poetry; and second,
by his own writing, which earned for him the title of father of English
prose. Finding that some fragments of poetry had escaped the fire of the
Danes, he caused search to be made for old manuscripts, and had copies made
of all that were legible. [Footnote: These copies were made in Alfred's
dialect (West Saxon) not in the Northumbrian dialect in which they were
first written.] But what gave Alfred deepest concern was that in all his
kingdom there were few priests and no laymen who could read or write their
own language. As he wrote sadly:

"King Alfred sends greeting to Bishop Werfrith in words of love and
friendship. Let it be known to thee that it often comes to my mind
what wise men and what happy times were formerly in England, ... I
remember what I saw before England had been ravaged and burned, how
churches throughout the whole land were filled with treasures of
books. And there was also a multitude of God's servants, but these
had no knowledge of the books: they could not understand them
because they were not written in their own language. It was as if
the books said, 'Our fathers who once occupied these places loved
wisdom, and through it they obtained wealth and left it to us. We
see here their footprints, but we cannot follow them, and therefore
have we lost both their wealth and their wisdom, because we would
not incline our hearts to their example.' When I remember this, I
marvel that good and wise men who were formerly in England, and who
had learned these books, did not translate them into their own
language. Then I answered myself and said, 'They never thought that
their children would be so careless, or that learning would so
decay.'" [Footnote: A free version of part of Alfred's preface to
his translation of Pope Gregory's _Cura Pastoralis_, which
appeared in English as the Hirdeboc or Shepherd's Book.]

To remedy the evil, Alfred ordered that every freeborn Englishman should
learn to read and write his own language; but before he announced the order
he followed it himself. Rather late in his boyhood he had learned to spell
out an English book; now with immense difficulty he took up Latin, and
translated the best works for the benefit of his people. His last notable
work was the famous _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_.

[Sidenote: ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE]

At that time it was customary in monasteries to keep a record of events
which seemed to the monks of special importance, such as the coming of a
bishop, the death of a king, an eclipse of the moon, a battle with the
Danes. Alfred found such a record at Winchester, rewrote it (or else caused
it to be rewritten) with numerous additions from Bede's History and other
sources, and so made a fairly complete chronicle of England. This was sent
to other monasteries, where it was copied and enlarged, so that several
different versions have come down to us. The work thus begun was continued
after Alfred's death, until 1154, and is the oldest contemporary history
possessed by any modern nation in its own language.

* * * * *

ANGLO-NORMAN OR MIDDLE-ENGLISH PERIOD (1066-1350)

SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. A glance at the following selections will show
how Anglo-Saxon was slowly approaching our English speech of to-day. The
first is from a religious book called _Ancren Riwle_ (Rule of the
Anchoresses, _cir_. 1225). The second, written about a century later,
is from the riming chronicle, or verse history, of Robert Manning or Robert
of Brunne. In it we note the appearance of rime, a new thing in English
poetry, borrowed from the French, and also a few words, such as "solace,"
which are of foreign origin:

"Hwoso hevide iseid to Eve, theo heo werp hire eien therone, 'A!
wend te awei; thu worpest eien o thi death!' hwat heved heo
ionswered? 'Me leove sire, ther havest wouh. Hwarof kalenges tu me?
The eppel that ich loke on is forbode me to etene, and nout forto
biholden.'"

"Whoso had said (or, if anyone had said) to Eve when she cast her
eye theron (i.e. on the apple) 'Ah! turn thou away; thou castest
eyes on thy death!' what would she have answered? 'My dear sir,
thou art wrong. Of what blamest thou me? The apple which I look
upon is forbidden me to eat, not to behold.'"

Lordynges that be now here,
If ye wille listene and lere [1]
All the story of Inglande,
Als Robert Mannyng wryten it fand,
And on Inglysch has it schewed,
Not for the lered [2] but for the lewed, [3]
For tho that on this land wonn [4]
That ne Latin ne Frankys conn, [5]
For to hauf solace and gamen
In felauschip when they sitt samen; [6]
And it is wisdom for to wytten [7]
The state of the land, and haf it wryten.

[Footnote 1: learn]
[Footnote 2: learned]
[Footnote 3: simple or ignorant]
[Footnote 4: those that dwell]
[Footnote 5: That neither Latin nor French know]
[Footnote 6: together]
[Footnote 7: know]

THE NORMAN CONQUEST. For a century after the Norman conquest native poetry
disappeared from England, as a river may sink into the earth to reappear
elsewhere with added volume and new characteristics. During all this time
French was the language not only of literature but of society and business;
and if anyone had declared at the beginning of the twelfth century, when
Norman institutions were firmly established in England, that the time was
approaching when the conquerors would forget their fatherland and their
mother tongue, he would surely have been called dreamer or madman. Yet the
unexpected was precisely what happened, and the Norman conquest is
remarkable alike for what it did and for what it failed to do.

[Illustration: DOMESDAY BOOK
From a facsimile edition published in 1862.
The volumes, two in number, were kept in the chest here shown]

It accomplished, first, the nationalization of England, uniting the petty
Saxon earldoms into one powerful kingdom; and second, it brought into
English life, grown sad and stern, like a man without hope, the spirit of
youth, of enthusiasm, of eager adventure after the unknown,--in a word, the
spirit of romance, which is but another name for that quest of some Holy
Grail in which youth is forever engaged.

NORMAN LITERATURE. One who reads the literature that the conquerors brought
to England must be struck by the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon and the
Norman-French spirit. For example, here is the death of a national hero as
portrayed in _The Song of Roland_, an old French epic, which the
Normans first put into polished verse:

Li quens Rollans se jut desuz un pin,
Envers Espaigne en ad turnet son vis,
De plusurs choscs a remembrer le prist....

"Then Roland placed himself beneath a pine tree. Towards Spain he
turned his face. Of many things took he remembrance: of various
lands where he had made conquests; of sweet France and his kindred;
of Charlemagne, his feudal lord, who had nurtured him. He could not
refrain from sighs and tears; neither could he forget himself in
need. He confessed his sins and besought the Lord's mercy. He
raised his right glove and offered it to God; Saint Gabriel from
his hand received the offering. Then upon his breast he bowed his
head; he joined his hands and went to his end. God sent down his
cherubim, and Saint Michael who delivers from peril. Together with
Saint Gabriel they departed, bearing the Count's soul to Paradise."

We have not put Roland's ceremonious exit into rime and meter; neither do
we offer any criticism of a scene in which the death of a national hero
stirs no interest or emotion, not even with the help of Gabriel and the
cherubim. One is reminded by contrast of Scyld, who fares forth alone in
his Viking ship to meet the mystery of death; or of that last scene of
human grief and grandeur in _Beowulf_ where a few thanes bury their
dead chief on a headland by the gray sea, riding their war steeds around
the memorial mound with a chant of sorrow and victory.

The contrast is even more marked in the mass of Norman literature: in
romances of the maidens that sink underground in autumn, to reappear as
flowers in spring; of Alexander's journey to the bottom of the sea in a
crystal barrel, to view the mermaids and monsters; of Guy of Warwick, who
slew the giant Colbrant and overthrew all the knights of Europe, just to
win a smile from his Felice; of that other hero who had offended his lady
by forgetting one of the commandments of love, and who vowed to fill a
barrel with his tears, and did it. The Saxons were as serious in speech as
in action, and their poetry is a true reflection of their daily life; but
the Normans, brave and resourceful as they were in war and statesmanship,
turned to literature for amusement, and indulged their lively fancy in
fables, satires, garrulous romances, like children reveling in the lore of
elves and fairies. As the prattle of a child was the power that awakened
Silas Marner from his stupor of despair, so this Norman element of gayety,
of exuberant romanticism, was precisely what was needed to rouse the
sterner Saxon mind from its gloom and lethargy.

[Illustration: THE NORMAN STAIR, CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL]

THE NEW NATION. So much, then, the Normans accomplished: they brought
nationality into English life, and romance into English literature. Without
essentially changing the Saxon spirit they enlarged its thought, aroused
its hope, gave it wider horizons. They bound England with their laws,
covered it with their feudal institutions, filled it with their ideas and
their language; then, as an anticlimax, they disappeared from English
history, and their institutions were modified to suit the Saxon
temperament. The race conquered in war became in peace the conquerors. The
Normans speedily forgot France, and even warred against it. They began to
speak English, dropping its cumbersome Teutonic inflections, and adding to
it the wealth of their own fine language. They ended by adopting England as
their country, and glorifying it above all others. "There is no land in the
world," writes a poet of the thirteenth century, "where so many good kings
and saints have lived as in the isle of the English. Some were holy martyrs
who died cheerfully for God; others had strength or courage like to that of
Arthur, Edmund and Cnut."

This poet, who was a Norman monk at Westminster Abbey, wrote about the
glories of England in the French language, and celebrated as the national
heroes a Celt, a Saxon and a Dane. [Footnote: The significance of this old
poem was pointed out by Jusserand, _Literary History of the English
People_, Vol. I, p. 112.]

So in the space of two centuries a new nation had arisen, combining the
best elements of the Anglo-Saxon and Norman-French people, with a
considerable mixture of Celtic and Danish elements. Out of the union of
these races and tongues came modern English life and letters.

GEOFFREY AND THE LEGENDS OF ARTHUR. Geoffrey of Monmouth was a Welshman,
familiar from his youth with Celtic legends; also he was a monk who knew
how to write Latin; and the combination was a fortunate one, as we shall
see.

Long before Geoffrey produced his celebrated History (_cir._ 1150),
many stories of the Welsh hero Arthur [Footnote: Who Arthur was has never
been determined. There was probably a chieftain of that name who was active
in opposing the Anglo-Saxon invaders of Britain, about the year 500; but
Gildas, who wrote a Chronicle of Britain only half a century later, does
not mention him; neither does Bede, who made study of all available records
before writing his History. William of Malmesbury, a chronicler of the
twelfth century, refers to "the warlike Arthur of whom the Britons tell so
many extravagant fables, a man to be celebrated not in idle tales but in
true history." He adds that there were two Arthurs, one a Welsh war-chief
(not a king), and the other a myth or fairy creation. This, then, may be
the truth of the matter, that a real Arthur, who made a deep impression on
the Celtic imagination, was soon hidden in a mass of spurious legends. That
Bede had heard these legends is almost certain; that he did not mention
them is probably due to the fact that he considered Arthur to be wholly
mythical.] were current in Britain and on the Continent; but they were
never written because of a custom of the Middle Ages which required that,
before a legend could be recorded, it must have the authority of some Latin
manuscript. Geoffrey undertook to supply such authority in his _Historia
regum britanniae_, or History of the Kings of Britain, in which he
proved Arthur's descent from Roman ancestors. [Footnote: After the landing
of the Romans in Britain a curious mingling of traditions took place, and
in Geoffrey's time native Britons considered themselves as children of
Brutus of Rome, and therefore as grandchildren of Aneas of Troy.] He quoted
liberally from an ancient manuscript which, he alleged, established
Arthur's lineage, but which he did not show to others. A storm instantly
arose among the writers of that day, most of whom denounced Geoffrey's
Latin manuscript as a myth, and his History as a shameless invention. But
he had shrewdly anticipated such criticism, and issued this warning to the
historians, which is solemn or humorous according to your point of view:

"I forbid William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon to speak of
the kings of Britain, since they have not seen the book which
Walter Archdeacon of Oxford [who was dead, of course] brought out
of Brittany."

It is commonly believed that Geoffrey was an impostor, but in such matters
one should be wary of passing judgment. Many records of men, cities,
empires, have suddenly arisen from the tombs to put to shame the scientists
who had denied their existence; and it is possible that Geoffrey had seen
one of the legion of lost manuscripts. The one thing certain is, that if he
had any authority for his History he embellished the same freely from
popular legends or from his own imagination, as was customary at that time.

[Sidenote: ARTHURIAN ROMANCES]

His work made a sensation. A score of French poets seized upon his
Arthurian legends and wove them into romances, each adding freely to
Geoffrey's narrative. The poet Wace added the tale of the Round Table, and
another poet (Walter Map, perhaps) began a cycle of stories concerning
Galahad and the quest of the Holy Grail. [Footnote: The Holy Grail, or San
Graal, or Sancgreal, was represented as the cup from which Christ drank
with his disciples at the Last Supper. Legend said that the sacred cup had
been brought to England, and Arthur's knights undertook, as the most
compelling of all duties, to search until they found it.]

The origin of these Arthurian romances, which reappear so often in English
poetry, is forever shrouded in mystery. The point to remember is, that we
owe them all to the genius of the native Celts; that it was Geoffrey of
Monmouth who first wrote them in Latin prose, and so preserved a treasure
which else had been lost; and that it was the French _trouveres,_ or
poets, who completed the various cycles of romances which were later
collected in Malory's _Morte d' Arthur._

TYPES OF MIDDLE-ENGLISH LITERATURE. It has long been customary to begin the
study of English literature with Chaucer; but that does not mean that he
invented any new form of poetry or prose. To examine any collection of our
early literature, such as Cook's _Middle-English Reader_, is to
discover that many literary types were flourishing in Chaucer's day, and
that some of these had grown old-fashioned before he began to use them.

[Sidenote: METRICAL ROMANCES]

In the thirteenth century, for example, the favorite type of literature in
England was the metrical romance, which was introduced by the French poets,
and written at first in the French language. The typical romance was a
rambling story dealing with the three subjects of love, chivalry and
religion; it was filled with adventures among giants, dragons, enchanted
castles; and in that day romance was not romance unless liberally supplied
with magic and miracle. There were hundreds of such wonder-stories,
arranged loosely in three main groups: the so-called "matter of Rome" dealt
with the fall of Troy in one part, and with the marvelous adventures of
Alexander in the other; the "matter of France" celebrated the heroism of
Charlemagne and his Paladins; and the "matter of Britain" wove the magic
web of romance around Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.

One of the best of the metrical romances is "Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight," which may be read as a measure of all the rest. If, as is commonly
believed, the unknown author of "Sir Gawain" wrote also "The Pearl" (a
beautiful old elegy, or poem of grief, which immortalizes a father's love
for his little girl), he was the greatest poet of the early Middle-English
period. Unfortunately for us, he wrote not in the king's English or speech
of London (which became modern English) but in a different dialect, and his
poems should be read in a present-day version; else will the beauty of his
work be lost in our effort to understand his language.

Other types of early literature are the riming chronicles or verse
histories (such as Layamon's _Brut_, a famous poem, in which the
Arthurian legends appear as part of English history), stories of travel,
translations, religious poems, books of devotion, miracle plays, fables,
satires, ballads, hymns, lullabies, lyrics of love and nature,--an
astonishing collection for so ancient a time, indicative at once of our
changing standards of poetry and of our unchanging human nature. For the
feelings which inspired or gave welcome to these poems, some five or six
hundred years ago, are precisely the same feelings which warm the heart of
a poet and his readers to-day. There is nothing ancient but the spelling in
this exquisite Lullaby, for instance, which was sung on Christmas eve:

He cam also stylle
Ther his moder was
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the gras;
He cam also stylle
To his moderes bowr
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the flour;
He cam also stylle
Ther his moder lay
As dew in Aprylle
That fallyt on the spray.

[Footnote: In reading this beautiful old lullaby the _e_ in "stylle"
and "Aprylle" should be lightly sounded, like _a_ in "China."]

Or witness this other fragment from an old love song, which reflects the
feeling of one who "would fain make some mirth" but who finds his heart sad
within him:

Now wold I fayne som myrthis make
All oneli for my ladys sake,
When I hir se;
But now I am so ferre from hir
Hit will nat be.

Thogh I be long out of hir sight,
I am hir man both day and night,
And so will be;
Wherfor, wold God as I love hir
That she lovd me!

When she is mery, then I am glad;
When she is sory, then am I sad,
And cause whi:
For he livith nat that lovith hir
So well as I.

She sayth that she hath seen hit wreten
That 'seldyn seen is soon foryeten.'
Hit is nat so;
For in good feith, save oneli hir,
I love no moo.

Wherfor I pray, both night and day,
That she may cast al care away,
And leve in rest
That evermo, where'er she be,
I love hir best;

And I to hir for to be trew,
And never chaunge her for noon new
Unto myne ende;
And that I may in hir servise
For evyr amend.

[Footnote: The two poems quoted above hardly belong to the Norman-French
period proper, but rather to a time when the Anglo-Saxon had assimilated
the French element, with its language and verse forms. They were written,
probably, in the age of Chaucer, or in what is now called the Late
Middle-English period.]

* * * * *

SUMMARY OF BEGINNINGS. The two main branches of our literature are
the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman-French, both of which received some
additions from Celtic, Danish and Roman sources. The Anglo-Saxon
literature came to England with the invasion of Teutonic tribes,
the Angles, Saxons and Jutes (_cir._ 449). The Norman-French
literature appeared after the Norman conquest of England, which
began with the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

The Anglo-Saxon literature is classified under two heads, pagan and
Christian. The extant fragments of pagan literature include one
epic or heroic poem, _Beowulf_, and several lyrics and battle
songs, such as "Widsith," "Deor's Lament," "The Seafarer," "The
Battle of Brunanburh" and "The Battle of Maldon." All these were
written at an unknown date, and by unknown poets.

The best Christian literature of the period was written in the
Northumbrian and the West-Saxon schools. The greatest names of the
Northumbrian school are Bede, Cadmon and Cynewulf. The most famous
of the Wessex writers is Alfred the Great, who is called "the
father of English prose."

The Normans were originally Northmen, or sea rovers from
Scandinavia, who settled in northern France and adopted the
Franco-Latin language and civilization. With their conquest of
England, in the eleventh century, they brought nationality into
English life, and the spirit of romance into English literature.
Their stories in prose or verse were extremely fanciful, in marked
contrast with the stern, somber poetry of the Anglo-Saxons.

The most notable works of the Norman-French period are: Geoffrey's
_History of the Kings of Britain_, which preserved in Latin
prose the native legends of King Arthur; Layamon's _Brut_, a
riming chronicle or verse history in the native tongue; many
metrical romances, or stories of love, chivalry, magic and
religion; and various popular songs and ballads. The greatest poet
of the period is the unknown author of "Sir Gawain and the Green
Knight" (a metrical romance) and probably also of "The Pearl," a
beautiful elegy, which is our earliest _In Memoriam_.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Without special study of Old English it is
impossible to read our earliest literature. The beginner may,
however, enter into the spirit of that literature by means of
various modern versions, such as the following:

_Beowulf_. Garnett's Beowulf (Ginn and Company), a literal
translation, is useful to those who study Anglo-Saxon, but is not
very readable. The same may be said of Gummere's The Oldest English
Epic, which follows the verse form of the original. Two of the best
versions for the beginner are Child's Beowulf, in Riverside
Literature Series (Houghton), and Earle's The Deeds of Beowulf
(Clarendon Press).

_Anglo-Saxon Poetry_. The Seafarer, The Wanderer, The
Husband's Message (or Love Letter), Deor's Lament, Riddles, Battle
of Brunanburh, selections from The Christ, Andreas, Elene, Vision
of the Rood, and The Phoenix,--all these are found in an excellent
little volume, Cook and Tinker, Translations from Old English
Poetry (Ginn and Company).

_Anglo-Saxon Prose_. Good selections in Cook and Tinker,
Translations from Old English Prose (Ginn and Company). Bede's
History, translated in Everyman's Library (Dutton) and in the Bohn
Library (Macmillan). In the same volume of the Bohn Library is a
translation of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Alfred's Orosius (with
stories of early exploration) translated in Pauli's Life of Alfred.

_Norman-French Period_. Selections in Manly, English Poetry,
and English Prose (Ginn and Company); also in Morris and Skeat,
Specimens of Early English (Clarendon Press). The Song of Roland in
Riverside Literature Series, and in King's Classics. Selected
metrical romances in Ellis, Specimens of Early English Metrical
Romances (Bohn Library); also in Morley, Early English Prose
Romances, and in Carisbrooke Library Series. Sir Gawain and the
Green Knight, modernized by Weston, in Arthurian Romances Series.
Andrew Lang, Aucassin and Nicolette (Crowell). The Pearl,
translated by Jewett (Crowell), and by Weir Mitchell (Century).
Selections from Layamon's Brut in Morley, English Writers, Vol.
III. Geoffrey's History in Everyman's Library, and in King's
Classics. The Arthurian legends in The Mabinogion (Everyman's
Library); also in Sidney Lanier's The Boy's King Arthur and The
Boy's Mabinogion (Scribner). A good single volume containing the
best of Middle-English literature, with notes, is Cook, A Literary
Middle-English Reader (Ginn and Company).

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For extended works covering the entire field of
English history and literature, and for a list of the best
anthologies, school texts, etc., see the General Bibliography. The
following works are of special interest in studying early English
literature.

_HISTORY_. Allen, Anglo-Saxon Britain; Turner, History of the
Anglo-Saxons; Ramsay, The Foundations of England; Freeman, Old
English History; Cook, Life of Alfred; Freeman, Short History of
the Norman Conquest; Jewett, Story of the Normans, in Stories of
the Nations.

_LITERATURE_. Brooke, History of Early English Literature;
Jusserand, Literary History of the English People, Vol. I; Ten
Brink, English Literature, Vol. I; Lewis, Beginnings of English
Literature; Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest
to Chaucer; Brother Azarias, Development of Old-English Thought;
Mitchell, From Celt to Tudor; Newell, King Arthur and the Round
Table. A more advanced work on Arthur is Rhys, Studies in the
Arthurian Legends.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake; Lytton,
Harold Last of the Saxon Kings; Scott, Ivanhoe; Kipling, Puck of
Pook's Hill; Jane Porter, Scottish Chiefs; Shakespeare, King John;
Tennyson, Becket, and The Idylls of the King; Gray, The Bard; Bates
and Coman, English History Told by English Poets.

CHAPTER III

THE AGE OF CHAUCER AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING (1350-1550)

For out of olde feldes, as men seith,
Cometh al this newe corn fro yeer te yere;
And out of olde bokes, in good feith,
Cometh all this newe science that men lere.

Chaucer, "Parliament of Foules"

SPECIMENS OF THE LANGUAGE. Our first selection, from _Piers Plowman_
(_cir._ 1362), is the satire of Belling the Cat. The language is that
of the common people, and the verse is in the old Saxon manner, with accent
and alliteration. The scene is a council of rats and mice (common people)
called to consider how best to deal with the cat (court), and it satirizes
the popular agitators who declaim against the government. The speaker is a
rat, "a raton of renon, most renable of tonge":

"I have y-seen segges," quod he,
"in the cite of London
Beren beighes ful brighte
abouten here nekkes....
Were there a belle on here beighe,
certes, as me thynketh,
Men myghte wite where thei went,
and awei renne!
And right so," quod this raton,
"reson me sheweth
To bugge a belle of brasse
or of brighte sylver,
And knitten on a colere
for owre comune profit,
And hangen it upon the cattes hals;
than hear we mowen
Where he ritt or rest
or renneth to playe." ...
Alle this route of ratones
to this reson thei assented;
Ac tho the belle was y-bought
and on the beighe hanged,
Ther ne was ratoun in alle the route,
for alle the rewme of Fraunce,
That dorst have y-bounden the belle
aboute the cattis nekke.

"I have seen creatures" (dogs), quoth he,
"in the city of London
Bearing collars full bright
around their necks....
Were there a bell on those collars,
assuredly, in my opinion,
One might know where the dogs go,
and run away from them!
And right so," quoth this rat,
"reason suggests to me
To buy a bell of brass
or of bright silver,
And tie it on a collar
for our common profit,
And hang it on the cat's neck;
in order that we may hear
Where he rides or rests
or runneth to play." ...
All this rout (crowd) of rats
to this reasoning assented;
But when the bell was bought
and hanged on the collar,
There was not a rat in the crowd
that, for all the realm of France
Would have dared to bind the bell
about the cat's neck.

The second selection is from Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" (_cir_.
1375). It was written "in the French manner" with rime and meter, for the
upper classes, and shows the difference between literary English and the
speech of the common people:

In th' olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour,
Of which that Britons speken greet honour,
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.
The elf-queene with hir joly companye
Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede;
This was the olde opinion, as I rede.
I speke of manye hundred yeres ago;
But now kan no man see none elves mo.

The next two selections (written _cir_. 1450) show how rapidly the
language was approaching modern English. The prose, from Malory's _Morte
d' Arthur_, is the selection that Tennyson closely followed in his
"Passing of Arthur." The poetry, from the ballad of "Robin Hood and the
Monk," is probably a fifteenth-century version of a much older English
song:

"'Therefore,' sayd Arthur unto Syr Bedwere, 'take thou Excalybur my
good swerde, and goo with it, to yonder water syde, and whan thou
comest there I charge the throwe my swerde in that water, and come
ageyn and telle me what thou there seest.'

"'My lord,' sayd Bedwere, 'your commaundement shal be doon, and
lyghtly brynge you worde ageyn.'

"So Syr Bedwere departed; and by the waye he behelde that noble
swerde, that the pomel and the hafte was al of precyous stones; and
thenne he sayd to hym self, 'Yf I throwe this ryche swerde in the
water, thereof shal never come good, but harme and losse.' And
thenne Syr Bedwere hydde Excalybur under a tree."

In somer, when the shawes be sheyne,
And leves be large and long,
Hit is full mery in feyr foreste
To here the foulys song:

To se the dere draw to the dale,
And leve the hilles hee,
And shadow hem in the leves grene,
Under the grene-wode tre.

HISTORICAL OUTLINE. The history of England during this period is
largely a record of strife and confusion. The struggle of the House
of Commons against the despotism of kings; the Hundred Years War
with France, in which those whose fathers had been Celts, Danes,
Saxons, Normans, were now fighting shoulder to shoulder as
Englishmen all; the suffering of the common people, resulting in
the Peasant Rebellion; the barbarity of the nobles, who were
destroying one another in the Wars of the Roses; the beginning of
commerce and manufacturing, following the lead of Holland, and the
rise of a powerful middle class; the belated appearance of the
Renaissance, welcomed by a few scholars but unnoticed by the masses
of people, who remained in dense ignorance,--even such a brief
catalogue suggests that many books must be read before we can enter
into the spirit of fourteenth-century England. We shall note here
only two circumstances, which may help us to understand Chaucer and
the age in which he lived.

[Sidenote: MODERN PROBLEMS]

The first is that the age of Chaucer, if examined carefully, shows
many striking resemblances to our own. It was, for example, an age
of warfare; and, as in our own age of hideous inventions, military
methods were all upset by the discovery that the foot soldier with
his blunderbuss was more potent than the panoplied knight on
horseback. While war raged abroad, there was no end of labor
troubles at home, strikes, "lockouts," assaults on imported workmen
(the Flemish weavers brought in by Edward III), and no end of
experimental laws to remedy the evil. The Turk came into Europe,
introducing the Eastern and the Balkan questions, which have ever
since troubled us. Imperialism was rampant, in Edward's claim to
France, for example, or in John of Gaunt's attempt to annex
Castile. Even "feminism" was in the air, and its merits were
shrewdly debated by Chaucer's Wife of Bath and his Clerk of
Oxenford. A dozen other "modern" examples might be given, but the
sum of the matter is this: that there is hardly a social or
political or economic problem of the past fifty years that was not
violently agitated in the latter half of the fourteenth century.
[Footnote: See Kittredge, _Chaucer and his Poetry_ (1915), pp.
2-5.]

[Sidenote: REALISTIC POETRY]

A second interesting circumstance is that this medieval age
produced two poets, Langland and Chaucer, who were more realistic
even than present-day writers in their portrayal of life, and who
together gave us such a picture of English society as no other
poets have ever equaled. Langland wrote his _Piers Plowman_ in
the familiar Anglo-Saxon style for the common people, and pictured
their life to the letter; while Chaucer wrote his _Canterbury
Tales_, a poem shaped after Italian and French models,
portraying the holiday side of the middle and upper classes.
Langland drew a terrible picture of a degraded land, desperately in
need of justice, of education, of reform in church and state;
Chaucer showed a gay company of pilgrims riding through a
prosperous country which he called his "Merrie England." Perhaps
the one thing in common with these two poets, the early types of
Puritan and Cavalier, was their attitude towards democracy.
Langland preached the gospel of labor, far more powerfully than
Carlyle ever preached it, and exalted honest work as the patent of
nobility. Chaucer, writing for the court, mingled his characters in
the most democratic kind of fellowship and, though a knight rode at
the head of his procession, put into the mouth of the Wife of Bath
his definition of a gentleman:

Loke who that is most vertuous alway,
Privee and apert, [1] and most entendeth aye
To do the gentle dedes that he can,
And take him for the grettest gentilman.

[Footnote [1]: Secretly and openly.]

* * * * *

GEOFFREY CHAUCER (_cir_. 1340-1400)

"Of Chaucer truly I know not whether to marvel more, either that he in
that misty time could see so clearly, or that we in this clear age walk
so stumblingly after him."
(Philip Sidney, _cir_. 1581)

It was the habit of Old-English chieftains to take their scops with them
into battle, to the end that the scop's poem might be true to the outer
world of fact as well as to the inner world of ideals. The search for
"local color" is, therefore, not the newest thing in fiction but the oldest
thing in poetry. Chaucer, the first in time of our great English poets, was
true to this old tradition. He was page, squire, soldier, statesman,
diplomat, traveler; and then he was a poet, who portrayed in verse the
many-colored life which he knew intimately at first hand.

[Illustration: CHAUCER]

For example, Chaucer had to describe a tournament, in the Knight's Tale;
but instead of using his imagination, as other romancers had always done,
he drew a vivid picture of one of those gorgeous pageants of decaying
chivalry with which London diverted the French king, who had been brought
prisoner to the city after the victory of the Black Prince at Poitiers. So
with his Tabard Inn, which is a real English inn, and with his Pilgrims,
who are real pilgrims; and so with every other scene or character he
described. His specialty was human nature, his strong point observation,
his method essentially modern. And by "modern" we mean that he portrayed
the men and women of his own day so well, with such sympathy and humor and
wisdom, that we recognize and welcome them as friends or neighbors, who are
the same in all ages. From this viewpoint Chaucer is more modern than
Tennyson or Longfellow.

LIFE. Chaucer's boyhood was spent in London, near Westminster,
where the brilliant court of Edward was visible to the favored
ones; and near the Thames, where the world's commerce, then
beginning to ebb and flow with the tides, might be seen of every
man. His father was a vintner, or wine merchant, who had enough
influence at court to obtain for his son a place in the house of
the Princess Elizabeth. Behold then our future poet beginning his
knightly training as page to a highborn lady. Presently he
accompanied the Black Prince to the French wars, was taken prisoner
and ransomed, and on his return entered the second stage of
knighthood as esquire or personal attendant to the king. He married
a maid of honor related to John of Gaunt, the famous Duke of
Lancaster, and at thirty had passed from the rank of merchant into
official and aristocratic circles.

[Sidenote: PERIODS OF WORK]

The literary work of Chaucer is conveniently, but not accurately,
arranged in three different periods. While attached to the court,
one of his duties was to entertain the king and his visitors in
their leisure. French poems of love and chivalry were then in
demand, and of these Chaucer had great store; but English had
recently replaced French even at court, and King Edward and Queen
Philippa, both patrons of art and letters, encouraged Chaucer to
write in his native language. So he made translations of favorite
poems into English, and wrote others in imitation of French models.
These early works, the least interesting of all, belong to what is
called the period of French influence.

Then Chaucer, who had learned the art of silence as well as of
speech, was sent abroad on a series of diplomatic missions. In
Italy he probably met the poet Petrarch (as we infer from the
Prologue to the Clerk's Tale) and became familiar with the works of
Dante and Boccaccio. His subsequent poetry shows a decided advance
in range and originality, partly because of his own growth, no
doubt, and partly because of his better models. This second period,
of about fifteen years, is called the time of Italian influence.

In the third or English period Chaucer returned to London and was a
busy man of affairs; for at the English court, unlike those of
France and Italy, a poet was expected to earn his pension by some
useful work, literature being regarded as a recreation. He was in
turn comptroller of customs and superintendent of public works;
also he was at times well supplied with money, and again, as the
political fortunes of his patron John of Gaunt waned, in sore need
of the comforts of life. Witness his "Complaint to His Empty
Purse," the humor of which evidently touched the king and brought
Chaucer another pension.

Two poems of this period are supposed to contain autobiographical
material. In the _Legend of Good Women_ he says:

And as for me, though that my wit be lyte,
On bokes for to rede I me delyte.

Again, in _The House of Fame_ he speaks of finding his real
life in books after his daily work in the customhouse is ended.
Some of the "rekeninges" (itemized accounts of goods and duties) to
which he refers are still preserved in Chaucer's handwriting:

For whan thy labour doon al is,
And hast y-maad thy rekeninges,
In stede of reste and newe thinges
Thou gost hoom to thy hous anoon,
And, also domb as any stoon,
Thou sittest at another boke
Til fully dawsed is thy loke,
And livest thus as an hermyte,
Although thine abstinence is lyte.

Such are the scanty facts concerning England's first great poet,
the more elaborate biographies being made up chiefly of guesses or
doubtful inferences. He died in the year 1400, and was buried in
St. Benet's chapel in Westminster Abbey, a place now revered by all
lovers of literature as the Poets' Corner.

ON READING CHAUCER. Said Caxton, who was the first to print
Chaucer's poetry, "He writeth no void words, but all his matter is
full of high and quick sentence." Caxton was right, and the modern
reader's first aim should be to get the sense of Chaucer rather
than his pronunciation. To understand him is not so difficult as
appears at first sight, for most of the words that look strange
because of their spelling will reveal their meaning to the ear if
spoken aloud. Thus the word "leefful" becomes "leveful" or
"leaveful" or "permissible."

Next, the reader should remember that Chaucer was a master of
versification, and that every stanza of his is musical. At the
beginning of a poem, therefore, read a few lines aloud, emphasizing
the accented syllables until the rhythm is fixed; then make every
line conform to it, and every word keep step to the music. To do
this it is necessary to slur certain words and run others together;
also, since the mistakes of Chaucer's copyists are repeated in
modern editions, it is often necessary to add a helpful word or
syllable to a line, or to omit others that are plainly superfluous.

This way of reading Chaucer musically, as one would read any other
poet, has three advantages: it is easy, it is pleasant, and it is
far more effective than the learning of a hundred specifications
laid down by the grammarians.

[Sidenote: RULES FOR READING]

As for Chaucer's pronunciation, you will not get that accurately
without much study, which were better spent on more important
matters; so be content with a few rules, which aim simply to help
you enjoy the reading. As a general principle, the root vowel of a
word was broadly sounded, and the rest slurred over. The
characteristic sound of _a_ was as in "far"; _e_ was
sounded like _a_, _i_ like _e_, and all diphthongs
as broadly as possible,--in "floures" (flowers), for example, which
should be pronounced "floores."

Another rule relates to final syllables, and these will appear more
interesting if we remember that they represent the dying
inflections of nouns and adjectives, which were then declined as in
modern German. Final _ed_ and _es_ are variable, but the
rhythm will always tell us whether they should be given an extra
syllable or not. So also with final _e_, which is often
sounded, but not if the following word begins with a vowel or with
_h_. In the latter case the two words may be run together, as
in reading Virgil. If a final _e_ occurs at the end of a line,
it may be lightly pronounced, like _a_ in "China," to give
added melody to the verse.

Applying these rules, and using our liberty as freely as Chaucer
used his, [Footnote: The language was changing rapidly in Chaucer's
day, and there were no printed books to fix a standard. Sometimes
Chaucer's grammar and spelling are according to rule, and again as
heaven pleases.] the opening lines of _The Canterbury Tales_
would read something like this:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
_Whan that Apreele with 'is shoores sohte_

The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
_The drooth of March hath paarced to the rohte_

And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
_And bahthed ev'ree vyne in swech lecoor,_

Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
_Of whech varetu engendred is the floor;_

Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth
_Whan Zephirus aik with 'is swaite braith_

Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
_Inspeered hath in ev'ree holt and haith_

The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
_The tendre croopes, and th' yoonge sonne_

Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y-ronne,
_Hath in the Ram 'is hawfe coors ironne,_

And smale fowles maken melodye,
_And smawle fooles mahken malyodiee,_

That slepen al the night with open ye
_That slaipen awl the nicht with open ee_

(So priketh hem nature in hir corages)
_(So priketh 'eem nahtur in hir coorahges)_

Than longen folk to goon on pilgrimages.
_Than longen folk to goon on peelgrimahges._

EARLY WORKS OF CHAUCER. In his first period, which was dominated by French
influence, Chaucer probably translated parts of the _Roman de la
Rose_, a dreary allegorical poem in which love is represented as a
queen-rose in a garden, surrounded by her court and ministers. In
endeavoring to pluck this rose the lover learns the "commandments" and
"sacraments" of love, and meets with various adventures at the hands of
Virtue, Constancy, and other shadowy personages of less repute. Such
allegories were the delight of the Middle Ages; now they are as dust and
ashes. Other and better works of this period are _The Book of the
Duchess_, an elegy written on the death of Blanche, wife of Chaucer's
patron, and various minor poems, such as "Compleynte unto Pitee," the
dainty love song "To Rosemunde," and "Truth" or the "Ballad of Good
Counsel."

Characteristic works of the second or Italian period are _The House of
Fame_, _The Legend of Good Women_, and especially _Troilus and
Criseyde_. The last-named, though little known to modern readers, is one
of the most remarkable narrative poems in our literature. It began as a
retelling of a familiar romance; it ended in an original poem, which might
easily be made into a drama or a "modern" novel.

[Sidenote: STORY OF TROILUS]

The scene opens in Troy, during the siege of the city by the
Greeks. The hero Troilus is a son of Priam, and is second only to
the mighty Hector in warlike deeds. Devoted as he is to glory, he
scoffs at lovers until the moment when his eye lights on Cressida.
She is a beautiful young widow, and is free to do as she pleases
for the moment, her father Calchas having gone over to the Greeks
to escape the doom which he sees impending on Troy. Troilus falls
desperately in love with Cressida, but she does not know or care,
and he is ashamed to speak his mind after scoffing so long at love.
Then appears Pandarus, friend of Troilus and uncle to Cressida, who
soon learns the secret and brings the young people together. After
a long courtship with interminable speeches (as in the old
romances) Troilus wins the lady, and all goes happily until Calchas
arranges to have his daughter brought to him in exchange for a
captured Trojan warrior. The lovers are separated with many tears,
but Cressida comforts the despairing Troilus by promising to
hoodwink her doting father and return in a few days. Calchas,
however, loves his daughter too well to trust her in a city that
must soon be given over to plunder, and keeps her safe in the Greek
camp. There the handsome young Diomede wins her, and presently
Troilus is killed in battle by Achilles.

Such is the old romance of feminine fickleness, which had been written a
hundred times before Chaucer took it bodily from Boccaccio. Moreover he
humored the old romantic delusion which required that a lover should fall
sick in the absence of his mistress, and turn pale or swoon at the sight of
her; but he added to the tale many elements not found in the old romances,
such as real men and women, humor, pathos, analysis of human motives, and a
sense of impending tragedy which comes not from the loss of wealth or
happiness but of character. Cressida's final thought of her first lover is
intensely pathetic, and a whole chapter of psychology is summed up in the
line in which she promises herself to be true to Diomede at the very moment
when she is false to Troilus:

"Allas! of me unto the worldes ende
Shal neyther ben ywriten nor y-songe
No good word; for these bookes wol me shende.
O, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge!
Thurghout the world my belle shal be ronge,
And wommen moste wol haten me of alle.
Allas, that swich a cas me sholde falle!
They wol seyn, in-as-much as in me is,
I have hem doon dishonour, weylawey!
Al be I not the firste that dide amis,
What helpeth that to doon my blame awey?
But since I see ther is no betre wey,
And that too late is now for me to rewe,
To Diomede, algate, I wol be trewe."

