Part 189

Alcuin, a native of northern England and an earnest student and teacher, became the chief intellectual light in the court of Charlemagne. John Scotus Erigena wrote, among other things, a work on the _Division of Nature_, which is regarded as laying the foundation of the scholastic philosophy. King Alfred (901), great in arms and noble and enlightened in character, translated into Anglo-Saxon the histories of Bede and Orosius, and Boethius’s _Consolations of Philosophy_. Other contributions to literature are likewise attributed to him. Ælfric, the grammarian, who died in 1006, wrote his eighty _Homilies_ for the use of the common people.

The well-known _Saxon Chronicle_ is a survey of early English history, written by various authors. It began soon after the time of Alfred, and continued to the death of Stephen in 1154. Among its entries in verse is a spirited poem on the battle of Brunanburh, fought victoriously by Athelstan against his combined Danish and Celtic foes in 937. Besides the leading writers above cited, there were others of less importance who graced the Anglo-Saxon period--a period embracing some five hundred years from the time of Columbanus to the Norman Conquest.

THE NORMAN-FRENCH PERIOD, 1066-1400

New conditions were imported into the learning and literature of England by the Norman Conquest. Although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, referred to above, was continued until 1154, the native language practically ceased for a time to be employed in literature. For nearly a century and a half the old language was supplanted, Latin being employed in law, history, and philosophy, French in the lighter forms of literature. Monastic chronicles were the order of the day, and these were only of real value as they drew near to, and actually dealt with, contemporary events. The Norman _trouvère_ displaced the Saxon _scop_, or gleeman, introducing the _Fabliau_ and the Romance.

English literature was not greatly influenced by the _Fabliau_ until the time of Chaucer; but the Romance attained an early and striking development in the Arthurian cycle, founded upon the legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who wrote the _History of British Kings_.

Much of this Latin chronicle is imaginative. It began with a mythical Brutus of Troy, and ended with Cadwallader. King Arthur was a prominent figure in the book, and from this time the romantic legends concerning him and his court became a prominent feature in the Anglo-Norman literature. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s _Chronicle_ was abridged by Alfred of Beverley, and rewritten in French verse by Geoffrey Gaimar and “Maistre” Wace, the latter version becoming permanent as the _Roman de Brut_. Wace, who died in 1184, was also the author of the _Roman de Rou_.

Walter Map or Mapes, poet and prose writer, gave form and substance to the Arthurian legends, uniting them into a harmonious whole as the spiritual allegory of the Holy Grail. Map attacked the abuses and corruptions of the Church in a series of witty and vigorous Latin poems. Hitherto there had been no man of such genius among the early writers.

Two of the most important of the monastic chroniclers were Ordericus Vitalis, who wrote the _Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy_, a conscientious if disorderly record, and William of Malmesbury, who flourished at the same time and wrote a _History of English Kings_. The latter writer has been placed by Milton next to Bede.

Early in the thirteenth century English began to recover its position, and Layamon’s _Brut_ was the first important piece of literature in transition English. Layamon, who was “a priest of Ernleye-upon-Severne,” wrote in English verse, and he interpolated many things into Wace’s narrative. His work was completed about 1205. A St. Augustine canon, named Ormin, was the author of _Ormulum_, a metrical paraphrase, with expositions, of the Gospel of the day. To the same period belong the early ballads of the Robin Hood type and the rendering into English verse of _Havelok the Dane_ and other metrical romances.

Roger Bacon, the great scientific investigator, was a Franciscan who settled at Oxford. Bacon enshrined the results of his knowledge in his _Opus Majus_, _Opus Minus_, and _Opus Tertium_. Robert of Gloucester was a monk in the time of Henry III. and Edward I. who wrote in English rhyme a chronicle from the siege of Troy to the death of Henry III.

PERIOD OF CHAUCER.--The first great era of English literature may be said to begin about the year 1300, and to extend to the introduction of printing by Caxton in 1477. The overshadowing name in this period is that of Chaucer, who has been styled the Father of English Poetry.