THE CANTERBURY TALES. The plan of gathering a company of people and letting
each tell his favorite story has been used by so many poets, ancient and
modern, that it is idle to seek the origin of it. Like Topsy, it wasn't
born; it just grew up. Chaucer's plan, however, is more comprehensive than
any other in that it includes all classes of society; it is also more
original in that it does not invent heroic characters but takes such men
and women as one might meet in any assembly, and shows how typical they are
of humanity in all ages. As Lowell says, Chaucer made use in his
_Canterbury Tales_ of two things that are everywhere regarded as
symbols of human life; namely, the short journey and the inn. We might add,
as an indication of Chaucer's philosophy, that his inn is a comfortable
one, and that the journey is made in pleasant company and in fair weather.

An outline of Chaucer's great work is as follows. On an evening in
springtime the poet comes to Tabard Inn, in Southwark, and finds it
filled with a merry company of men and women bent on a pilgrimage
to the shrine of Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.

After supper appears the jovial host, Harry Bailey, who finds the
company so attractive that he must join it on its pilgrimage. He
proposes that, as they shall be long on the way, they shall furnish
their own entertainment by telling stories, the best tale to be
rewarded by the best of suppers when the pilgrims return from
Canterbury. They assent joyfully, and on the morrow begin their
journey, cheered by the Knight's Tale as they ride forth under the
sunrise. The light of morning and of springtime is upon this work,
which is commonly placed at the beginning of modern English
literature.

As the journey proceeds we note two distinct parts to Chaucer's record. One
part, made up of prologues and interludes, portrays the characters and
action of the present comedy; the other part, consisting of stories,
reflects the comedies and tragedies of long ago. The one shows the
perishable side of the men and women of Chaucer's day, their habits, dress,
conversation; the other reveals an imperishable world of thought, feeling,
ideals, in which these same men and women discover their kinship to
humanity. It is possible, since some of the stories are related to each
other, that Chaucer meant to arrange the _Canterbury Tales_ in
dramatic unity, so as to make a huge comedy of human society; but the work
as it comes down to us is fragmentary, and no one has discovered the order
in which the fragments should be fitted together.

[Illustration: PILGRIMS SETTING OUT FROM THE "TABARD"]

[Sidenote: THE PROLOGUE]

The Prologue is perhaps the best single fragment of the _Canterbury
Tales_. In it Chaucer introduces us to the characters of his drama: to
the grave Knight and the gay Squire, the one a model of Chivalry at its
best, "a verray parfit gentil knight," the other a young man so full of
life and love that "he slept namore than dooth a nightingale"; to the
modest Prioress, also, with her pretty clothes, her exquisite manners, her
boarding-school accomplishments:

And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe,
For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe.

In contrast to this dainty figure is the coarse Wife of Bath, as garrulous
as the nurse in _Romeo and Juliet_. So one character stands to another
as shade to light, as they appear in a typical novel of Dickens. The
Church, the greatest factor in medieval life, is misrepresented by the
hunting Monk and the begging Friar, and is well represented by the Parson,
who practiced true religion before he preached it:

But Christes lore and his apostles twelve
He taughte, and first he folwed it himselve.

Trade is represented by the Merchant, scholarship by the poor Clerk of
Oxenford, the professions by the Doctor and the Man-of-law, common folk by
the Yeoman, Frankelyn (farmer), Miller and many others of low degree.
Prominent among the latter was the Shipman:

Hardy he was, and wys to undertake;
With many a tempest hadde his berd been shake.

From this character, whom Stevenson might have borrowed for his _Treasure
Island_, we infer the barbarity that prevailed when commerce was new,
when the English sailor was by turns smuggler or pirate, equally ready to
sail or scuttle a ship, and to silence any tongue that might tell tales by
making its wretched owner "walk the plank." Chaucer's description of the
latter process is a masterpiece of piratical humor:

If that he faught and hadde the hyer hond,
By water he sente hem hoom to every lond.

[Sidenote: VARIETY OF TALES]

Some thirty pilgrims appear in the famous Prologue, and as each was to tell
two stories on the way to Canterbury, and two more on the return, it is
probable that Chaucer contemplated a work of more than a hundred tales.
Only four-and-twenty were completed, but these are enough to cover the
field of light literature in that day, from the romance of love to the
humorous animal fable. Between these are wonder-stories of giants and
fairies, satires on the monks, parodies on literature, and some examples of
coarse horseplay for which Chaucer offers an apology, saying that he must
let each pilgrim tell his tale in his own way.

A round dozen of these tales may still be read with pleasure; but, as a
suggestion of Chaucer's variety, we name only three: the Knight's romance
of "Palamon and Arcite," the Nun's Priest's fable of "Chanticleer," and the
Clerk's old ballad of "Patient Griselda." The last-named will be more
interesting if we remember that the subject of woman's rights had been
hurled at the heads of the pilgrims by the Wife of Bath, and that the Clerk
told his story to illustrate his different ideal of womanhood.

THE CHARM OF CHAUCER. The first of Chaucer's qualities is that he is an
excellent story-teller; which means that he has a tale to tell, a good
method of telling it, and a philosophy of life which gives us something to
think about aside from the narrative. He had a profound insight of human
nature, and in telling the simplest story was sure to slip in some nugget
of wisdom or humor: "What wol nat be mote need be left," "For three may
keep counsel if twain be away," "The lyf so short, the craft so long to
lerne," "Ful wys is he that can himselven knowe,"

The firste vertue, sone, if thou wilt lere,
Is to restreine and kepen wel thy tonge.

There are literally hundreds of such "good things" which make Chaucer a
constant delight to those who, by a very little practice, can understand
him almost as easily as Shakespeare. Moreover he was a careful artist; he
knew the principles of poetry and of story-telling, and before he wrote a
song or a tale he considered both his subject and his audience, repeating
to himself his own rule:

Ther nis no werkman, whatsoever he be,
That may bothe werke wel and hastily:
This wol be doon at leysur, parfitly.

A second quality of Chaucer is his power of observation, a power so
extraordinary that, unlike other poets, he did not need to invent scenes or
characters but only to describe what he had seen and heard in this
wonderful world. As he makes one of his characters say:

For certeynly, he that me made
To comen hider seyde me:
I shoulde bothe hear et see
In this place wonder thinges.

In the _Canterbury Tales_ alone he employs more than a score of
characters, and hardly a romantic hero among them; rather does he delight
in plain men and women, who reveal their quality not so much in their
action as in their dress, manner, or tricks of speech. For Chaucer has the
glance of an Indian, which passes over all obvious matters to light upon
one significant detail; and that detail furnishes the name or the adjective
of the object. Sometimes his descriptions of men or nature are microscopic
in their accuracy, and again in a single line he awakens the reader's
imagination,--as when Pandarus (in _Troilus_), in order to make
himself unobtrusive in a room where he is not wanted, picks up a manuscript
and "makes a face," that is, he pretends to be absorbed in a story,

and fand his countenance
As for to loke upon an old romance.

A dozen striking examples might be given, but we shall note only one. In
the _Book of the Duchess_ the poet is in a forest, when a chase sweeps
by with whoop of huntsman and clamor of hounds. After the hunt, when the
woods are all still, comes a little lost dog:

Hit com and creep to me as lowe
Right as hit hadde me y-knowe,
Hild down his heed and jiyned his eres,
And leyde al smouthe doun his heres.
I wolde han caught hit, and anoon
Hit fledde and was fro me goon.

[Sidenote: CHAUCER'S HUMOR]

Next to his power of description, Chaucer's best quality is his humor, a
humor which is hard to phrase, since it runs from the keenest wit to the
broadest farce, yet is always kindly and human. A mendicant friar comes in
out of the cold, glances about the snug kitchen for the best seat:

And fro the bench he droof awey the cat.

Sometimes his humor is delicate, as in touching up the foibles of the
Doctor or the Man-of-law, or in the Priest's translation of Chanticleer's
evil remark about women:

_In principio_
_Mulier est hominis confusio._
Madame, the sentence of this Latin is:
Woman is mannes joye and al his blis.

The humor broadens in the Wife of Bath, who tells how she managed several
husbands by making their lives miserable; and occasionally it grows a
little grim, as when the Maunciple tells the difference between a big and a
little rascal. The former does evil on a large scale, and,

Lo! therfor is he cleped a Capitain;
But for the outlawe hath but small meynee,
And may not doon so gret an harm as he,
Ne bring a countree to so gret mischeef,
Men clepen him an outlawe or a theef.

[Sidenote: FREEDOM FROM BIAS]

A fourth quality of Chaucer is his broad tolerance, his absolute
disinterestedness. He leaves reforms to Wyclif and Langland, and can laugh
with the Shipman who turns smuggler, or with the worldly Monk whose
"jingling" bridle keeps others as well as himself from hearing the chapel
bell. He will not even criticize the fickle Cressida for deserting Troilus,
saying that men tell tales about her, which is punishment enough for any
woman. In fine, Chaucer is content to picture a world in which the rain
falleth alike upon the just and the unjust, and in which the latter seem to
have a liberal share of the umbrellas. He enjoys it all, and describes its
inhabitants as they are, not as he thinks they ought to be. The reader may
think that this or that character deserves to come to a bad end; but not so
Chaucer, who regards them all as kindly, as impersonally as Nature herself.

So the Canterbury pilgrims are not simply fourteenth-century Englishmen;
they are human types whom Chaucer met at the Tabard Inn, and whom later
English writers discover on all of earth's highways. One appears unchanged
in Shakespeare's drama, another in a novel of Jane Austen, a third lives
over the way or down the street. From century to century they change not,
save in name or dress. The poet who described or created such enduring
characters stands among the few who are called universal writers.

* * * * *

CHAUCER'S CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS

Someone has compared a literary period to a wood in which a few giant oaks
lift head and shoulders above many other trees, all nourished by the same
soil and air. If we follow this figure, Langland and Wyclif are the only
growths that tower beside Chaucer, and Wyclif was a reformer who belongs to
English history rather than to literature.

LANGLAND. William Langland (_cir_. 1332--1400) is a great figure in
obscurity. We are not certain even of his name, and we must search his work
to discover that he was, probably, a poor lay-priest whose life was
governed by two motives: a passion for the poor, which led him to plead
their cause in poetry, and a longing for all knowledge:

All the sciences under sonne, and all the sotyle craftes,
I wolde I knew and couthe, kyndely in myne herte.

His chief poem, _Piers Plowman_ (_cir_. 1362), is a series of
visions in which are portrayed the shams and impostures of the age and the
misery of the common people. The poem is, therefore, as the heavy shadow
which throws into relief the bright picture of the _Canterbury Tales_.

For example, while Chaucer portrays the Tabard Inn with its good cheer and
merry company, Langland goes to another inn on the next street; there he
looks with pure eyes upon sad or evil-faced men and women, drinking,
gaming, quarreling, and pictures a scene of physical and moral degradation.
One must look on both pictures to know what an English inn was like in the
fourteenth century.

Because of its crude form and dialect _Piers Plowman_ is hard to
follow; but to the few who have read it and entered into Langland's
vision--shared his passion for the poor, his hatred of shams, his belief in
the gospel of honest work, his humor and satire and philosophy--it is one
of the most powerful and original poems in English literature. [Footnote:
The working classes were beginning to assert themselves in this age, and to
proclaim "the rights of man." Witness the followers of John Ball, and his
influence over the crowd when he chanted the lines:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

Langland's poem, written in the midst of the labor agitation, was the first
glorification of labor to appear in English literature. Those who read it
may make an interesting comparison between "Piers Plowman" and a modern
labor poem, such as Hood's "Song of the Shirt" or Markham's "The Man with
the Hoe."]

MALORY. Judged by its influence, the greatest prose work of the fifteenth
century was the _Morte d'Arthur_ of Thomas Malory (d. 1471). Of the
English knight who compiled this work very little is known beyond this,
that he sought to preserve in literature the spirit of medieval knighthood
and religion. He tells us nothing of this purpose; but Caxton, who received
the only known copy of Malory's manuscript and published it in 1485, seems
to have reflected the author's spirit in these words:

"I according to my copy have set it in imprint, to the intent that
noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle
and virtuous deeds that some knyghts used in those days, by which
they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished
and put oft to shame and rebuke.... For herein may be seen noble
chivalry, courtesy, humanity, hardness, love, friendship,
cowardice, murder, hate, virtue and sin. Do after the good, and
leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renommee."

[Illustration: A STREET IN CAERLEON ON USK
The traditional home of King Arthur]

Malory's spirit is further indicated by the fact that he passed over all
extravagant tales of foreign heroes and used only the best of the Arthurian
romances. [Footnote: For the origin of the Arthurian stories see above,
"Geoffrey and the Legends of Arthur" in Chapter II. An example of the way
these stories were enlarged is given by Lewis, _Beginnings of English
Literature_, pp 73-76, who records the story of Arthur's death as told,
first, by Geoffrey, then by Layamon, and finally by Malory, who copied the
tale from French sources. If we add Tennyson's "Passing of Arthur," we
shall have the story as told from the twelfth to the nineteenth century.]
These had been left in a chaotic state by poets, and Malory brought order
out of the chaos by omitting tedious fables and arranging his material in
something like dramatic unity under three heads: the Coming of Arthur with
its glorious promise, the Round Table, and the Search for the Holy Grail:

"And thenne the kynge and al estates wente home unto Camelot, and
soo wente to evensonge to the grete mynster, and soo after upon
that to souper; and every knyght sette in his owne place as they
were to forehand. Thenne anone they herd crakynge and cryenge of
thonder, that hem thought the place shold alle to dryve. In the
myddes of this blast entred a sonne beaume more clerer by seven
tymes than ever they sawe daye, and al they were alyghted of the
grace of the Holy Ghoost. Then beganne every knyghte to behold
other, and eyther sawe other by theire semynge fayrer than ever
they sawe afore. Not for thenne there was no knyght myghte speke
one word a grete whyle, and soo they loked every man on other, as
they had ben domb. Thenne ther entred into the halle the Holy
Graile, covered with whyte samyte, but ther was none myghte see
hit, nor who bare hit. And there was al the halle fulfylled with
good odoures, and every knyght had suche metes and drynkes as he
best loved in this world. And when the Holy Grayle had be borne
thurgh the halle, thenne the holy vessel departed sodenly, that
they wyste not where hit becam....

"'Now,' said Sir Gawayne, 'we have ben served this daye of what
metes and drynkes we thoughte on, but one thynge begyled us; we
myght not see the Holy Grayle, it was soo precyously coverd.
Therfor I wil mak here avowe, that to morne, withoute lenger
abydyng, I shall laboure in the quest of the Sancgreal; that I
shalle hold me oute a twelve moneth and a day, or more yf nede be,
and never shalle I retorne ageyne unto the courte tyl I have sene
hit more openly than hit hath ben sene here.'... Whan they of the
Table Round herde Syr Gawayne saye so, they arose up the most party
and maade suche avowes as Sire Gawayne had made."

Into this holy quest sin enters like a serpent; then in quick succession
tragedy, rebellion, the passing of Arthur, the penitence of guilty
Launcelot and Guinevere. The figures fade away at last, as Shelley says of
the figures of the Iliad, "in tenderness and inexpiable sorrow."

As the best of Malory's work is now easily accessible, we forbear further
quotation. These old Arthurian legends, the common inheritance of all
English-speaking people, should be known to every reader. As they appear in
_Morte d'Arthur_ they are notable as an example of fine old English
prose, as a reflection of the enduring ideals of chivalry, and finally as a
storehouse in which Spenser, Tennyson and many others have found material
for some of their noblest poems.

CAXTON. William Caxton (d. 1491) is famous for having brought the printing
press to England, but he has other claims to literary renown. He was editor
as well as printer; he translated more than a score of the books which came
from his press; and, finally, it was he who did more than any other man to
fix a standard of English speech.

In Caxton's day several dialects were in use, and, as we infer from one of
his prefaces, he was doubtful which was most suitable for literature or
most likely to become the common speech of England. His doubt was dissolved
by the time he had printed the _Canterbury Tales_ and the _Morte
d'Arthur_. Many other works followed in the same "King's English"; his
successor at the printing press, Wynkyn de Worde, continued in the same
line; and when, less than sixty years after the first English book was
printed, Tyndale's translation of the New Testament had found its way to
every shire in England, there was no longer room for doubt that the
East-Midland dialect had become the standard of the English nation. We have
been speaking and writing that dialect ever since.

[Illustration: THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER
Caxton's printing office From an old print]

[Sidenote: STORY OF THE PRINTING PRESS]

The story of how printing came to England, not as a literary but as a
business venture, is a very interesting one. Caxton was an English merchant
who had established himself at Bruges, then one of the trading centers of
Europe. There his business prospered, and he became governor of the
_Domus Angliae_, or House of the English Guild of Merchant
Adventurers. There is romance in the very name. With moderate wealth came
leisure to Caxton, and he indulged his literary taste by writing his own
version of some popular romances concerning the siege of Troy, being
encouraged by the English princess Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, into
whose service he had entered.

Copies of his work being in demand, Caxton consulted the professional
copyists, whose beautiful work we read about in a remarkable novel called
_The Cloister and the Hearth_. Then suddenly came to Bruges the rumor
of Gutenberg's discovery of printing from movable types, and Caxton
hastened to Germany to investigate the matter, led by the desire to get
copies of his own work as cheaply as possible. The discovery fascinated
him; instead of a few copies of his manuscript he brought back to Bruges a
press, from which he issued his _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy_
(1474), which was probably the first book to appear in English print. Quick
to see the commercial advantages of the new invention, Caxton moved his
printing press to London, near Westminster Abbey, where he brought out in
1477 his _Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers_, the first book
ever printed on English soil. [Footnote: Another book of Caxton's, _The
Game and Playe of the Chesse_ (1475) was long accorded this honor, but
it is fairly certain that the book on chess-playing was printed in Bruges.]

[Sidenote: THE FIRST PRINTED BOOKS]

From the very outset Caxton's venture was successful, and he was soon busy
in supplying books that were most in demand. He has been criticized for not
printing the classics and other books of the New Learning; but he evidently
knew his business and his audience, and aimed to give people what they
wanted, not what he thought they ought to have. Chaucer's _Canterbury
Tales_, Malory's _Morte d'Arthur_, Mandeville's _Travels_,
Asop's _Fables_, parts of the _Aneid_, translations of French
romances, lives of the saints (The Golden Legend), cookbooks, prayer books,
books of etiquette,--the list of Caxton's eighty-odd publications becomes
significant when we remember that he printed only popular books, and that
the titles indicate the taste of the age which first looked upon the marvel
of printing.

POPULAR BALLADS. If it be asked, "What is a ballad?" any positive answer
will lead to disputation. Originally the ballad was probably a chant to
accompany a dance, and so it represents the earliest form of poetry. In
theory, as various definitions indicate, it is a short poem telling a story
of some exploit, usually of a valorous kind. In common practice, from
Chaucer to Tennyson, the ballad is almost any kind of short poem treating
of any event, grave or gay, in any descriptive or dramatic way that appeals
to the poet.

For the origin of the ballad one must search far back among the social
customs of primitive times. That the Anglo-Saxons were familiar with it
appears from the record of Tacitus, who speaks of their _carmina_ or
narrative songs; but, with the exception of "The Fight at Finnsburgh" and a
few other fragments, all these have disappeared.

During the Middle Ages ballads were constantly appearing among the common
people, [Footnote: Thus, when Sidney says, "I never heard the old song of
Percy and Douglass that I found not my heart moved more than with a
trumpet," and when Shakespeare shows Autolycus at a country fair offering
"songs for men and women of all sizes," both poets are referring to popular
ballads. Even later, as late as the American Revolution, history was first
written for the people in the form of ballads.] but they were seldom
written, and found no standing in polite literature. In the eighteenth
century, however, certain men who had grown weary of the formal poetry of
Pope and his school turned for relief to the old vigorous ballads of the
people, and rescued them from oblivion. The one book to which, more than
any other, we owe the revival of interest in balladry is _Percy's
Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_ (1765).

[Sidenote: THE MARKS OF A BALLAD]

The best of our ballads date in their present form from the fifteenth or
sixteenth century; but the originals were much older, and had been
transmitted orally for years before they were recorded on manuscript. As we
study them we note, as their first characteristic, that they spring from
the unlettered common people, that they are by unknown authors, and that
they appear in different versions because they were changed by each
minstrel to suit his own taste or that of his audience.

A second characteristic is the objective quality of the ballad, which deals
not with a poet's thought or feeling (such subjective emotions give rise to
the lyric) but with a man or a deed. See in the ballad of "Sir Patrick
Spence" (or Spens) how the unknown author goes straight to his story:

The king sits in Dumferling towne,
Drinking the blude-red wine:
"O whar will I get guid sailor
To sail this schip of mine?"

Up and spak an eldern knicht,
Sat at the king's richt kne:
"Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor
That sails upon the se."

There is a brief pause to tell us of Sir Patrick's dismay when word comes
that the king expects him to take out a ship at a time when she should be
riding to anchor, then on goes the narrative:

"Mak hast, mak haste, my mirry men all,
Our guid schip sails the morne."
"O say na sae, my master deir,
For I feir a deadlie storme:

"Late, late yestreen I saw the new moone
Wi the auld moone in hir arme,
And I feir, I feir, my deir master,
That we will cum to harme."

At the end there is no wailing, no moral, no display of the poet's feeling,
but just a picture:

O lang, lang may the ladies stand,
Wi thair gold kems in their hair,
Waiting for thair ain deir lords,
For they'll se thame na mair.

Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,
It's fiftie fadom deip,
And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,
Wi the Scots lords at his feit.

Directness, vigor, dramatic action, an ending that appeals to the
imagination,--most of the good qualities of story-telling are found in this
old Scottish ballad. If we compare it with Longfellow's "Wreck of the
Hesperus," we may discover that the two poets, though far apart in time and
space, have followed almost identical methods.

Other good ballads, which take us out under the open sky among vigorous
men, are certain parts of "The Gest of Robin Hood," "Mary Hamilton," "The
Wife of Usher's Well," "The Wee Wee Man," "Fair Helen," "Hind Horn,"
"Bonnie George Campbell," "Johnnie O'Cockley's Well," "Catharine Jaffray"
(from which Scott borrowed his "Lochinvar"), and especially "The Nutbrown
Mayde," sweetest and most artistic of all the ballads, which gives a
popular and happy version of the tale that Chaucer told in his "Patient
Griselda."

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The period included in the Age of Chaucer and the Revival
of Learning covers two centuries, from 1350 to 1550. The chief
literary figure of the period, and one of the greatest of English
poets, is Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in the year 1400. He was
greatly influenced by French and Italian models; he wrote for the
middle and upper classes; his greatest work was _The Canterbury
Tales_.

Langland, another poet contemporary with Chaucer, is famous for his
_Piers Plowman_, a powerful poem aiming at social reform, and
vividly portraying the life of the common people. It is written in
the old Saxon manner, with accent and alliteration, and is
difficult to read in its original form.

After the death of Chaucer a century and a half passed before
another great writer appeared in England. The time was one of
general decline in literature, and the most obvious causes were:
the Wars of the Roses, which destroyed many of the patrons of
literature; the Reformation, which occupied the nation with
religious controversy; and the Renaissance or Revival of Learning,
which turned scholars to the literature of Greece and Rome rather
than to English works.

In our study of the latter part of the period we reviewed: (1) the
rise of the popular ballad, which was almost the only type of
literature known to the common people. (2) The work of Malory, who
arranged the best of the Arthurian legends in his _Morte
d'Arthur._ (3) The work of Caxton, who brought the first
printing press to London, and who was instrumental in establishing
the East-Midland dialect as the literary language of England.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections from all authors of the
period are given in Manly, English Poetry, and English Prose;
Newcomer and Andrews, Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose;
Ward, English Poets; Morris and Skeat, Specimens of Early English.

Chaucer's Prologue, Knight's Tale, and other selections in
Riverside Literature, King's Classics, and several other school
series. A good single-volume edition of Chaucer's poetry is Skeat,
The Student's Chaucer (Clarendon Press). A good, but expensive,
modernized version is Tatlock and MacKaye, Modern Reader's Chaucer
(Macmillan).

Metrical version of Piers Plowman, by Skeat, in King's Classics;
modernized prose version by Kate Warren, in Treasury of English
Literature (Dodge).

Selections from Malory's Morte d'Arthur in Athenaum Press Series
(Ginn and Company); also in Camelot Series. An elaborate edition of
Malory with introduction by Sommer and an essay by Andrew Lang (3
vols., London, 1889); another with modernized text, introduction by
Rhys, illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley (London, 1893).

The best of the old ballads are published in Pocket Classics, and
in Maynard's English Classics; a volume of ancient and modern
English ballads in Ginn and Company's Classics for Children;
Percy's Reliques, in Everyman's Library. Allingham, The Ballad
Book; Hazlitt, Popular Poetry of England; Gummere, Old English
Ballads; Gayley and Flaherty, Poetry of the People; Child, English
and Scottish Popular Poetry (5 vols.); the last-named work, edited
and abridged by Kittredge, in one volume.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The following works have been sifted from a much
larger number dealing with the age of Chaucer and the Revival of
Learning. More extended works, covering the entire field of English
history and literature, are listed in the General Bibliography.

_HISTORY_. Snell, the Age of Chaucer; Jusserand, Wayfaring
Life in the Fourteenth Century; Jenks, In the Days of Chaucer;
Trevelyan, In the Age of Wyclif; Coulton, Chaucer and His England;
Denton, England in the Fifteenth Century; Green, Town Life in the
Fifteenth Century; Einstein, The Italian Renaissance in England;
Froissart, Chronicles; Lanier, The Boy's Froissart.

_LITERATURE_. Ward, Life of Chaucer (English Men of Letters
Series); Kittredge, Chaucer and His Poetry (Harvard University
Press); Pollard, Chaucer Primer; Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer;
Lowell's essay in My Study Windows; essay by Hazlitt, in Lectures
on the English Poets; Jusserand, Piers Plowman; Roper, Life of Sir
Thomas More.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Lytton, Last of the Barons; Yonge,
Lances of Lynwood; Scott, Marmion; Shakespeare, Richard II, Henry
IV, Richard III; Bates and Coman, English History Told by English
Poets.

CHAPTER IV

THE ELIZABETHAN AGE (1550-1620)

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea, ...
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England!

Shakespeare, _King Richard II_

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND. In such triumphant lines, falling from the
lips of that old imperialist John of Gaunt, did Shakespeare
reflect, not the rebellious spirit of the age of Richard II, but
the boundless enthusiasm of his own times, when the defeat of
Spain's mighty Armada had left England "in splendid isolation,"
unchallenged mistress of her own realm and of the encircling sea.
For it was in the latter part of Elizabeth's reign that England
found herself as a nation, and became conscious of her destiny as a
world empire.

There is another and darker side to the political shield, but the
student of literature is not concerned with it. We are to remember
the patriotic enthusiasm of the age, overlooking the frequent
despotism of "good Queen Bess" and entering into the spirit of
national pride and power that thrilled all classes of Englishmen
during her reign, if we are to understand the outburst of
Elizabethan literature. Nearly two centuries of trouble and danger
had passed since Chaucer died, and no national poet had appeared in
England. The Renaissance came, and the Reformation, but they
brought no great writers with them. During the first thirty years
of Elizabeth's reign not a single important literary work was
produced; then suddenly appeared the poetry of Spenser and Chapman,
the prose of Hooker, Sidney and Bacon, the dramas of Marlowe,
Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and a score of others,--all voicing the
national feeling after the defeat of the Armada, and growing silent
as soon as the enthusiasm began to wane.

LITERARY CHARACTERISTICS. Next to the patriotic spirit of Elizabethan
literature, its most notable qualities are its youthful freshness and
vigor, its romantic spirit, its absorption in the theme of love, its
extravagance of speech, its lively sense of the wonder of heaven and earth.
The ideal beauty of Spenser's poetry, the bombast of Marlowe, the boundless
zest of Shakespeare's historical plays, the romantic love celebrated in
unnumbered lyrics,--all these speak of youth, of springtime, of the joy and
the heroic adventure of human living.

This romantic enthusiasm of Elizabethan poetry and prose may be explained
by the fact that, besides the national impulse, three other inspiring
influences were at work. The first in point of time was the rediscovery of
the classics of Greece and Rome,--beautiful old poems, which were as new to
the Elizabethans as to Keats when he wrote his immortal sonnet, beginning:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold.

The second awakening factor was the widespread interest in nature and the
physical sciences, which spurred many another Elizabethan besides Bacon to
"take all knowledge for his province." This new interest was generally
romantic rather than scientific, was more concerned with marvels, like the
philosopher's stone that would transmute all things to gold, than with the
simple facts of nature. Bacon's chemical changes, which follow the
"instincts" of metals, are almost on a par with those other changes
described in Shakespeare's song of Ariel:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.

The third factor which stimulated the Elizabethan imagination was the
discovery of the world beyond the Atlantic, a world of wealth, of beauty,
of unmeasured opportunity for brave spirits, in regions long supposed to be
possessed of demons, monsters, Othello's impossible

cannibals that each other eat,
The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

[Sidenote: THE NEW WORLD]

When Drake returned from his voyage around the world he brought to England
two things: a tale of vast regions just over the world's rim that awaited
English explorers, and a ship loaded to the hatches with gold and jewels.
That the latter treasure was little better than a pirate's booty; that it
was stolen from the Spaniards, who had taken it from poor savages at the
price of blood and torture,--all this was not mentioned. The queen and her
favorites shared the treasure with Drake's buccaneers, and the New World
seemed to them a place of barbaric splendor, where the savage's wattled hut
was roofed with silver, his garments beaded with all precious jewels. As a
popular play of the period declares:

"Why, man, all their dripping pans are pure gold! The prisoners
they take are fettered in gold; and as for rubies and diamonds,
they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'hem by the seashore to hang
on their children's coates."

Before the American settlements opened England's eyes to the stern reality
of things, it was the romance of the New World that appealed most
powerfully to the imagination, and that influenced Elizabethan literature
to an extent which we have not yet begun to measure.

FOREIGN INFLUENCE. We shall understand the imitative quality of early
Elizabethan poetry if we read it in the light of these facts: that in the
sixteenth century England was far behind other European nations in culture;
that the Renaissance had influenced Italy and Holland for a century before
it crossed the Channel; that, at a time when every Dutch peasant read his
Bible, the masses of English people remained in dense ignorance, and the
majority of the official classes were like Shakespeare's father and
daughter in that they could neither read nor write. So, when the new
national spirit began to express itself in literature, Englishmen turned to
the more cultured nations and began to imitate them in poetry, as in dress
and manners. Shakespeare gives us a hint of the matter when he makes Portia
ridicule the apishness of the English. In _The Merchant of Venice_
(Act I, scene 2) the maid Nerissa is speaking of various princely suitors
for Portia's hand. She names them over, Frenchman, Italian, Scotsman,
German; but Portia makes fun of them all. The maid tries again:

_Nerissa_. What say you, then, to Falconbridge, the young baron of
England?

_Portia_. You know I say nothing to him, for he understands not me,
nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian; and you will
come into the court and swear that I have a poor pennyworth in the
English. He is a proper man's picture, but, alas, who can converse
with a dumb show? How oddly he is suited! I think he bought his
doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germany
and his behaviour every where.

When Wyatt and Surrey brought the sonnet to England, they brought also the
habit of imitating the Italian poets; and this habit influenced Spenser and
other Elizabethans even more than Chaucer had been influenced by Dante and
Petrarch. It was the fashion at that time for Italian gentlemen to write
poetry; they practiced the art as they practiced riding or fencing; and
presently scores of Englishmen followed Sidney's example in taking up this
phase of foreign education. It was also an Italian custom to publish the
works of amateur poets in the form of anthologies, and soon there appeared
in England _The Paradise of Dainty Devices, A Gorgeous Gallery of Gallant
Inventions_ and other such collections, the best of which was
_England's Helicon_ (1600). Still another foreign fashion was that of
writing a series of sonnets to some real or imaginary mistress; and that
the fashion was followed in England is evident from Spenser's
_Amoretti_, Sidney's _Astrophel and Stella_, Shakespeare's
_Sonnets_, and other less-famous effusions.

* * * * *

SPENSER AND THE LYRIC POETS

[Illustration: MICHAEL DRAYTON]

LYRICS OF LOVE. Love was the subject of a very large part of the minor
poems of the period, the monotony being relieved by an occasional ballad,
such as Drayton's "Battle of Agincourt" and his "Ode to the Virginian
Voyage," the latter being one of the first poems inspired by the New World.
Since love was still subject to literary rules, as in the metrical
romances, it is not strange that most Elizabethan lyrics seem to the modern
reader artificial. They deal largely with goddesses and airy shepherd folk;
they contain many references to classic characters and scenes, to Venus,
Olympus and the rest; they are nearly all characterized by extravagance of
language. A single selection, "Apelles' Song" by Lyly, may serve as typical
of the more fantastic love lyrics:

Cupid and my Campaspe played
At cards for kisses; Cupid paid.
He stakes his quiver, bow and arrows,
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?

MUSIC AND POETRY. Another reason for the outburst of lyric poetry in
Elizabethan times was that choral music began to be studied, and there was
great demand for new songs. Then appeared a theory of the close relation
between poetry and music, which was followed by the American poet Lanier
more than two centuries later. [Footnote: Much of Lanier's verse seems more
like a musical improvisation than like an ordinary poem. His theory that
music and poetry are subject to the same laws is developed in his
_Science of English Verse._ It is interesting to note that Lanier's
ancestors were musical directors at the courts of Elizabeth and of James
I.] This interesting theory is foreshadowed in several minor works of the
period; for example, in Barnfield's sonnet "To R. L.," beginning:

If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.

The stage caught up the new fashion, and hundreds of lyrics appeared in the
Elizabethan drama, such as Dekker's "Content" (from the play of _Patient
Grissell), which almost sets itself to music as we read it:

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
O sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?
O punishment!
Dost laugh to see how fools are vexed
To add to golden numbers golden numbers?
O sweet content, O sweet, O sweet content!

_Work apace, apace, apace, apace!
Honest labour bears a lovely face.
Then hey noney, noney; hey noney, noney!_

Canst drink the waters of the crisped spring?
O sweet content!
Swim'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears?
O punishment!
Then he that patiently want's burden bears
No burden bears, but is a king, a king.
O sweet content, O sweet, O sweet content!

So many lyric poets appeared during this period that we cannot here
classify them; and it would be idle to list their names. The best place to
make acquaintance with theo is not in a dry history of literature, but in
such a pleasant little book as Palgrave's _Golden Treasury_, where
their best work is accessible to every reader.

* * * * *

EDMUND SPENSER (1552-1599)

Spenser was the second of the great English poets, and it is but natural to
compare him with Chaucer, who was the first. In respect of time nearly two
centuries separate these elder poets; in all other respects, in aims,
ideals, methods, they are as far apart as two men of the same race can well
be.

LIFE. Very little is known of Spenser; he appears in the light,
then vanishes into the shadow, like his Arthur of _The Faery
Queen_. We see him for a moment in the midst of rebellion in
Ireland, or engaged in the scramble for preferment among the
queen's favorites; he disappears, and from his obscurity comes a
poem that is like the distant ringing of a chapel bell, faintly
heard in the clatter of the city streets. We shall try here to
understand this poet by dissolving some of the mystery that
envelops him.

He was born in London, and spent his youth amid the political and
religious dissensions of the times of Mary and Elizabeth. For all
this turmoil Spenser had no stomach; he was a man of peace, of
books, of romantic dreams. He was of noble family, but poor; his
only talent was to write poetry, and as poetry would not buy much
bread in those days, his pride of birth was humbled in seeking the
patronage of nobles:

Full little knowest thou, that hast not tried,
What hell it is in suing long to bide: ...
To fawn, to crouch, to wait, to ride, to run,
To spend, to give, to want, to be undone.

To the liberality of a patron he owed his education at Cambridge.
It was then the heyday of Renaissance studies, and Spenser steeped
himself in Greek, Latin and Italian literatures. Everything that
was antique was then in favor at the universities; there was a
revival of interest in Old-English poetry, which accounts largely
for Spenser's use of obsolete words and his imitation of Chaucer's
spelling.

After graduation he spent some time in the north of England,
probably as a tutor, and had an unhappy love affair, which he
celebrated in his poems to Rosalind. Then he returned to London,
lived by favor in the houses of Sidney and Leicester, and through
these powerful patrons was appointed secretary to Lord Grey de
Wilton, the queen's deputy in Ireland.

[Illustration: EDMUND SPENSER]

[Sidenote: SPENSER'S EXILE]

From this time on our poet is represented as a melancholy Spenser's
"exile," but that is a poetic fiction. At that time Ireland, having
refused to follow the Reformation, was engaged in a desperate
struggle for civil and religious liberty. Every English army that
sailed to crush this rebellion was accompanied by a swarm of
parasites, each inspired by the hope of getting one of the rich
estates that were confiscated from Irish owners. Spenser seems to
have been one of these expectant adventurers who accompanied Lord
Grey in his campaign of brutality. To the horrors of that campaign
the poet was blind; [Footnote: The barbarism of Spenser's view, a
common one at that time, is reflected in his _View of the Present
State of Ireland._ Honorable warfare on land or sea was unknown
in Elizabeth's day. Scores of pirate ships of all nations were then
openly preying on commerce. Drake, Frobisher and many other
Elizabethan "heroes" were at times mere buccaneers who shared their
plunder with the queen. In putting down the Irish rebellion Lords
Grey and Essex used some of the same horrible methods employed by
the notorious Duke of Alva in the Netherlands.] his sympathies were
all for his patron Grey, who appears in The Faery Queen as Sir
Artegall, "the model of true justice."

For his services Spenser was awarded the castle of Kilcolman and
3000 acres of land, which had been taken from the Earl of Desmond.
In the same way Raleigh became an Irish landlord, with 40,000 acres
to his credit; and so these two famous Elizabethans were thrown
together in exile, as they termed it. Both longed to return to
England, to enjoy London society and the revenues of Irish land at
the same time, but unfortunately one condition of their immense
grants was that they should occupy the land and keep the rightful
owners from possessing it.

[Sidenote: WORK IN IRELAND]

In Ireland Spenser began to write his masterpiece _The Faery
Queen_. Raleigh, to whom the first three books were read, was so
impressed by the beauty of the work that he hurried the poet off to
London, and gained for him the royal favor. In the poem "Colin
Clout's Come Home Again" we may read Spenser's account of how the
court impressed him after his sojourn in Ireland.

[Illustration: RALEIGH'S BIRTHPLACE, BUDLEIGH SALTERTON.
Hayes, Devonshire]

The publication of the first parts of _The Faery Queen_ (1590)
raised Spenser to the foremost place in English letters. He was
made poet-laureate, and used every influence of patrons and of
literary success to the end that he be allowed to remain in London,
but the queen was flint-hearted, insisting that he must give up his
estate or occupy it. So he returned sorrowfully to "exile," and
wrote three more books of _The Faery Queen_. To his other
offices was added that of sheriff of County Cork, an adventurous
office for any man even in times of peace, and for a poet, in a
time of turmoil, an invitation to disaster. Presently another
rebellion broke out, Kilcolman castle was burned, and the poet's
family barely escaped with their lives. It was said by Ben Jonson
that one of Spenser's children and some parts of _The Faery
Queen_ perished in the fire, but the truth of the saying has not
been established.

Soon after this experience, which crushed the poet's spirit, he was
ordered on official business to London, and died on the journey in
1599. As he was buried beside Chaucer, in Westminster Abbey, poets
were seen casting memorial verses and the pens that had written
them into his tomb.

[Sidenote: CHARACTER]

In character Spenser was unfitted either for the intrigues among
Elizabeth's favorites or for the more desperate scenes amid which
his Lot was cast. Unlike his friend Raleigh, who was a man of
action, Spenser was essentially a dreamer, and except in Cambridge
he seems never to have felt at home. His criticism of the age as
barren and hopeless, and the melancholy of the greater part of his
work, indicate that for him, at least, the great Elizabethan times
were "out of joint." The world, which thinks of Spenser as a great
poet, has forgotten that he thought of himself as a disappointed
man.

WORKS OF SPENSER. The poems of Spenser may be conveniently grouped in three
classes. In the first are the pastorals of _The Shepherd's Calendar_,
in which he reflects some of the poetical fashions of his age. In the
second are the allegories of _The Faery Queen_, in which he pictures
the state of England as a struggle between good and evil. In the third
class are his occasional poems of friendship and love, such as the
_Amoretti_. All his works are alike musical, and all remote from
ordinary life, like the eerie music of a wind harp.

[Sidenote: SHEPHERD'S CALENDAR]

_The Shepherd's Calendar_ (1579) is famous as the poem which announced
that a successor to Chaucer had at last appeared in England. It is an
amateurish work in which Spenser tried various meters; and to analyze it is
to discover two discordant elements, which we may call fashionable poetry
and puritanic preaching. Let us understand these elements clearly, for
apart from them the _Calendar_ is a meaningless work.

It was a fashion among Italian poets to make eclogues or pastoral poems
about shepherds, their dancing, piping, love-making,--everything except a
shepherd's proper business. Spenser followed this artificial fashion in his
_Calendar_ by making twelve pastorals, one for each month of the year.
These all take the form of conversations, accompanied by music and dancing,
and the personages are Cuddie, Diggon, Hobbinoll, and other fantastic
shepherds. According to poetic custom these should sing only of love; but
in Spenser's day religious controversy was rampant, and flattery might not
be overlooked by a poet who aspired to royal favor. So while the January
pastoral tells of the unhappy love of Colin Clout (Spenser) for Rosalind,
the springtime of April calls for a song in praise of Elizabeth:

Lo, how finely the Graces can it foot
To the instrument!
They dancen deffly and singen soote,
In their merriment.
Wants not a fourth Grace to make the dance even?
Let that room to my Lady be yeven.
She shall be a Grace,
To fill the fourth place,
And reign with the rest in heaven.

In May the shepherds are rival pastors of the Reformation, who end their
sermons with an animal fable; in summer they discourse of Puritan theology;
October brings them to contemplate the trials and disappointments of a
poet, and the series ends with a parable comparing life to the four seasons
of the year.

The moralizing of _The Shepherd's Calendar_ and the uncouth spelling
which Spenser affected detract from the interest of the poem; but one who
has patience to read it finds on almost every page some fine poetic line,
and occasionally a good song, like the following (from the August pastoral)
in which two shepherds alternately supply the lines of a roundelay:

Sitting upon a hill so high,
Hey, ho, the high hill!
The while my flock did feed thereby,
The while the shepherd's self did spill,
I saw the bouncing Bellibone,
Hey, ho, Bonnibell!
Tripping over the dale alone;
She can trip it very well.
Well decked in a frock of gray,
Hey, ho, gray is greet!
And in a kirtle of green say;
The green is for maidens meet.
A chaplet on her head she wore,
Hey, ho, chapelet!
Of sweet violets therein was store,
She sweeter than the violet.

THE FAERY QUEEN. Let us hear one of the stories of this celebrated poem,
and after the tale is told we may discover Spenser's purpose in writing all
the others.

[Sidenote: SIR GUYON]

From the court of Gloriana, Queen of Faery, the gallant Sir Guyon
sets out on adventure bent, and with him is a holy Palmer, or
pilgrim, to protect him from the evil that lurks by every wayside.
Hardly have the two entered the first wood when they fall into the
hands of the wicked Archimago, who spends his time in devising
spells or enchantments for the purpose of leading honest folk
astray.

For all he did was to deceive good knights,
And draw them from pursuit of praise and fame.

Escaping from the snare, Guyon hears a lamentation, and turns aside
to find a beautiful woman dying beside a dead knight. Her story is,
that her man has been led astray by the Lady Acrasia, who leads
many knights to her Bower of Bliss, and there makes them forget
honor and knightly duty. Guyon vows to right this wrong, and
proceeds on the adventure.

With the Palmer and a boatman he embarks in a skiff and crosses the
Gulf of Greediness, deadly whirlpools on one side, and on the other
the Magnet Mountain with wrecks of ships strewed about its foot.
Sighting the fair Wandering Isles, he attempts to land, attracted
here by a beautiful damsel, there by a woman in distress; but the
Palmer tells him that these seeming women are evil shadows placed
there to lead men astray. Next he meets the monsters of the deep,
"sea-shouldering whales," "scolopendras," "grisly wassermans,"
"mighty monoceroses with unmeasured tails." Escaping these, he
meets a greater peril in the mermaids, who sing to him alluringly:

This is port of rest from troublous toil,
The world's sweet inn from pain and wearisome turmoil.

Many other sea-dangers are passed before Guyon comes to land, where
he is immediately charged by a bellowing herd of savage beasts.
Only the power of the Palmer's holy staff saves the knight from
annihilation.

This is the last physical danger which Guyon encounters. As he goes
forward the country becomes an earthly paradise, where pleasures
call to him from every side. It is his soul, not his body, which is
now in peril. Here is the Palace of Pleasure, its wondrous gates
carved with images representing Jason's search for the Golden
Fleece. Beyond it are parks, gardens, fountains, and the beautiful
Lady Excess, who squeezes grapes into a golden cup and offers it to
Guyon as an invitation to linger. The scene grows ever more
entrancing as he rejects the cup of Excess and pushes onward:

Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound
Of all that mote delight a dainty ear,
Such as at once might not on living ground,
Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere:
Right hard it was for wight which did it hear
To read what manner music that mote be;
For all that pleasing is to living ear
Was there consorted in one harmony;
Birds, voices, instruments, winds, waters, all agree.

Amid such allurements Guyon comes at last to where beautiful
Acrasia lives, with knights who forget their knighthood. From the
open portal comes a melody, the voice of an unseen singer lifting
up the old song of Epicurus and of Omar:

Gather the rose of love whilst yet is time.

The following scenes in the Bower of Bliss were plainly suggested
by the Palace of Circe, in the _Odyssey_; but where Homer is
direct, simple, forceful, Spenser revels in luxuriant details. He
charms all Guyon's senses with color, perfume, beauty, harmony;
then he remembers that he is writing a moral poem, and suddenly his
delighted knight turns reformer. He catches Acrasia in a net woven
by the Palmer, and proceeds to smash her exquisite abode with
puritanic thoroughness:

But all those pleasaunt bowers and palace brave
Guyon brake down with rigour pitilesse.

As they fare forth after the destruction, the herd of horrible
beasts is again encountered, and lo! all these creatures are men
whom Acrasia has transformed into brutal shapes. The Palmer
"strooks" them all with his holy staff, and they resume their human
semblance. Some are glad, others wroth at the change; and one named
Grylle, who had been a hog, reviles his rescuers for disturbing
him; which gives the Palmer a final chance to moralize:

Let Grylle be Grylle and have his hoggish mind;
But let us hence depart while weather serves and wind.

[Sidenote: OTHER STORIES]

Such is Spenser's story of Sir Guyon, or Temperance. It is a long story,
drifting through eighty-seven stanzas, but it is only a final chapter or
canto of the second book of _The Faery Queen_. Preceding it are eleven
other cantos which serve as an introduction. So leisurely is Spenser in
telling a tale! One canto deals with the wiles of Archimago and of the
"false witch" Duessa; in another the varlet Braggadocchio steals Guyon's
horse and impersonates a knight, until he is put to shame by the fair
huntress Belphoebe, who is Queen Elizabeth in disguise. Now Elizabeth had a
hawk face which was far from comely, but behold how it appeared to a poet:

Her face so fair, as flesh it seemed not,
But heavenly portrait of bright angel's hue,
Clear as the sky, withouten blame or blot,
Through goodly mixture of complexions due;
And in her cheek the vermeil red did shew
Like roses in a bed of lilies shed,
The which ambrosial odours from them threw
And gazers' sense with double pleasure fed,
Able to heal the sick and to revive the dead.

There are a dozen more stanzas devoted to her voice, her eyes, her hair,
her more than mortal beauty. Other cantos of the same book are devoted to
Guyon's temptations; to his victories over Furor and Mammon; to his rescue
of the Lady Alma, besieged by a horde of villains in her fair Castle of
Temperance. In this castle was an aged man, blind but forever doting over
old records; and this gives Spenser the inspiration for another long canto
devoted to the ancient kings of Britain. So all is fish that comes to this
poet's net; but as one who is angling for trout is vexed by the nibbling of
chubs, the reader grows weary of Spenser's story before his story really
begins.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST BOOK]

Other books of _The Faery Queen_ are so similar in character to the
one just described that a canto from any one of them may be placed without
change in any other. In the first book, for example, the Redcross Knight
(Holiness) fares forth accompanied by the Lady Una (Religion). Straightway
they meet the enchanter Archimago, who separates them by fraud and magic.
The Redcross Knight, led to believe that his Una is false, comes, after
many adventures, to Queen Lucifera in the House of Pride; meanwhile Una
wanders alone amidst perils, and by her beauty subdues the lion and the
satyrs of the wood. The rest of the book recounts their adventures with
paynims, giants and monsters, with Error, Avarice, Falsehood and other
allegorical figures.

It is impossible to outline such a poem, for the simple reason that it has
no outlines. It is a phantasmagoria of beautiful and grotesque shapes, of
romance, morality and magic. Reading it is like watching cloud masses,
aloft and remote, in which the imagination pictures men, monsters,
landscapes, which change as we view them without cause or consequence.
Though _The Faery Queen_ is overfilled with adventure, it has no
action, as we ordinarily understand the term. Its continual motion is
without force or direction, like the vague motions of a dream.

[Sidenote: PLAN OF THE FAERY QUEEN]

What, then, was Spenser's object in writing _The Faery Queen_? His
professed object was to use poetry in the service of morality by portraying
the political and religious affairs of England as emblematic of a worldwide
conflict between good and evil. According to his philosophy (which, he
tells us, he borrowed from Aristotle) there were twelve chief virtues, and
he planned twelve books to celebrate them. [Footnote: Only six of these
books are extant, treating of the Redcross Knight or Holiness, Sir Guyon or
Temperance, Britomartis or Chastity, Cambel and Triamond or Friendship, Sir
Artegall or Justice, and Sir Calidore or Courtesy. The rest of the
allegory, if written, may have been destroyed in the fire of Kilcolman.] In
each book a knight or a lady representing a single virtue goes forth into
the world to conquer evil. In all the books Arthur, or Magnificence (the
sum of all virtue), is apt to appear in any crisis; Lady Una represents
religion; Archimago is another name for heresy, and Duessa for falsehood;
and in order to give point to Spenser's allegory the courtiers and
statesmen of the age are all flattered as glorious virtues or condemned as
ugly vices.

[Sidenote: THE ALLEGORY]

Those who are fond of puzzles may delight in giving names and dates to
these allegorical personages, in recognizing Elizabeth in Belphoebe or
Britomart or Marcella, Sidney in the Redcross Knight, Leicester in Arthur,
Raleigh in Timias, Mary Stuart in Duessa, and so on through the list of
characters good or evil. The beginner will wisely ignore all such
interpretation, and for two reasons: first, because Spenser's allegories
are too shadowy to be taken seriously; and second, because as a chronicler
of the times he is outrageously partisan and untrustworthy. In short, to
search for any reality in _The Faery Queen_ is to spoil the poem as a
work of the imagination. "If you do not meddle with the allegory," said
Hazlitt, "the allegory will not meddle with you."

MINOR POEMS. The minor poems of Spenser are more interesting, because more
human, than the famous work which we have just considered. Prominent among
these poems are the _Amoretti_, a collection of sonnets written in
honor of the Irish girl Elizabeth, who became the poet's wife. They are
artificial, to be sure, but no more so than other love poems of the period.
In connection with a few of these sonnets may be read Spenser's four
"Hymns" (in honor of Love, Beauty, Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beauty) and
especially his "Epithalamium," a marriage hymn which Brooke calls, with
pardonable enthusiasm, "the most glorious love song in the English
language."

A CRITICISM OF SPENSER. In reading _The Faery Queen_ one must note the
contrast between Spenser's matter and his manner. His matter is: religion,
chivalry, mythology, Italian romance, Arthurian legends, the struggles of
Spain and England on the Continent, the Reformation, the turmoil of
political parties, the appeal of the New World,--a summary of all stirring
matters that interested his own tumultuous age. His manner is the reverse
of what one might expect under the circumstances. He writes no stirring
epic of victory or defeat, and never a downright word of a downright man,
but a dreamy, shadowy narrative as soothing as the abode of Morpheus:

And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling stream from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling rain upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes,
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne,
Might there be heard; but careless Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternal silence far from enemyes.

Such stanzas (and they abound in every book of _The Faery Queen_) are
poems in themselves; but unfortunately they distract attention from the
story, which soon loses all progression and becomes as the rocking of an
idle boat on the swell of a placid sea. The invention of this melodious
stanza, ever since called "Spenserian," was in itself a notable achievement
which influenced all subsequent English poetry. [Footnote: The Spenserian
was an improvement on the _ottava-rima_, or eight-line stanza, of the
Italians. It has been used by Burns in "The Cotter's Saturday Night," by
Shelley in "The Revolt of Islam," by Byron in "Childe Harold," by Keats in
"The Eve of St. Agnes," and by many other poets.]

[Sidenote: SPENSER'S FAULTS]

As Spenser's faults cannot be ignored, let us be rid of them as quickly as
possible. We record, then: the unreality of his great work; its lack of
human interest, which causes most of us to drop the poem after a single
canto; its affected antique spelling; its use of _fone_ (foes),
_dan_ (master), _teene_ (trouble), _swink_ (labor), and of
many more obsolete words; its frequent torturing of the king's English to
make a rime; its utter lack of humor, appearing in such absurd lines as,

Astond he stood, and up his hair did hove.

[Sidenote: MORAL IDEAL]

Such defects are more than offset by Spenser's poetic virtues. We note,
first, the moral purpose which allies him with the medieval poets in aim,
but not in method. By most medieval romancers virtue was regarded as a
means to an end, as in the _Morte d' Arthur_, where a knight made a
vow of purity in order to obtain a sight of the Holy Grail. With Spenser
virtue is not a means but an end, beautiful and desirable for its own sake;
while sin is so pictured that men avoid it because of its intrinsic
ugliness. This is the moral secret of _The Faery Queen_, in which
virtues are personified as noble knights or winsome women, while the vices
appear in the repulsive guise of hags, monsters and "loathy beasts."

[Sidenote: SENSE OF BEAUTY]

Spenser's sense of ideal beauty or, as Lanier expressed it, "the beauty of
holiness and the holiness of beauty," is perhaps his greatest poetic
quality. He is the poet-painter of the Renaissance; he fills his pages with
descriptions of airy loveliness, as Italian artists covered the high
ceilings of Venice with the reflected splendor of earth and heaven.
Moreover, his sense of beauty found expression in such harmonious lines
that one critic describes him as having set beautiful figures moving to
exquisite music.

In consequence of this beauty and melody, Spenser has been the inspiration
of nearly all later English singers. Milton was one of the first to call
him master, and then in a long succession such diverse poets as Dryden,
Burns, Wordsworth, Scott, Shelley, Keats, Byron, Tennyson and Swinburne.
The poet of "Faery" has influenced all these and more so deeply that he has
won the distinctive title of "the poets' poet."

* * * * *

THE DRAMATISTS

"Few events in our literary history are so startling as this sudden rise of
the Elizabethan drama," says Green in his _History of the English
People_, and his judgment is echoed by other writers who speak of the
"marvelous efflorescence" of the English drama as a matter beyond
explanation. Startling it may be, with its frank expression of a nation's
life, the glory and the shame of it; but there is nothing sudden or
inexplicable about it, as we may see by reviewing the history of
playwriting in England.

THE RELIGIOUS DRAMA. In its simplicity the drama is a familiar story retold
to the eye by actors who "make believe" that they are the heroes of the
action. In this elemental form the play is almost as old as humanity.
Indeed, it seems to be a natural impulse of children to act a story which
has given them pleasure; of primitive men also, who from time immemorial
have kept alive the memory of tribal heroes by representing their deeds in
play or pantomime. Thus, certain parts of _Hiawatha_ are survivals of
dramatic myths that were once acted at the spring assembly of the Algonquin
Indians. An interesting fact concerning these primitive dramas, whether in
India or Greece or Persia, is that they were invariably associated with
some religious belief or festival.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST MIRACLES]

A later example of this is found in the Church, which at an early age began
to make its holy-day services more impressive by means of Miracle plays and
Mysteries. [Footnote: In France any play representing the life of a saint
was called _miracle_, and a play dealing with the life of Christ was
called _mystere_. In England no such distinction was made, the name
"Miracle" being given to any drama dealing with Bible history or with the
lives of the saints.] At Christmas time, for example, the beautiful story
of Bethlehem would be made more vivid by placing in a corner of the parish
church an image of a babe in a manger, with shepherds and the Magi at hand,
and the choir in white garments chanting the _Gloria in excelsis_.
Other festivals were celebrated in a similar way until a cycle of simple
dramas had been prepared, clustering around four cardinal points of
Christian teaching; namely, Creation, the Fall, Redemption, and Doomsday or
the Last Judgment.

[Sidenote: GROWTH OF THE MIRACLES]

At first such plays were given in the church, and were deeply religious in
spirit. They made a profound impression in England especially, where people
flocked in such numbers to see them that presently they overflowed to the
churchyard, and from there to the city squares or the town common. Once
outside the church, they were taken up by the guilds or trades-unions, in
whose hands they lost much of their religious character. Actors were
trained for the stage rather than for the church, and to please the crowds
elements of comedy and buffoonery were introduced, [Footnote: In the
"Shepherd's Play" or "Play of the Nativity," for example, the adoration of
the Magi is interrupted by Mak, who steals a sheep and carries it to his
wife. She hides the carcass in a cradle, and sings a lullaby to it while
the indignant shepherds are searching the house.] until the sacred drama
degenerated into a farce. Here and there, however, a true Miracle survived
and kept its character unspotted even to our own day, as in the famous
Passion Play at Oberammergau.

[Sidenote: CYCLES OF PLAYS]

When and how these plays came to England is unknown. By the year 1300 they
were extremely popular, and continued so until they were replaced by the
Elizabethan drama. Most of the important towns of England had each its own
cycle of plays [Footnote: At present only four good cycles of Miracles are
known to exist; namely, the Chester, York, Townley (or Wakefield) and
Coventry plays. The number of plays varies, from twenty-five in the Chester
to forty-eight in the York cycle.] which were given once a year, the
performance lasting from three to eight days in a prolonged festival. Every
guild responsible for a play had its own stage, which was set on wheels and
drawn about the town to appointed open places, where a crowd was waiting
for it. When it passed on, to repeat the play to a different audience,
another stage took its place. The play of "Creation" would be succeeded by
the "Temptation of Adam and Eve," and so on until the whole cycle of
Miracles from "Creation" to "Doomsday" had been performed. It was the play
not the audience that moved, and in this trundling about of the stage van
we are reminded of Thespis, the alleged founder of Greek tragedy, who went
about with his cart and his play from one festival to another.

[Sidenote: MORALITIES]

Two other dramatic types, the Morality and the Interlude, probably grew out
of the religious drama. In one of the old Miracles we find two characters
named Truth and Righteousness, who are severe in their denunciation of
Adam, while Mercy and Peace plead for his life. Other virtues appear in
other Miracles, then Death and the Seven Deadly Sins, until we have a play
in which all the characters are personified virtues or vices. Such a play
was called a Morality, and it aimed to teach right conduct, as the Miracles
had at first aimed to teach right doctrine.

[Sidenote: INTERLUDES]

The Interlude was at first a crude sketch, a kind of ancient side show,
introduced into the Miracle plays after the latter had been taken up by the
guilds. A boy with a trained pig, a quarrel between husband and wife,--any
farce was welcome so long as it amused the crowd or enlivened the Miracle.
In time, however, the writing of Interludes became a profession; they
improved rapidly in character, were separated from the Miracles, and were
performed at entertainments or "revels" by trade guilds, by choir boys and
by companies of strolling actors or "minstrels." At the close of such
entertainments the minstrels would add a prayer for the king (an
inheritance from the religious drama), and this impressive English custom
still survives in the singing of "God Save the King" at the end of a public
assembly.

THE SECULAR DRAMA. When the Normans came to England they brought with them
a love of pageants, or spectacles, that was destined to have an important
influence on the drama. These pageants, representing scenes from history or
mythology (such as the bout between Richard and Saladin, or the combat
between St. George and the Dragon), were staged to celebrate feasts, royal
weddings, treaties or any other event that seemed of special importance.
From Norman times they increased steadily in favor until Elizabeth began
her "progresses" through England, when every castle or town must prepare a
play or pageant to entertain the royal visitor.

[Sidenote: THE MASQUE]

From simple pantomime the pageant developed into a masque; that is, a
dramatic entertainment accompanied by poetry and music. Hundreds of such
masques were written and acted before Shakespeare's day; the taste for them
survived long after the Elizabethan drama had decayed; and a few of them,
such as _The Sad Shepherd_ of Ben Jonson and the _Comus_ of
Milton, may still be read with pleasure.

[Sidenote: POPULAR COMEDY]

While the nobles were thus occupied with pageants and masques, the common
people were developing a crude drama in which comedy predominated. Such
were the Christmas plays or "mummings," introducing the characters of Merry
Andrew and Old King Cole, which began in England before the Conquest, and
which survived in country places down to our own times. [Footnote: In
Hardy's novel _The Return of the Native_ may be found a description of
these mummings (from "mum," a mask) in the nineteenth century. In Scott's
novel _The Abbot_ we have a glimpse of other mummings, such as were
given to celebrate feast days of the Church.] More widespread than the
mummings were crude spectacles prepared in celebration of secular
holidays,--the May Day plays, for example, which represented the adventures
of Robin Hood and his merry men. To these popular comedies the Church
contributed liberally, though unwillingly; its holy days became holidays to
the crowd, and its solemn fasts were given over to merriment, to the
_festa fatuorum_, or play of fools, in which such characters as Boy
Bishop, Lord of Misrule and various clowns or jesters made a scandalous
caricature of things ecclesiastical. Such plays, prepared largely by clerks
and choir boys, were repeatedly denounced by priest or bishop, but they
increased rapidly from the twelfth to the sixteenth century.

[Sidenote: SPREAD OF THE DRAMA]

By the latter date England seemed in danger of going spectacle-mad; and we
may understand the symptoms if we remember that the play was then almost
the only form of popular amusement; that it took the place of the modern
newspaper, novel, political election and ball game, all combined. The trade
guilds, having trained actors for the springtime Miracles, continued to
give other plays throughout the year. The servants of a nobleman, having
given a pageant to welcome the queen, went out through the country in
search of money or adventure, and presented the same spectacle wherever
they could find an audience. When the Renaissance came, reviving interest
in the classics, Latin plays were taken up eagerly and presented in
modified form by every important school or university in England. In this
way our first regular comedy, _Ralph Royster Doyster_ (written by
Nicholas Udall, Master of Eton, and acted by his schoolboys _cir_.
1552), was adapted from an old Latin comedy, the _Miles Gloriosus_ of
Plautus.

[Sidenote: BOY ACTORS]

The awakened interest in music had also its influences on the English
drama. The choir boys of a church were frequently called upon to furnish
music at a play, and from this it was but a step to furnish both the play
and the music. So great was the demand to hear these boys that certain
choir masters (those of St. Paul's and the Chapel Royal) obtained the right
to take any poor boy with a good voice and train him, ostensibly for the
service of the Church, but in reality to make a profitable actor out of
him. This dangerous practice was stimulated by the fact that the feminine
parts in all plays had to be taken by boys, the stage being then deemed an
unfit place for a woman. And it certainly was. If a boy "took to his
lines," his services were sold from one company to another, much as the
popular ball player is now sold, but with this difference, that the poor
boy had no voice or profit in the transaction. Some of these lads were
cruelly treated; all were in danger of moral degradation. The abuse was
finally suppressed by Parliament, but not until the choir-boy players were
rivals of the regular companies, in which Shakespeare and Ben Jonson played
their parts.

CLASSICAL AND ENGLISH DRAMA. At the time of Shakespeare's birth two types
of plays were represented in England. The classic drama, modeled upon Greek
or Roman plays, was constructed according to the dramatic "unities," which
Aristotle foreshadowed in his _Treatise on Poetry_. According to this
authority, every play must be concerned with a "single, important and
complete event"; in other words, it must have "unity of action." A second
rule, relating to "unity of time," required that the events represented in
a play must all occur within a single day. A third provided that the action
should take place in the same locality, and this was known as the "unity of
place." [Footnote: The Roman philosopher and dramatist Seneca (d. 65 A.D.)
is supposed to have established this rule. The influence of Aristotle on
the "unities" is a matter of dispute.] Other rules of classic drama
required that tragedy and comedy should not occur in the same play, and
that battles, murders and all such violent affairs should never be
represented on the stage but be announced at the proper time by a
messenger.

[Sidenote: THE NATIVE DRAMA]

The native plays ignored these classic unities. The public demanded
chronicle plays, for example, in which the action must cover years of time,
and jump from court to battlefield in following the hero. Tragedy and
comedy, instead of being separated, were represented as meeting at every
crossroad or entering the church door side by side. So the most solemn
Miracles were scandalized by humorous Interludes, and into the most tragic
of Shakespeare's scenes entered the fool and the jester. A Greek playwright
might object to brutalizing scenes before a cultured audience, but the
crowds who came to an Elizabethan play were of a temper to enjoy a Mohawk
scalp dance. They were accustomed to violent scenes and sensations; they
had witnessed the rack and gibbet in constant operation; they were familiar
with the sight of human heads decorating the posts of London Bridge or
carried about on the pikes of soldiers. After witnessing such horrors free
of cost, they would follow their queen and pay their money to see a chained
bear torn to pieces by ferocious bulldogs. Then they would go to a play,
and throw stones or dead cats at the actors if their tastes were not
gratified.

To please such crowds no stage action could possibly be too rough; hence
the riotousness of the early theaters, which for safety were placed outside
the city limits; hence also the blood and thunder of Shakespeare's
_Adronicus_ and the atrocities represented in the plays of Kyd and
Marlowe.

[Sidenote: THE TWO SCHOOLS]

Following such different ideals, two schools of playwrights appeared in
England. One school, the University Wits, to whom we owe our first real
tragedy, _Gorboduc_, [Footnote: This play, called also _Ferrex and
Porrex_, was written by Sackville and Norton, and played in 1562, only
two years before Shakespeare's birth. It related how Gorboduc divided his
British kingdom between his two sons, who quarreled and threw the whole
country into rebellion--a story much like that used by Shakespeare in
_King Lear_. The violent parts of this first tragedy were not
represented on the stage but were announced by a messenger. At the end of
each act a "chorus" summed up the situation, as in classic tragedy.
_Gorboduc_ differed from all earlier plays in that it was divided into
acts and scenes, and was written in blank verse. It is generally regarded
as the first in time of the Elizabethan dramas. A few comedies divided into
acts and scenes were written before _Gorboduc_, but not in the blank
verse with which we associate an Elizabethan play.] aimed to make the
English drama like that of Greece and Rome. The other, or native, school
aimed at a play which should represent life, or please the crowd, without
regard to any rules ancient or modern. The best Elizabethan drama was a
combination of classic and native elements, with the latter predominating.

SHAKESPEARE'S PREDECESSORS. In a general way, all unknown men who for three
centuries had been producing miracle plays, moralities, interludes, masques
and pageants were Shakespeare's predecessors; but we refer here to a small
group of playwrights who rapidly developed what is now called the
Elizabethan drama. The time was the last quarter of the sixteenth century.

By that time England was as excited over the stage as a modern community
over the "movies." Plays were given on every important occasion by choir
boys, by noblemen's servants, by court players governed by the Master of
Revels, by grammar schools and universities, by trade guilds in every shire
of England. Actors were everywhere in training, and audiences gathered as
to a bull-baiting whenever a new spectacle was presented. Then came the
awakening of the national consciousness, the sense of English pride and
power after the defeat of the Armada, and this new national spirit found
expression in hundreds of chronicle plays representing the past glories of
Britain. [Footnote: Over two hundred chronicle plays, representing almost
every important character in English history, appeared within a few years.
Shakespeare wrote thirteen plays founded on English history, and three on
the history of other countries.]

It was at this "psychological moment," when English patriotism was aroused
and London was as the heart of England, that a group of young
actors--Greene, Lyly, Peele, Dekker, Nash, Kyd, Marlowe, and others of less
degree--seized upon the crude popular drama, enlarged it to meet the needs
of the time, and within a single generation made it such a brilliant
reflection of national thought and feeling as no other age has thus far
produced.

MARLOWE. The best of these early playwrights, each of whom contributed some
element of value, was Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), who is sometimes
called the father of the Elizabethan drama. He appeared in London sometime
before 1587, when his first drama _Tamburlaine_ took the city by
storm. The prologue of this drama is at once a criticism and a promise:

From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
Threatening the world with high-astounding terms,
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.

The "jigging" refers to the doggerel verse of the earlier drama, and
"clownage" to the crude horseplay intended to amuse the crowd. For the
doggerel is substituted blank verse, "Marlowe's mighty line" as it has ever
since been called, since he was the first to use it with power; and for the
"clownage" he promises a play of human interest revolving around a man
whose sole ambition is for world power,--such ambition as stirred the
English nation when it called halt to the encroachments of Spain, and
announced that henceforth it must be reckoned with in the councils of the
Continent. Though _Tamburlaine_ is largely rant and bombast, there is
something in it which fascinates us like the sight of a wild bull on a
rampage; for such was Timur, the hero of the first play to which we
confidently give the name Elizabethan. In the latter part of the play the
action grows more intense; there is a sense of tragedy, of impending doom,
in the vain attempt of the hero to oppose fate. He can conquer a world but
not his own griefs; he ends his triumphant career with a pathetic admission
of failure: "And Tamburlaine, the Scourge of God, must die."

[Sidenote: MARLOWE'S DRAMAS]

The succeeding plays of Marlowe are all built on the same model; that is,
they are one-man plays, and the man is dominated by a passion for power.
_Doctor Faustus_, the most poetical of Marlowe's works, is a play
representing a scholar who hungers for more knowledge, especially the
knowledge of magic. In order to obtain it he makes a bargain with the
devil, selling his soul for twenty-four years of unlimited power and
pleasure. [Footnote: The story is the same as that of Goethe's
_Faust_. It was a favorite story, or rather collection of stories, of
the Middle Ages, and was first printed as the _History of Johann
Faust_ in Frankfort, in 1587. Marlowe's play was written, probably, in
the same year.] _The Jew of Malta_ deals with the lust for such power
as wealth gives, and the hero is the money-lender Barabas, a monster of
avarice and hate, who probably suggested to Shakespeare the character of
Shylock in _The Merchant of Venice_. The last play written by Marlowe
was _Edward II_, which dealt with a man who might have been powerful,
since he was a king, but who furnished a terrible example of weakness and
petty tyranny that ended miserably in a dungeon.

After writing these four plays with their extraordinary promise, Marlowe,
who led a wretched life, was stabbed in a tavern brawl. The splendid work
which he only began (for he died under thirty years of age) was immediately
taken up by the greatest of all dramatists, Shakespeare.

* * * * *

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616)

"The name of Shakespeare is the greatest in all literature. No man
ever came near to him in the creative power of the mind; no man
ever had such strength and such variety of imagination." (Hallam)

"Shakespeare's mind is the horizon beyond which, at present, we do
not see." (Emerson)

"I do not believe that any book or person or event in my life ever
made so great an impression on me as the plays of Shakespeare. They
appear to be the work of some heavenly genius." (Goethe)

Shakespeare's name has become a signal for enthusiasm. The tributes quoted
above are doubtless extravagant, but they were written by men of mark in
three different countries, and they serve to indicate the tremendous
impression which Shakespeare has left upon the world. He wrote in his day
some thirty-seven plays and a few poems; since then as many hundred volumes
have been written in praise of his accomplishment. He died three centuries
ago, without caring enough for his own work to print it. At the present
time unnumbered critics, historians, scholars, are still explaining the
mind and the art displayed in that same neglected work. Most of these
eulogists begin or end their volumes with the remark that Shakespeare is so
great as to be above praise or criticism. As Taine writes, before plunging
into his own analysis, "Lofty words, eulogies are all used in vain;
Shakespeare needs not praise but comprehension merely."

LIFE. It is probably because so very little is known about
Shakespeare that so many bulky biographies have been written of
him. Not a solitary letter of his is known to exist; not a play
comes down to us as he wrote it. A few documents written by other
men, and sometimes ending in a sprawling signature by Shakespeare,
which looks as if made by a hand accustomed to almost any labor
except that of the pen,--these are all we have to build upon. One
record, in dribbling Latin, relates to the christening of
"Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakspere"; a second, unreliable as a
village gossip, tells an anecdote of the same person's boyhood; a
third refers to Shakespeare as "one of his Majesty's poor players";
a fourth records the burial of the poet's son Hamnet; a fifth
speaks of "Willi. Shakspere, gentleman"; a sixth is a bit of
wretched doggerel inscribed on the poet's tombstone; a seventh
tells us that in 1622, only six years after the poet's death, the
public had so little regard for his art that the council of his
native Stratford bribed his old company of players to go away from
the town without giving a performance.

It is from such dry and doubtful records that we must construct a
biography, supplementing the meager facts by liberal use of our
imagination.

[Sidenote: EARLY DAYS]

In the beautiful Warwickshire village of Stratford our poet was
born, probably in the month of April, in 1564. His mother, Mary
Arden, was a farmer's daughter; his father was a butcher and small
tradesman, who at one time held the office of high bailiff of the
village. There was a small grammar school in Stratford, and
Shakespeare may have attended it for a few years. When he was about
fourteen years old his father, who was often in lawsuits, was
imprisoned for debt, and the boy probably left school and went to
work. At eighteen he married Anne Hathaway, a peasant's daughter
eight years older than himself; at twenty-three, with his father
still in debt and his own family of three children to provide for,
Shakespeare took the footpath that led to the world beyond his
native village. [Footnote: Such is the prevalent opinion of
Shakespeare's early days; but we are dealing here with surmises,
not with established facts. There are scholars who allege that
Shakespeare's poverty is a myth; that his father was prosperous to
the end of his days; that he probably took the full course in Latin
and Greek at the Stratford school. Almost everything connected with
the poet's youth is still a matter of dispute.]

[Sidenote: IN LONDON]

From Stratford he went to London, from solitude to crowds, from
beautiful rural scenes to dirty streets, from natural country
people to seekers after the bubble of fame or fortune. Why he went
is largely a matter of speculation. That he was looking for work;
that he followed a company of actors, as a boy follows a circus;
that he was driven out of Stratford after poaching on the game
preserves of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom he ridiculed in the plays of
_Henry VI_ and _Merry Wives_,--these and other theories
are still debated. The most probable explanation of his departure
is that the stage lured him away, as the printing press called the
young Franklin from whatever else he undertook; for he seems to
have headed straight for the theater, and to have found his place
not by chance or calculation but by unerring instinct. England was
then, as we have noted, in danger of going stage mad, and
Shakespeare appeared to put method into the madness.

[Sidenote: ACTOR AND PLAYWRIGHT]

Beginning, undoubtedly, as an actor of small parts, he soon learned
the tricks of the stage and the humors of his audience. His first
dramatic work was to revise old plays, giving them some new twist
or setting to please the fickle public. Then he worked with other
playwrights, with Lyly and Peele perhaps, and the horrors of his
_Titus Andronicus_ are sufficient evidence of his
collaboration with Marlowe. Finally he walked alone, having learned
his steps, and _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Midsummer Nights
Dream_ announced that a great poet and dramatist had suddenly
appeared in England.

[Illustration: THE LIBRARY, STRATFORD GRAMMAR SCHOOL ATTENDED BY
SHAKESPEARE]

[Sidenote: PERIOD OF GLOOM]

This experimental period of Shakespeare's life in London was
apparently a time of health, of joyousness, of enthusiasm which
comes with the successful use of one's powers. It was followed by a
period of gloom and sorrow, to which something of bitterness was
added. What occasioned the change is again a matter of speculation.
The first conjecture is that Shakespeare was a man to whom the low
ideals of the Elizabethan stage were intolerable, and this opinion
is strengthened after reading certain of Shakespeare's sonnets,
which reflect a loathing for the theaters and the mannerless crowds
that filled them. Another conjectural cause of his gloom was the
fate of certain noblemen with whom he was apparently on terms of
friendship, to whom he dedicated his poems, and from whom he
received substantial gifts of money. Of these powerful friends, the
Earl of Essex was beheaded for treason, Pembroke was banished, and
Southampton had gone to that grave of so many high hopes, the Tower
of London. Shakespeare may have shared the sorrow of these men, as
once he had shared their joy, and there are critics who assume that
he was personally implicated in the crazy attempt of Essex at
rebellion.

Whatever the cause of his grief, Shakespeare shows in his works
that he no longer looks on the world with the clear eyes of youth.
The great tragedies of this period, _Lear_, _Macbeth_,
_Hamlet_, _Othello_ and _Casar_, all portray man not
as a being of purpose and high destiny, but as the sport of chance,
the helpless victim who cries out, as in _Henry IV_, for a
sight of the Book of Fate, wherein is shown

how chances mock,
And changes fill the cup of alteration
With divers liquors! O, if this were seen,
The happiest youth, viewing his progress through,
What perils past, what crosses to ensue,
Would shut the book, and sit him down and die.

[Sidenote: RETURN TO STRATFORD]

For such a terrible mood London offered no remedy. For a time
Shakespeare seems to have gloried in the city; then he wearied of
it, grew disgusted with the stage, and finally, after some
twenty-four years (_cir_. 1587-1611), sold his interest in the
theaters, shook the dust of London from his feet, and followed his
heart back to Stratford. There he adopted the ways of a country
gentleman, and there peace and serenity returned to him. He wrote
comparatively little after his retirement; but the few plays of
this last period, such as _Cymbeline_, _Winter's Tale_
and _The Tempest_, are the mellowest of all his works.