The accounts of Chaucer’s early life are uncertain, but he acquired the favor of Edward III. through John of Gaunt. In the reign of Richard II., however, he fell upon evil times, and he died in the year 1400 at the age of seventy-two. His _Canterbury Tales_ are immortal, alike for their poetic qualities, their unrivaled delineations of character, and their pictures of the middle-class English life of the period. Although the poet was influenced in his style and choice of subject by Dante and Boccaccio, he infused into his creations a dramatic force and a breath of sympathy which are the characteristics of the highest genius. His earlier and minor poems--such as _The Romaunt of the Rose_, _The Court of Love_, and _The House of Fame_--were the fruit of his French and Italian studies. Hallam classes Chaucer with Dante and Petrarch in the mighty poetic triumvirate of the Middle Ages.

John Gower, next in contemporary importance to Chaucer, wrote the _Confessio Amantis_, an English poem, which included a number of tales that were moralized to illustrate the seven deadly sins.

Langlande, or Longlande, author of _The Visions of Piers Plowman_--a poem which stands out for its graphic force--“sought to animate men to the search for Christ, and battled vigorously with Church corruptions.” Langlande is more distinctly English in his language than Chaucer, and his poem was a representative one as showing the workings of the national mind in religion and politics.

James I. of Scotland takes high rank for _The King’s Quhair_, and Lawrence Minot for his series of poems on the victories of Edward III. Barbour’s heroic poem of the _Bruce_ also calls for mention. Thomas Occleve, author of a poem on the duty of kings, and John Lydgate, to whom we owe the _Falls of Princes_, and other compositions, were likewise considerable poets.

For a long period Sir John de Mandeville was regarded as “the father of English prose,” but this claim is now abandoned. The larger portion of his _Travels_ was borrowed from a worthy Friar Odoric and from other writers, while the whole narrative is more entertaining than veracious. John Wyclif, who gave to his countrymen the first English version of the whole Bible, has been not inaptly styled the “Morning Star of the English Reformation.” Sir John Fortescue, Chief Justice in the reign of Henry VI., was the author of a fine legal treatise, _De Laudibus Legum Angliæ_, and of an admirable constitutional work on the _Difference Between Absolute and Limited Monarchy_, in which he contrasted the French rule with the English to the disparagement of the former.

INFLUENCE OF CAXTON.--William Caxton, who introduced the art of printing into England, gave an impetus to literature whose effects have been of incalculable value. The earliest work which can with certainty be maintained to have been printed in England was the _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_, published in 1477. In 1474, however, Caxton had issued at Bruges the first book printed in the English tongue, the _Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye_, and soon after this he printed the _Game and Playe of the Chesse_. Caxton was a most assiduous workman, and produced editions of Chaucer, Lydgate, Gower, and Sir Thomas Mallory’s _King Arthur_, translations of Cicero’s _De Senectute_ and _De Amicitia_, and other works.

William Dunbar, the Chaucer of the North, is placed by Sir Walter Scott at the head of the roll of Scottish poets. Dunbar led a checkered life, and his works are remarkable for their strong human lights and shadows. His allegorical poem, _The Thistle and the Rose_, was written in celebration of the marriage of James IV. with Henry VII.’s daughter Margaret. _The Golden Terge_, another of his poems of fantasy, is very descriptive and rhetorical. _The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins_ powerfully depicts--under the lead of Pride--a procession of the seven deadly sins in the infernal regions. Dunbar was equally remarkable in the comic as in the serious vein.

At the close of the fifteenth century many of the best spirits of the age were drawn to Oxford for the study of Greek. It was taught by William Grocyn and the physician Linacre. Erasmus came over from Paris to acquire it, and while at Oxford he made the acquaintance of young Thomas More, who wrote a defense of the new branch of learning. More afterwards entered upon the thorny paths of statecraft, and paid for his opposition to Henry VIII. with his head. More was the leading prose writer of his time, and his _Life and Reign of Edward V._--in which he draws a somber picture of the usurper Richard--is the earliest specimen of classical English prose; but his real fame rests upon the _Utopia_, in which he imagines an ideal commonwealth in the New World, discovered by a supposed companion of Amerigo Vespucci. The root idea was borrowed from Plato.