[Sidenote: SHAKESPEARE THE MAN]

After a brief period of leisure, Shakespeare died at his prime in
1616, and was buried in the parish church of Stratford. Of his
great works, now the admiration of the world, he thought so little
that he never collected or printed them. From these works many
attempts are made to determine the poet's character, beliefs,
philosophy,--a difficult matter, since the works portray many types
of character and philosophy equally well. The testimony of a few
contemporaries is more to the point, and from these we hear that
our poet was "very good company," "of such civil demeanor," "of
such happy industry," "of such excellent fancy and brave notions,"
that he won in a somewhat brutal age the characteristic title of
"the gentle Shakespeare."

THE DRAMAS OF SHAKESPEARE. In Shakespeare's day playwrights were producing
various types of drama: the chronicle play, representing the glories of
English history; the domestic drama, portraying homely scenes and common
people; the court comedy (called also Lylian comedy, after the dramatist
who developed it), abounding in wit and repartee for the delight of the
upper classes; the melodrama, made up of sensational elements thrown
together without much plot; the tragedy of blood, centering in one
character who struggles amidst woes and horrors; romantic comedy and
romantic tragedy, in which men and women were more or less idealized, and
in which the elements of love, poetry, romance, youthful imagination and
enthusiasm predominated.

[Illustration: ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE]

It is interesting to note that Shakespeare essayed all these types--the
chronicle play in _Henry IV_, the domestic drama in _Merry
Wives_, the court comedy in _Loves Labor's Lost_, the melodrama in
_Richard III_, the tragedy of blood in _King Lear_, romantic
tragedy in _Romeo and Juliet_, romantic comedy in _As You Like
It_--and that in each he showed such a mastery as to raise him far above
all his contemporaries.

[Sidenote: EARLY DRAMAS]

In his experimental period of work (_cir_. 1590-1595) Shakespeare
began by revising old plays in conjunction with other actors. _Henry
VI_ is supposed to be an example of such tinkering work. The first part
of this play (performed by Shakespeare's company in 1592) was in all
probability an older work made over by Shakespeare and some unknown
dramatist. From the fact that Joan of Arc appears in the play in two
entirely different characters, and is even made to do battle at Rouen
several years after her death, it is almost certain that _Henry VI_ in
its present form was composed at different times and by different authors.

[Illustration: THE MAIN ROOM, ANNE HATHAWAY'S COTTAGE]

_Love's Labor's Lost_ is an example of the poet's first independent
work. In this play such characters as Holofernes the schoolmaster, Costard
the clown and Adriano the fantastic Spaniard are all plainly of the "stock"
variety; various rimes and meters are used experimentally; blank verse is
not mastered; and some of the songs, such as "On a Day," are more or less
artificial. Other plays of this early experimental period are _Two
Gentlemen of Verona_ and _Richard III_, the latter of which shows
the influence and, possibly, the collaboration of Marlowe.

[Sidenote: SECOND PERIOD]

In the second period (_cir_. 1595-1600) Shakespeare constructed his
plots with better skill, showed a greater mastery of blank verse, created
some original characters, and especially did he give free rein to his
romantic imagination. All doubt and experiment vanished in the confident
enthusiasm of this period, as if Shakespeare felt within himself the coming
of the sunrise in _Romeo and Juliet_:

Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops.

Though some of his later plays are more carefully finished, in none of them
are we so completely under the sway of poetry and romance as in these early
works, written when Shakespeare first felt the thrill of mastery in his
art.

In _Midsummer Nights Dream_, for example, the practical affairs of
life seem to smother its poetic dreams; but note how the dream abides with
us after the play is over. The spell of the enchanted forest is broken when
the crowd invades its solitude; the witchery of moonlight fades into the
light of common day; and then comes Theseus with his dogs to drive not the
foxes but the fairies out of the landscape. As Chesterton points out, this
masterful man, who has seen no fairies, proceeds to arrange matters in a
practical way, with a wedding, a feast and a pantomime, as if these were
the chief things of life. So, he thinks, the drama is ended; but after he
and his noisy followers have departed to slumber, lo! enter once more Puck,
Oberon, Titania and the whole train of fairies, to repeople the ancient
world and dance to the music of Mendelssohn:

Hand in hand, with fairy grace,
While we sing, and bless this place.

So in _The Merchant of Venice_ with its tragic figure of Shylock, who
is hurried off the stage to make place for a final scene of love, moonlight
and music; so in every other play of this period, the poetic dream of life
triumphs over its practical realities.

[Sidenote: THIRD PERIOD]

During the third period, of maturity of power (_cir._ 1600-1610),
Shakespeare was overshadowed by some personal grief or disappointment. He
wrote his "farewell to mirth" in _Twelfth Night_, and seems to have
reflected his own perturbed state in the lines which he attributes to
Achilles in _Troilus and Cressida_:

My mind is troubled, like a fountain stirr'd,
And I myself see not the bottom of it.

His great tragedies belong to this period, tragedies which reveal increased
dramatic power in Shakespeare, but also his loss of hope, his horrible
conviction that man is not a free being but a puppet blown about by every
wind of fate or circumstance. In _Hamlet_ great purposes wait upon a
feeble will, and the strongest purpose may be either wrecked or consummated
by a trifle. The whole conception of humanity in this play suggests a
clock, of which, if but one small wheel is touched, all the rest are thrown
into confusion. In _Macbeth_ a man of courage and vaulting ambition
turns coward or traitor at the appearance of a ghost, at the gibber of
witches, at the whisper of conscience, at the taunts of his wife. In
_King Lear_ a monarch of high disposition drags himself and others
down to destruction, not at the stern command of fate, but at the mere
suggestion of foolishness. In _Othello_ love, faith, duty, the
fidelity of a brave man, the loyalty of a pure woman,--all are blasted,
wrecked, dishonored by a mere breath of suspicion blown by a villain.

[Sidenote: LAST DRAMAS]

In his final period, of leisurely experiment (_cir._ 1610-1616),
Shakespeare seems to have recovered in Stratford the cheerfulness that he
had lost in London. He did little work during this period, but that little
is of rare charm and sweetness. He no longer portrayed human life as a
comedy of errors or a tragedy of weakness but as a glowing romance, as if
the mellow autumn of his own life had tinged all the world with its own
golden hues. With the exception of _As You Like It_ (written in the
second period), in which brotherhood is pictured as the end of life, and
love as its unfailing guide, it is doubtful if any of the earlier plays
leaves such a wholesome impression as _The Winter's Tale_ or _The
Tempest_, which were probably the last of the poet's works.

Following is a list of Shakespeare's thirty-four plays (or thirty-seven,
counting the different parts of _Henry IV_ and _Henry VI_)
arranged according to the periods in which they were probably written. The
dates are approximate, not exact, and the chronological order is open to
question:

FIRST PERIOD, EARLY EXPERIMENT (1590-1595). _Titus Andronicus_,
_Henry VI_, _Love's Labor's Lost_, _Comedy of Errors_,
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, _Richard III_, _Richard II_,
_King John._

SECOND PERIOD, DEVELOPMENT (1595-1600). _Romeo and Juliet_,
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Henry IV_,
_Henry V_, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Much Ado About
Nothing_, _As You Like It._

THIRD PERIOD, MATURITY AND TROUBLE (1600-1610). _Twelfth Night_,
_Taming of the Shrew_, _Julius Caesar_, _Hamlet_, _Troilus
and Cressida_, _All's Well that Ends Well_, _Measure for
Measure_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, _Macbeth_, _Antony
and Cleopatra_, _Timon of Athens._

FOURTH PERIOD, LATER EXPERIMENT (1610-1616). _Coriolanus_,
_Pericles_, _Cymbeline_, _The Winter's Tale_, _The
Tempest_, _Henry VIII_ (left unfinished, completed probably by
Fletcher).

[Sidenote: TRAGEDY AND COMEDY]

The most convenient arrangement of these plays appears in the First Folio
(1623) [Footnote: This was the first edition of Shakespeare's plays. It was
prepared seven years after the poet's death by two of his fellow actors,
Heminge and Condell. It contained all the plays now attributed to
Shakespeare with the exception of _Pericles_.] where they are grouped
in three classes called tragedies, comedies and historical plays. The
tragedy is a drama in which the characters are the victims of unhappy
passions, or are involved in desperate circumstances. The style is grave
and dignified, the movement stately; the ending is disastrous to
individuals, but illustrates the triumph of a moral principle. These rules
of true tragedy are repeatedly set aside by Shakespeare, who introduces
elements of buffoonery, and who contrives an ending that may stand for the
triumph of a principle but that is quite likely to be the result of
accident or madness. His best tragedies are _Macbeth_, _Romeo and
Juliet_, _Hamlet_, _King Lear_ and _Othello_.

Comedy is a type of drama in which the elements of fun and humor
predominate. The style is gay; the action abounds in unexpected incidents;
the ending brings ridicule or punishment to the villains in the plot, and
satisfaction to all worthy characters. Among the best of Shakespeare's
comedies, in which he is apt to introduce serious or tragic elements, are
_As You Like It_, _Merchant of Venice_, _Midsummer Night's
Dream_, _The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_.

[Illustration: CAWDOR CASTLE, SCOTLAND, ASSOCIATED WITH MACBETH]

Strictly speaking there are only two dramatic types, all others, such as
farce, melodrama, tragi-comedy, lyric drama, or opera, and chronicle play,
being modifications of comedy or tragedy. The historical play, to which
Elizabethans were devoted, aimed to present great scenes or characters from
a past age, and were generally made up of both tragic and comic elements.
The best of Shakespeare's historical plays are _Julius Casar_,
_Henry IV_, _Henry V_, _Richard III_ and _Coriolanus_.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

There is no better way to feel the power of Shakespeare than to read in
succession three different types of plays, such as the comedy of _As You
Like It_, the tragedy of _Macbeth_ and the historical play of
_Julius Casar_. Another excellent trio is _The Merchant of
Venice_, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Henry IV_; and the reading of
these typical plays might well be concluded with _The Tempest_, which
was probably Shakespeare's last word to his Elizabethan audience.

THE QUALITY OF SHAKESPEARE. As the thousand details of a Gothic cathedral
receive character and meaning from its towering spire, so all the works of
Shakespeare are dominated by his imagination. That imagination of his was
both sympathetic and creative. It was sympathetic in that it understood
without conscious effort all kinds of men, from clowns to kings, and all
human emotions that lie between the extremes of joy and sorrow; it was
creative in that, from any given emotion or motive, it could form a human
character who should be completely governed by that motive. Ambition in
Macbeth, pride in Coriolanus, wit in Mercutio, broad humor in Falstaff,
indecision in Hamlet, pure fancy in Ariel, brutality in Richard, a
passionate love in Juliet, a merry love in Rosalind, an ideal love in
Perdita,--such characters reveal Shakespeare's power to create living men
and women from a single motive or emotion.

Or take a single play, _Othello_, and disregarding all minor
characters, fix attention on the pure devotion of Desdemona, the jealousy
of Othello, the villainy of Iago. The genius that in a single hour can make
us understand these contrasting characters as if we had met them in the
flesh, and make our hearts ache as we enter into their joy, their anguish,
their dishonor, is beyond all ordinary standards of measurement. And
_Othello_ must be multiplied many times before we reach the limit of
Shakespeare's creative imagination. He is like the genii of the _Arabian
Nights_, who produce new marvels while we wonder at the old.

Such an overpowering imagination must have created wildly, fancifully, had
it not been guided by other qualities: by an observation almost as keen as
that of Chaucer, and by the saving grace of humor. We need only mention the
latter qualities, for if the reader will examine any great play of
Shakespeare, he will surely find them in evidence: the observation keeping
the characters of the poet's imagination true to the world of men and
women, and the humor preventing some scene of terror or despair from
overwhelming us by its terrible reality.

[Sidenote: HIS FAULTS]

In view of these and other qualities it has become almost a fashion to
speak of the "perfection" of Shakespeare's art; but in truth no word could
be more out of place in such a connection. As Ben Jonson wrote in his
_Timber_:

"I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to
Shakespeare that in his writing, whatever he penned, he never
blotted out a line. My answer hath been, 'Would he had blotted a
thousand.'"

Even in his best work Shakespeare has more faults than any other poet of
England. He is in turn careless, extravagant, profuse, tedious,
sensational; his wit grows stale or coarse; his patriotism turns to
bombast; he mars even such pathetic scenes as the burial of Ophelia by
buffoonery and brawling; and all to please a public that was given to
bull-baiting.

These certainly are imperfections; yet the astonishing thing is that they
pass almost unnoticed in Shakespeare. He reflected his age, the evil and
the good of it, just as it appeared to him; and the splendor of his
representation is such that even his faults have their proper place, like
shadows in a sunlit landscape.

[Sidenote: HIS VIEW OF LIFE]

Of Shakespeare's philosophy we may say that it reflected equally well the
views of his hearers and of the hundred characters whom he created for
their pleasure. Of his personal views it is impossible to say more than
this, with truth: that he seems to have been in full sympathy with the
older writers whose stories he used as the sources of his drama. [Footnote:
The chief sources of Shakespeare's plays are: (1) Older plays, from which
he made half of his dramas, such as _Richard III_, _Hamlet_,
_King John_. (2) Holinshed's _Chronicles_, from which he obtained
material for his English historical plays. (3) Plutarch's _Lives_,
translated by North, which furnished him material for _Caesar_,
_Coriolanus_, _Antony and Cleopatra_. (4) French, Italian and
Spanish romances, in translations, from which he obtained the stories of
_The Merchant of Venice_, _Othello_, _Twelfth Night_ and
_As You Like It_.] Now these stories commonly reflected three things
besides the main narrative: a problem, its solution, and the consequent
moral or lesson. The problem was a form of evil; its solution depended on
goodness in some form; the moral was that goodness triumphs finally and
inevitably over evil.

Many such stories were cherished by the Elizabethans, the old tale of
"Gammelyn" for example (from which came _As You Like It_); and just as
in our own day popular novels are dramatized, so three centuries ago
audiences demanded to see familiar stories in vigorous action. That is why
Shakespeare held to the old tales, and pleased his audience, instead of
inventing new plots. But however much he changed the characters or the
action of the story, he remained always true to the old moral:

That goodness is the rule of life,
And its glory and its triumph.

Shakespeare's women are his finest characters, and he often portrays the
love of a noble woman as triumphing over the sin or weakness of men. He has
little regard for abnormal or degenerate types, such as appear in the later
Elizabethan drama; he prefers vigorous men and pure women, precisely as the
old story-tellers did; and if Richard or some other villain overruns his
stage for an hour, such men are finally overwhelmed by the very evil which
they had planned for others. If they drag the innocent down to a common
destruction, these pure characters never seem to us to perish; they live
forever in our thought as the true emblems of humanity.

[Sidenote: MORAL EMPHASIS]

It was Charles Lamb who referred to a copy of Shakespeare's plays as "this
manly book." The expression is a good one, and epitomizes the judgment of a
world which has found that, though Shakespeare introduces evil or vulgar
elements into his plays, his emphasis is always upon the right man and the
right action. This may seem a trite thing to say in praise of a great
genius; but when you reflect that Shakespeare is read throughout the
civilized world, the simple fact that the splendor of his poetry is
balanced by the rightness of his message becomes significant and
impressive. It speaks not only for Shakespeare but for the moral quality of
the multitudes who acknowledge his mastery. Wherever his plays are read, on
land or sea, in the crowded cities of men or the far silent places of the
earth, there the solitary man finds himself face to face with the
unchanging ideals of his race, with honor, duty, courtesy, and the moral
imperative,

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

* * * * *

THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMA AFTER SHAKESPEARE

The drama began to decline during Shakespeare's lifetime. Even before his
retirement to Stratford other popular dramatists appeared who catered to a
vulgar taste by introducing more sensational elements into the stage
spectacle. In consequence the drama degenerated so rapidly that in 1642,
only twenty-six years after the master dramatist had passed away,
Parliament closed the theaters as evil and degrading places. This closing
is charged to the zeal of the Puritans, who were rapidly rising into power,
and the charge is probably well founded. So also was the Puritan zeal. One
who was compelled to read the plays of the period, to say nothing of
witnessing them, must thank these stern old Roundheads for their insistence
on public decency and morality. In the drama of all ages there seems to be
a terrible fatality which turns the stage first to levity, then to
wickedness, and which sooner or later calls for reformation.

[Illustration: FRANCIS BEAUMONT]

Among those who played their parts in the rise and fall of the drama, the
chief names are Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Middleton, Webster, Heywood,
Dekker, Massinger, Ford and Shirley. Concerning the work of these
dramatists there is wide diversity of opinion. Lamb regards them, Beaumont
and Fletcher especially, as "an inferior sort of Sidneys and Shakespeares."
Landor writes of them poetically:

They stood around
The throne of Shakespeare, sturdy but unclean.

Lowell finds some small things to praise in a large collection of their
plays. Hazlitt regards them as "a race of giants, a common and noble brood,
of whom Shakespeare was simply the tallest." Dyce, who had an extraordinary
knowledge of all these dramatists, regards such praise as absurd, saying
that "Shakespeare is not only immeasurably superior to the dramatists of
his time, but is utterly unlike them in almost every respect."

[Illustration: JOHN FLETCHER
From the engraving by Philip Oudinet published 1811]

We shall not attempt to decide where such doctors disagree. It may not be
amiss, however, to record this personal opinion: that these playwrights
added little to the drama and still less to literature, and that it is
hardly worth while to search out their good passages amid a welter of
repulsive details. If they are to be read at all, the student will find
enough of their work for comparison with the Shakespearean drama in a book
of selections, such as Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poetry_
or Thayer's _The Best Elizabethan Plays_.

BEN JONSON (1573?-1637). The greatest figure among these dramatists was
Jonson,--"O rare Ben Jonson" as his epitaph describes him, "O rough Ben
Jonson" as he was known to the playwrights with whom he waged literary
warfare. His first notable play, _Every Man in His Humour_, satirizing
the fads or humors of London, was acted by Shakespeare's company, and
Shakespeare played one of the parts. Then Jonson fell out with his fellow
actors, and wrote _The Poetaster_ (acted by a rival company) to
ridicule them and their work. Shakespeare was silent, but the cudgels were
taken up by Marston and Dekker, the latter of whom wrote, among other and
better plays, _Satiromastix_, which was played by Shakespeare's
company as a counter attack on Jonson.

[Illustration: BEN JONSON]

The value of Jonson's plays is that they give us vivid pictures of
Elizabethan society, its speech, fashions, amusements, such as no other
dramatist has drawn. Shakespeare pictures men and women as they might be in
any age; but Jonson is content to picture the men and women of London as
they appeared superficially in the year 1600. His chief comedies, which
satirize the shams of his age, are: _Volpone, or the Fox_, a merciless
exposure of greed and avarice; _The Alchemist_, a study of quackery as
it was practiced in Elizabethan days; _Bartholomew Fair_, a riot of
folly; and _Epicoene, or the Silent Woman_, which would now be called
a roaring farce. His chief tragedies are _Sejanus_ and
_Catiline_.

In later life Jonson was appointed poet laureate, and wrote many masques,
such as the _Masque of Beauty_ and the unfinished _Sad Shepherd_.
These and a few lyrics, such as the "Triumph of Charis" and the song
beginning, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," are the pleasantest of
Jonson's works. At the end he abandoned the drama, as Shakespeare had done,
and lashed it as severely as any Puritan in the ode beginning, "Come leave
the loathed stage."

* * * * *

THE PROSE WRITERS

Unless one have antiquarian tastes, there is little in Elizabethan prose to
reward the reader. Strange to say, the most tedious part of it was written
by literary men in what was supposed to be a very fine style; while the
small part that still attracts us (such as Bacon's _Essays_ or
Hakluyt's _Voyages_) was mostly written by practical men with no
thought for literary effect.

This curious result came about in the following way. In the sixteenth
century poetry was old, but English prose was new; for in the two centuries
that had elapsed since Mandeville wrote his _Travels_, Malory's
_Morte d' Arthur_ (1475) and Ascham's _Scholemaster_ (1563) are
about the only two books that can be said to have a prose style. Then, just
as the Elizabethans were turning to literature, John Lyly appeared with his
_Euphues, or the Anatomy of Wit_ (1578), an alleged novel made up of
rambling conversations upon love, education, fashion,--everything that came
into the author's head. The style was involved, artificial, tortured; it
was loaded with conceits, antitheses and decorations:

"I perceive, Camilla, that be your cloth never so bad it will take
some colour, and your cause never so false it will bear some show
of probability; wherein you manifest the right nature of a woman,
who, having no way to win, thinketh to overcome with words.... Take
heed, Camilla, that seeking all the wood for a straight stick you
choose not at the last a crooked staff, or prescribing a good
counsel to others thou thyself follow the worst much like to Chius,
who selling the best wine to others drank himself of the lees."

[Sidenote: THE FAD OF EUPHUISM]

This "high fantastical" style, ever since called euphuistic, created a
sensation. The age was given over to extravagance and the artificial
elegance of _Euphues_ seemed to match the other fashions. Just as
Elizabethan men and women began to wear grotesque ruffs about their necks
as soon as they learned the art of starching from the Dutch, so now they
began to decorate their writing with the conceits of Lyly. [Footnote: Lyly
did not invent the fashion; he carried to an extreme a tendency towards
artificial writing which was prevalent in England and on the Continent. As
is often the case, it was the extreme of fashion that became fashionable.]
Only a year after _Euphues_ appeared, Spenser published _The
Shepherd's Calendar_, and his prose notes show how quickly the style,
like a bad habit, had taken possession of the literary world. Shakespeare
ridicules the fashion in the character of Holofernes, in _Love's Labor's
Lost_, yet he follows it as slavishly as the rest. He could write good
prose when he would, as is shown by a part of Hamlet's speech; but as a
rule he makes his characters speak as if the art of prose were like walking
a tight rope, which must be done with a balancing pole and some
contortions. The scholars who produced the translation of the Scriptures
known as the Authorized Version could certainly write well; yet if you
examine their Dedication, in which, uninfluenced by the noble sincerity of
the Bible's style, they were free to follow the fashion, you may find there
the two faults of Elizabethan prose; namely, the habit of servile flattery
and the sham of euphuism.

Among prose writers of the period the name that appears most frequently is
that of Philip Sidney (1554-1586). He wrote one of our first critical
essays, _An Apologie for Poetrie_ (cir. 1581), the spirit of which may
be judged from the following:

"Nowe therein of all sciences ... is our poet the monarch. For he
dooth not only show the way but giveth so sweete a prospect into
the way as will intice any man to enter into it. Nay, he dooth, as
if your journey should be through a faire vineyard, at the first
give you a cluster of grapes, that, full of that taste, you may
long to passe further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions,
which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the
memory with doubtfulnesse; but hee cometh to you with words set in
delightfull proportion, either accompanied with or prepared for the
well enchaunting skill of musicke; and with a tale, forsooth, he
cometh unto you,--with a tale which holdeth children from play and
old men from the chimney corner."

[Illustration: SIR PHILIP SIDNEY]

Sidney wrote also the pastoral romance _Arcadia_ which was famous in
its day, and in which the curious reader may find an occasional good
passage, such as the prayer to a heathen god, "O All-seeing Light,"--a
prayer that became historic and deeply pathetic when King Charles repeated
it, facing death on the scaffold. That was in 1649, more than half a
century after _Arcadia_ was written:

"O all-seeing Light, and eternal Life of all things, to whom
nothing is either so great that it may resist or so small that it
is contemned, look upon my miserie with thine eye of mercie, and
let thine infinite power vouchsafe to limite out some proportion of
deliverance unto me, as to thee shall seem most convenient. Let not
injurie, O Lord, triumphe over me, and let my faults by thy hands
be corrected, and make not mine unjuste enemie the minister of thy
justice. But yet, my God, if in thy wisdome this be the aptest
chastisement for my inexcusable follie; if this low bondage be
fittest for my over-hie desires; if the pride of my not-inough
humble hearte be thus to be broken, O Lord, I yeeld unto thy will,
and joyfully embrace what sorrow thou wilt have me suffer."

[Sidenote: THE KING JAMES BIBLE]

The finest example of the prose of the period is the King James or
Authorized Version of the Bible, which appeared in 1611. This translation
was so much influenced by the earlier work of Wyclif, Tyndale, and many
others, that its style cannot properly be called Elizabethan or Jacobean;
it is rather an epitome of English at its best in the two centuries between
Chaucer and Shakespeare. The forty-seven scholars who prepared this
translation aimed at a faithful rendering of the Book which, aside from its
spiritual teaching, contains some of the noblest examples of style in the
whole range of human literature: the elemental simplicity of the Books of
Moses, the glowing poetry of Job and the Psalms, the sublime imagery of
Isaiah, the exquisite tenderness of the Parables, the forged and tempered
argument of the Epistles, the gorgeous coloring of the Apocalypse. All
these elements entered in some degree into the translation of 1611, and the
result was a work of such beauty, strength and simplicity that it remained
a standard of English prose for more than three centuries. It has not only
been a model for our best writers; it has pervaded all the minor literature
of the nation, and profoundly influenced the thought and the expression of
the whole English-speaking world.

* * * * *

FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626)

"My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own country
_after some time is passed over_," said Bacon in his will. That
reference to the future meant, not that England might learn to forget and
forgive (for Bacon was not greatly troubled by his disgrace), but that she
might learn to appreciate his _Instauratio Magna_. In the same
document the philosopher left magnificent bequests for various purposes,
but when these were claimed by the beneficiaries it was learned that the
debts of the estate were three times the assets. This high-sounding will is
an epitome of Bacon's life and work.

LIFE. Bacon belongs with Sidney and Raleigh in that group of
Elizabethans who aimed to be men of affairs, politicians,
reformers, explorers, rather than writers of prose or poetry. He
was of noble birth, and from an early age was attached to
Elizabeth's court. There he expected rapid advancement, but the
queen and his uncle (Lord Burghley) were both a little suspicious
of the young man who, as he said, had "taken all knowledge for his
province."

Failing to advance by favor, Bacon studied law and entered
Parliament, where he rose rapidly to leadership. Ben Jonson writes
of him, in that not very reliable collection of opinions called
_Timber_:

"There happened in my time one noble speaker who was full
of gravity in his speaking.... No man ever spake more
neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less
emptiness, less idleness, in what he uttered.... The fear
of every man that heard him was lest he should make an
end."

[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON]

[Sidenote: HIS TRIUMPH]

When Elizabeth died, Bacon saw his way open. He offered his
services to the royal favorite, Buckingham, and was soon in the
good graces of King James. He was made Baron Verulam and Viscount
St. Albans; he married a rich wife; he rose rapidly from one
political honor to another, until at sixty he was Lord High
Chancellor of England. So his threefold ambition for position,
wealth and power was realized. It was while he held the highest
state office that he published his _Novum Organum_, which
established his reputation as "the first philosopher in Europe."
That was in 1620, the year when a handful of Pilgrims sailed away
unnoticed on one of the world's momentous voyages.

[Sidenote: HIS DISGRACE]

After four years of power Bacon, who had been engaged with
Buckingham in selling monopolies, and in other schemes to be rich
at the public expense, was brought to task by Parliament. He was
accused of receiving bribes, confessed his guilt (it is said to
shield the king and Buckingham, who had shared the booty), was
fined, imprisoned, banished from court, and forbidden to hold
public office again. All these punishments except the last were
remitted by King James, to whom Bacon had been a useful tool. His
last few years were spent in scientific study at Gorhambury, where
he lived proudly, keeping up the appearance of his former grandeur,
until his death in 1626.

Such a sketch seems a cold thing, but there is little of divine
fire or human warmth in Bacon to kindle one's enthusiasm. His
obituary might well be the final word of his essay "Of Wisdom for a
Man's Self":

"Whereas they have all their time sacrificed to themselves,
they become in the end sacrifices to the inconstancy of
fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to
have pinioned."

Ben Jonson had a different and, possibly, a more just opinion. In
the work from which we have quoted he says:

"My conceit of his person was never increased towards him
by his place or honours; but I have and do reverence him
for his greatness that was only proper to himself, in that
he seemed to me ever by his work one of the greatest men,
and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages.
In his adversity I ever prayed that God would give him
strength; for greatness he could not want."

WORKS OF BACON. The _Essays_ of Bacon are so highly esteemed that the
critic Hallam declares it would be "derogatory to a man of the slightest
claim to polite letters" to be unacquainted with them. His first venture
was a tiny volume called _Essays, Religious Meditations, Places of
Persuasion and Dissuasion_ (1597). This was modeled upon a French work
by Montaigne (_Essais_, 1580) and was considered of small consequence
by the author. As time went on, and his ambitious works were overlooked in
favor of his sketches, he paid more attention to the latter, revising and
enlarging his work until the final edition of fifty-eight essays appeared
in 1625. Then it was that Bacon wrote, "I do now publish my Essays, which
of all my works have been most current; for that, as it seems, they come
home to men's business and bosoms."

[Sidenote: QUALITY OF THE ESSAYS]

The spirit of these works may be judged by the essay "Of Friendship." This
promises well, for near the beginning we read, "A crowd is not company, and
faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talking is but a tinkling cymbal
where there is no love." Excellent! As we read on, however, we find nothing
of the love that beareth all things for a friend's sake. We are not even
encouraged to be friendly, but rather to cultivate the friendship of other
men for the following advantages: that a friend is useful in saving us from
solitude; that he may increase our joy or diminish our trouble; that he
gives us good counsel; that he can finish our work or take care of our
children, if need be; and finally, that he can spare our modesty while
trumpeting our virtues:

"How many things are there which a man cannot, with any face or
comeliness, say or do himself! A man can scarce allege his own
merits with modesty, much less extol them; a man cannot sometimes
brook to supplicate or beg; and a number of the like. But all these
things are graceful in a friend's mouth, which are blushing in a
man's own."

In old Arabic manuscripts one frequently finds a record having the
appearance of truth; but at the very end, in parenthesis, one reads, "This
is all a lie," or "This was my thought when I was sick," or some other
enlightening climax. Bacon's essay "Of Friendship" might be more in accord
with the verities if it had a final note to the effect that the man who
cultivates friendship in the Baconian way will never have or deserve a
friend in the world.

So with many other Baconian essays: with "Love" for example, in which we
are told that it is impossible for a man to love and be wise; or with
"Negotiations," which informs us that, unless a man intends to use his
letter to justify himself (lo! the politician), it is better to deal by
speech than by writing; for a man can "disavow or expound" his speech, but
his written word may be used against him.

[Sidenote: BACON'S VIEW OF LIFE]

To some men, to most men, life offers a problem to be solved by standards
that are eternally right; to others life is a game, the object is to win,
and the rules may be manipulated to one's own advantage. Bacon's moral
philosophy was that of the gamester; his leading motive was self-interest;
so when he wrote of love or friendship or any other noble sentiment he was
dealing with matters of which he had no knowledge. The best he could offer
was a "counsel of prudence," and many will sympathize with John Wesley, who
declared that worldly prudence is a quality from which an honest man should
pray God to be delivered.

[Sidenote: WHAT TO READ]

It is only when Bacon deals with practical matters, leaving the high places
of life, where he is a stranger, to write of "Discourse" or "Gardens" or
"Seeming Wise" that his essays begin to strike home by their vigor and
vitality. Though seldom profound or sympathetic, they are notable for their
keen observation and shrewd judgment of the ambitious world in which the
author himself lived. Among those that are best worth reading are
"Studies," "Wisdom for a Man's Self," "Riches," "Great Place," "Atheism,"
and "Travel."

The style of these essays is in refreshing contrast to most Elizabethan
prose, to the sonorous periods of Hooker, to the ramblings of Sidney, to
the conceits of Lyly and Shakespeare. The sentences are mostly short,
clear, simple; and so much meaning is crystallized in them that they
overshadow even the "Poor Richard" maxims of Franklin, the man who had a
genius for packing worldly wisdom into a convenient nutshell.

[Sidenote: AMBITIOUS WORKS]

Other works of Bacon are seldom read, and may be passed over lightly. We
mention only, as indicative of his wide range, his _History of Henry
VII_, his Utopian romance _The New Atlantis_, his Advancement of
Learning and his _Novum Organum_. The last two works, one in English,
the other in Latin, were parts of the _Instauratio Magna_, or _The
Great Institution of True Philosophy_, a colossal work which Bacon did
not finish, which he never even outlined very clearly.

The aim of the _Instauratio_ was, first, to sweep away ancient
philosophy and the classic education of the universities; and second, to
substitute a scheme of scientific study to the end of discovering and
utilizing the powers of nature. It gave Bacon his reputation (in Germany
especially) of a great philosopher and scientist, and it is true that his
vision of vast discoveries has influenced the thought of the world; but to
read any part of his great work is to meet a mind that seems ingenious
rather than philosophical, and fanciful rather than scientific. He had what
his learned contemporary Peter Heylyn termed "a chymical brain," a brain
that was forever busy with new theories; and the leading theory was that
some lucky man would discover a key or philosopher's stone or magic
_sesame_ that must straightway unlock all the secrets of nature.

Meanwhile the real scientists of his age were discovering secrets in the
only sure way, of hard, self-denying work. Gilbert was studying magnetism,
Harvey discovering the circulation of the blood, Kepler determining the
laws that govern the planets' motions, Napier inventing logarithms, and
Galileo standing in ecstasy beneath the first telescope ever pointed at the
stars of heaven.

[Sidenote: HIS VAST PLANS]

Of the work of these scientific heroes Bacon had little knowledge, and for
their plodding methods he had no sympathy. He was Viscount, Lord
Chancellor, "high-browed Verulam," and his heaven-scaling
_Instauratio_ which, as he said, was "for the glory of the Creator and
for the relief of man's estate" must have something stupendous,
Elizabethan, about it, like the victory over the Armada. In his plans there
was always an impression of vastness; his miscellaneous works were like the
strange maps that geographers made when the wonders of a new world opened
upon their vision. Though he never made an important discovery, his
conviction that knowledge is power and that there are no metes or bounds to
knowledge, his belief that the mighty forces of nature are waiting to do
man's bidding, his thought of ships that navigate the air as easily as the
sea,--all this Baconian dream of mental empire inspired the scientific
world for three centuries. It was as thoroughly Elizabethan in its way as
the voyage of Drake or the plays of Shakespeare.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The most remarkable feature of the Elizabethan age was its
patriotic enthusiasm. This enthusiasm found its best expression on
the stage, in the portrayal of life in vigorous action; and dramas
were produced in such number and of such quality that the whole
period is sometimes called the age of the play. It was a time of
poetry rather than of prose, and nearly all of the poetry is
characterized by its emotional quality, by youthful freshness of
feeling, by quickened imagination, and by an extravagance of
language which overflows, even in Shakespeare, in a kind of
glorious bombast.

Our study of the literature of the age includes: (1) The outburst
of lyric poetry. (2) The life and works of Spenser, second in time
of the great English poets. (3) A review of the long history of the
drama, from the earliest church spectacle, through miracle,
morality, interlude, pageant and masque to the Elizabethan drama.
(4) The immediate forerunners of Shakespeare, of whom the most
notable was Marlowe. (5) The life and work of Shakespeare. (6) Ben
Jonson, the successors of Shakespeare, and the rapid decline of the
drama. (7) Elizabethan prose; the appearance of euphuism; Sidney's
_Apologie for Poetrie_; the Authorized Version of the
Scriptures; and the life and work of Francis Bacon.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Selected lyrics in Manly, English Poetry;
Newcomer, Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose; Palgrave,
Golden Treasury; Schilling, Elizabethan Lyrics; Ward, English
Poets.

_Spenser_. Selected poems in Temple Classics, Cambridge Poets
Series. Selections from The Faery Queen in Standard English
Classics and other school editions. (See Texts, in General
Bibliography.)

_Early Drama_. A miracle play, such as Noah, may be read in
Manly, Specimens of Pre-Shakespearean Drama (Ginn and Company).
Marlowe's plays in Everyman's Library; his Edward II in Holt's
English Readings; his Faustus in Temple Dramatists, and in Mermaid
Series.

_Shakespeare_. Several editions of Shakespeare's plays, such
as the revised Hudson (Ginn and Company) and the Neilson (Scott)
are available. Single plays, such as Julius Caesar, Merchant of
Venice, Macbeth, As You Like It, are edited for class use in
Standard English Classics, Lake Classics, and various other school
series. The Sonnets in Athenaum Press Series.

_Ben Jonson_. The Alchemist in Cambridge Poets Series; also in
Thayer, Best Elizabethan Plays (Ginn and Company), which includes
in one volume plays by Marlowe, Jonson, Webster, Beaumont and
Fletcher.

_Prose Writers_. Selections from Bacon's Essays in Riverside
Literature, or Maynard's English Classkcs. The Essays complete in
Everyman's Library. Selections from Hooker, Sidney and Lyly in
Manly, English Prose, or Craik, English Prose. Ampler selections in
Garnett, English Prose from Elizabeth to Victoria (Ginn and
Company), which contains in one volume typical works of 33 prose
writers from Lyly to Carlyle. Hakluyt's Voyages in Everyman's
Library.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

_HISTORY_. Creighton, The Age of Elizabeth; Winter,
Shakespeare's England; Goadby, The England of Shakespeare;
Harrison, Elizabethan England; Spedding, Francis Bacon and his
Times; Lee, Great Englishmen of the Sixteenth Century; Payne,
Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen.

_LITERATURE_. Saintsbury, Short History of Elizabethan
Literature; Seccombe and Allen, The Age of Shakespeare; Whipple,
Literature of the Age of Elizabeth; Schilling, Elizabethan Lyrics;
Lee, Elizabethan Sonnets; Sheavyn, Literary Profession in the
Elizabethan Age.

_Spenser_. Life, by Church (English Men of Letters Series).
Carpenter, Outline Guide to the Study of Spenser; Craik, Spenser
and his Times. Essays, by Lowell, in Among My Books; by Dowden, in
Transcripts and Studies; by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English
Poets; by Leigh Hunt, in Imagination and Fancy.

_The Drama_. Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers (a study of the
early drama); Evans, English Masques; Bates, The English Religious
Drama; Schilling, The Elizabethan Drama; Symonds, Shakespeare's
Predecessors in the English Drama; Boas, Shakespeare and his
Predecessors; Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry; Ward,
English Dramatic Literature; Chambers, The Medieval Stage; Pollard,
English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes.

_Shakespeare_. Life, by Raleigh (E. M. of L.), by Lee, by
Halliwell-Phillipps, by Brandes. Dowden, A Shakespeare Primer;
Dowden, Shakespeare: a Critical Study of his Mind and Art; Baker,
Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist.

_Other Dramatists_. Lowell, Old English Dramatists; Lamb,
Specimens of English Dramatic Poets; Fleay, Biographical Chronicle
of the English Drama; Ingram, Christopher Marlowe.

_Prose Writers_. Church, Life of Bacon (E. M. of L.); Nicol,
Bacon's Life and Philosophy; Macaulay, Essay on Bacon. Symonds,
Life of Sidney (E. M. of L.); Bourne, Life of Sidney (Heroes of the
Nations Series). Stebbing, Life of Raleigh.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Kingsley, Westward Ho; Black, Judith
Shakespeare; Scott, Kenilworth; Schiller, Maria Stuart; Alfred
Noyes, Drake; Bates and Coman, English History Told by English
Poets.

CHAPTER V

THE PURITAN AGE AND THE RESTORATION (1625-1700)

Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again,
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.

Wordsworth, "Sonnet on Milton"

HISTORICAL OUTLINE. The period from the accession of Charles I in
1625 to the Revolution of 1688 was filled with a mighty struggle
over the question whether king or Commons should be supreme in
England. On this question the English people were divided into two
main parties. On one side were the Royalists, or Cavaliers, who
upheld the monarch with his theory of the divine right of kings; on
the other were the Puritans, or Independents, who stood for the
rights of the individual man and for the liberties of Parliament
and people. The latter party was at first very small; it had
appeared in the days of Langland and Wyclif, and had been
persecuted by Elizabeth; but persecution served only to increase
its numbers and determination. Though the Puritans were never a
majority in England, they soon ruled the land with a firmness it
had not known since the days of William the Conqueror. They were
primarily men of conscience, and no institution can stand before
strong men whose conscience says the institution is wrong. That is
why the degenerate theaters were not reformed but abolished; that
is why the theory of the divine right of kings was shattered as by
a thunderbolt when King Charles was sent to the block for treason
against his country.

The struggle reached a climax in the Civil War of 1642, which ended
in a Puritan victory. As a result of that war, England was for a
brief period a commonwealth, disciplined at home and respected
abroad, through the genius and vigor and tyranny of Oliver
Cromwell. When Cromwell died (1658) there was no man in England
strong enough to take his place, and two years later "Prince
Charlie," who had long been an exile, was recalled to the throne as
Charles II of England. He had learned nothing from his father's
fate or his own experience, and proceeded by all evil ways to
warrant this "Epitaph," which his favorite, Wilmot, Earl of
Rochester, pinned on the door of his bedchamber:

Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.

The next twenty years are of such disgrace and national weakness
that the historian hesitates to write about them. It was called the
period of the Restoration, which meant, in effect, the restoration
of all that was objectionable in monarchy. Another crisis came in
the Revolution of 1688, when the country, aroused by the attempt of
James II to establish another despotism in Church and state,
invited Prince William of Orange (husband of the king's daughter
Mary) to the English throne. That revolution meant three things:
the supremacy of Parliament, the beginning of modern England, and
the final triumph of the principle of political liberty for which
the Puritan had fought and suffered hardship for a hundred years.

TYPICAL WRITERS. Among the writers of the period three men stand out
prominently, and such was the confusion of the times that in the whole
range of our literature it would be difficult to find three others who
differ more widely in spirit or method. Milton represents the scholarship,
the culture of the Renaissance, combined with the moral earnestness of the
Puritan. Bunyan, a poor tinker and lay preacher, reflects the tremendous
spiritual ferment among the common people. And Dryden, the cool,
calculating author who made a business of writing, regards the Renaissance
and Puritanism as both things of the past. He lives in the present, aims to
give readers what they like, follows the French critics of the period who
advocate writing by rule, and popularizes that cold, formal, precise style
which, under the assumed name of classicism, is to dominate English poetry
during the following century.

* * * * *

JOHN MILTON (1608-1674)

Yet some there be that by due steps aspire
To lay their just hands on that golden key
That opes the palace of eternity:
To such my errand is.

In these words of the Attendant Spirit in _Comus_ we seem to hear
Milton speaking to his readers. To such as regard poetry as the means of an
hour's pleasant recreation he brings no message; his "errand" is to those
who, like Sidney, regard poetry as the handmaiden of virtue, or, like
Aristotle, as the highest form of human history.

LIFE. Milton was born in London (1608) at a time when Shakespeare
and his fellow dramatists were in their glory. He grew up in a home
where the delights of poetry and music were added to the moral
discipline of the Puritan. Before he was twelve years old he had
formed the habit of studying far into the night; and his field
included not only Greek, Latin, Hebrew and modern European
literatures, but mathematics also, and science and theology and
music. His parents had devoted him in infancy to noble ends, and he
joyously accepted their dedication, saying, "He who would not be
frustrate of his hope to write well ... ought himself to be a true
poem, that is, a composition and pattern of the best and
honorablest things."

[Sidenote: MILTON AT HORTON]

From St. Paul's school Milton went to Christ's College, Cambridge,
took his master's degree, wrote a few poems in Latin, Italian and
English, and formed a plan for a great epic, "a poem that England
would not willingly let die." Then he retired to his father's
country-place at Horton, and for six years gave himself up to
music, to untutored study, and to that formal pleasure in nature
which is reflected in his work. Five short poems were the only
literary result of this retirement, but these were the most perfect
of their kind that England had thus far produced.

Milton's next step, intended like all others to cultivate his
talent, took him to the Continent. For fifteen months he traveled
through France and Italy, and was about to visit Greece when,
hearing of the struggle between king and Parliament, he set his
face towards England again. "For I thought it base," he said, "to
be traveling at my ease for culture when my countrymen at home were
fighting for liberty."

[Sidenote: HOME LIFE]

To find himself, or to find the service to which he could devote
his great learning, seems to have been Milton's object after his
return to London (1639). While he waited he began to educate his
nephews, and enlarged this work until he had a small private
school, in which he tested some of the theories that appeared later
in his _Tractate on Education_. Also he married, in haste it
seems, and with deplorable consequences. His wife, Mary Powell, the
daughter of a Cavalier, was a pleasure-loving young woman, and
after a brief experience of Puritan discipline she wearied of it
and went home. She has been amply criticized for her desertion, but
Milton's house must have been rather chilly for any ordinary human
being to find comfort in. To him woman seemed to have been made for
obedience, and man for rebellion; his toplofty doctrine of
masculine superiority found expression in a line regarding Adam and
Eve, "He for God only, she for God in him,"--an old delusion, which
had been seriously disturbed by the first woman.

[Illustration: JOHN MILTON]

[Sidenote: PERIOD OF CONTROVERSY]

For a period of near twenty years Milton wrote but little poetry,
his time being occupied with controversies that were then waged
even more fiercely in the press than in the field. It was after the
execution of King Charles (1649), when England was stunned and all
Europe aghast at the Puritans' daring, that he published his
_Tenure of Kings and Magistrates_, the argument of which was,
that magistrates and people are equally subject to the law, and
that the divine right of kings to rule is as nothing beside the
divine right of the people to defend their liberties. That argument
established Milton's position as the literary champion of
democracy. He was chosen Secretary of the Commonwealth, his duties
being to prepare the Latin correspondence with foreign countries,
and to confound all arguments of the Royalists. During the next
decade Milton's pen and Cromwell's sword were the two outward
bulwarks of Puritanism, and one was quite as ready and almost as
potent as the other.

[Sidenote: HIS BLINDNESS]

It was while Milton was thus occupied that he lost his eyesight,
"his last sacrifice on the altar of English liberty." His famous
"Sonnet on his Blindness" is a lament not for his lost sight but
for his lost talent; for while serving the Commonwealth he must
abandon the dream of a great poem that he had cherished all his
life:

When I consider how my light is spent
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent, which is death to hide,
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
"Doth God exact day labour, light denied?"
I fondly ask; but Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or his own gifts. Who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at his bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait."

With the Restoration (1660) came disaster to the blind Puritan
poet, who had written too harshly against Charles I to be forgiven
by Charles II. He was forced to hide; his property was confiscated;
his works were burned in public by the hangman; had not his fame as
a writer raised up powerful friends, he would have gone to the
scaffold when Cromwell's bones were taken from the grave and hanged
in impotent revenge. He was finally allowed to settle in a modest
house, and to be in peace so long as he remained in obscurity. So
the pen was silenced that had long been a scourge to the enemies of
England.

[Sidenote: HIS LONELINESS]

His home life for the remainder of his years impresses us by its
loneliness and grandeur. He who had delighted as a poet in the
English country, and more delighted as a Puritan in the fierce
struggle for liberty, was now confined to a small house, going from
study to porch, and finding both in equal darkness. He who had
roamed as a master through the wide fields of literature was now
dependent on a chance reader. His soul also was afflicted by the
apparent loss of all that Puritanism had so hardly won, by the
degradation of his country, by family troubles; for his daughters
often rebelled at the task of taking his dictation, and left him
helpless. Saddest of all, there was no love in the house, for with
all his genius Milton could not inspire affection in his own
people; nor does he ever reach the heart of his readers.

[Sidenote: HIS MASTERPIECE]

In the midst of such scenes, denied the pleasure of hope, Milton
seems to have lived largely in his memories. He took up his early
dream of an immortal epic, lived with it seven years in seclusion,
and the result was _Paradise Lost_. This epic is generally
considered the finest fruit of Milton's genius, but there are two
other poems that have a more personal and human significance. In
the morning of his life he had written _Comus_, and the poem
is a reflection of a noble youth whose way lies open and smiling
before him. Almost forty years later, or just before his death in
1674, he wrote _Samson Agonistes_, and in this tragedy of a
blind giant, bound, captive, but unconquerable, we have a picture
of the agony and moral grandeur of the poet who takes leave of
life:

I feel my genial spirits droop, ...
My race of glory run, and race of shame;
And I shall shortly be with them that rest. [1]

[Footnote [1]: From Milton's _Samson_. For the comparison we
are indebted to Henry Reed, _Lectures on English Literature_
(1863), p. 223.]

[Illustration: COTTAGE AT CHALFONT, ST. GILES, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
Where Milton lived during the Plague, and where _Paradise Lost_ was
written]

THE EARLY POEMS. Milton's first notable poem, written in college days, was
the "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity," a chant of victory and
praise such as Pindar might have written had he known the meaning of
Christmas. In this boyish work one may find the dominant characteristic of
all Milton's poetry; namely, a blending of learning with piety, a devotion
of all the treasures of classic culture to the service of religion.

Among the earliest of the Horton poems (so-called because they were written
in the country-place of that name) are "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso," two
of the most widely quoted works in our literature. They should be read in
order to understand what people have admired for nearly three hundred
years, if not for their own beauty. "L'Allegro" (from the Italian, meaning
"the cheerful man") is the poetic expression of a happy state of mind, and
"Il Penseroso" [Footnote: The name is generally translated into
"melancholy," but the latter term is now commonly associated with sorrow or
disease. To Milton "melancholy" meant "pensiveness." In writing "Il
Penseroso" he was probably influenced by a famous book, Burton's _Anatomy
of Melancholy_, which appeared in 1621 and was very widely read.] of a
quiet, thoughtful mood that verges upon sadness, like the mood that follows
good music. Both poems are largely inspired by nature, and seem to have
been composed out of doors, one in the morning and the other in the evening
twilight.

[Sidenote: THE MASQUE OF COMUS]

_Comus_ (1634), another of the Horton poems, is to many readers the
most interesting of Milton's works. In form it is a masque, that is, a
dramatic poem intended to be staged to the accompaniment of music; in
execution it is the most perfect of all such poems inspired by the
Elizabethan love of pageants. We may regard it, therefore, as a late echo
of the Elizabethan drama, which, like many another echo, is sweeter though
fainter than the original. It was performed at Ludlow Castle, before the
Earl of Bridgewater, and was suggested by an accident to the Earl's
children, a simple accident, in which Milton saw the possibility of
"turning the common dust of opportunity to gold."

The story is that of a girl who becomes separated from her brothers
in a wood, and is soon lost. The magician Comus [Footnote: In
mythology Comus, the god of revelry, was represented as the son of
Dionysus (Bacchus, god of wine), and the witch Circe. In Greek
poetry Comus is the leader of any gay band of satyrs or dancers.
Milton's masque of _Comus_ was influenced by a similar story
in Peele's _Old Wives' Tale_, by Spenser's "Palace of
Pleasure" in _The Faery Queen_ (see above "Sir Guyon" in
Chapter IV), and by Homer's story of the witch Circe in the
_Odyssey_.] appears with his band of revelers, and tries to
bewitch the girl, to make her like one of his own brutish
followers. She is protected by her own purity, is watched over by
the Attendant Spirit, and finally rescued by her brothers. The
story is somewhat like that of the old ballad of "The Children in
the Wood," but it is here transformed into a kind of morality play.

[Sidenote: COMUS AND THE TEMPEST]

In this masque may everywhere be seen the influence of Milton's
predecessors and the stamp of his own independence; his Puritan spirit
also, which must add a moral to the old pagan tales. Thus, Miranda
wandering about the enchanted isle (in Shakespeare's _The Tempest_)
hears strange, harmonious echoes, to which Caliban gives expression:

The isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

The bewildered girl in _Comus_ also hears mysterious voices, and has
glimpses of a world not her own; but, like Sir Guyon of _The Faery
Queen_, she is on moral guard against all such deceptions:

A thousand phantasies
Begin to throng into my memory,
Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,
And airy tongues that syllable men's names
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.
These thoughts may startle well but not astound
The virtuous mind, that ever walks attended
By a strong-siding champion, Conscience.

Again, in _The Tempest_ we meet "the frisky spirit" Ariel, who sings
of his coming freedom from Prospero's service:

Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip's bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On a bat's back I do fly
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.

[Illustration: LUDLOW CASTLE]

The Attendant Spirit in _Comus_ has something of Ariel's gayety, but
his joy is deeper-seated; he serves not the magician Prospero but the
Almighty, and comes gladly to earth in fulfilment of the divine promise,
"He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways."
When his work is done he vanishes, like Ariel, but with a song which shows
the difference between the Elizabethan, or Renaissance, conception of
sensuous beauty (that is, beauty which appeals to the physical senses) and
the Puritan's idea of moral beauty, which appeals to the soul:

Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run
Quickly to the green earth's end,
Where the bowed welkin slow doth bend,
And from thence can soar as soon
To the corners of the moon.
Mortals, that would follow me,
Love Virtue; she alone is free:
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime;
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her.

[Sidenote: LYCIDAS]

_Lycidas_ (1637), last of the Horton poems, is an elegy occasioned by
the death of one who had been Milton's fellow student at Cambridge. It was
an old college custom to celebrate important events by publishing a
collection of Latin or English poems, and _Lycidas_ may be regarded as
Milton's wreath, which he offered to the memory of his classmate and to his
university. The poem is beautifully fashioned, and is greatly admired for
its classic form; but it is cold as any monument, without a touch of human
grief or sympathy. Probably few modern readers will care for it as they
care for Tennyson's _In Memoriam_, a less perfect elegy, but one into
which love enters as well as art. Other notable English elegies are the
_Thyrsis_ of Matthew Arnold and the _Adonais_ of Shelley.

MILTON'S LEFT HAND. This expression was used by Milton to designate certain
prose works written in the middle period of his life, at a time of turmoil
and danger. These works have magnificent passages which show the power and
the harmony of our English speech, but they are marred by other passages of
bitter raillery and invective. The most famous of all these works is the
noble plea called _Areopagitica:_ [Footnote: From the Areopagus or
forum of Athens, the place of public appeal. This was the "Mars Hill" from
which St. Paul addressed the Athenians, as recorded in the Book of Acts.]
_a Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing_ (1644).

There was a law in Milton's day forbidding the printing of any work until
it had been approved by the official Licenser of Books. Such a law may have
been beneficial at times, but during the seventeenth century it was another
instrument of tyranny, since no Licenser would allow anything to be printed
against his particular church or government. When _Areopagitica_ was
written the Puritans of the Long Parliament were virtually rulers of
England, and Milton pleaded with his own party for the free expression of
every honest opinion, for liberty in all wholesome pleasures, and for
tolerance in religious matters. His stern confidence in truth, that she
will not be weakened but strengthened by attack, is summarized in the
famous sentence, "I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue."

Two interesting matters concerning _Areopagitica_ are: first, that
this eloquent plea for the freedom of printing had to be issued in defiance
of law, without a license; and second, that Milton was himself, a few years
later, under Cromwell's iron government, a censor of the press.

[Sidenote: THE SONNETS]

Milton's rare sonnets seem to belong to this middle period of strife,
though some of them were written earlier. Since Wyatt and Surrey had
brought the Italian sonnet to England this form of verse had been employed
to sing of love; but with Milton it became a heroic utterance, a trumpet
Wordsworth calls it, summoning men to virtue, to patriotism, to stern
action. The most personal of these sonnets are "On Having Arrived at the
Age of Twenty-three," "On his Blindness" and "To Cyriack Skinner"; the most
romantic is "To the Nightingale"; others that are especially noteworthy are
"On the Late Massacre," "On his Deceased Wife" [Footnote: This beautiful
sonnet was written to his second wife, not to Mary Powell.] and "To
Cromwell." The spirit of these sonnets, in contrast with those of
Elizabethan times, is finely expressed by Landor in the lines:

Few his words, but strong,
And sounding through all ages and all climes;
He caught the sonnet from the dainty hand
Of Love, who cried to lose it, and he gave the notes
To Glory.

MILTON'S LATER POETRY. [Footnote: The three poems of Milton's later life
are _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_ and _Samson
Agonistes_. The last-named has been referred to above under "His
Masterpiece". _Paradise Regained_ contains some noble passages, but is
inferior to _Paradise Lost_, on which the poet's fame chiefly rests.]
It was in 1658, the year of Cromwell's death, when the political power of
Puritanism was tottering, that Milton in his blindness began to write
_Paradise Lost_. After stating his theme he begins his epic, as Virgil
began the _Aneid_, in the midst of the action; so that in reading his
first book it is well to have in mind an outline of the whole story, which
is as follows:

[Sidenote: PLAN OF PARADISE LOST]

The scene opens in Heaven, and the time is before the creation of
the world. The archangel Lucifer rebels against the Almighty, and
gathers to his banner an immense company of the heavenly hosts, of
angels and flaming cherubim. A stupendous three days' battle
follows between rebel and loyal legions, the issue being in doubt
until the Son goes forth in his chariot of victory. Lucifer and his
rebels are defeated, and are hurled over the ramparts of Heaven.
Down, down through Chaos they fall "nine times the space that
measures day and night," until they reach the hollow vaults of
Hell.

In the second act (for _Paradise Lost_ has some dramatic as
well as epic construction) we follow the creation of the earth in
the midst of the universe; and herein we have an echo of the old
belief that the earth was the center of the solar system. Adam and
Eve are formed to take in the Almighty's affection the place of the
fallen angels. They live happily in Paradise, watched over by
celestial guardians. Meanwhile Lucifer and his followers are
plotting revenge in Hell. They first boast valiantly, and talk of
mighty war; but the revenge finally degenerates into a base plan to
tempt Adam and Eve and win them over to the fallen hosts.

The third act shows Lucifer, now called Satan or the Adversary,
with his infernal peers in Pandemonium, plotting the ruin of the
world. He makes an astounding journey through Chaos, disguises
himself in various forms of bird or beast in order to watch Adam
and Eve, is detected by Ithuriel and the guardian angels, and is
driven away. Thereupon he haunts vast space, hiding in the shadow
of the earth until his chance comes, when he creeps back into Eden
by means of an underground river. Disguising himself as a serpent,
he meets Eve and tempts her with the fruit of a certain "tree of
knowledge," which she has been forbidden to touch. She eats the
fruit and shares it with Adam; then the pair are discovered in
their disobedience, and are banished from Paradise. [Footnote: In
the above outline we have arranged the events in the order in which
they are supposed to have occurred. Milton tells the story in a
somewhat confused way. The order of the twelve books of _Paradise
Lost_ is not the natural or dramatic order of the story.]

[Sidenote: MILTON'S MATERIALS]

It is evident from this outline that Milton uses material from two
different sources, one an ancient legend which Cadmon employed in his
Paraphrase, the other the Bible narrative of Creation. Though the latter is
but a small part of the epic, it is as a fixed center about which all other
interests are supposed to revolve. In reading _Paradise Lost_,
therefore, with its vast scenes and colossal figures, one should keep in
mind that every detail was planned by Milton to be closely related to his
central theme, which is the fall of man.

In using such diverse materials Milton met with difficulties, some of which
(the character of Lucifer, for example) were too great for his limited
dramatic powers. In Books I and II Lucifer is a magnificent figure, the
proudest in all literature, a rebel with something of celestial grandeur
about him:

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime,"
Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat
That we must change for Heaven? this mournful gloom
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid
What shall be right: farthest from him is best,
Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields,
Where joy forever dwells! Hail, horrors! hail,
Infernal world! and thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor, one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less than he
Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence;
Here we may reign secure; and in my choice
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven."

In other books of _Paradise Lost_ the same character appears not as
the heroic rebel but as the sneaking "father of lies," all his grandeur
gone, creeping as a snake into Paradise or sitting in the form of an ugly
toad "squat at Eve's ear," whispering petty deceits to a woman while she
sleeps. It is probable that Milton meant to show here the moral results of
rebellion, but there is little in his poem to explain the sudden degeneracy
from Lucifer to Satan.

[Sidenote: MATTER AND MANNER]

The reader will note, also, the strong contrast between Milton's matter and
his manner. His matter is largely mythical, and the myth is not beautiful
or even interesting, but childish for the most part and frequently
grotesque, as when cannon are used in the battle of the angels, or when the
Almighty makes plans,

Lest unawares we lose
This our high place, our sanctuary, our hill.

Indeed, all Milton's celestial figures, with the exception of the original
Lucifer, are as banal as those of the old miracle plays; and his Adam and
Eve are dull, wooden figures that serve merely to voice the poet's theology
or moral sentiments.

In contrast with this unattractive matter, Milton's manner is always and
unmistakably "the grand manner." His imagination is lofty, his diction
noble, and the epic of _Paradise Lost_ is so filled with memorable
lines, with gorgeous descriptions, with passages of unexampled majesty or
harmony or eloquence, that the crude material which he injects into the
Bible narrative is lost sight of in our wonder at his superb style.

THE QUALITY OF MILTON. If it be asked, What is Milton's adjective? the word
"sublime" rises to the lips as the best expression of his style. This word
(from the Latin _sublimis_, meaning "exalted above the ordinary") is
hard to define, but may be illustrated from one's familiar experience.

You stand on a hilltop overlooking a mighty landscape on which the
new snow has just fallen: the forest bending beneath its soft
burden, the fields all white and still, the air scintillating with
light and color, the whole world so clean and pure that it seems as
if God had blotted out its imperfections and adorned it for his own
pleasure. That is a sublime spectacle, and the soul of man is
exalted as he looks upon it. Or here in your own village you see a
woman who enters a room where a child is stricken with a deadly and
contagious disease. She immolates herself for the suffering one,
cares for him and saves him, then lays down her own life. That is a
sublime act. Or you hear of a young patriot captured and hanged by
the enemy, and as they lead him forth to death he says, "I regret
that I have but one life to give to my country." That is a sublime
expression, and the feeling in your heart as you hear it is one of
moral sublimity.

[Sidenote: SUBLIMITY]

The writer who lifts our thought and feeling above their ordinary level,
who gives us an impression of outward grandeur or of moral exaltation, is a
sublime writer, has a sublime style; and Milton more than any other poet
deserves the adjective. His scenes are immeasurable; mountain, sea and
forest are but his playthings; his imagination hesitates not to paint
Chaos, Heaven, Hell, the widespread Universe in which our world hangs like
a pendant star and across which stretches the Milky Way:

A broad and ample road, whose dust is gold,
And pavement stars.

No other poet could find suitable words for such vast themes, but Milton
never falters. Read the assembly of the fallen hosts before Lucifer in Book
I of _Paradise Lost_, or the opening of Hellgates in Book II, or the
invocation to light in Book III, or Satan's invocation to the sun in Book
IV, or the morning hymn of Adam and Eve in Book V; or open _Paradise
Lost_ anywhere, and you shall soon find some passage which, by the
grandeur of its scene or by the exalted feeling of the poet as he describes
it, awakens in you the feeling of sublimity.

[Sidenote: HARMONY]

The harmony of Milton's verse is its second notable quality. Many of our
poets use blank verse, as many other people walk, as if they had no sense
of rhythm within them; but Milton, by reason of his long study and practice
of music, seems to be always writing to melody. In consequence it is easy
to read his most prolix passages, as it is easy to walk over almost any
kind of ground if one but keeps step to outward or inward music. Not only
is Milton's verse stately and melodious, but he is a perfect master of
words, choosing them for their sound as well as for their sense, as a
musician chooses different instruments to express different emotions. Note
these contrasting descriptions of so simple a matter as the opening of
gates:

Heaven opened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound,
On golden hinges moving. On a sudden open fly
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th' infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.

In dealing with a poet of such magnificent qualities one should be wary of
criticism. That Milton's poetry has little human interest, no humor, and
plenty of faults, may be granted. His _Paradise Lost_ especially is
overcrowded with mere learning or pedantry in one place and with pompous
commonplaces in another. But such faults appear trivial, unworthy of
mention in the presence of a poem that is as a storehouse from which the
authors and statesmen of three hundred years have drawn their choicest
images and expressions. It stands forever as our supreme example of
sublimity and harmony,--that sublimity which reflects the human spirit
standing awed and reverent before the grandeur of the universe; that
harmony of expression at which every great poet aims and which Milton
attained in such measure that he is called the organ-voice of England.

* * * * *

JOHN BUNYAN (1628-1688)

There is a striking contrast between the poet and the prose writer of the
Puritan age. Milton the poet is a man of culture, familiar with the best
literature of all ages; Bunyan the prose writer is a poor, self-taught
laborer who reads his Bible with difficulty, stumbling over the hard
passages. Milton writes for the cultivated classes, in harmonious verse
adorned with classic figures; Bunyan speaks for common men in sinewy prose,
and makes his meaning clear by homely illustrations drawn from daily life.
Milton is a solitary and austere figure, admirable but not lovable; Bunyan
is like a familiar acquaintance, ruddy-faced, clear-eyed, who wins us by
his sympathy, his friendliness, his good sense and good humor. He is known
as the author of one book, _The Pilgrim's Progress_, but that book has
probably had more readers than any other that England has ever produced.

LIFE. During Bunyan's lifetime England was in a state of religious
ferment or revival, and his experience of it is vividly portrayed
in a remarkable autobiography called _Grace Abounding to the
Chief of inners_. In reading this book we find that his life is
naturally separated into two periods. His youth was a time of
struggle with doubts and temptations; his later years were
characterized by inward peace and tireless labor. His peace meant
that he was saved, his labor that he must save others. Here, in a
word, is the secret of all his works.

[Illustration: JOHN BUNYAN]

He was born (1628) in the village of Elstow, Bedfordshire, and was
the son of a poor tinker. He was sent to school long enough to
learn elementary reading and writing; then he followed the tinker's
trade; but at the age of sixteen, being offended at his father's
second marriage, he ran away and joined the army.

As a boy Bunyan had a vivid but morbid imagination, which led him
to terrible doubts, fears, fits of despondency, hallucinations. On
such a nature the emotional religious revivals of the age made a
tremendous impression. He followed them for years, living in a
state of torment, until he felt himself converted; whereupon he
turned preacher and began to call other sinners to repentance. Such
were his native power and rude eloquence that, wherever he went,
the common people thronged to hear him.

[Sidenote: IN BEDFORD JAIL]

After the Restoration all this was changed. Public meetings were
forbidden unless authorized by bishops of the Established Church,
and Bunyan was one of the first to be called to account. When
ordered to hold no more meetings he refused to obey, saying that
when the Lord called him to preach salvation he would listen only
to the Lord's voice. Then he was thrown into Bedford jail. During
his imprisonment he supported his family by making shoe laces, and
wrote _Grace Abounding_ and _The Pilgrim's Progress_.

After his release Bunyan became the most popular writer and
preacher in England. He wrote a large number of works, and went
cheerfully up and down the land, preaching the gospel to the poor,
helping the afflicted, doing an immense amount of good. He died
(1688) as the result of exposure while on an errand of mercy. His
works were then known only to humble readers, and not until long
years had passed did critics awaken to the fact that one of
England's most powerful and original writers had passed away with
the poor tinker of Elstow.

WORKS OF BUNYAN. From the pen of this uneducated preacher came nearly sixty
works, great and small, the most notable of which are: _Grace
Abounding_ (1666), a kind of spiritual autobiography; _The Holy
War_ (1665), a prose allegory with a theme similar to that of Milton's
epic; and _The Life and Death of Mr. Badman_ (1682), a character study
which was a forerunner of the English novel. These works are seldom read,
and Bunyan is known to most readers as the author of _The Pilgrim's
Progress_ (1678). This is the famous allegory [Footnote: Allegory is
figurative writing, in which some outward object or event is described in
such a way that we apply the description to humanity, to our mental or
spiritual experiences. The object of allegory, as a rule, is to teach moral
lessons, and in this it is like a drawn-out fable and like a parable. The
two greatest allegories in our literature are Spenser's _Faery Queen_
and Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_.] in which, under guise of telling
the story of a pilgrim in search of a city, Bunyan portrays the experiences
of humanity in its journey from this world to the next. Here is an outline
of the story:

[Sidenote: STORY OF PILGRIM'S PROGRESS]

In the City of Destruction lives a poor sinner called Christian.
When he learns that the city is doomed, he is terrified and flees
out of it, carrying a great burden on his back. He is followed by
the jeers of his neighbors, who have no fear. He seeks a safe and
abiding city to dwell in, but is ignorant how to find it until
Evangelist shows him the road.

As he goes on his journey Mr. Worldly Wiseman meets him and urges
him to return; but he hastens on, only to plunge into the Slough of
Despond. His companion Pliable is here discouraged and turns back.
Christian struggles on through the mud and reaches the Wicket Gate,
where Interpreter shows him the way to the Celestial City. As he
passes a cross beside the path, the heavy burden which he carries
(his load of sins) falls off of itself. Then with many adventures
he climbs the steep hill Difficulty, where his eyes behold the
Castle Beautiful. To reach this he must pass some fearful lions in
the way, but he adventures on, finds that the lions are chained, is
welcomed by the porter Watchful, and is entertained in the castle
overnight.

Dangers thicken and difficulties multiply as he resumes his
journey. His road is barred by the demon Apollyon, whom he fights
to the death. The way now dips downward into the awful Valley of
the Shadow. Passing through this, he enters the town of Vanity,
goes to Vanity Fair, where he is abused and beaten, and where his
companion Faithful is condemned to death. As he escapes from
Vanity, the giant Despair seizes him and hurls him into the gloomy
dungeon of Doubt. Again he escapes, struggles onward, and reaches
the Delectable Mountains. There for the first time he sees the
Celestial City, but between him and his refuge is a river, deep and
terrible, without bridge or ford. He crosses it, and the journey
ends as angels come singing down the streets to welcome Christian
into the city. [Footnote: This is the story of the first part of
_Pilgrim's Progress_, which was written in Bedford jail, but
not published till some years later. In 1684 Bunyan published the
second part of his story, describing the adventures of Christiana
and her children on their journey to the Celestial City. This
sequel, like most others, is of minor importance.]

[Illustration: BUNYAN MEETINGHOUSE, SOUTHWARK]

Such an outline gives but a faint idea of Bunyan's great work, of its
realistic figures, its living and speaking characters, its knowledge of
humanity, its portrayal of the temptations and doubts that beset the
ordinary man, its picturesque style, which of itself would make the book
stand out above ten thousand ordinary stories. _Pilgrim's Progress_ is
still one of our best examples of clear, forceful, idiomatic English; and
our wonder increases when we remember that it was written by a man ignorant
of literary models. But he had read his Bible daily until its style and
imagery had taken possession of him; also he had a vivid imagination, a
sincere purpose to help his fellows, and his simple rule of rhetoric was to
forget himself and deliver his message. In one of his poems he gives us his
rule of expression, which is an excellent one for writers and speakers:

Thine only way,
Before them all, is to say out thy say
In thine own native language.

* * * * *

JOHN DRYDEN (1631-1700)

For fifty years Dryden lived in the city of Milton, in the country of John
Bunyan; but his works might indicate that he inhabited a different planet.
Unlike his two great contemporaries, his first object was to win favor; he
sold his talent to the highest bidder, won the leading place among
second-rate Restoration writers, and was content to reflect a generation
which had neither the hearty enthusiasm of Elizabethan times nor the moral
earnestness of Puritanism.

LIFE. Knowledge of Dryden's life is rather meager, and as his
motives are open to question we shall state here only a few facts.
He was born of a Puritan and aristocratic family, at Aldwinkle, in
1631. After an excellent education, which included seven years at
Trinity College, Cambridge, he turned to literature as a means of
earning a livelihood, taking a worldly view of his profession and
holding his pen ready to serve the winning side. Thus, he wrote his
"Heroic Stanzas," which have a hearty Puritan ring, on the death of
Cromwell; but he turned Royalist and wrote the more flattering
"Astraa Redux" to welcome Charles II back to power.

[Sidenote: HIS VERSATILITY]

In literature Dryden proved himself a man of remarkable
versatility. Because plays were in demand, he produced many that
catered to the evil tastes of the Restoration stage,--plays that he
afterwards condemned unsparingly. He was equally ready to write
prose or verse, songs, criticisms, political satires. In 1670 he
was made poet laureate under Charles II; his affairs prospered; he
became a literary dictator in London, holding forth nightly in
Will's Coffeehouse to an admiring circle of listeners. After the
Revolution of 1688 he lost his offices, and with them most of his
income.

[Illustration: JOHN DRYDEN
From a picture by Hudson in the Hall of Trinity College, Cambridge]

In his old age, being reduced to hackwork, he wrote obituaries,
epitaphs, paraphrases of the tales of Chaucer, translations of
Latin poets,--anything to earn an honest living. He died in 1700,
and was buried beside Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

Such facts are not interesting; nor do they give us a true idea of
the man Dryden. To understand him we should have to read his works
(no easy or pleasant task) and compare his prose prefaces, in which
he is at his best, with the comedies in which he is abominable.
When not engaged with the degenerate stage, or with political or
literary or religious controversies, he appears sane,
well-balanced, good-tempered, manly; but the impression is not a
lasting one. He seems to have catered to the vicious element of his
own age, to have regretted the misuse of his talent, and to have
recorded his own judgment in two lines from his ode "To the Memory
of Mrs. Killigrew":

O gracious God, how far have we
Profaned thy heavenly grace of poesy!

WORKS OF DRYDEN. The occasional poems written by Dryden may be left in the
obscurity into which they fell after they had been applauded. The same may
be said of his typical poem "Annus Mirabilis," which describes the
wonderful events of the year 1666, a year which witnessed the taking of New
Amsterdam from the Dutch and the great fire of London. Both events were
celebrated in a way to contribute to the glory of King Charles and to
Dryden's political fortune. Of all his poetical works, only the odes
written in honor of St. Cecilia are now remembered. The second ode,
"Alexander's Feast," is one of our best poems on the power of music.

[Sidenote: HIS PLAYS]

Dryden's numerous plays show considerable dramatic power, and every one of
them contains some memorable line or passage; but they are spoiled by the
author's insincerity in trying to satisfy the depraved taste of the
Restoration stage. He wrote one play, _All for Love_, to please
himself, he said, and it is noticeable that this play is written in blank
verse and shows the influence of Shakespeare, who was then out of fashion.
If any of the plays are to be read, _All for Love_ should be selected,
though it is exceptional, not typical, and gives but a faint idea of
Dryden's ordinary dramatic methods.

[Sidenote: SATIRES]

In the field of political satire Dryden was a master, and his work here is
interesting as showing that unfortunate alliance between literature and
politics which led many of the best English writers of the next century to
sell their services to the Whigs or Tories. Dryden sided with the later
party and, in a kind of allegory of the Bible story of Absalom's revolt
against David, wrote "Absalom and Achitophel" to glorify the Tories and to
castigate the Whigs. This powerful political satire was followed by others
in the same vein, and by "MacFlecknoe," which satirized certain poets with
whom Dryden was at loggerheads. As a rule, such works are for a day, having
no enduring interest because they have no human kindness, but occasionally
Dryden portrays a man of his own time so well that his picture applies to
the vulgar politician of all ages, as in this characterization of Burnet:

Prompt to assail and careless of defence,
Invulnerable in his impudence,
He dares the world, and eager of a name
He thrusts about and justles into fame;
So fond of loud report that, not to miss.
Of being known (his last and utmost bliss),
He rather would be known for what he is.

These satires of Dryden were largely influential in establishing the heroic
couplet, [Footnote: The heroic couplet consists of two iambic pentameter
lines that rime. By "pentameter" is meant that the line has five feet or
measures; by "iambic," that each foot contains two syllables, the first
short or unaccented, the second long or accented.] which dominated the
fashion of English poetry for the next century. The couplet had been used
by earlier poets, Chaucer for example; but in his hands it was musical and
unobtrusive, a minor part of a complete work. With Dryden, and with his
contemporary Waller, the making of couplets was the main thing; in their
hands the couplet became "closed," that is, it often contained a complete
thought, a criticism, a nugget of common sense, a poem in itself, as in
this aphorism from "MacFlecknoe":

All human things are subject to decay,
And when Fate summons, monarchs must obey.

[Sidenote: PROSE WORKS]

In his prose works Dryden proved himself the ablest critic of his time, and
the inventor of a neat, serviceable style which, with flattery to
ourselves, we are wont to call modern. Among his numerous critical works we
note especially "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy," "Of Heroic Plays," "Discourse
on Satire," and the Preface to his _Fables_. These have not the vigor
or picturesqueness of Bunyan's prose, but they are written clearly, in
short sentences, with the chief aim of being understood. If we compare them
with the sonorous periods of Milton, or with the pretty involutions of
Sidney, we shall see why Dryden is called "the father of modern prose." His
sensible style appears in this criticism of Chaucer:

"He must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature,
because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into
the compass of his _Canterbury Tales_ the various manners and
humours (as we now call them) of the whole English nation in his
age. Not a single character has escaped him.... We have our fathers
and great-grand-dames all before us as they were in Chaucer's days:
their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even
in England, though they are called by other names than those of
monks and friars and canons and lady abbesses and nuns; for mankind
is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature though everything
is altered."

* * * * *

SECONDARY WRITERS

PURITAN AND CAVALIER VERSE. The numerous minor poets of this period are
often arranged in groups, but any true classification is impossible since
there was no unity among them. Each was a law unto himself, and the result
was to emphasize personal oddity or eccentricity. It would seem that in
writing of love, the common theme of poets, Puritan and Cavalier must alike
speak the common language of the heart; but that is precisely what they did
not do. With them love was no longer a passion, or even a fashion, but any
fantastic conceit that might decorate a rime. Thus, Suckling habitually
made love a joke:

Why so pale and wan, fond lover,
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well wont move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?

Crashaw turned from his religious poems to sing of love in a way to appeal
to the Transcendentalists, of a later age:

Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me.

And Donne must search out some odd notion from natural (or unnatural)
history, making love a spider that turns the wine of life into poison; or
from mechanics, comparing lovers to a pair of dividers:

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two:
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth if the other do.

[Illustration: GEORGE HERBERT
From a rare print by White, prefixed to his poems]

Several of these poets, commonly grouped in a class which includes Donne,
Herbert, Cowley, Crashaw, and others famous in their day, received the name
of metaphysical poets, not because of their profound thought, but because
of their eccentric style and queer figures of speech. Of all this group
George Herbert (1593-1633) is the sanest and the sweetest. His chief work,
_The Temple_, is a collection of poems celebrating the beauty of
holiness, the sacraments, the Church, the experiences of the Christian
life. Some of these poems are ingenious conceits, and deserve the derisive
name of "metaphysical" which Dr. Johnson flung at them; but others, such as
"Virtue," "The Pulley," "Love" and "The Collar," are the expression of a
beautiful and saintly soul, speaking of the deep things of God; and
speaking so quietly withal that one is apt to miss the intensity that lurks
even in his calmest verses. Note in these opening and closing stanzas of
"Virtue" the restraint of the one, the hidden glow of the other:

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky!
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die.