When William Tyndale completed his famous translation of the New Testament in 1525, More adversely criticized it on the ground of its Lutheran bias in the choice of words. Tyndale replied with spirit, however, and also defended against More the exposition of the Lord’s Supper published by John Frith. In 1530 Tyndale completed, with the help of Miles Coverdale, his translation of the Pentateuch, and six years later he was put to death for heresy in Belgium. Coverdale’s translation of the whole Bible appeared in 1535.

Many Church writers and reformers flourished at this time. To Cranmer was largely due _The Book of Common Prayer_, a work which contains some of the noblest specimens of English in our literature. He was also responsible for a book of _Twelve Homilies_ and a revised translation of the Scriptures, known as _Cranmer’s Bible_. The martyr Latimer was the author of sermons which are rare specimens of vigorous eloquence, while Bishop Fisher preached and wrote trenchantly on the other side. John Knox, the great Scottish reformer, wrote a _History of the Scottish Reformation_, and he was so indignant at the fact that three ruling sovereigns were women that just before the accession of Elizabeth he issued from Geneva his _First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women_. John Foxe, the martyrologist did much for Protestantism by his work on the _Acts and Monuments of the Church_; and Roger Ascham, classical tutor to Queen Elizabeth, and author of _Toxophilus_ and _The Schoolmaster_, was the first writer on education in the language. Mention must not be omitted here of the unfortunate Earl of Surrey, who was the first writer of blank verse in England, and who did much to invest English poetry with accuracy, polish, and a general spirit of refinement. Surrey used the medium of blank verse in translating two books of the _Æneid_. With his friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt, he also transplanted the sonnet into the garden of English verse.

THE ELIZABETHAN AND PURITAN PERIODS, 1559-1660

The most brilliant, as well as the most virile, era in English literature was that extending from the accession of Elizabeth in 1558 to the closing of the theaters by the Long Parliament in 1648. No other period of ninety years in English history exhibits such a profusion of literary effort and achievement, especially on the dramatic and imaginative sides. The former portion of this period, however, known as the Elizabethan age--but really extending to the middle of the reign of James I.--was the greater in conception. It witnessed not only the rise but the culminating splendor of the drama. Miracle plays or mysteries were the forerunners of the drama. They were acted in churches and convents, and by their dramatic representations of Biblical episodes it was sought to influence the people in favor of virtue.

There was something grotesque, however, in the choice of Satan as the first comedian, while the general treatment of sacred subjects was most objectionable. In course of time the plays changed into moralities, in which abstract qualities such as Justice and Vice took the place of Scripture characters. Next to these, and before the drama proper, came a series of farcical productions, of which Heywood’s _Interludes_ may be taken as a type.

EDMUND SPENSER.--One great name interposes between these early plays and the drama, namely, that of Edmund Spenser. He restored the glory of English poetry from the long eclipse it suffered after the death of Chaucer. Spenser’s _Shepherd’s Calendar_ applied pastoral images to the religious conflicts of the time, and under the name of Algrind he introduced Archbishop Grindal, whose firmness in encouraging free search for Scripture truth he applauded. To his master, Chaucer, the poet paid tribute under the name of Tityrus. In 1590 Spenser published his great but unfinished allegorical epic _The Faerie Queene_, in which he depicted man with all his capacity for good striving heavenwards. The work is “an intense utterance of the spiritual life of England under Elizabeth.” Spenser’s _Colin Clout Come Home Again_ was written in memory of his friendship for Sir Walter Raleigh. The purely poetic qualities were redundant in Spenser, and these have made him a favorite with all his singing brethern since his death.

Sir Philip Sidney has gained a reputation as an English classic for his _Defense of Poesie_, but his romance of _Arcadia_ is the more widely known, as it was the more warmly appreciated on its publication. Later critics have censured it, but it is rich and highly finished in its phrases, and “full of fine enthusiasm and courtesy of high sentiment, and of the breath of a gentle and heroic spirit.”