Only a sweet and virtuous soul,
Like seasoned timber, never gives;
But, though the whole world turn to coal,
Then chiefly lives.

[Sidenote: CAVALIER POETS]

In contrast with the disciplined Puritan spirit of Herbert is the gayety of
another group, called the Cavalier poets, among whom are Carew, Suckling
and Lovelace. They reflect clearly the spirit of the Royalists who followed
King Charles with a devotion worthy of a better master. Robert Herrick
(1591-1674) is the best known of this group, and his only book,
_Hesperides and Noble Numbers_ (1648), reflects the two elements found
in most of the minor poetry of the age; namely, Cavalier gayety and Puritan
seriousness. In the first part of the book are some graceful verses
celebrating the light loves of the Cavaliers and the fleeting joys of
country life:

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
Of April, May, of June and July flowers;
I sing of Maypoles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes,
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes.

In _Noble Numbers_ such poems as "Thanksgiving," "A True Lent,"
"Litany," and the child's "Ode on the Birth of Our Saviour" reflect the
better side of the Cavalier, who can be serious without pulling a long
face, who goes to his devotions cheerfully, and who retains even in his
religion what Andrew Lang calls a spirit of unregenerate happiness.

[Sidenote: BUTLER'S HUDIBRAS]

Samuel Butler (1612-1680) may also be classed with the Cavalier poets,
though in truth he stands alone in this age, a master of doggerel rime and
of ferocious satire. His chief work, _Hudibras_, a grotesque
caricature of Puritanism, appeared in 1663, when the restored king and his
favorites were shamelessly plundering the government. The poem (probably
suggested by _Don Quixote_) relates a rambling story of the adventures
of Sir Hudibras, a sniveling Puritan knight, and his squire Ralpho. Its
doggerel style may be inferred from the following:

Besides, 'tis known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;
That Latin was no more difficle
Than to a blackbird 'tis to whistle:
Being rich in both, he never scanted
His bounty unto such as wanted.

Such was the stuff that the Royalists quoted to each other as wit; and the
wit was so dear to king and courtiers that they carried copies of
_Hudibras_ around in their pockets. The poem was enormously popular in
its day, and some of its best lines are still quoted; but the selections we
now meet give but a faint idea of the general scurrility of a work which
amused England in the days when the Puritan's fanaticism was keenly
remembered, his struggle for liberty quite forgotten.

PROSE WRITERS. Of the hundreds of prose works that appeared in Puritan
times very few are now known even by name. Their controversial fires are
sunk to ashes; even the causes that produced or fanned them are forgotten.
Meanwhile we cherish a few books that speak not of strife but of peace and
charity.

[Illustration: SIR THOMAS BROWNE]

Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was a physician, vastly learned in a day when he
and other doctors gravely prescribed herbs or bloodsuckers for witchcraft;
but he was less interested in his profession than in what was then called
modern science. His most famous work is _Religio Medici_ (Religion of
a Physician, 1642), a beautiful book, cherished by those who know it as one
of the greatest prose works in the language. His _Urn Burial_ is even
more remarkable for its subtle thought and condensed expression; but its
charm, like that of the Silent Places, is for the few who can discover and
appreciate it.

[Illustration: ISAAC WALTON]

Isaac Walton (1593-1683), or Isaak, as he always wrote it, was a modest
linen merchant who, in the midst of troublous times, kept his serenity of
spirit by attending strictly to his own affairs, by reading good books, and
by going fishing. His taste for literature is reflected with rare
simplicity in his _Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, George Herbert and
Bishop Sanderson_, a series of biographies which are among the earliest
and sweetest in our language. Their charm lies partly in their refined
style, but more largely in their revelation of character; for Walton chose
men of gentle spirit for his subjects, men who were like himself in
cherishing the still depths of life rather than its noisy shallows, and
wrote of them with the understanding of perfect sympathy. Wordsworth
expressed his appreciation of the work in a noble sonnet beginning:

There are no colours in the fairest sky
So fair as these. The feather whence the pen
Was shaped that traced the lives of these good men
Dropped from an angel's wing.

Walton's love of fishing, and of all the lore of trout brooks and spring
meadows that fishing implies, found expression in _The Compleat Angler,
or Contemplative Man's Recreation_ (1653). This is a series of
conversations in which an angler convinces his friends that fishing is not
merely the sport of catching fish, but an art that men are born to, like
the art of poetry. Even such a hard-hearted matter as impaling a minnow for
bait becomes poetical, for this is the fashion of it: "Put your hook in at
his mouth, and out at his gills, and do it as if you loved him." It is
enough to say of this old work, the classic of its kind, that it deserves
all the honor which the tribe of anglers have given it, and that you could
hardly find a better book to fall asleep over after a day's fishing.

[Sidenote: EVELYN AND PEPYS]

No such gentle, human, lovable books were produced in Restoration times.
The most famous prose works of the period are the diaries of John Evelyn
and Samuel Pepys. The former was a gentleman, and his _Diary_ is an
interesting chronicle of matters large and small from 1641 to 1697. Pepys,
though he became Secretary of the Admiralty and President of the Royal
Society, was a gossip, a chatterbox, with an eye that loved to peek into
closets and a tongue that ran to slander. His _Diary_, covering the
period from 1660 to 1669, is a keen but malicious exposition of private and
public life during the Restoration.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. The literary period just studied covers the last three
quarters of the seventeenth century. Its limits are very
indefinite, merging into Elizabethan romance on the one side, and
into eighteenth century formalism on the other. Historically, the
period was one of bitter conflict between two main political and
religious parties, the Royalists, or Cavaliers, and the Puritans.
The literature of the age is extremely diverse in character, and is
sadly lacking in the unity, the joyousness, the splendid enthusiasm
of Elizabethan prose and poetry.

The greatest writer of the period was John Milton. He is famous in
literature for his early or Horton poems, which are Elizabethan in
spirit; for his controversial prose works, which reflect the strife
of the age; for his epic of _Paradise Lost_, and for his
tragedy of _Samson_.

Another notable Puritan, or rather Independent, writer was John
Bunyan, whose works reflect the religious ferment of the
seventeenth century. His chief works are _Grace Abounding_, a
kind of spiritual biography, and _The Pilgrim's Progress_, an
allegory of the Christian life which has been more widely read than
any other English book.

The chief writer of the Restoration period was John Dryden, a
professional author, who often catered to the coarser tastes of the
age. There is no single work by which he is gratefully remembered.
He is noted for his political satires, for his vigorous use of the
heroic couplet, for his modern prose style, and for his literary
criticisms.

Among the numerous minor poets of the period, Robert Herrick and
George Herbert are especially noteworthy. A few miscellaneous prose
works are the _Religio Medici_ of Thomas Browne, _The
Compleat Angler_ of Isaac Walton, and the diaries of Pepys and
Evelyn.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Minor poems of Milton, and parts of
Paradise Lost, in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature,
and other school series (see Texts, in General Bibliography).
Selections from Cavalier and Puritan poets in Maynard's English
Classics, Golden Treasury Series, Manly's English Poetry, Century
Readings, Ward's English Poets. Prose selections in Manly's English
Prose, Craik's English Prose Selections, Garnett's English Prose
from Elizabeth to Victoria. Pilgrim's Progress and Grace Abounding
in Standard English Classics, Pocket Classics, Student's Classics.
Religio Medici and Complete Angler in Temple Classics and
Everyman's Library. Selections from Dryden in Manly's English Prose
and Manly's English Poetry. Dryden's version of Palamon and Arcite
(the Knight's Tale of Chaucer) in Standard English Classics,
Riverside Literature, Lake Classics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For texts and manuals dealing with the whole field of
English history and literature see the General Bibliography. The
following works deal chiefly with the Puritan and Restoration
periods.

_HISTORY_. Wakeling, King and Parliament (Oxford Manuals of
English History); Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan
Revolution (Great Epochs Series); Tulloch, English Puritanism;
Harrison, Oliver Cromwell; Hale, The Fall of the Stuarts; Airy, The
English Restoration and Louis XIV.

_LITERATURE_. Masterman, The Age of Milton; Dowden, Puritan
and Anglican; Wendell, Temper of the Seventeenth Century in
Literature; Gosse, Seventeenth-Century Studies; Schilling,
Seventeenth-Century Lyrics (Athenaum Press Series); Isaac Walton,
Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert and Sanderson.

_Milton_. Life, by Garnett (Great Writers Series); by Pattison
(English Men of Letters). Corson, Introduction to Milton; Raleigh,
Milton; Stopford Brooke, Milton. Essays, by Macaulay; by Lowell, in
Among My Books; by M. Arnold, in Essays in Criticism.

_Bunyan_. Life, by Venables (Great Writers); by Froude (E. M.
of L.). Brown, John Bunyan; Woodberry's essay, in Makers of
Literature.

_Dryden_. Life by Saintsbury (E. M. of L.). Gosse, From
Shakespeare to Pope.

_Thomas Browne_. Life, by Gosse (E. M. of L.). Essays, by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Pater, in Appreciations.

_FICTION AND POETRY_. Shorthouse, John Inglesant; Scott, Old
Mortality, Peveril of the Peak, Woodstock; Blackmore, Lorna Doone.
Milton, Sonnet on Cromwell; Scott, Rokeby; Bates and Coman, English
History Told by English Poets.

CHAPTER VI

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold:
Alike fantastic if too new or old.
Be not the first by whom the new are tried,
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

Pope, "An Essay on Criticism"

HISTORY OF THE PERIOD. The most striking political feature of the
times was the rise of constitutional and party government. The
Revolution of 1688, which banished the Stuarts, had settled the
king question by making Parliament supreme in England, but not all
Englishmen were content with the settlement. No sooner were the
people in control of the government than they divided into hostile
parties: the liberal Whigs, who were determined to safeguard
popular liberty, and the conservative Tories, with tender memories
of kingcraft, who would leave as much authority as possible in the
royal hands. On the extreme of Toryism was a third party of
zealots, called the Jacobites, who aimed to bring the Stuarts back
to the throne, and who for fifty years filled Britain with plots
and rebellion. The literature of the age was at times dominated by
the interests of these contending factions.

The two main parties were so well balanced that power shifted
easily from one to the other. To overturn a Tory or a Whig cabinet
only a few votes were necessary, and to influence such votes London
was flooded with pamphlets. Even before the great newspapers
appeared, the press had become a mighty power in England, and any
writer with a talent for argument or satire was almost certain to
be hired by party leaders. Addison, Steele, Defoe, Swift,--most of
the great writers of the age were, on occasion, the willing
servants of the Whigs or Tories. So the new politician replaced the
old nobleman as a patron of letters.

[Sidenote: SOCIAL LIFE]

Another feature of the age was the rapid development of social
life. In earlier ages the typical Englishman had lived much by
himself; his home was his castle, and in it he developed his
intense individualism; but in the first half of the eighteenth
century some three thousand public coffeehouses and a large number
of private clubs appeared in London alone; and the sociability of
which these clubs were an expression was typical of all English
cities. Meanwhile country life was in sore need of refinement.

The influence of this social life on literature was inevitable.
Nearly all writers frequented the coffeehouses, and matters
discussed there became subjects of literature; hence the enormous
amount of eighteenth-century writing devoted to transient affairs,
to politics, fashions, gossip. Moreover, as the club leaders set
the fashion in manners or dress, in the correct way of taking snuff
or of wearing wigs and ruffles, so the literary leaders emphasized
formality or correctness of style, and to write prose like Addison,
or verse like Pope, became the ambition of aspiring young authors.

There are certain books of the period (seldom studied amongst its
masterpieces) which are the best possible expression of its thought
and manners. The Letters of Lord Chesterfield, for example,
especially those written to his son, are more significant, and more
readable, than anything produced by Johnson. Even better are the
Memoirs of Horace Walpole, and his gossipy Letters, of which
Thackeray wrote:

"Fiddles sing all through them; wax lights, fine dresses,
fine jokes, fine plate, fine equipages glitter and sparkle;
never was such a brilliant, smirking Vanity Fair as that
through which he leads us."

[Sidenote: SPREAD OF EMPIRE]

Two other significant features of the age were the large part
played by England in Continental wars, and the rapid expansion of
the British empire. These Continental wars, which have ever since
influenced British policy, seem to have originated (aside from the
important matter of self-interest) in a double motive: to prevent
any one nation from gaining overwhelming superiority by force of
arms, and to save the smaller "buffer" states from being absorbed
by their powerful neighbors. Thus the War of the Spanish Succession
(1711) prevented the union of the French and Spanish monarchies,
and preserved the smaller states of Holland and Germany. As Addison
then wrote, at least half truthfully:

'T is Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate,
And hold in balance each contending state:
To threaten bold, presumptuous kings with war,
And answer her afflicted neighbors' prayer. [1]

[Footnote [1]: From Addison's Address to Liberty, in his poetical
"Letter to Lord Halifax."]

The expansion of the empire, on the whole the most marvelous
feature of English history, received a tremendous impetus in this
age when India, Australia and the greater part of North America
were added to the British dominions, and when Captain Cook opened
the way for a belt of colonies around the whole world.

The influence of the last-named movement hardly appears in the
books which we ordinarily read as typical of the age. There are
other books, however, which one may well read for his own
unhampered enjoyment: such expansive books as Hawkesworth's
_Voyages_ (1773), corresponding to Hakluyt's famous record of
Elizabethan exploration, and especially the _Voyages of Captain
Cook_, [Footnote: The first of Cook's fateful voyages appears in
Hawkesworth's collection. The second was recorded by Cook himself
(1777), and the third by Cook and Captain King (1784). See Synge,
_Captain Cook's Voyages Around the World_ (London, 1897).]
which take us from the drawing-room chatter of politics or fashion
or criticism into a world of adventure and great achievement. In
such works, which make no profession of literary style, we feel the
lure of the sea and of lands beyond the horizon, which is as the
mighty background of English literature from Anglo-Saxon times to
the present day.

It is difficult to summarize the literature of this age, or to group such
antagonistic writers as Swift and Addison, Pope and Burns, Defoe and
Johnson, Goldsmith and Fielding, with any fine discrimination. It is simply
for convenience, therefore, that we study eighteenth-century writings in
three main divisions: the reign of so-called classicism, the revival of
romantic poetry, and the beginnings of the modern novel. As a whole, it is
an age of prose rather than of poetry, and in this respect it differs from
all preceding ages of English literature.

* * * * *

EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CLASSICISM

The above title is an unfortunate one, but since it is widely used we must
try to understand it as best we can. Yet when one begins to define
"classicism" one is reminded of that old bore Polonius, who tells how
Hamlet is affected:

Your noble son is mad:
Mad, call I it; for to define true madness,
What is't but to be nothing else but mad?

In our literature the word "classic" was probably first used in connection
with the writers of Greece and Rome, and any English work which showed the
influence of such writers was said to have a classic style. If we seek to
the root of the word, we shall find that it refers to the _classici_,
that is, to the highest of the classes into which the census divided the
Roman people; hence the proper use of "classic" to designate the writings
that have won first rank in any nation. As Goethe said, "Everything that is
good in literature is classical."

[Sidenote: CLASSIC AND PSEUDO-CLASSIC]

Gradually, however, the word "classic" came to have a different meaning, a
meaning now expressed by the word "formal." In the Elizabethan age, as we
have seen, critics insisted that English plays should conform to the rules
or "unities" of the Greek drama, and plays written according to such rules
were called classic. Again, in the eighteenth century, English poets took
to studying ancient authors, especially Horace, to find out how poetry
should be written. Having discovered, as they thought, the rules of
composition, they insisted on following such rules rather than individual
genius or inspiration. It is largely because of this adherence to rules,
this slavery to a fashion of the time, that so much of eighteenth-century
verse seems cold and artificial, a thing made to order rather than the
natural expression of human feeling. The writers themselves were well
satisfied with their formality, however, and called their own the Classic
or Augustan age of English letters. [Footnote: Though the eighteenth
century was dominated by this formal spirit, it had, like every other age,
its classic and romantic movements. The work of Gray, Burns and other
romantic poets will be considered later.]

* * * * *

ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744)

It was in 1819 that a controversy arose over the question, Was Pope a poet?
To have asked that in 1719 would have indicated that the questioner was
ignorant; to have asked it a half century later might have raised a doubt
as to his sanity, for by that time Pope was acclaimed as a master by the
great majority of poets in England and America. We judge now, looking at
him in perspective and comparing him with Chaucer or Burns, that he was not
a great poet but simply the kind of poet that the age demanded. He belongs
to eighteenth-century London exclusively, and herein he differs from the
master poets who are at home in all places and expressive of all time.

[Illustration: ALEXANDER POPE]

LIFE. Pope is an interesting but not a lovable figure. Against the
petty details of his life we should place, as a background, these
amazing achievements: that this poor cripple, weak of body and
spiteful of mind, was the supreme literary figure of his age; that
he demonstrated how an English poet could live by his pen, instead
of depending on patrons; that he won greater fame and fortune than
Shakespeare or Milton received from their contemporaries; that he
dominated the fashion of English poetry during his lifetime, and
for many years after his death.

[Sidenote: THE WRITER]

Such are the important facts of Pope's career. For the rest: he was
born in London, in the year of the Revolution (1688). Soon after
that date his father, having gained a modest fortune in the linen
business, retired to Binfield, on the fringe of Windsor Forest.
There Pope passed his boyhood, studying a little under private
tutors, forming a pleasurable acquaintance with Latin and Greek
poets. From fourteen to twenty, he tells us, he read for amusement;
but from twenty to twenty-seven he read for "improvement and
instruction." The most significant traits of these early years were
his determination to be a poet and his talent for imitating any
writer who pleased him. Dryden was his first master, from whom he
inherited the couplet, then he imitated the French critic Boileau
and the Roman poet Horace. By the time he was twenty four the
publication of his _Essay on Criticism_ and _The Rape of the
Lock_ had made him the foremost poet of England. By his
translation of Homer he made a fortune, with which he bought a
villa at Twickenham. There he lived in the pale sunshine of
literary success, and there he quarreled with every writer who
failed to appreciate his verses, his jealousy overflowing at last
in _The Dunciad_ (Iliad of Dunces), a witty but venomous
lampoon, in which he took revenge on all who had angered him.

[Illustration: TWICKENHAM PARISH CHURCH, WHERE POPE WAS BURIED
Pope lived at Twickenham for nearly thirty years]

[Sidenote: THE MAN]

Next to his desire for glory and revenge, Pope loved to be
considered a man of high character, a teacher of moral philosophy.
His ethical teaching appears in his _Moral Epistles_, his
desire for a good reputation is written large in his Letters, which
he secretly printed, and then alleged that they had been made
public against his wish. These Letters might impress us as the
utterances of a man of noble ideals, magnanimous with his friends,
patient with his enemies, until we reflect that they were published
by the author for the purpose of giving precisely that impression.

Another side of Pope's nature is revealed in this: that to some of
his friends, to Swift and Bolingbroke for example, he showed
gratitude, and that to his parents he was ever a dutiful son. He
came perhaps as near as he could to a real rather than an
artificial sentiment when he wrote of his old mother:

Me let the tender office long engage,
To rock the cradle of reposing age.

WORKS OF POPE. Pope's first important work, _An Essay on Criticism_
(1711), is an echo of the rules which Horace had formulated in his _Ars
Poetica_, more than seventeen centuries before Pope was born. The French
critic Boileau made an alleged improvement of Horace in his _L'Art
Poetique_, and Pope imitated both writers with his rimed _Essay_,
in which he attempted to sum up the rules by which poetry should be judged.
And he did it, while still under the age of twenty-five, so brilliantly
that his characterization of the critic is unmatched in our literature. A
few selections will serve to show the character of the work:

First follow nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:
Unerring nature, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged and universal light,
Life, force and beauty must to all impart,
At once the source and end and test of Art.

Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,
And hide with ornaments their want of art.
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed.

Expression is the dress of thought, and still
Appears more decent, as more suitable.

[Sidenote: RAPE OF THE LOCK]

Pope's next important poem, _The Rape of the Lock_ (1712), is his most
original and readable work. The occasion of the poem was that a fop stole a
lock of hair from a young lady, and the theft plunged two families into a
quarrel which was taken up by the fashionable set of London. Pope made a
mock-heroic poem on the subject, in which he satirized the fads and
fashions of Queen Anne's age. Ordinarily Pope's fancy is of small range,
and proceeds jerkily, like the flight of a woodpecker, from couplet to
couplet; but here he attempts to soar like the eagle. He introduces dainty
aerial creatures, gnomes, sprites, sylphs, to combat for the belles and
fops in their trivial concerns; and herein we see a clever burlesque of the
old epic poems, in which gods or goddesses entered into the serious affairs
of mortals. The craftsmanship of the poem is above praise; it is not only a
neatly pointed satire on eighteenth-century fashions but is one of the most
graceful works in English verse.

[Sidenote: ESSAY OF MAN]

An excellent supplement to _The Rape of the Lock_, which pictures the
superficial elegance of the age, is _An Essay on Man_, which reflects
its philosophy. That philosophy under the general name of Deism, had
fancied to abolish the Church and all revealed religion, and had set up a
new-old standard of natural faith and morals. Of this philosophy Pope had
small knowledge; but he was well acquainted with the discredited
Bolingbroke, his "guide, philosopher and friend," who was a fluent exponent
of the new doctrine, and from Bolingbroke came the general scheme of the
_Essay on Man_.

The poem appears in the form of four epistles, dealing with man's place in
the universe, with his moral nature, with social and political ethics, and
with the problem of happiness. These were discussed from a common-sense
viewpoint, and with feet always on solid earth. As Pope declares:

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man....
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest and riddle of the world.

Throughout the poem these two doctrines of Deism are kept in sight: that
there is a God, a Mystery, who dwells apart from the world; and that man
ought to be contented, even happy, in his ignorance of matters beyond his
horizon:

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear: whatever is, is right.

The result is rubbish, so far as philosophy is concerned, but in the heap
of incongruous statements which Pope brings together are a large number of
quotable lines, such as:

Honor and shame from no condition rise;
Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

It is because of such lines, the care with which the whole poem is
polished, and the occasional appearance of real beauty (such as the passage
beginning, "Lo, the poor Indian") that the _Essay on Man_ occupies
such a high place in eighteenth-century literature.

[Sidenote: THE QUALITY OF POPE]

It is hardly necessary to examine other works of Pope, since the poems
already named give us the full measure of his strength and weakness. His
talent is to formulate rules of poetry, to satirize fashionable society, to
make brilliant epigrams in faultless couplets. His failure to move or even
to interest us greatly is due to his second-hand philosophy, his inability
to feel or express emotion, his artificial life apart from nature and
humanity. When we read Chaucer or Shakespeare, we have the impression that
they would have been at home in any age or place, since they deal with
human interests that are the same yesterday, to-day and forever; but we can
hardly imagine Pope feeling at ease anywhere save in his own set and in his
own generation. He is the poet of one period, which set great store by
formality, and in that period alone he is supreme.

* * * * *

JONATHAN SWIFT (1667-1745)

In the history of literature Swift occupies a large place as the most
powerful of English satirists; that is, writers who search out the faults
of society in order to hold them up to ridicule. To most readers, however,
he is known as the author of _Gulliver's Travels_, a book which young
people still read with pleasure, as they read _Robinson Crusoe_ or any
other story of adventure. In the fate of that book, which was intended to
scourge humanity but which has become a source of innocent entertainment,
is a commentary on the colossal failure of Swift's ambition.

[Illustration: JONATHAN SWIFT]

LIFE. Little need be recorded of Swift's life beyond the few facts
which help us to understand his satires. He was born in Dublin, of
English parents, and was so "bantered by fortune" that he was
compelled to spend the greater part of his life in Ireland, a
country which he detested. He was very poor, very proud; and even
in youth he railed at a mocking fate which compelled him to accept
aid from others. For his education he was dependent on a relative,
who helped him grudgingly. After leaving Trinity College, Dublin,
the only employment he could find was with another relative, Sir
William Temple, a retired statesman, who hired Swift as a secretary
and treated him as a servant. Galled by his position and by his
feeling of superiority (for he was a man of physical and mental
power, who longed to be a master of great affairs) he took orders
in the Anglican Church; but the only appointment he could obtain
was in a village buried, as he said, in a forsaken district of
Ireland. There his bitterness overflowed in _A Tale of a Tub_
and a few pamphlets of such satiric power that certain political
leaders recognized Swift's value and summoned him to their
assistance.

[Illustration: TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN]

[Sidenote: SWIFT IN LONDON]

To understand his success in London one must remember the times.
Politics were rampant; the city was the battleground of Whigs and
Tories, whose best weapon was the printed pamphlet that justified
one party by heaping abuse or ridicule on the other. Swift was a
master of satire, and he was soon the most feared author in
England. He seems to have had no fixed principles, for he was ready
to join the Tories when that party came into power and to turn his
literary cannon on the Whigs, whom he had recently supported. In
truth, he despised both parties; his chief object was to win for
himself the masterful position in Church or state for which, he
believed, his talents had fitted him.

For several years Swift was the literary champion of the victorious
Tories; then, when his keen eye detected signs of tottering in the
party, he asked for his reward. He obtained, not the great
bishopric which he expected, but an appointment as Dean of St.
Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin. Small and bitter fruit this seemed
to Swift, after his years of service, but even so, it was given
grudgingly. [Footnote: Swift's pride and arrogance with his
official superiors worked against him. Also he had published _A
Tale of a Tub_, a coarse satire against the churches, which
scandalized the queen and her ministers, who could have given him
preferment. Thackeray says, "I think the Bishops who advised Queen
Anne not to appoint the author of the _Tale of a Tub_ to a
Bishopric gave perfectly good advice."]

[Sidenote: LIFE IN IRELAND]

When the Tories went out of power Swift's political occupation was
gone. The last thirty years of his life were spent largely in
Dublin. There in a living grave, as he regarded it, the scorn which
he had hitherto felt for individuals or institutions widened until
it included humanity. Such is the meaning of his _Gulliver's
Travels_. His only pleasure during these years was to expose the
gullibility of men, and a hundred good stories are current of his
practical jokes,--such as his getting rid of a crowd which had
gathered to watch an eclipse by sending a solemn messenger to
announce that, by the Dean's orders, the eclipse was postponed till
the next day. A brain disease fastened upon him gradually, and his
last years were passed in a state of alternate stupor or madness
from which death was a blessed deliverance.

WORKS OF SWIFT. The poems of Swift, though they show undoubted power (every
smallest thing he wrote bears that stamp), may be passed over with the
comment of his relative Dryden, who wrote: "Cousin Swift, you will never be
a poet." The criticism was right, but thereafter Swift jeered at Dryden's
poetry. We may pass over also the _Battle of the Books_, the
_Drapier's Letters_ and a score more of satires and lampoons. Of all
these minor works the _Bickerstaff Papers_, which record Swift's
practical joke on the astrologers, are most amusing. [Footnote: Almanacs
were at that time published by pretender astrologers, who read fortunes or
made predictions from the stars. Against the most famous of these quacks,
Partridge by name, Swift leveled his "Predictions for the year 1708, by
Isaac Bickerstaff." Among the predictions of coming events was this trifle:
that Partridge was doomed to die on March 29 following, about eleven
o'clock at night, of a raging fever. On March 30 appeared, in the
newspapers, a letter giving the details of Partridge's death, and then a
pamphlet called "An Elegy of Mr. Partridge." Presently Partridge, who could
not see the joke, made London laugh by his frantic attempts to prove that
he was alive. Then appeared an elaborate "Vindication of Isaac
Bickerstaff," which proved by the infallible stars that Partridge was dead,
and that the astrologer now in his place was an impostor. This joke was
copied twenty-five years later by Franklin in his _Poor Richard's
Almanac._]

[Sidenote: GULLIVER'S TRAVELS]

Swift's fame now rests largely upon his _Gulliver's Travels_, which
appeared in 1726 under the title, "Travels into Several Remote Nations of
the World, by Lemuel Gulliver, first a Surgeon and then a Captain of
Several Ships." In the first voyage we are taken to Lilliput, a country
inhabited by human beings about six inches tall, with minds in proportion.
The capers of these midgets are a satire on human society, as seen through
Swift's scornful eyes. In the second voyage we go to Brobdingnag, where the
people are of gigantic stature, and by contrast we are reminded of the
petty "human insects" whom Gulliver represents. The third voyage, to the
Island of Laputa, is a burlesque of the scientists and philosophers of
Swift's day. The fourth leads to the land of the Houyhnhnms, where
intelligent horses are the ruling creatures, and humanity is represented by
the Yahoos, a horribly degraded race, having the forms of men and the
bestial habits of monkeys.

Such is the ferocious satire on the elegant society of Queen Anne's day.
Fortunately for our peace of mind we can read the book for its grim humor
and adventurous action, as we read any other good story. Indeed, it
surprises most readers of _Gulliver_ to be told that the work was
intended to wreck our faith in humanity.

[Sidenote: QUALITY OF SWIFT]

In all his satires Swift's power lies in his prose style--a convincing
style, clear, graphic, straightforward--and in his marvelous ability to
make every scene, however distant or grotesque, as natural as life itself.
As Emerson said, he describes his characters as if for the police. His
weakness is twofold: he has a fondness for coarse or malodorous references,
and he is so beclouded in his own soul that he cannot see his fellows in a
true light. In one of his early works he announced the purpose of all his
writing:

My hate, whose lash just Heaven has long decreed,
Shall on a day make Sin and Folly bleed.

That was written at twenty-six, before he took orders in the Church. As a
theological student it was certainly impressed upon the young man that
Heaven keeps its own prerogatives, and that sin and folly have never been
effectually reformed by lashing. But Swift had a scorn of all judgment
except his own. As the eyes of fishes are so arranged that they see only
their prey and their enemies, so Swift had eyes only for the vices of men
and for the lash that scourges them. When he wrote, therefore, he was not
an observer, or even a judge; he was a criminal lawyer prosecuting humanity
on the charge of being a sham. A tendency to insanity may possibly account
both for his spleen against others and for the self-tortures which made
him, as Archbishop King said, "the most unhappy man on earth."

[Sidenote: JOURNAL TO STELLA]

There is one oasis in the bitter desert of Swift's writings, namely, his
_Journal to Stella_. While in the employ of Temple he was the daily
companion of a young girl, Esther Johnson, who was an inmate of the same
household. Her love for Swift was pure and constant; wherever he went she
followed and lived near him, bringing a ray of sunshine into his life, in a
spirit which reminds us of the sublime expression of another woman: "For
whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy
people shall be my people, and thy God my God." She was probably married to
Swift, but his pride kept him from openly acknowledging the union. While he
was at London he wrote a private journal for Esther (Stella) in which he
recorded his impressions of the men and women he met, and of the political
battles in which he took part. That journal, filled with strange
abbreviations to which only he and Stella had the key, can hardly be called
literature, but it is of profound interest. It gives us glimpses of a woman
who chose to live in the shadow; it shows the better side of Swift's
nature, in contrast with his arrogance toward men and his brutal treatment
of women; and finally, it often takes us behind the scenes of a stage on
which was played a mixed comedy of politics and society.

* * * * *

JOSEPH ADDISON (1672-1719)

In Addison we have a pleasant reflection of the new social life of England.
Select almost any feature of that life, and you shall find some account of
it in the papers of Addison: its party politics in his _Whig
Examiner_; its "grand tour," as part of a gentleman's education, in his
_Remarks on Italy_; its adventure on foreign soil in such poems as
"The Campaign"; its new drama of decency in his _Cato_; its classic
delusions in his _Account of the Greatest English Poets_; its frills,
fashions and similar matters in his _Spectator_ essays. He tried
almost every type of literature, from hymns to librettos, and in each he
succeeded well enough to be loudly applauded. In his own day he was
accounted a master poet, but now he is remembered as a writer of prose
essays.

[Illustration: JOSEPH ADDISON]

LIFE. Addison's career offers an interesting contrast to that of
Swift, who lived in the same age. He was the son of an English
clergyman, settled in the deanery of Lichfield, and his early
training left upon him the stamp of good taste and good breeding.
In school he was always the model boy; in Oxford he wrote Latin
verses on safe subjects, in the approved fashion; in politics he
was content to "oil the machine" as he found it; in society he was
shy and silent (though naturally a brilliant talker) because he
feared to make some slip which might mar his prospects or the
dignity of his position.

A very discreet man was Addison, and the only failure he made of
discretion was when he married the Dowager Countess of Warwick,
went to live in her elegant Holland House, and lived unhappily ever
afterwards. The last is a mere formal expression. Addison had not
depth enough to be really unhappy. From the cold comfort of the
Dowager's palace he would slip off to his club or to Will's Coffee
house. There, with a pipe and a bottle, he would loosen his
eloquent tongue and proceed to "make discreetly merry with a few
old friends."

[Illustration: MAGDALEN COLLEGE OXFORD]

His characteristic quality appears in the literary work which
followed his Latin verses. He began with a flattering "Address to
Dryden," which pleased the old poet and brought Addison to the
attention of literary celebrities. His next effort was "The Peace
of Ryswick," which flattered King William's statesmen and brought
the author a chance to serve the Whig party. Also it brought a
pension, with a suggestion that Addison should travel abroad and
learn French and diplomacy, which he did, to his great content, for
the space of three years.

The death of the king brought Addison back to England. His pension
stopped, and for a time he lived poorly "in a garret," as one may
read in Thackeray's _Henry Esmond_. Then came news of an
English victory on the Continent (Marlborough's victory at
Blenheim), and the Whigs wanted to make political capital out of
the event. Addison was hunted up and engaged to write a poem. He
responded with "The Campaign," which made him famous. Patriots and
politicians ascribed to the poem undying glory, and their judgment
was accepted by fashionable folk of London. To read it now is to
meet a formal, uninspired production, containing a few stock
quotations and, incidentally, a sad commentary on the union of
Whiggery and poetry.

[Sidenote: HIS PATH OF ROSES]

From that moment Addison's success was assured. He was given
various offices of increasing importance; he entered Parliament; he
wrote a classic tragedy, _Cato_, which took London by storm
(his friend Steele had carefully "packed the house" for the first
performance); his essays in _The Spectator_ were discussed in
every fashionable club or drawing-room; he married a rich countess;
he was appointed Secretary of State. The path of politics, which
others find so narrow and slippery, was for Addison a broad road
through pleasant gardens. Meanwhile Swift, who could not follow the
Addisonian way of kindness and courtesy, was eating bitter bread
and railing at humanity.

After a brief experience as Secretary of State, finding that he
could not make the speeches expected of him, Addison retired on a
pension. His unwavering allegiance to good form in all matters
appears even in his last remark, "See how a Christian can die."
That was in 1719. He had sought the easiest, pleasantest way
through life, and had found it. Thackeray, who was in sympathy with
such a career, summed it up in a glowing panegyric:

"A life prosperous and beautiful, a calm death; an immense
fame and affection afterwards for his happy and spotless
name."

WORKS OF ADDISON. Addison's great reputation was won chiefly by his poetry;
but with the exception of a few hymns, simple and devout, his poetical
works no longer appeal to us. He was not a poet but a verse-maker. His
classic tragedy _Cato_, for example (which met with such amazing
success in London that it was taken over to the Continent, where it was
acclaimed "a masterpiece of regularity and elegance"), has some good
passages, but one who reads the context is apt to find the elegant lines
running together somewhat drowsily. Nor need that reflect on our taste or
intelligence. Even the cultured Greeks, as if in anticipation of classic
poems, built two adjoining temples, one dedicated to the Muses and the
other to Sleep.

[Sidenote: THE ESSAYS]

The _Essays_ of Addison give us the full measure of his literary
talent. In his verse, as in his political works, he seems to be speaking to
strangers; he is on guard over his dignity as a poet, as Secretary of
State, as husband of a countess; but in his _Essays_ we meet the man
at his ease, fluent, witty, light-hearted but not frivolous,--just as he
talked to his friends in Will's Coffeehouse. The conversational quality of
these _Essays_ has influenced all subsequent works of the same
type,--a type hard to define, but which leaves the impression of pleasant
talk about a subject, as distinct from any learned discussion.

The _Essays_ cover a wide range: fashions, dress, manners, character
sketches, letters of travel, ghost stories, satires on common vices,
week-end sermons on moral subjects. They are never profound, but they are
always pleasant, and their graceful style made such a lasting impression
that, half a century later, Dr. Johnson summed up a general judgment when
he said:

"Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but not
coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days and
nights to the volumes of Addison."

ADDISON AND STEELE. Of these two associates Richard Steele (1672-1729) had
the more original mind, and his writings reveal a warm, human sympathy that
is lacking in the work of his more famous contemporary. But while Addison
cultivated his one talent of writing, Steele was like Defoe in that he
always had some new project in his head, and some old debt urging him to
put the project into immediate execution. He was in turn poet, political
pamphleteer, soldier, dramatist, member of Parliament, publisher, manager
of a theater, following each occupation eagerly for a brief season, then
abandoning it cheerfully for another,--much like a boy picking blueberries
in a good place, who moves on and on to find a better bush, eats his
berries on the way, and comes home at last with an empty pail.

[Illustration: SIR RICHARD STEELE
From the engraving by Freeman after original by J. Richardson]

[Sidenote: THE TATLER AND THE SPECTATOR]

While holding the political office of "gazetteer" (one who had a monopoly
of official news) the idea came to Steele of publishing a literary
magazine. The inventive Defoe had already issued _The Review_ (1704),
but that had a political origin. With the first number of _The Tatler_
(1709) the modern magazine made its bow to the public. This little sheet,
published thrice a week and sold at a penny a copy, contained more or less
politics, to be sure, but the fact that it reflected the gossip of
coffeehouses made it instantly popular. After less than two years of
triumph Steele lost his official position, and _The Tatler_ was
discontinued. The idea remained, however, and a few months later appeared
_The Spectator_ (1711), a daily magazine which eschewed politics and
devoted itself to essays, reviews, letters, criticisms,--in short, to
"polite" literature. Addison, who had been a contributor to _The
Tatler_ entered heartily into the new venture, which had a brief but
glorious career. He became known as "Mr. Spectator," and the famous
Spectator Essays are still commonly attributed to him, though in truth
Steele furnished a large part of them. [Footnote: Of the _Tatler_
essays Addison contributed 42, Steele about 180, and some 36 were the work
of the two authors in collaboration. Of the _Spectator_ essays Addison
furnished 274, Steele 236, and about 45 were the work of other writers. In
some of the best essays ("Sir Roger de Coverley," for example) the two men
worked together. Steele is supposed to have furnished the original ideas,
the humor and overflowing kindness of such essays, while the work of
polishing and perfecting the style fell to the more skillful Addison.]

[Sidenote: ADDISONIAN STYLE]

Because of their cultivated prose style, Steele and Addison were long
regarded as models, and we are still influenced by them in the direction of
clearness and grace of expression. How wide their influence extended may be
seen in American literature. Hardly had _The Spectator_ appeared when
it crossed the Atlantic and began to dominate our English style on both
sides of the ocean. Franklin, in Boston, studied it by night in order to
imitate it in the essay which he slipped under the printing-house door next
morning; and Boyd, in Virginia, reflects its influence in his charming
Journal of exploration. Half a century later, the Hartford Wits were
writing clever sketches that seemed like the work of a new "Spectator";
another half century, and Irving, the greatest master of English prose in
his day, was still writing in the Addisonian manner, and regretting as he
wrote that the leisurely style showed signs, in a bustling age, "of
becoming a little old-fashioned."