BEGINNING OF ENGLISH COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.--The first English comedy, _Ralph Roister Doister_, was written by Nicholas Udall, Master of Eton, between 1534 and 1541. It was avowedly modeled upon _Plautus_, and intended for the edification of Eton boys.

The first tragedy was _Gorboduc_, a new rendering of the old British story of Ferrex and Porrex by Thomas Sackville (Lord Buckhurst), and Thomas Norton. It was acted at the Inner Temple in 1561, and also before the queen by command. It substituted English for Latin in a play constructed after the manner of Seneca, and “its grave dwelling upon the need of union to keep a people strong, a truth of deep significance to England at that time, pleased Elizabeth.” But nearly twenty years yet elapsed before the drama obtained a stable hold, and theaters began to be built.

John Lyly, author of the _Euphues_, wrote a number of mythological plays, and George Peele produced _The Arraignment of Paris_ and _The Device of the Pageant_ in 1584-1585; but Christopher Marlowe, with his “mighty line,” was the first great Elizabethan dramatist. His genius was somber, and his tragedies dark and terrible. His _Tamburlaine the Great_ was produced in 1587, but his _Doctor Faustus_ was not published until ten years after his death, which occurred in 1593.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.--In the latter part of the sixteenth century began the career of the greatest poet the world has ever seen, William Shakespeare. A period of less than twenty-five years covers the production of all those comedies and histories which are the wonder of modern literature. We marvel what kind of man that could be whose intellect could conceive such widely different works as _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, _Venus and Adonis_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _The Rape of Lucrece_, the famous _Sonnets_, _The Merchant of Venice_, _Othello_, _Macbeth_, _King Lear_, and _Hamlet_. Shakespeare seems to sum up within himself the whole of poetry and of human philosophy. His power and universality are unique, and will probably ever remain so.

Ben Jonson, the greatest and most scholarly of his contemporaries, wrote from 1596 to 1637; but he lacked the freedom and naturalness of Shakespeare. Beaumont and Fletcher worked in unison with a success rarely attained by collaborators. Massinger was a dramatist of undoubted power, as his _New Way to Pay Old Debts_ testifies; and Dekker, Heywood, Marston, and Middleton would all have taken a higher niche in the temple of fame had they lived in a less prolific age. Ford and Webster produced plays of a dark and terrible cast, and the list of Elizabethan dramatists closes with James Shirley who was purer in thought and expression than any of his predecessors. Other poets of this period were Thomas Tusser, who gave an excellent picture of English peasant life in his _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_, and Michael Drayton described this favored isle itself in his _Polyolbion_. The learned John Donne gave utterance to his metaphysical conceits, while Drummond of Hawthornden attested his claim to the title of the finest Scottish poet of his day. Carew, Herrick, and Suckling produced their exquisite lyrics, and Herbert chanted the solemn strains of _The Temple_.

ELIZABETHAN PROSE WRITERS.--The great prose writers of the period must be headed with the illustrious name of Francis Bacon. The father of the inductive philosophy was regarded by those of his contemporaries who knew him best as “one of the greatest men and most worthy of admiration that had been for ages.” His adventurous intellect could not be bound by mere tradition. He brought his keen analytical faculty to bear upon the study of man and nature, so that in his matchless _Essays_ we have the result of his penetration into the human mysteries, while his philosophy of nature stands revealed in the two books of the _Advancement of Learning_, in which he laid the basis for his _New Organon_.

“Who is there,” Burke demands, “that upon hearing the name of Lord Bacon does not instantly recognize everything of genius the most profound, everything of literature the most extensive, everything of discovery the most penetrating, everything of observation of human life the most distinguishing and refined?”