* * * * *

DR. JOHNSON AND HIS CIRCLE

Since Caxton established the king's English as a literary language our
prose style has often followed the changing fashion of London. Thus, Lyly
made it fantastic, Dryden simplified it, Addison gave it grace; and each
leader set a fashion which was followed by a host of young writers. Hardly
had the Addisonian style crossed the Atlantic, to be the model for American
writers for a century, when London acclaimed a new prose fashion--a
ponderous, grandiloquent fashion, characterized by mouth-filling words,
antithetical sentences, rounded periods, sonorous commonplaces--which was
eagerly adopted by orators and historians especially. The man who did more
than any other to set this new oratorical fashion in motion was the same
Dr. Samuel Johnson who advised young writers to study Addison as a model.
And that was only one of his amusing inconsistencies.

Johnson was a man of power, who won a commanding place in English letters
by his hard work and his downright sincerity. He won his name of "the great
lexicographer" by his _Dictionary_, which we no longer consult, but
which we remember as the first attempt at a complete English lexicon. If
one asks what else he wrote, with the idea of going to the library and
getting a book for pleasure, the answer must be that Johnson's voluminous
works are now as dead as his dictionary. One student of literature may be
interested in such a melancholy poem as "The Vanity of Human Wishes";
another will be entertained by the anecdotes or blunt criticisms of the
_Lives of the Poets_; a third may be uplifted by the _Rambler
Essays_, which are well called "majestically moral productions"; but we
shall content ourselves here by recording Johnson's own refreshing
criticism of certain ancient authors, that "it is idle to criticize what
nobody reads." Perhaps the best thing he wrote was a minor work, which he
did not know would ever be published. This was his manly Letter to Lord
Chesterfield, a nobleman who had treated Johnson with discourtesy when the
poor author was making a heroic struggle, but who offered his patronage
when the Dictionary was announced as an epoch-making work. In his noble
refusal of all extraneous help Johnson unconsciously voiced Literature's
declaration of independence: that henceforth a book must stand or fall on
its own merits, and that the day of the literary patron was gone forever.

[Illustration: DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON
From the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds]

LIFE. The story of Johnson's life (1709-1784) has been so well told
that one is loath to attempt a summary of it. We note, therefore, a
few plain facts: that he was the son of a poor bookseller; that
despite poverty and disease he obtained his classic education; that
at twenty-six he came to London, and, after an experience with
patrons, rebelled against them; that he did every kind of hackwork
to earn his bread honestly, living in the very cellar of Grub
Street, where he was often cold and more often hungry; that after
nearly thirty years of labor his services to literature were
rewarded by a pension, which he shared with the poor; that he then
formed the Literary Club (including Reynolds, Pitt, Gibbon,
Goldsmith, Burke, and almost every other prominent man in London)
and indulged nightly in his famous "conversations," which were
either monologues or knockdown arguments; and that in his old age
he was regarded as the king of letters, the oracle of literary
taste in England.

[Illustration: DR. JOHNSON'S HOUSE (BOLT COURT, FLEET ST.)
From the print by Charles J. Smith]

Such is the bare outline of Johnson's career. To his character, his
rough exterior and his kind heart, his vast learning and his Tory
prejudices, his piety, his melancholy, his virtues, his frailty,
his "mass of genuine manhood," only a volume could do justice.
Happily that volume is at hand. It is Boswell's _Life of
Johnson_, a famous book that deserves its fame.

BOSWELL'S JOHNSON. Boswell was an inquisitive barrister who came from
Edinburgh to London and thrust himself into the company of great men. To
Johnson, then at the summit of his fame, "Bozzy" was devotion itself,
following his master about by day or night, refusing to be rebuffed,
jotting down notes of what he saw and heard. After Johnson's death he
gathered these notes together and, after seven years of labor, produced his
incomparable _Life of Johnson_ (1791).

The greatness of Boswell's work may be traced to two causes. First, he had
a great subject. The story of any human life is interesting, if truthfully
told, and Johnson's heroic life of labor and pain and reward was passed in
a capital city, among famous men, at a time which witnessed the rapid
expansion of a mighty empire. Second, Boswell was as faithful as a man
could be to his subject, for whom he had such admiration that even the
dictator's frailties seemed more impressive than the virtues of ordinary
humanity. So Boswell concealed nothing, and felt no necessity to distribute
either praise or blame. He portrayed a man just as that man was, recorded
the word just as the word was spoken; and facing the man we may see his
enraptured audience,--at a distance, indeed, but marvelously clear, as when
we look through the larger end of a field glass at a landscape dominated by
a mountain. One who reads this matchless biography will know Johnson better
than he knows his own neighbor; he will gain, moreover, a better
understanding of humanity, to reflect which clearly and truthfully is the
prime object of all good literature.

[Illustration: James Boswell]

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797). This brilliant Irishman came up to London as a
young man of twenty-one. Within a few years--such was his character, his
education, his genius--he had won a reputation among old statesmen as a
political philosopher. Then he entered Parliament, where for twenty years
the House listened with growing amazement to his rhythmic periods, and he
was acclaimed the most eloquent of orators.

Among Burke's numerous works those on America, India and France are
deservedly the most famous. Of his orations on American subjects a student
of literature or history may profitably read "On Taxation" (1774) and "On
Conciliation" (1775), in which Burke presents the Whig argument in favor of
a liberal colonial policy. The Tory view of the same question was bluntly
presented by Johnson in his essay "Taxation No Tyranny"; while like a
reverberation from America, powerful enough to carry across the Atlantic,
came Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," which was a ringing plea for colonial
independence.

[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE
From the print by John Jones, after Romney]

Of Burke's works pertaining to India "The Nabob of Arcot's Debts" (1785)
and the "Impeachment of Warren Hastings" (1786) are interesting to those who
can enjoy a long flight of sustained eloquence. Here again Burke presents
the liberal, the humane view of what was then largely a political question;
but in his _Reflections on the French Revolution_ (1790) he goes over
to the Tories, thunders against the revolutionists or their English
sympathizers, and exalts the undying glories of the British constitution.
The _Reflections_ is the most brilliant of all Burke's works, and is
admired for its superb rhetorical style.

[Sidenote: BURKE'S METHOD]

To examine any of these works is to discover the author's characteristic
method: first, his framework or argument is carefully constructed so as to
appeal to reason; then this framework is buried out of sight and memory by
a mass of description, digression, emotional appeal, allusions,
illustrative matter from the author's wide reading or from his prolific
imagination. Note this passage from the _French Revolution_:

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of
France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never
lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more
delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and
cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in,
glittering like the morning star, full of life and splendor and
joy. Oh, what a revolution! And what a heart must I have to
contemplate without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little
did I dream, when she added titles of veneration to those of
distant, enthusiastic, respectful love, that she should ever be
obliged to carry the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in
that bosom; little did I dream that I should have lived to see such
disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation
of men of honour and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords
must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that
threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That
of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the
glory of Europe is extinguished for ever. Never, never more shall
we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud
submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the
heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an
exalted freedom. The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of
nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is
gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of
honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage
whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched,
and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its
grossness."

That is finely expressed, but it has no bearing on the political matter in
question; namely, whether the sympathy of England should be extended to the
French revolutionists in their struggle for liberty. This irrelevancy of
Burke suggests our first criticism: that he is always eloquent, and usually
right; but he is seldom convincing, and his eloquence is a hindrance rather
than a help to his main purpose. So we are not surprised to hear that his
eloquent speech on Conciliation emptied the benches; or that after his
supreme effort in the impeachment of Hastings--an effort so tremendously
dramatic that spectators sobbed, screamed, were carried out in fits--the
object of all this invective was acquitted by his judges. Reading the works
now, they seem to us praiseworthy not for their sustained eloquence, which
is wearisome, but for the brilliancy of certain detached passages which
catch the eye like sparkling raindrops after a drenching shower. It was the
splendor of such passages, their vivid imagery and harmonious rhythm, which
led Matthew Arnold to assert that Burke was the greatest master of prose
style in our literature. Anybody can make such an assertion; nobody can
prove or disprove it.

THE HISTORIANS. Perhaps it was the rapid expansion of the empire in the
latter, part of the eighteenth century which aroused such interest in
historical subjects that works of history were then more eagerly welcomed
than poetry or fiction. Gibbon says in his _Memoirs_ that in his day
"history was the most popular species of composition." It was also the best
rewarded; for while Johnson, the most renowned author of his time, wrote a
romance (_Rasselas_) hoping to sell it for enough to pay for his
mother's funeral, Robertson easily disposed of his _History of the
Emperor Charles V_ for L4500; and there were others who were even better
paid for popular histories, the very titles of which are now forgotten.

[Sidenote: GIBBON]

Of all the historical works of the age, and their name was legion, only one
survives with something of its original vitality, standing the double test
of time and scholarship. This is _The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire_ (1776), a work which remained famous for a century, and which
still has its admiring readers. It was written by Edward Gibbon
(1737-1794), who belonged to the Literary Club that gathered about Johnson,
and who cultivated his style, he tells us, first by adopting the dictator's
rounded periods, and then practicing them "till they moved to flutes and
hautboys."

The scope of Gibbon's work is enormous. It begins with the Emperor Trajan
(A.D. 98) and carries us through the convulsions of a dying civilization,
the descent of the Barbarians on Rome, the spread of Christianity, the
Crusades, the rise of Mohammedanism,--through all the confused history of
thirteen centuries, ending with the capture of Constantinople by the Turks,
in 1453. The mind that could grasp such vast and chaotic materials, arrange
them in orderly sequence and resent them as in a gorgeous panorama, moves
us to wonder. To be sure, there are many things to criticize in Gibbon's
masterpiece,--the author's love of mere pageants; his materialism; his
inability to understand religious movements, or even religious motives; his
lifeless figures, which move as if by mechanical springs,--but one who
reads the _Decline and Fall_ may be too much impressed by the
evidences of scholarship, of vast labor, of genius even, to linger over
faults. It is a "monumental" work, most interesting to those who admire
monuments; and its style is the perfection of that oratorical, Johnsonese
style which was popular in England in 1776, and which, half a century
later, found its best American mouthpiece in Daniel Webster. The influence
of Gibbon may still be seen in the orators and historians who, lacking the
charm of simplicity, clothe even their platitudes in high-sounding phrases.

[Illustration: EDWARD GIBBON
From an enamel by H Bone, R.A.; after Sir Joshua Reynolds]

* * * * *

THE REVIVAL OF ROMANTIC POETRY

Every age has had its romantic poets--that is, poets who sing the dreams
and ideals of life, and whose songs seem to be written naturally,
spontaneously, as from a full heart [Footnote: For specific examples of
formal and romantic poetry see the comparison between Addison and
Wordsworth below, under "Natural vs Formal Poetry", Chapter VII]--but in
the eighteenth century they were completely overshadowed by formal
versifiers who made poetry by rule. At that time the imaginative verse
which had delighted an earlier age was regarded much as we now regard an
old beaver hat; Shakespeare and Milton were neglected, Spenser was but a
name, Chaucer was clean forgotten. If a poet aspired to fame, he imitated
the couplets of Dryden or Pope, who, as Cowper said,

Made poetry a mere mechanic art,
And every warbler has his tune by heart.

[Illustration: THOMAS GRAY
from a portrait by Benjamin Wilson, in the possession of John Murray]

Among those who made vigorous protest against the precise and dreary
formalism of the age were Collins and Gray, whose names are commonly
associated in poetry, as are the names of Addison and Steele in prose. They
had the same tastes, the same gentle melancholy, the same freedom from the
bondage of literary fashion. Of the two, William Collins (1721-1759) was
perhaps the more gifted poet. His exquisite "Ode to Evening" is without a
rival in its own field, and his brief elegy beginning, "How sleep the
brave," is a worthy commemoration of a soldier's death and a nation's
gratitude. It has, says Andrew Lang, the magic of an elder day and of all
time.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771) is more widely known than his fellow poet, largely
because of one fortunate poem which "returned to men's bosoms" as if sure
of its place and welcome. This is the "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" (1750), which has been translated into all civilized tongues,
and which is known, loved, quoted wherever English is spoken.

[Illustration: STOKE POGES CHURCHYARD, SHOWING PART OF THE CHURCH AND
GRAY'S TOMB]

[Sidenote: GRAY'S ELEGY]

To criticize this favorite of a million readers seems almost ruthless, as
if one were pulling a flower to pieces for the sake of giving it a
botanical name. A pleasanter task is to explain, if one can, the immense
popularity of the "Elegy." The theme is of profound interest to every man
who reveres the last resting place of his parents, to the nation which
cherishes every monument of its founders, and even to primitive peoples,
like the Indians, who refuse to leave the place where their fathers are
buried, and who make the grave a symbol of patriotism. With this great
theme our poet is in perfect sympathy. His attitude is simple and reverent;
he treads softly, as if on holy ground. The natural setting or atmosphere
of his poem, the peace of evening falling on the old churchyard at Stoke
Poges, the curfew bell, the cessation of daily toil, the hush which falls
upon the twilight landscape like a summons to prayer,--all this is exactly
as it should be. Finally, Gray's craftsmanship, his choice of words, his
simple figures, his careful fitting of every line to its place and context,
is as near perfection as human skill could make it.

Other poems of Gray, which make his little book precious, are the four
odes: "To Spring," "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College," "The Progress
of Poesy" and "The Bard," the last named being a description of the
dramatic end of an old Welsh minstrel, who chants a wild prophecy as he
goes to his death. These romantic odes, together with certain translations
which Gray made from Norse mythology, mark the end of "classic" domination
in English poetry.

* * * * *

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774)

Most versatile of eighteenth-century writers was "poor Noll," a most
improvident kind of man in all worldly ways, but so skillful with his pen
that Johnson wrote a sincere epitaph to the effect that Goldsmith attempted
every form of literature, and adorned everything which he attempted. The
form of his verse suggests the formal school, and his polished couplets
rival those of Pope; but there the resemblance ceases. In his tenderness
and humor, in his homely subjects and the warm human sympathy with which he
describes them, Goldsmith belongs to the new romantic school of poetry.

LIFE. The life of Goldsmith has inspired many pens; but the
subject, far from being exhausted, is still awaiting the right
biographer. The poet's youthful escapades in the Irish country, his
classical education at Trinity College, Dublin, and his vagabond
studies among gypsies and peddlers, his childish attempts at
various professions, his wanderings over Europe, his shifts and
makeshifts to earn a living in London, his tilts with Johnson at
the Literary Club, his love of gorgeous raiment, his indiscriminate
charity, his poverty, his simplicity, his success in the art of
writing and his total failure in the art of living,--such
kaleidoscopic elements make a brief biography impossible. The
character of the man appears in a single incident.

Landing one day on the Continent with a flute, a spare shirt and a
guinea as his sole outward possessions, the guinea went for a feast
and a game of cards at the nearest inn, and the shirt to the first
beggar that asked for it. There remained only the flute, and with
that Goldsmith fared forth confidently, like the gleeman of old
with his harp, delighted at seeing the world, utterly forgetful of
the fact that he had crossed the Channel in search of a medical
education.

That aimless, happy-go-lucky journey was typical of Goldsmith's
whole life of forty-odd years. Those who knew him loved but
despaired of him. When he passed away (1774) Johnson summed up the
feeling of the English literary world in the sentence, "He was a
very great man, let not his frailties be remembered."

[Illustration: OLIVER GOLDSMITH
After the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds]

GOLDSMITH'S PROSE AND VERSE. Among the forgotten works of Goldsmith we note
with interest several that he wrote for children: a fanciful _History of
England_, an entertaining but most unreliable _Animated Nature_,
and probably also the tale of "Little Goody Twoshoes." These were written
(as were all his other works) to satisfy the demands of his landlady, or to
pay an old debt, or to buy a new cloak,--a plum-colored velvet cloak,
wherewith to appear at the opera or to dazzle the Literary Club. From among
his works we select four, as illustrative of Goldsmith's versatility.

_The Citizen of the World_, a series of letters from an alleged
Chinese visitor, invites comparison with the essays of Addison or Steele.
All three writers are satirical, all have a high moral purpose, all are
masters of a graceful style, but where the "Spectator" touches the surface
of life, Goldsmith often goes deeper and probes the very spirit of the
eighteenth century. Here is a paragraph from the first letter, in which the
alleged visitor, who has heard much of the wealth and culture of London,
sets down his first impressions:

"From these circumstances in their buildings, and from the dismal
looks of the inhabitants, I am induced to conclude that the nation
is actually poor, and that, like the Persians, they make a splendid
figure everywhere but at home. The proverb of Xixofou is, that a
man's riches may be seen in his eyes if we judge of the English by
this rule, there is not a poorer nation under the sun."

[Illustration: THE "CHESHIRE CHEESE," LONDON, SHOWING DR. JOHNSON'S FAVORITE
SEAT The tavern, which still stands, was the favorite haunt of both Johnson
and Goldsmith]

[Sidenote: THE DESERTED VILLAGE]

_The Deserted Village_ (1770) is the best remembered of Goldsmith's
poems, or perhaps one should say "verses" in deference to critics like
Matthew Arnold who classify the work with Pope's _Essay on Man_, as a
rimed dissertation rather than a true poem.

To compare the two works just mentioned is to discover how far Goldsmith is
from his formal model. In Pope's "Essay" we find common sense, moral maxims
and some alleged philosophy, but no emotion, no romance, no men or women.
The "Village," on the other hand, is romantic even in desolation; it
awakens our interest, our sympathy; and it gives us two characters, the
Parson and the Schoolmaster, who live in our memories with the best of
Chaucer's creations. Moreover, it makes the commonplace life of man ideal
and beautiful, and so appeals to readers of widely different tastes or
nationalities. Of the many ambitious poems written in the eighteenth
century, the two most widely read (aside from the songs of Burns) are
Goldsmith's "Village," which portrays the life of simple country people,
and Gray's "Elegy," which laments their death.

[Illustration: CANONBURY TOWER (LONDON)
Goldsmith lived here when he wrote the "Vicar of Wakefield"]

[Sidenote: VICAR OF WAKEFIELD]

Goldsmith's one novel, _The Vicar of Wakefield_ (1766), has been well
called "the Prince Charming" of our early works of fiction. This work has a
threefold distinction: its style alone is enough to make it pleasant
reading; as a story it retains much of its original charm, after a century
and a half of proving; by its moral purity it offered the best kind of
rebuke to the vulgar tendency of the early English novel, and influenced
subsequent fiction in the direction of cleanness and decency.

The story is that of a certain vicar, or clergyman, Dr. Primrose and his
family, who pass through heavy trials and misfortunes. These might crush or
embitter an ordinary man, but they only serve to make the Vicar's love for
his children, his trust in God, his tenderness for humanity, shine out more
clearly, like star's after a tempest. Mingled with these affecting trials
are many droll situations which probably reflect something of the author's
personal escapades; for Goldsmith was the son of a clergyman, and brought
himself and his father into his tale. As a novel, that is, a reflection of
human life in the form of a story, it contains many weaknesses; but despite
its faults of moralizing and sentimentality, the impression which the story
leaves is one of "sweetness and light." Swinburne says that, of all novels
he had seen rise and fall in three generations, _The Vicar of
Wakefield_ alone had retained the same high level in the opinion of its
readers.

[Sidenote: SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER]

Another notable work is Goldsmith's comedy _She Stoops to Conquer_. The
date of that comedy (1773) recalls the fact that, though it has been played
for nearly a century and a half, during which a thousand popular plays have
been forgotten, it is still a prime favorite on the amateur stage. Perhaps
the only other comedies of which the same can be said with approximate
truth are _The Rivals_ (1775) and _The School for Scandal_ (1777)
of Richard Brinsley Sheridan.

The plot of _She Stoops to Conquer_ is said to have been suggested by
one of Goldsmith's queer adventures. He arrived one day at a village,
riding a borrowed nag, and with the air of a lordly traveler asked a
stranger to direct him "to the best house in the place." The stranger
misunderstood, or else was a rare wag, for he showed the way to the abode
of a wealthy gentleman. There Goldsmith made himself at home, ordered the
servants about, invited his host to share a bottle of wine,--in short, made
a great fool of himself. Evidently the host was also a wag, for he let the
joke run on till the victim was ready to ride away. [Footnote: There is
some doubt as to the source of Goldsmith's plot. It may have been suggested
by an earlier French comedy by Marivaux.]

From some such crazy escapade Goldsmith made his comedy of manners, a
lively, rollicking comedy of topsy-turvy scenes, all hinging upon the
incident of mistaking a private house for a public inn. We have called
_She Stoops to Conquer_ a comedy of eighteenth-century manners, but
our continued interest in its absurdities would seem to indicate that it is
a comedy of human nature in all ages.

* * * * *

ROBERT BURNS (1759-1796)

Burns is everywhere acclaimed the poet of Scotland, and for two good
reasons: because he reflects better than any other the emotions of the
Scottish people, and because his book is a summary of the best verse of his
native land. Practically all his songs, such as "Bonnie Boon" and "Auld
Lang Syne," are late echoes of much older verses; his more ambitious poems
borrow their ideas, their satire or sentiment, their form even, from
Ferguson, Allan Ramsay and other poets, all of whom aimed (as Scott aimed
in "Lochinvar") to preserve the work of unnamed minstrels whose lines had
been repeated in Highlands or Lowlands for two centuries. Burns may be
regarded, therefore, as a treasury of all that is best in Scottish song.
His genius was to take this old material, dear to the heart of the native,
and give it final expression.

[Illustration: ROBERT BURNS
After Alexander Nasmyth]

LIFE. The life of Burns is one to discourage a biographer who does
not relish the alternative of either concealing the facts or
apologizing for his subject. We shall record here only a few
personal matters which may help us to understand Burns's poetry.

Perhaps the most potent influence in his life was that which came
from his labor in the field. He was born in a clay biggin, or
cottage, in the parish of Alloway, near the little town of Ayr.

Auld Ayr, wham neer a town surpasses
For honest men and bonnie lasses.

His father was a poor crofter, a hard working, God fearing man of
the Covenanter type, who labored unceasingly to earn a living from
the soil of a rented farm. The children went barefoot in all
seasons, almost from the time they could walk they were expected to
labor and at thirteen Bobbie was doing a man's work at the plow or
the reaping. The toil was severe, the reward, at best, was to
escape dire poverty or disgraceful debt, but there was yet a
nobility in the life which is finely reflected in "The Cotter's
Saturday Night," a poem which ranks with Whittier's "Snow Bound"
among the best that labor has ever inspired.

[Illustration: "ELLISLAND"
The hundred acre farm near Dumfries where Burns worked as a farmer.
The happiest days of his life were spent here, 1787-1791]

[Sidenote: THE ELEMENT OF NATURE]

As a farmer's boy Burns worked in the open, in close contact with
nature, and the result is evident in all his verse. Sunshine or
storm, bird song or winter wind, the flowers, the stars, the dew of
the morning,--open Burns where you will, and you are face to face
with these elemental realities. Sometimes his reflection of nature
is exquisitely tender, as in "To a Mouse" or "To a Mountain Daisy";
but for the most part he regards nature not sentimentally, like
Gray, or religiously, like Wordsworth and Bryant, but in a breezy,
companionable way which suggests the song of "Under the Greenwood
Tree" in _As You Like It_.

[Sidenote: HIS EDUCATION]

Another influence in Burns's life came from his elementary
education. There were no ancient classics studied in the school
which he attended,--fortunately, perhaps, for his best work is free
from the outworn classical allusions which decorate the bulk of
eighteenth-century verse. In the evening he listened to tales from
Scottish history, which stirred him deeply and made him live in a
present world rather than in the misty region of Greek mythology.
One result of this education was the downright honesty of Burns's
poems. Here is no echo from a vanished world of gods and goddesses,
but the voice of a man, living, working, feeling joy or sorrow in
the presence of everyday nature and humanity.

For another formative influence Burns was indebted to Betty
Davidson, a relative and an inmate of the household, who carried
such a stock of old wives' tales as would scare any child into fits
on a dark night. Hear Burns speak of her:

"She had, I suppose, the largest collection in the country
of tales and songs concerning devils, ghosts, fairies,
brownies, witches, warlocks, spunkies, kelpies,
elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, apparitions, cantrips,
giants, enchanted towers, dragons, and other trumpery. This
cultivated the latent seeds of poetry, but had so strong an
effect upon my imagination that to this hour, in my
nocturnal rambles, I sometimes keep a sharp look-out in
suspicious places."

Reflections of these grotesque superstitions appear in such poems
as the "Address to the Deil" and "Tam o' Shanter." The latter is
commonly named as one of the few original works of Burns, but it is
probably a retelling of some old witch-tale of Betty Davidson.

[Sidenote: EVIL ELEMENTS]

The evil influence in Burns's life may be only suggested. It leads
first to the tavern, to roistering and dissipation, to
entanglements in vulgar love affairs; then swiftly to the loss of a
splendid poetic gift, to hopeless debts, to degrading poverty, to
an untimely death. Burns had his chance, if ever poet had it, after
the publication of his first book (the famous Kilmarnock edition of
1786) when he was called in triumph to Edinburgh. There he sold
another edition of his poems for a sum that seemed fabulous to a
poor crofter; whereupon he bought a farm and married his Jean
Armour. He was acclaimed throughout the length and breadth of his
native land, his poems were read by the wise and by the ignorant,
he was the poet of Scotland, and the nation, proud of its gifted
son, stood ready to honor and follow him. But the old habits were
too strong, and Burns took the downhill road. To this element of
dissipation we owe his occasional bitterness, railing and
coarseness, which make an expurgated edition of his poems essential
to one who would enjoy the reading.

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF TARBOLTON, NEAR WHICH BURNS LIVED
WHEN ABOUT NINETEEN YEARS OLD]

There is another element, often emphasized for its alleged
influence on Burns's poetry. During his lifetime the political
world was shaken by the American and French revolutions, democracy
was in the air, and the watchwords "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity"
inspired many a song besides the _Marseillaise_ and many a
document besides the Declaration of Independence. That Burns was
aware of this political commotion is true, but he was not much
influenced by it. He was at home only in his own Scottish field,
and even there his interests were limited,--not to be compared with
those of Walter Scott, for example. When the Bastille was stormed,
and the world stood aghast, Burns was too much engrossed in
personal matters to be greatly moved by distant affairs in France.
Not to the Revolution, therefore, but to his Scottish blood do we
owe the thrilling "Scots Wha Hae," one of the world's best battle
songs, not to the new spirit of democracy abroad but to the old
Covenanter spirit at home do we owe "A Man's a Man for a' That"
with its assertion of elemental manhood.

THE SONGS OF BURNS. From such an analysis of Burns's life one may forecast
his subject and his method. Living intensely in a small field, he must
discover that there are just two poetic subjects of abiding interest. These
are Nature and Humanity, and of these Burns must write from first-hand
knowledge, simply, straightforwardly, and with sincerity. Moreover, as
Burns lives in an intense way, reading himself rather than books, he must
discover that the ordinary man is more swayed by strong feeling than by
logical reasons. He will write, therefore, of the common emotions that lie
between the extremes of laughter and tears, and his appeal will be to the
heart rather than to the head of his reader.

[Illustration: AULD ALLOWAY KIRK
Made famous by the poem of "Tam o'Shanter"]

This emotional power of Burns, his masterful touch upon human heartstrings,
is the first of his poetic qualities; and he has others which fairly force
themselves upon the attention. For example, many of his lyrics ("Auld Lang
Syne," "Banks o' Doon," "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton," "O Wert Thou in the
Cauld Blast") have been repeatedly set to music; and the reason is that
they were written to music, that in such poems Burns was refashioning some
old material to the tune of a Scottish song. There is a singing quality in
his poetry which not only makes it pleasant reading but which is apt to set
the words tripping to melody. For a specific example take this stanza from
"Of a' the Airts," a lyric which one can hardly read without making a tune
to match it:

I see her in the dewy flow'rs,
I see her sweet and fair;
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,
I hear her charm the air:
There's not a bonie flow'r that springs
By fountain, shaw or green,
There's not a bonie bird that sings,
But minds me o' my Jean.

Sympathy is another marked characteristic of Burns, a wide, all-embracing
sympathy that knows no limit save for hypocrites, at whom he pointed his
keenest satire. His feeling for nature is reflected in "To a Mouse" and "To
a Daisy"; his comradeship with noble men appears in "The Cotter's Saturday
Night," with riotous and bibulous men in "The Jolly Beggars," with
smugglers and their ilk in "The Deil's Awa' with the Exciseman," [Footnote:
Burns was himself an exciseman; that is, a collector of taxes on alcoholic
liquors. He wrote this song while watching a smuggler's craft, and waiting
in the storm for officers to come and make an arrest.] with patriots in
"Bannockburn," with men who mourn in "To Mary in Heaven," and with all
lovers in a score of famous lyrics. Side by side with Burns's sympathy (for
Smiles live next door to Tears) appears his keen sense of humor, a humor
that is sometimes rollicking, as in "Contented wi' Little," and again too
broad for decency. For the most part, however, Burns contents himself with
dry, quiet sarcasm delivered with an air of great seriousness:

Ah, gentle dames, it gars me greet
To think how mony counsels sweet,
How mony lengthened sage advices
The husband frae the wife despises!

WHY BURNS IS READ. Such qualities, appearing on almost every page of
Burns's little book of poetry, show how widely he differs from the formal
school of Pope and Dryden. They labor to compose poetry, while Burns gives
the impression of singing, as naturally as a child sings from a full heart.
Again, most eighteenth-century poets wrote for the favored few, but Burns
wrote for all his neighbors. His first book was bought farmers, plowboys,
milkmaids,--by every Lowlander who could scrape together three shillings to
buy a treasure. Then scholars got hold of it, taking it from humble hands,
and Burns was called to Edinburgh to prepare a larger edition of his songs.
For a half century Scotland kept him to herself, [Footnote: Up to 1850
Burns was rarely mentioned in treatises on English literature. One reason
for his late recognition was that the Lowland vocabulary employed in most
of his poems was only half intelligible to the ordinary English reader]
then his work went wide in the world, to be read again by plain men and
women, by sailors on the sea, by soldiers round the campfire, by farmers,
mechanics, tradesmen, who in their new homes in Australia or America warmed
themselves at the divine fire which was kindled, long ago, in the little
clay biggin at Alloway.

[Illustration: BURNS'S MAUSOLEUM]

[Sidenote: THE GENIUS OF BURNS]

If one should ask, Why this world wide welcome to Burns, the while Pope
remains a mark for literary criticism? the answer is that Burns has a most
extraordinary power of touching the hearts of common men. He is one of the
most democratic of poets, he takes for his subject a simple experience--a
family gathering at eventide, a fair, a merrymaking, a joy, a grief, the
finding of a flower, the love of a lad for a lass--and with rare simplicity
reflects the emotion that such an experience awakens. Seen through the
poet's eyes, this simple emotion becomes radiant and lovely, a thing not of
earth but of heaven. That is the genius of Burns, to ennoble human feeling,
to reveal some hidden beauty in a commonplace experience. The luminous
world of fine thought and fine emotion which we associate with the name of
poetry he opened not to scholars alone but to all humble folk who toil and
endure. As a shoemaker critic once said, "Burns confirms my former
suspicion that the world was made for me as well as for Casar."

* * * * *

MINOR POETS OF ROMANTICISM

There were other poets who aided in the romantic revival, and among them
William Cowper (1731-1800) is one of the most notable. His most ambitious
works, such as _The Task_ and the translation of Homer into blank
verse, have fallen into neglect, and he is known to modern readers chiefly
by a few familiar hymns and by the ballad of "John Gilpin."

[Illustration: WILLIAM COWPER
From the rare engraving by W Blake (1802) After the painting by T
Lawrence, R A (1793)]

Less gifted but more popular than Cowper was James Macpherson (1736-1796),
who made a sensation that spread rapidly over Europe and America with his
_Fingal_ (1762) and other works of the same kind,--wildly heroic poems
which, he alleged, were translations from Celtic manuscripts written by an
ancient bard named Ossian. Another and better literary forgery appeared in
a series of ballads called _The Rowley Papers_, dealing with medieval
themes. These were written by "the marvelous boy" Thomas Chatterton
(1752-1770), who professed to have found the poems in a chest of old
manuscripts. The success of these forgeries, especially of the "Ossian"
poems, is an indication of the awakened interest in medieval poetry and
legend which characterized the whole romantic movement.

In this connection, Thomas Percy (1729-1811) did a notable work when he
published, after years of research, his _Reliques of Ancient English
Poetry_ (1765). This was a collection of old ballads, which profoundly
influenced Walter Scott, and which established a foundation for all later
works of balladry.

Another interesting figure in the romantic revival is William Blake
(1757-1827), a strange, mystic child, a veritable John o' Dreams, whom some
call madman because of his huge, chaotic, unintelligible poems, but whom
others regard as the supreme poetical genius of the eighteenth century. His
only readable works are the boyish _Poetical Sketches_ (1783) and two
later volumes called _Songs of Innocence_ and _Songs of
Experience_ (1794). Even these contain much to make us question Blake's
sanity; but they contain also a few lyrics that might have been written by
an elf rather than a man,--beautiful, elusive lyrics that haunt us like a
strain of gypsy music, a memory of childhood, a bird song in the night:

Can the eagle see what is in the pit,
Or wilt thou go ask the mole?
Can wisdom be put in a silver rod,
Or love in a golden bowl?

In the witchery of these lyrics eighteenth-century poetry appears
commonplace; but they attracted no attention, even "Holy Thursday," the
sweetest song of poor children ever written, passing unnoticed. That did
not trouble Blake, however, who cared nothing for rewards. He was a
childlike soul, well content

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower;
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

* * * * *

THE EARLY ENGLISH NOVEL

An important literary event of the eighteenth century was the appearance of
the modern novel. This invention, generally credited to the English,
differs radically from the old romance, which was known to all civilized
peoples. Walter Scott made the following distinction between the two types
of fiction: the romance is a story in which our interest centers in
marvelous incidents, brought to pass by extraordinary or superhuman
characters; the novel is a story which is more natural, more in harmony
with our experience of life. Such a definition, though faulty, is valuable
in that it points to the element of imagination as the distinguishing mark
between the romance and the true novel.

[Sidenote: THE ROMANCE]

Take, for example, the romances of Arthur or Sindbad or the Green Knight.
Here are heroes of more than human endurance, ladies of surpassing
loveliness, giants, dragons, enchanters, marvelous adventures in the land
of imagination. Such fanciful stories, valuable as a reflection of the
ideals of different races, reached their highest point in the Middle Ages,
when they were used to convey the ideals of chivalry and knightly duty.
They grew more fantastic as they ran to seed, till in the Elizabethan age
they had degenerated into picaresque stories (from _picaro_, "a
rogue") which recounted the adventures not of a noble knight but of some
scoundrel or outcast. They were finally laughed out of literature in
numerous burlesques, of which the most famous is _Don Quixote_ (1605).
In the humor of this story, in the hero's fighting windmills and meeting so
many adventures that he had no time to breathe, we have an excellent
criticism not of chivalry, as is sometimes alleged, but of extravagant
popular romances on the subject. [Footnote: _Don Quixote_ is commonly
named as a type of extravagant humor, but from another viewpoint it is a
sad book, intensely sad. For it recounts the experience of a man who had a
knightly heart and who believed the world to be governed by knightly
ideals, but who went forth to find a world filled with vulgarity and
villainy.]

[Sidenote: THE NOVEL]

Compare now these old romances with _Ivanhoe_ or _Robinson
Crusoe_ or _Lorna Doone_ or _A Tale of Two Cities_. In each of
the last-named novels one may find three elements: a story, a study, and an
exercise of the creative imagination. A modern work of fiction must still
have a good story, if anybody is to read it; must contain also a study or
observation of humanity, not of superhuman heroes but of men and women who
work or play or worship in close relationship to their fellows. Finally,
the story and the study must be fused by the imagination, which selects or
creates various scenes, characters, incidents, and which orders or arranges
its materials so as to make a harmonious work that appeals to our sense of
truth and beauty; in other words, a work of art.

Such is the real novel, a well-told story in tune with human experience,
holding true to life, exercising fancy but keeping it under control,
arousing thought as well as feeling, and appealing to our intellect as well
as to our imagination. [Footnote: This convenient division of prose fiction
into romances and novels is open to challenge. Some critics use the name
"novel" for any work of prose fiction. They divide novels into two classes,
stories (or short stories) and romances. The story relates simple or
detached incidents; the romance deals with life in complex relations,
dominated by strong emotions, especially by the emotion of love.

Other critics arrange prose fiction in the following classes: novels of
adventure (Robinson Crusoe, The Last of the Mohicans), historical novels
(Ivanhoe, The Spy), romantic novels (Lorna Doone, The Heart of Midlothian),
novels of manners (Cranford, Pride and Prejudice), novels of personality
(Silas Marner, The Scarlet Letter), novels of purpose (Oliver Twist, Uncle
Tom's Cabin).

Still another classification arranges fiction under two heads, romance and
realism. In the romance, which portrays unusual incidents or characters, we
see the ideal, the poetic side of humanity; in the realistic novel, dealing
with ordinary men and women, the prosaic element of life is emphasized.]

DEFOE (1661-1731). Among the forerunners of the modern novel is Daniel Foe,
author of _Robinson Crusoe_, who began to call himself "Defoe" after
he attained fame. He produced an amazing variety of wares: newspapers,
magazines, ghost stories, biographies, journals, memoirs, satires,
picaresque romances, essays on religion, reform, trade, projects,--in all
more than two hundred works. These were written in a picturesque style and
with such a wealth of detail that, though barefaced inventions for the most
part, they passed for veracious chronicles. One critic, thinking of the
vividly realistic _Journal of the Plague Year_ and _Memoirs of a
Cavalier_, says that "Defoe wrote history, but invented the facts";
another declares that "the one little art of which Defoe was past master
was the art of forging a story and imposing it on the world as truth." The
long list of his works ends with a _History of the Devil_, in 1726.

[Illustration: DANIEL DEFOE]

Foe's career was an extraordinary one. By nature and training he
seems to have preferred devious ways to straight, and to have
concealed his chief motive whether he appeared as reformer or
politician, tradesman or writer, police-spy or friend of outcasts.
His education, which he picked up from men and circumstance, was
more varied than any university could have given him. Perhaps the
chief factor in this practical education was his ability to turn
every experience to profitable account. As a journalist he invented
the modern magazine (his _Review_ appeared in 1704, five years
before Steele's _Tatler_); also he projected the interview,
the editorial, the "scoop," and other features which still figure
in our newspapers. As a hired pamphleteer, writing satires against
Whigs or Tories, he learned so many political secrets that when one
party fell he was the best possible man to be employed by the
other. While sitting in the stocks (in punishment for writing a
satirical pamphlet that set Tories and Churchmen by the ears) he
made such a hit with his doggerel verses against the authorities
that crowds came to the pillory to cheer him and to buy his poem.
While in durance vile, in the old Newgate Prison, he mingled freely
with all sorts of criminals (there were no separate cells in those
days), won their secrets, and used them to advantage in his
picaresque romances. He learned also so much of the shady side of
London life that no sooner was he released than he was employed as
a secret service agent, or spy, by the government which had jailed
him.