George Buchanan ranks as the Scottish Virgil from the elegance of his Latin verse, while he exhibited equal command over Latin prose. Richard Hooker gave a new elevation and dignity to English prose by his _Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_. Sir Walter Raleigh, the admirable Crichton of his age, carried the English name abroad, but returned only to find imprisonment and the scaffold. He glorified his prison life by the production of his great _History of the World_, which is especially memorable for its vivid recital of the histories of Greece and Rome. Camden the antiquary constructed his _Britannia_, and Hakluyt and Purchas indited their wonderful records of travel. James I. threw his ill-digested learning into treatises on Divine Right, Witchcraft, etc.; Burton wrote his quaint and erudite work, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_; Selden, the chief of the learned men of his time, according to Milton, alternated politics with the production of his _Treatise on Titles of Honour_ and his _History of Tithes_; Hobbes of Malmesbury, the terseness of whose style is unique, promulgated his theory of action and morals, as well as his absolutism in politics, in _The Leviathan_; Howell first showed what correspondence might become in his _Familiar Letters_, and genial old Izaak Walton wove an immortal spell over all lovers of good literature by his _Lives of Donne_, _Hooker_, and others, and _The Complete Angler_. Altogether the age was one eminently full of intellectual life.

THE PURITAN PERIOD.--The decline of the drama, and the end of what we may call the Pagan Renaissance, were contemporaneous with the birth of the great constitutional struggle which began with James I. and did not terminate until the English Revolution.

It is strange that such a time of upheaval should have produced the greatest Christian epic, _The Paradise Lost_, and the greatest Christian allegory, _The Pilgrim’s Progress_, which are to be found in any literature. Three great men represented the various forms of the religious struggle going forward; the saintly Jeremy Taylor, a poet among preachers, upheld the cause of Episcopacy; Richard Baxter, while desiring the church discipline and the form of belief, advocated a greater liberty for the individual conscience; and John Milton was a type of the religious freedom and toleration which found best exposition in the principles of the Independents. Milton’s _Eikonoklastes_ broke down the buttresses of kingly authority; his _Areopagitica_ was a noble argument in behalf of intellectual liberty; while his _Paradise Lost_, _Paradise Regained_, and _Samson Agonistes_ were not merely magnificently great as poetry, but Christian evidences of the most sublime type.

John Bunyan, a man of the people, came forward with words that burn and images that enthrall, to show the way from a world of vice to a pure and Holy City. Thomas Fuller, remembering that “blessed are the peacemakers,” sought to heal that strife between king and people which was beyond all healing save that of the sword. Some men held themselves aloof from violent controversy while yet maintaining independence of thought--as, for example, Thomas Browne in the _Religio Medici_, published in 1642.

The anti-Puritans had their champions in Samuel Butler, whose fierce wit blazed forth in _Hudibras_; in the great Royalist writer, Clarendon; and in that staunch Royalist and Churchman, Bishop South, whose antipathy to the Nonconformists may be partly condoned by his brilliant wit. Among other writers of the time may be mentioned the versatile Barrow; the powerful satirists Wither, and Bishop Hall; Harrington, the author of the _Oceana_; the patriotic Algernon Sidney, with his admirable _Discourses on Government_; and those garrulous but inimitable chroniclers, Pepys and Evelyn.

The poets were many and varied, including Waller, Davenant, Denham, Marvell, Lovelace, and Cowley.

PERIOD OF THE RESTORATION TO THE RISE OF THE NOVEL, 1660-1740

Extremes always lead to revulsion, and from Puritanism we pass to the licentious court of Charles II., with the songs of Rochester, and the works of Etherege. The comic dramatists of the Restoration and the period immediately succeeding--Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar--vividly and wittily reflect the glittering life and base morality of the age. One stronger intellect did bring with it for a time the sense of a fresher and diviner air, when John Dryden sang with vigor and insight, and also produced his best comedies and tragedies. Otway likewise showed a momentary gleam of the old Elizabethan dramatic fire. In the sphere of mental and natural philosophy, Locke, Newton, and Boyle grappled with problems hitherto considered unsolvable, and illumined for the world the devious and mysterious paths of scientific inquiry. The selection of names in every branch of English literature, and in every age, can, of course, only be illustrative, not exhaustive.

PERIOD OF DRYDEN AND POPE.--The eighteenth century witnessed a great revolution in English literature, especially on the poetic side. Imagination, passion, and nature were dethroned, and poetry became didactic, philosophical, and political.

Dryden manifested something of the qualities of both schools, but when Alexander Pope arose the new order triumphed. Everything was sacrificed to precision and artificiality.