[Illustration: CUPOLA HOUSE Defoe's residence at Bury]

It is as difficult to find the real Foe amidst such devious trails
as to determine where a caribou is from the maze of footprints
which he leaves behind him. He seems to have been untiring in his
effort to secure better treatment of outcast folk, he speaks of
himself with apparent sincerity, as having received his message
from the Divine Spirit, but the impression which he made upon the
upper classes was reflected by Swift, who called him "a grave,
dogmatical rogue". For many years he was a popular hero, trusted
not only by the poor but by the criminal classes (ordinarily keen
judges of honesty in other men), until his secret connection with
the government became known. Then suspicion fell upon him, his
popularity was destroyed and he fled from London. The last few
years of his life were spent in hiding from real or imaginary
enemies.

[Sidenote: ROBINSON CRUSOE]

Defoe was approaching his sixtieth year when he wrote _Robinson
Crusoe_ (1719), a story which has been read through out the civilized
world, and which, after two centuries of life, is still young and vigorous.
The first charm of the book is in its moving adventures, which are
surprising enough to carry us through the moralizing passages. These also
have their value; for who ever read them without asking, What would I have
done or thought or felt under such circumstances? The work of society is
now so comfortably divided that one seldom dreams of being his own
mechanic, farmer, hunter, herdsman, cook and tailor, as Crusoe was.
Thinking of his experience we are brought face to face with our dependence
on others, with our debt to the countless, unnamed men whose labor made
civilization possible. We understand also the pioneers, who in the far,
lonely places of the earth have won a home and country from the wilderness.

When the adventures are duly appreciated we discover another charm of
_Robinson Crusoe_, namely, its intense reality. Defoe had that
experience of many projects, and that vivid imagination, which enabled him
to put himself in the place of his hero, [Footnote: The basis of
_Robinson Crusoe_ was the experience of an English sailor, Alexander
Selkirk, or Selcraig, who was marooned on the lonely island of Juan
Fernandez, off the coast of Chile. There he lived in solitude for the space
of five years before he was rescued. When Selkirk returned to England
(1709) an account of his adventures appeared in the public press.] to
anticipate his needs, his feelings, his labors and triumph. That Crusoe was
heroic none will deny; yet his heroism was of a different kind from that
which we meet in the old romances. Here was no knight "without fear and
without reproach," but a plain man with his strength and weakness. He
despaired like other men; but instead of giving way to despair he drew up a
list of his blessings and afflictions, "like debtor and creditor," found a
reasonable balance in his favor, and straightway conquered himself,--which
is the first task of all real heroes. Again, he had horrible fears; he beat
his breast, cried out as one in mortal terror; then "I thought that would
do little good, so I began to make a raft." So he overcame his fears, as he
overcame the difficulties of the place, by setting himself to do alone what
a whole race of men had done before him. _Robinson Crusoe_ is
therefore history as well as fiction; its subject is not Alexander Selkirk
but Homo Sapiens; its lesson is the everlasting triumph of will and work.

RICHARDSON. One morning in 1740 the readers of London found a new work for
sale in the bookshops. It was made up of alleged letters from a girl to her
parents, a sentimental girl who opened her heart freely, explaining its
hopes, fears, griefs, temptations, and especially its moral sensibilities.
Such a work of fiction was unique at that time. Delighted readers waited
for another and yet another volume of the same story, till more than a year
had passed and _Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded_ reached its happy ending.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST NOVEL]

The book made a sensation in England; it was speedily translated, and
repeated its triumph on the other side of the Channel. Comparatively few
people could read it now without being bored, but it is famous in the
history of literature as the first English novel; that is, a story of a
human life under stress of emotion, told by one who understood the tastes
of his own age, and who strove to keep his work true to human nature in all
ages.

The author of _Pamela_, Samuel Richardson (1689--1761), was a very
proper person, well satisfied with himself, who conducted a modest business
as printer and bookseller. For years he had practiced writing, and had
often been employed by sentimental young women who came to him for model
love letters. Hence the extraordinary knowledge of feminine feelings which
Richardson displayed; hence also the epistolary form in which his novels
were written. His aim in all his work was to teach morality and correct
deportment. His strength was in his power to analyze and portray emotions.
His weakness lay in his vanity, which led him to shun masculine society and
to foregather at tea tables with women who flattered him.

Led by the success of _Pamela_, which portrayed the feelings of a
servant girl, the author began another series of letters which ended in the
eight-volume novel _Clarissa, or The History of a Young Lady_ (1748).
The story appeared in installments, which were awaited with feverish
impatience till the agony drew to an end, and the heroine died amid the
sobs of ten thousand readers. Yet the story had power, and the central
figure of Clarissa was impressive in its pathos and tragedy. The novel
would still be readable if it were stripped of the stilted conversations
and sentimental gush in which Richardson delighted; but that would leave
precious little of the story.

FIELDING. In vigorous contrast with the prim and priggish Richardson is
Henry Fielding (1707-1754), a big, jovial, reckless man, full of animal
spirits, who was ready to mitigate any man's troubles or forget his own by
means of a punch bowl or a venison potpie. He was noble born, but seems to
have been thrown on the world to shift for himself. After an excellent
education he studied law, and was for some years a police magistrate, in
which position he increased his large knowledge of the seamy side of life.
He had a pen for vigorous writing, and after squandering two modest
fortunes (his own and his wife's) he proceeded to earn his living by
writing buffooneries for the stage. Then appeared Richardson's _Pamela,
or Virtue Rewarded_, and in ridiculing its sentimental heroine Fielding
found his vocation as a novelist.

[Sidenote: BURLESQUE OF RICHARDSON]

He began _Joseph Andrews_ (1742) as a joke, by taking for his hero an
alleged brother of Pamela, who was also virtuous but whose reward was to be
kicked out of doors. Then the story took to the open road, among the inns
and highways of an age when traveling in rural England was almost as
adventurous as campaigning in Flanders. In the joy of his story Fielding
soon forgot his burlesque of Richardson, and attempted what he called a
realistic novel; that is, a story of real life. The morality and decorum
which Richardson exalted appeared to Fielding as hypocrisy; so he devoted
himself to a portrayal of men and manners as he found them.

Undoubtedly there were plenty of good men and manners at that time, but
Fielding had a vagabond taste that delighted in rough scenes, and of these
also eighteenth-century England could furnish an abundance. Hence his
_Joseph_ Andrews is a picture not of English society, as is often
alleged, but only of the least significant part of society. The same is
true of _Tom Jones_ (1749), which is the author's most vigorous work,
and of _Amelia_ (1751), in which, though he portrays one good woman,
he repeats many of the questionable incidents of his earlier works.

There is power in all these novels, the power of keen observation, of rough
humor, of downright sincerity; but unhappily the power often runs to waste
in long speeches to the reader, in descriptions of brutal or degrading
scenes, and in a wholly unnecessary coarseness of expression.

INFLUENCE OF THE EARLY NOVELS. The idea of the modern novel seems to have
been developed by several English authors, each of whom, like pioneers in a
new country, left his stamp on subsequent works in the same field.
Richardson's governing motive may be summed up in the word "sensibility,"
which means "delicacy of feeling," and which was a fashion, almost a
fetish, in eighteenth-century society. Because it was deemed essential to
display proper or decorous feeling on all occasions, Richardson's heroines
were always analyzing their emotions; they talked like a book of etiquette;
they indulged in tears, fainting, transports of joy, paroxysms of grief,
apparently striving to make themselves as unlike a real woman as possible.
It is astonishing how far and wide this fad of sensibility spread through
the literary world, and how many gushing heroines of English and American
fiction during the next seventy-five years were modeled on Pamela or
Clarissa.

In view of this artificial fashion, the influence of Fielding was like the
rush of crisp air into a hot house. His aim was realistic, that is, to
portray real people in their accustomed ways. Unfortunately his aim was
spoiled by the idea that to be realistic one must go to the gutter for
material. And then appeared Goldsmith, too much influenced by the fad of
sensibility, but aiming to depict human life as governed by high ideals,
and helping to cleanse the English novel from brutality and indecency.

[Sidenote: THREEFOLD INFLUENCE]

There were other early novelists, a host of them, but in Richardson,
Fielding and Goldsmith we have enough. Richardson emphasized the analysis
of human feeling or motive, and that of itself was excellent; but his
exaggerated sentimentality set a bad fashion which our novelists were
almost a century in overcoming. Fielding laid stress on realism, and that
his influence was effective is shown in the work of his disciple Thackeray,
who could be realistic without being coarse. And Goldsmith made all
subsequent novelists his debtors by exalting that purity of domestic life
to which every home worthy of the name forever strives or aspires.

If it be asked, What novels of the early type ought one to read? the answer
is simple. Unless you want to curdle your blood by a tale of mystery and
horror (in which case Mrs. Radcliffe's _Mysteries of Udolpho_ will
serve the purpose) there are only two that young readers will find
satisfactory: the realistic _Robinson Crusoe_ by Defoe, and the
romantic _Vicar of Wakefield_ by Goldsmith.

* * * * *

SUMMARY. What we call eighteenth-century literature appeared
between two great political upheavals, the English Revolution of
1688 and the French Revolution of 1789. Some of the chief
characteristics of that literature--such as the emphasis on form,
the union of poetry with politics, the prevalence of satire, the
interest in historical subjects--have been accounted for, in part
at least, in our summary of the history of the period.

The writings of the century are here arranged in three main
divisions: the reign of formalism (miscalled classicism), the
revival of romantic poetry, and the development of the modern
novel. Our study of the so-called classic period includes: (1) The
meaning of classicism in literature. (2) The life and works of
Pope, the leading poet of the age; of Swift, a master of satire; of
Addison and Steele, the graceful essayists who originated the
modern literary magazine. (3) The work of Dr. Johnson and his
school; in which we have included, for convenience, Edmund Burke,
most eloquent of English orators, and Gibbon the historian, famous
for his _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.

Our review of the romantic writers of the age covers: (1) The work
of Collins and Gray, whose imaginative poems are in refreshing
contrast to the formalism of Pope and his school. (2) The life and
works of Goldsmith, poet, playwright, novelist; and of Burns, the
greatest of Scottish song writers. (3) A glance at other poets,
such as Cowper and Blake, who aided in the romantic revival. (4)
The renewed interest in ballads and legends, which showed itself in
Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, and in two
famous forgeries, the _Ossian_ poems of Macpherson and _The
Rowley Papers_ of the boy Chatterton.

Our study of the novel includes: (1) The meaning of the modern
novel, as distinct from the ancient romance. (2) A study of Defoe,
author of _Robinson Crusoe_, who was a forerunner of the
modern realistic novelist. (3) The works of Richardson and of
Fielding, contrasting types of eighteenth-century story-tellers.
(4) The influence of Richardson's sentimentality, of Fielding's
realism, and of Goldsmith's moral purity on subsequent English
fiction.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Typical selections are given in Manly,
English Poetry and English Prose, Century Readings, and other
miscellaneous collections. Important works of major writers are
published in inexpensive editions for school use, a few of which
are named below.

Pope's poems, selected, in Standard English Classics, Pocket
Classics, Riverside Literature, and other series. (See Texts, in
General Bibliography.)

Selections from Swift's works, in Athenaum Press, Holt's English
Readings, Clarendon Press. Gulliver's Travels, in Standard English
Classics, in Ginn and Company's Classics for Children, in
Carisbrooke Library, in Temple Classics.

Selections from Addison and Steele, in Athenaum Press, Golden
Treasury, Maynard's English Classics. Sir Roger de Coverley Papers,
in Standard English Classics, Riverside Literature, Academy
Classics.

Chesterfield's Letters to his son, selected, in Ginn and Company's
Classics for Children, and in Maynard's English Classics.

Boswell's Life of Johnson, in Clarendon Press, Temple Classics,
Everyman's Library.

Burke's Speeches, selected, in Standard English Classics, Pocket
Classics, English Readings.

Selections from Gray, in Athenaum Press, Canterbury Poets,
Riverside Literature.

Goldsmith's Deserted Village and Vicar of Wakefield, in Standard
English Classics, King's Classics; She Stoops to Conquer, in Pocket
Classics, Belles Lettres Series, Cassell's National Library.

Sheridan's The Rivals, in Athenaum Press, Camelot Series, Riverside
Literature, Everyman's Library.

Poems of Burns, selected, in Standard English Classics, Riverside
Literature, Silver Classics.

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, school edition by Ginn and Company; the
same in Everyman's Library, Pocket Classics.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. For extensive manuals and texts see the General
Bibliography. The following works deal chiefly with the eighteenth
century.

_HISTORY_. Morris, Age of Queen Anne and the Early Hanoverians
(Epochs of Modern History Series); Sydney, England and the English
in the Eighteenth Century; Susan Hale, Men and Manners in the
Eighteenth Century; Ashton, Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne;
Thackeray, The Four Georges.

_LITERATURE_. L. Stephen, English Literature in the Eighteenth
Century; Perry, English Literature in the Eighteenth Century;
Seccombe, The Age of Johnson; Dennis, The Age of Pope; Gosse,
History of English Literature in the Eighteenth Century; Whitwell,
Some Eighteenth-Century Men of Letters; Phelps, Beginnings of the
English Romantic Movement; Beers, English Romanticism in the
Eighteenth Century; Thackeray, English Humorists.

_Pope_. Life, by Courthope; by L. Stephen (English Men of
Letters Series). Essays, by Thackeray, in English Humorists; by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Lowell, in My Study Windows.

_Swift_. Life, by Forster; by L. Stephen (E. M. of L.).
Essays, by Thackeray, in English Humorists; by Dobson, in
Eighteenth Century Vignettes.

_Addison and Steele_. Life of Addison, by Courthope (E. M. of
L.). Life of Steele, by Dobson. Essays by Macaulay, by Thackeray,
by Dobson.

_Johnson_. Life, by Boswell (for personal details); by L.
Stephen (E. M. of L.). Hill, Dr. Johnson: his Friends and his
Critics. Essays by Macaulay, by Thackeray, by L. Stephen.

_Burke_. Life, by Morley (E. M. of L.), by Prior. Macknight,
Life and Times of Burke.

_Gibbon_. Life, by Morrison (E. M. of L.). Essays, by Birrell,
in Collected Essays; by L. Stephen, in Studies of a Biographer; by
Harrison, in Ruskin and Other Literary Estimates; by Sainte-Beuve,
in English Portraits.

_Gray_. Life, by Gosse. Essays by Lowell, M. Arnold, L.
Stephen, Dobson.

_Goldsmith_. Life, by Washington Irving, by Dobson (Great
Writers Series), by Black (E. M. of L.), by Forster. Essays, by
Macaulay; by Thackeray, in English Humorists; by Dobson, in
Miscellanies.

_Burns_. Life, by Shairp (E. M. of L.), by Blackie (Great
Writers). Carlyle's Essay on Burns, in Standard English Classics
and other school editions. Essays, by Stevenson, in Familiar
Studies of Men and Books; by Hazlitt, in Lectures on the English
Poets; by Henley, in Introduction to the Cambridge Edition of
Burns.

_The Novel. Raleigh, The English Novel; Cross, Development of the
English Novel; Perry, A Study of Prose Fiction; Symonds,
Introduction to the Study of English Fiction; Dawson, Makers of
English Fiction.

_Defoe_. Life, by Minto (E. M. of L.), by William Lee. Essay
by L. Stephen, in Hours in a Library.

_Richardson_. Life, by Thomson, by Dobson. Essays, by L.
Stephen, in Hours in a Library; by Dobson, in Eighteenth Century
Vignettes.

_Fielding_. Life, by Dobson (E. M. of L.). Lawrence, Life and
Times of Fielding. Essays by Lowell, L. Stephen, Dobson; Thackeray,
in English Humorists; G. B. Smith, in Poets and Novelists.

_FICTION_. Thackeray, Henry Esmond, and The Virginians; Scott,
Guy Mannering, Rob Roy, Heart of Midlothian, Redgauntlet; Reade,
Peg Woffington.

CHAPTER VII

THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY

Two voices are there; one is of the sea,
One of the mountains; each a mighty voice:
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice,
They were thy chosen music, Liberty!

Wordsworth, "Sonnet to Switzerland"

The many changes recorded in the political and literary history of
nineteenth-century England may be grouped under two heads: the progress of
democracy in government, and the triumph of romanticism in literature. By
democracy we mean the assumption by common men of the responsibilities of
government, with a consequent enlargement of human liberty. Romanticism, as
we use the term here, means simply that literature, like politics, has
become liberalized; that it is concerned with the common life of men, and
that the delights of literature, like the powers of government, are no
longer the possession of the few but of the many.

HISTORICAL OUTLINE. To study either democracy or romanticism, the
Whig party or the poetry of Wordsworth, is to discover how greatly
England was influenced by matters that appeared beyond her borders.
The famous Reform Bill (1832) which established manhood suffrage,
the emancipation of the slaves in all British colonies, the
hard-won freedom of the press, the plan of popular
education,--these and numberless other reforms of the age may be
regarded as part of a general movement, as the attempt to fulfill
in England a promise made to the world by two events which occurred
earlier and on foreign soil. These two events, which profoundly
influenced English politics and literature, were the Declaration of
Independence and the French Revolution.

[Sidenote: TWO REVOLUTIONS]

In the Declaration we read, "We hold these truths to be
self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Glorious words!
But they were not new; they were old and familiar when Jefferson
wrote them. The American Revolution, which led up to the
Declaration, is especially significant in this: that it began as a
struggle not for new privileges but for old rights. So the
constructive character of that Revolution, which ended with a
democracy and a noble constitution, was due largely to the fact
that brave men stood ready to defend the old freedom, the old
manhood, the old charters, "the good old cause" for which other
brave men had lived or died through a thousand years.

A little later, and influenced by the American triumph, came
another uprising of a different kind. In France the unalienable
rights of man had been forgotten during ages of tyranny and class
privilege; so the French Revolution, shouting its watchwords of
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, had no conception of that liberty
and equality which were as ancient as the hills. Leaders and
followers of the Revolution were clamoring for new privileges, new
rights, new morals, new creeds. They acclaimed an "Age of Reason"
as a modern and marvelous discovery; they dreamed not simply of a
new society, but of a new man. A multitude of clubs or parties,
some political, some literary or educational, some with a pretense
of philosophy, sprang up as if by magic, all believing that they
must soon enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but nearly all forgetful of
the fact that to enter the Kingdom one must accept the old
conditions, and pay the same old price. Partly because of this
strange conception of liberty, as a new thing to be established by
fiat, the terrible struggle in France ended in the ignoble military
despotism of Napoleon.

[Sidenote: EFFECT OF THE REVOLUTIONS]

These two revolutions, one establishing and the other clamoring for
the dignity of manhood, created a mighty stir throughout the
civilized world. Following the French Revolution, most European
nations were thrown into political ferment, and the object of all
their agitation, rebellion, upheaval, was to obtain a greater
measure of democracy by overturning every form of class or caste
government. Thrones seemed to be tottering, and in terror of their
houses Continental sovereigns entered into their Holy Alliance
(1815) with the unholy object of joining forces to crush democracy
wherever it appeared.

THE REVOLUTION AND LITERATURE. The young writers of liberty-loving England
felt the stir, the _sursum_ of the age. Wordsworth, most sedate of
men, saw in the French Revolution a glorious prophecy, and wrote with
unwonted enthusiasm:

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very Heaven.

Coleridge and Southey formed their grand scheme of a Pantisocracy, a
government of perfect equality, on the banks of the Susquehanna. Scott
(always a Tory, and therefore distrustful of change) reflected the
democratic enthusiasm in a score of romances, the chief point of which was
this: that almost every character was at heart a king, and spake right
kingly fashion. Byron won his popularity largely because he was an
uncompromising rebel, and appealed to young rebels who were proclaiming the
necessity of a new human society. And Shelley, after himself rebelling at
almost every social law of his day, wrote his _Prometheus Unbound_,
which is a vague but beautiful vision of humanity redeemed in some magical
way from all oppression and sorrow.

All these and other writers of the age give the impression, as we read them
now, that they were gloriously expectant of a new day of liberty that was
about to dawn on the world. Their romantic enthusiasm, so different from
the cold formality of the age preceding, is a reflection, like a rosy
sunset glow, of the stirring scenes of revolution through which the world
had just passed.

* * * * *

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770-1850)

There is but one way to know Wordsworth, and that way leads to his nature
poems. Though he lived in a revolutionary age, his life was singularly
uneventful. His letters are terribly prosaic; and his _Excursion_, in
which he attempted an autobiography, has so many dull lines that few have
patience to read it. Though he asserted, finely, that there is but one
great society on earth, "the noble living and the noble dead," he held no
communion with the great minds of the past or of the present. He lived in
his own solitary world, and his only real companion was nature. To know
nature at first hand, and to reflect human thought or feeling in nature's
pure presence,--this was his chief object. His field, therefore, is a small
one, but in that field he is the greatest master that England has thus far
produced.

[Illustration: WILLIAM WORDSWORTH]

LIFE. Wordsworth is as inseparably connected with the English Lake
District as Burns with the Lowlands or Scott with the Border. A
large part of the formative period of his life was spent out of
doors amid beautiful scenery, where he felt the abounding life of
nature streaming upon him in the sunshine, or booming in his ears
with the steady roar of the March winds. He felt also (what
sensitive spirits still feel) a living presence that met him in the
loneliest wood, or spoke to him in the flowers, or preceded him
over the wind-swept hills. He was one of those favored mortals who
are surest of the Unseen. From school he would hurry away to his
skating or bird-nesting or aimless roaming, and every new day
afield was to him "One of those heavenly days that cannot die."

[Sidenote: WORDSWORTH AND THE REVOLUTION]

From the Lake Region he went to Cambridge, but found little in
college life to attract or hold him. Then, stirred by the promise
of the Revolution, he went to France, where his help was eagerly
sought by rival parties; for in that day every traveler from
America or England, whether an astute Jefferson or a lamblike
Wordsworth, was supposed to be, by virtue of his country, a master
politician Wordsworth threw himself rather blindly into the
Revolution, joined the Girondists (the ruling faction in 1792) and
might have gone to the guillotine with the leaders of that party
had not his friends brought him home by the simple expedient of
cutting off his supply of money. Thus ended ingloriously the only
adventure that ever quickened his placid life.

For a time Wordsworth mourned over the failure of his plans, but
his grief turned to bitterness when the Revolution passed over into
the Reign of Terror and ended in the despotism of Napoleon. His
country was now at war with France, and he followed his country,
giving mild support to Burke and the Tory party. After a few
uncertain years, during which he debated his calling in life, he
resolved on two things: to be a poet, and to bring back to English
poetry the romantic spirit and the naturalness of expression which
had been displaced by the formal elegance of the age of Pope and
Johnson.

[Illustration: WORDSWORTH'S DESK IN HAWKSHEAD SCHOOL]

For that resolution we are indebted partly to Coleridge, who had
been attracted by some of Wordsworth's early poems, and who
encouraged him to write more. From the association of these two men
came the famous _Lyrical Ballads_ (1798), a book which marks
the beginning of a new era in English poetry.

To Wordsworth's sister Dorothy we are even more indebted. It was
she who soothed Wordsworth's disappointment, reminded him of the
world of nature in which alone he was at home, and quietly showed
him where his power lay. As he says, in _The Prelude_

She whispered still that brightness would return,
She, in the midst of all preserved me still
A poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth

[Sidenote: PERSONAL TRAITS]

The latter half of Wordsworth's life was passed in the Lake Region,
at Grasmere and Rydal Mount for the most part, the continuity being
broken by walking trips in Britain or on the Continent. A very
quiet, uneventful life it was, but it revealed two qualities which
are of interest to Wordsworth's readers. The first was his devotion
to his art; the second was his granite steadfastness. His work was
at first neglected, while the poems of Scott, Byron and Tennyson in
succession attained immense popularity. The critics were nearly all
against him; misunderstanding his best work and ridiculing the
rest. The ground of their opposition was, that his theory of the
utmost simplicity in poetry was wrong; their ridicule was made
easier by the fact that Wordsworth produced as much bad work as
good. Moreover, he took himself very seriously, had no humor, and,
as visitors like Emerson found to their disappointment, was
interested chiefly in himself and his own work. For was he not
engaged in the greatest of all projects, an immense poem (_The
Recluse_) which should reflect the universe in the life of one
man, and that man William Wordsworth? Such self-satisfaction
invited attack; even Lamb, the gentlest of critics, could hardly
refrain from poking fun at it:

"Wordsworth, the great poet, is coming to town; he is to
have apartments in the Mansion House. He says he does not
see much difficulty in writing like Shakespeare, if he had
a mind to try it. It is clear that nothing is wanting but
the mind."

[Sidenote: HIS TRIUMPH]

Slowly but surely Wordsworth won recognition, not simply in being
made Laureate, but in having his ideal of poetry vindicated. Poets
in England and America began to follow him; the critics were
silenced, if not convinced. While the popularity of Scott and Byron
waned, the readers of Wordsworth increased steadily, finding him a
poet not of the hour but of all time. "If a single man plant
himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide," says
Emerson, "the huge world will come around to him." If the reading
world has not yet come around to Wordsworth, that is perhaps not
the poet's fault.

WORDSWORTH: HIS THEME AND THEORY. The theory which Wordsworth and Coleridge
formulated was simply this: that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of
powerful human feeling. Its only subjects are nature and human nature; its
only object is to reflect the emotions awakened by our contemplation of the
world or of humanity; its language must be as direct and simple as
possible, such language as rises unbidden to the lips whenever the heart is
touched. Though some of the world's best poets have taken a different view,
Wordsworth maintained steadily that poetry must deal with common subjects
in the plainest language; that it must not attempt to describe, in elegant
phrases, what a poet is supposed to feel about art or some other subject
selected for its poetic possibilities.

[Sidenote: NATURAL VS. FORMAL POETRY]

In the last contention Wordsworth was aiming at the formal school of
poetry, and we may better understand him by a comparison. Read, for
example, his exquisite "Early Spring" ("I heard a thousand blended notes").
Here in twenty-four lines are more naturalness, more real feeling finely
expressed, than you can find in the poems of Dryden, Johnson and Addison
combined. Or take the best part of "The Campaign," which made Addison's
fortune, and which was acclaimed the finest thing ever written:

So when an angel by divine command
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
(Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past)
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased th' Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

To know how artificial that famous simile is, read a few lines from
Wordsworth's "On the Sea-Shore," which lingers in our mind like a strain of
Handel's music:

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder--everlastingly.

If such comparisons interest the student, let him read Addison's "Letter to
Lord Halifax," with its Apostrophe to Liberty, which was considered sublime
in its day:

O Liberty, thou goddess heavenly bright,
Profuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight!
Eternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
And smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train;
Eased of her load, Subjection grows more light,
And Poverty looks cheerful in thy sight;
Thou mak'st the gloomy face of nature gay,
Giv'st beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day.

Place beside that the first four lines of Wordsworth's sonnet "To
Switzerland" (quoted at the head of this chapter), or a stanza from his
"Ode to Duty":

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead's most benignant grace;
Nor know we anything so fair
As is the smile upon thy face:
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
And fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

To follow such a comparison is to understand Wordsworth by sympathy; it is
to understand also the difference between poetry and formal verse.

THE POEMS OF WORDSWORTH. As the reading of literature is the main thing,
the only word of criticism which remains is to direct the beginner; and
direction is especially necessary in dealing with Wordsworth, who wrote
voluminously, and who lacked both the critical judgment and the sense of
humor to tell him what parts of his work were inferior or ridiculous:

There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon!

To be sure; springs in the one, gas in the other; but if there were
anything more poetic in horse or balloon, Wordsworth did not discover it.
There is something also in a cuckoo clock, or even in

A household tub, one such as those
Which women use to wash their clothes.

Such banalities are to be found in the work of a poet who could produce the
exquisite sonnet "On Westminster Bridge," the finely simple "I Wandered
Lonely as a Cloud," the stirring "Ode to Duty," the tenderly reflective
"Tintern Abbey," and the magnificent "Intimations of Immortality," which
Emerson (who was not a very safe judge) called "the high water mark of
poetry in the nineteenth century." These five poems may serve as the first
measure of Wordsworth's genius.

[Sidenote: POEMS OF NATURE]

A few of Wordsworth's best nature poems are: "Early Spring," "Three Years
She Grew," "The Fountain," "My Heart Leaps Up," "The Tables Turned," "To a
Cuckoo," "To a Skylark" (the second poem, beginning, "Ethereal minstrel")
and "Yarrow Revisited." The spirit of all his nature poems is reflected in
"Tintern Abbey," which gives us two complementary views of nature,
corresponding to Wordsworth's earlier and later experience. The first is
that of the boy, roaming foot-loose over the face of nature, finding, as
Coleridge said, "Rhythm in all thought, and joyance everywhere." The second
is that of the man who returns to the scenes of his boyhood, finds them as
beautiful as ever, but pervaded now by a spiritual quality,--"something
which defies analysis, undefined and ineffable, which must be felt and
perceived by the soul."

It was this spiritual view of nature, as a reflection of the Divine, which
profoundly influenced Bryant, Emerson and other American writers. The
essence of Wordsworth's teaching, in his nature poems, appears in the last
two lines of his "Skylark," a bird that soars the more gladly to heaven
because he must soon return with joy to his own nest:

Type of the wise, who soar but never roam:
True to the kindred points of heaven and home.

[Sidenote: POEMS OF HUMBLE LIFE]

Of the poems more closely associated with human life, a few the best are:
"Michael," "The Highland Reaper," "The Leech Gatherers," "Margaret" (in
_The Excursion_), "Brougham Castle," "The Happy Warrior," "Peel Castle
in a Storm," "Three Years She Grew," "She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways"
and "She was a Phantom of Delight." In such poems we note two significant
characteristics: that Wordsworth does not seek extraordinary characters,
but is content to show the hidden beauty in the lives of plain men and
women; and that his heroes and heroines dwell, as he said, where "labor
still preserves his rosy face." They are natural men and women, and are
therefore simple and strong; the quiet light in their faces is reflected
from the face of the fields. In his emphasis on natural simplicity, virtue,
beauty, Wordsworth has again been, as he desired, a teacher of multitudes.
His moral teaching may be summed up in three lines from _The
Excursion_:

The primal duties shine aloft like stars;
The charities that soothe and heal and bless
Are scattered at the feet of man like flowers.

[Sidenote: THE SONNETS]

In the number and fine quality of his sonnets Wordsworth has no superior in
English poetry. Simplicity, strength, deep thought, fine feeling, careful
workmanship,--these qualities are present in measure more abundant than can
be found elsewhere in the poet's work:

Bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells.

In these three lines from "On the Sonnet" (which should be read entire) is
the explanation why Wordsworth, who was often diffuse, found joy in
compressing his whole poem into fourteen lines. A few other sonnets which
can be heartily recommended are: "Westminster Bridge," "The Seashore," "The
World," "Venetian Republic," "To Sleep," "Toussaint L'Ouverture,"
"Afterthoughts," "To Milton" (sometimes called "London, 1802") and the
farewell to Scott when he sailed in search of health, beginning, "A trouble
not of clouds or weeping rain."

Not until one has learned to appreciate Wordsworth at his best will it be
safe to attempt _The Prelude, or the Growth of a Poet's Mind_. Most
people grow weary of this poem, which is too long; but a few read it with
pleasure for its portrayal of Wordsworth's education at the hand of Nature,
or for occasional good lines which lure us on like miners in search of
gold. _The Prelude_, though written at thirty-five, was not published
till after Wordsworth's death, and for this reason: he had planned an
immense poem, dealing with Nature, Man and Society, which he called _The
Recluse_, and which he likened to a Gothic cathedral. His _Prelude_
was the "ante-chapel" of this work; his miscellaneous odes, sonnets and
narrative poems were to be as so many "cells and oratories"; other parts of
the structure were _The Home at Grasmere_ and _The Excursion_,
which he may have intended as transepts, or as chapels.

[Illustration: ST. OSWALD'S CHURCH, GRASMERE
Wordsworth's body was buried in the churchyard See _The Excursion_, Book V]

This great work was left unfinished, and one may say of it, as of Spenser's
_Faery Queen_, that it is better so. Like other poets of venerable
years Wordsworth wrote many verses that were better left in the inkpot; and
it is a pity, in dealing with so beautiful and necessary a thing as poetry,
that one should ever reach the point of saying, sadly but truthfully,
"Enough is too much."

* * * * *

COLERIDGE AND SOUTHEY

The story of these two men is a commentary on the uncertainties of literary
fortune. Both won greater reward and reputation than fell to the lot of
Wordsworth; but while the fame of the latter poet mounts steadily with the
years, the former have become, as it were, footnotes to the great
contemporary with whom they were associated, under the name of "Lake
Poets," for half a glorious century.

[Illustration: SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE]

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834). The tragedy _Remorse_, which
Coleridge wrote, is as nothing compared with the tragedy of his own life.
He was a man of superb natural gifts, of vast literary culture, to whose
genius the writers of that age--Wordsworth, Hazlitt, Lamb, De Quincey,
Shelley, Landor, Southey--nearly all bear witness. He might well have been
a great poet, or critic, or philosopher, or teacher; but he lacked the will
power to direct his gifts to any definite end. His irresolution became
pitiful weakness when he began to indulge in the drug habit, which soon
made a slave of him. Thereafter he impressed all who met him with a sense
of loss and inexpressible sorrow.

[Sidenote: LIFE OF COLERIDGE]

Coleridge began to read at three years of age; at five he had gone
through the Bible and the Arabian Nights; at thirty he was perhaps
the most widely read man of his generation in the fields of
literature and philosophy. He was a student in a famous charity
school in London when he met Charles Lamb, who records his memories
of the boy and the place in his charming essay of "Christ's
Hospital." At college he was one of a band of enthusiasts inspired
by the French Revolution, and with Southey he formed a plan to
establish in America a world-reforming Pantisocracy, or communistic
settlement, where all should be brothers and equals, and where a
little manual work was to be tempered by much play, poetry and
culture. Europeans had queer ideas of America in those days. This
beautiful plan failed, because the reformers did not have money
enough to cross the ocean and stake out their Paradise.

[Illustration: THE COLERIDGE COTTAGE, NETHER STOWEY, IN
SOMERSETSHIRE]

The next important association of Coleridge was with Wordsworth and
his sister Dorothy, in Somerset, where the three friends planned
and published the _Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798. In this work
Wordsworth attempted to portray the charm of common things, and
Coleridge to give reality to a world of dreams and fantasies.
Witness the two most original poems in the book, "Tintern Abbey"
and "The Ancient Mariner."

During the latter part of his life Coleridge won fame by his
lectures on English poetry and German philosophy, and still greater
fame by his conversations,--brilliant, heaven-scaling monologues,
which brought together a company of young enthusiasts. And
presently these disciples of Coleridge were spreading abroad a new
idealistic philosophy, which crossed the ocean, was welcomed by
Emerson and a host of young writers or reformers, and appeared in
American literature as Transcendentalism.

[Sidenote: STORIES OF COLERIDGE]

Others who heard the conversations were impressed in a
somewhat different way. Keats met Coleridge on the road,
one day, and listened dumbfounded to an ecstatic discourse
on poetry, nightingales, the origin of sensation, dreams
(four kinds), consciousness, creeds, ghost stories,--"he
broached a thousand matters" while the poets were walking a
space of two miles.

Walter Scott, meeting Coleridge at a dinner, listened with
his head in a whirl to a monologue on fairies, the
classics, ancient mysteries, visions, ecstasies, the
psychology of poetry, the poetry of metaphysics. "Zounds!"
says Scott, "I was never so bethumped with words."

Charles Lamb, hurrying to his work, encountered Coleridge
and was drawn aside to a quiet garden. There the poet took
Lamb by a button of his coat, closed his eyes, and began to
discourse, his right hand waving to the rhythm of the
flowing words. No sooner was Coleridge well started than
Lamb slyly took out his penknife, cut off the button, and
escaped unobserved. Some hours later, as he passed the
garden on his return, Lamb heard a voice speaking most
musically; he turned aside in wonder, and there stood
Coleridge, his eyes closed, his left hand holding the
button, his right hand waving, "still talking like an
angel."

Such are the stories, true or apocryphal, of Coleridge's
conversations. Their bewildering quality appears, somewhat dimmed,
in his prose works, which have been finely compared with the flight
of an eagle on set wings, sweeping in wide circles, balancing,
soaring, mounting on the winds. But we must note this difference:
that the eagle keeps his keen eye on the distant earth, and always
knows just where he is; while Coleridge sees only the wonders of
Cloudland, and appears to be hopelessly lost.

[Sidenote: HIS PROSE AND POETRY]

The chief prose works of Coleridge are his _Biographia Literaria_ (a
brilliant patchwork of poetry and metaphysics), _Aids to Reflection_,
_Letters and Table Talk_ (the most readable of his works), and
_Lectures and Notes on Shakespeare_. These all contain fine gold, but
the treasure is for those doughty miners the critics rather than for
readers who go to literature for recreation. Among the best of his
miscellaneous poems (and Coleridge at his best has few superiors) are
"Youth and Age," "Love Poems," "Hymn before Sunrise," "Ode to the Departing
Year," and the pathetic "Ode to Dejection," which is a reflection of the
poet's saddened but ever hopeful life.

Two other poems, highly recommended by most critics, are the fragments
"Kubla Khan" and "Christabel"; but in dealing with these the reader may do
well to form his own judgment. Both fragments contain beautiful lines, but
as a whole they are wandering, disjointed, inconsequent,--mere sketches,
they seem, of some weird dream of mystery or terror which Coleridge is
trying in vain to remember.

[Sidenote: THE ANCIENT MARINER]

The most popular of Coleridge's works is his imperishable "Rime of the
Ancient Mariner," a wildly improbable poem of icebound or tropic seas, of
thirst-killed sailors, of a phantom ship sailed by a crew of ghosts,--all
portrayed in the vivid, picturesque style of the old ballad. When the
"Mariner" first appeared it was dismissed as a cock-and-bull story; yet
somehow readers went back to it, again and again, as if fascinated. It was
passed on to the next generation; and still we read it, and pass it on. For
this grotesque tale differs from all others of its kind in that its lines
have been quoted for over a hundred years as a reflection of some profound
human experience. That is the genius of the work: it takes the most
fantastic illusions and makes them appear as real as any sober journey
recorded in a sailor's log book. [Footnote: In connection with the "Ancient
Mariner" one should read the legends of "The Flying Dutchman" and "The
Wandering Jew." Poe's story "A Manuscript Found in a Bottle" is based on
these legends and on Coleridge's poem.]

At the present time our enjoyment of the "Mariner" is somewhat hampered by
the critical commentaries which have fastened upon the poem, like barnacles
on an old ship. It has been studied as a type of the romantic ballad, as a
moral lesson, as a tract against cruelty to animals, as a model of college
English. But that is no way to abuse a poet's fancy! To appreciate the
"Mariner" as the author intended, one should carry it off to the hammock or
orchard; there to have freedom of soul to enjoy a well-spun yarn, a
gorgeous flight of imagination, a poem which illustrates Coleridge's
definition of poetry as "the bloom and the fragrance of all human
knowledge, thoughts, emotions, language." It broadens one's sympathy, as
well as one's horizon, to accompany this ancient sailor through scenes of
terror and desolation:

O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
Alone on a wide, wide sea:
So lonely 't was, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

In the midst of such scenes come blessed memories of a real world, of the
beauty of unappreciated things, such as the "sweet jargoning" of birds:

And now 'twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute;
And now it is an angel's song,
That makes the heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on
A pleasant noise till noon,
A noise like of a hidden brook