No country in the beginning owed so much to the language and literature
of other nations as the English.
Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Norman-French, Cymric and Gaelic have all been
moulded into its literature.
Three periods stand out in its history--the first beginning with the
end of the Roman occupation, to the Norman conquest--this includes the
literature of the Celtic, Latin and Anglo-Saxon tongues. The second
from the Norman conquest to the time of Henry VIII, embracing the
literature of the Norman-French, the Latin and Anglo-Saxon; the gradual
evolution of the Anglo-Saxon into English; and the literature of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
The third period includes the Reformation, and the golden age of
Elizabethan literature; followed by the Restoration, Revolution, and
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Another division is called the Old English, Early English, and Middle
English. The latter was used by Chaucer, and with a little care in
reading can readily be understood by any educated person at the present
day, though it contains many words nationalized from the French. It is
a curious fact that the Anglo-Saxons, who in the present day, through
their descendants, the English, have the strongest national life and
literature, cannot boast of such a treasure house of ancient literature
as is possessed by the Irish and Welsh.
Ireland has its bardic songs and historical legends older than the
ninth century, at which time appeared the "Psalter of Cashel," which
has come down to the present day.
There are also prose chronicles, said to be the outcome of others of a
still earlier period, and which give a contemporary history of the
country in the Gaelic language of the fifth century. There is no other
modern nation in Europe that can point to such a literary past. The
Scotch Celts had early metrical verse, of which the Ossian, wherein is
related the heroic deeds of Fingal, was supposed to have been sung by
all the ancient Celtic bards. In the eighteenth century, Macpherson, a
Scotchman, found some of these poems sung in the Highlands of Scotland;
and, making a careful study of them, he translated all he could find
from the Gaelic into English, and gave them to the world. At the time
of publication, in 1762, their authenticity was questioned, and even at
the present day scholars are divided in their opinion as to their
genuineness. The literature of the Cymric Celts, the early inhabitants
of Britain, has given us the glorious legends of King Arthur and the
Knights of the Round Table. All the bardic songs refer to this mighty
prince, who resisted the Saxon invaders, and whose deeds were sung by
all the Welsh Britons. Some of these people took refuge in France, and
gradually the fame of their legends spread all over Europe, and were
eagerly seized upon and rendered into song, by the chivalric poets of
all countries. From these tales Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth
century compiled a Latin historical work of Britain, while in later
times Tennyson in England, and Richard Wagner in Germany, have made the
deeds of Arthur and his Knights the theme of some of their most
magnificent creations.
Other ancient Welsh writings are still extant, among them the Triads,
which is a work that has come down from primitive times. It comprises a
collection of historical and mythological maxims, traditions,
theological doctrines, and rules for constructing verse.
The Mabinogi, or "Tales of Youth," are old Welsh romances similar to
the Norse Sagas, which are supposed by critics to date from a very rude
and early age.
The Anglo-Saxon is very different from these ancient literatures. It
has no legends or romances, no national themes, and its early prose and
verse were written more in the style of religious narrative, and to
give practical information, than to amuse.
The poems of Beowulf, a thorough Norse Saga, embodies the doings of the
Anglo-Saxons before they emigrated to England, and must have been
written long before they set foot on English soil. Older than Beowulf
is the lyric poem of Widsith, which has some historical interest as
depicting the doings of kings, princes and warriors. It contains traces
of the epic, which in Beowulf, whose English poem is next in point of
time, is more markedly developed.
During the fifth and sixth centuries the Germanic tribes who emigrated
to Britain brought with them a heathen literature. The oldest fragment
now extant are the Hexenspruche and the Charms. They have elements of
Christian teaching in them, which would seem to imply that the Church
tried to give them a Christian setting. In some respects they resemble
the old Sanskrit, and are supposed to be among the earliest examples of
lyric poetry in England.
Alfred the Great improved the Anglo-Saxon prose and soon after his time
a translation of the Bible in that language was made, forming the
second known copy in a national language, the first being the
Moeso-Gothic of Bishop Ulphilus. The Saxon Chronicles, dating from the
time of Alfred to 1154 were copies of the Latin Chronicles kept in the
monasteries.
The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw the age of the Crusades, which
added a new impulse to learning through the co-mingling of different
races. French poetry was translated into English, which, in the
thirteenth century, in its evolution from the Anglo-Saxon became a
fixed language. Classical learning in this age was generally diffused
through the schoolmen, of whom Lanfranc, Anselm, John of Salisbury,
Duns Scotius, William of Malmesbury, and other great names of this
period, mentioned elsewhere, are instances.
In the thirteenth century appeared also the Gesta Romanorum, a
collection of fables, traditions, and various pictures of society,
changing with the different countries that the stories dealt with. The
romance of Apollonius in this collection gave Chaucer the plots for two
or three of his tales, and furnished Cowers with the theme for most of
his celebrated poem, the Confessio Amantis. This poem, in its turn,
suggested to Shakespeare the outlines for his characters of Pericles,
Prince of Tyre, and the Merchant of Venice. Other and less celebrated
works are also taken from the Gesta Romanorum.
After the accession of the Norman kings of England, the chief literary
works in England for two centuries are those of the Norman poets. Wace
in the twelfth century wrote in French his "Brut d'Angleterre." Brutus
was the mythical son of Aeneas, and the founder of Britain. The Britons
were settled in Cornwall, Wales and Bretagne, and were distinguished
for traditionary legends, which had been collected by Godfrey of
Monmouth in 1138. They formed the groundwork for Wace's poem, which was
written in 1160, and from that time proved to be an inexhaustible
treasury from which romantic writers of fiction drew their materials.
From this source Shakespeare obtained King Lear; Sackville found his
Ferrex and Porrex; and Milton and other poets are also indebted to
these legends. They furnished, also, the romances of chivalry for the
English Court, and have had an effect on English poetry that can be
seen even in the present day. The six romances of the British cycle,
celebrating Arthur, his Knights, and the Round Table, were written in
the last part of the twelfth century, at the instigation of Henry II.
They were the work of Englishmen; but were composed in French, and from
them the poets of France fashioned a number of metrical romances.
Geoffrey Chaucer in the fourteenth century borrowed freely from French,
Latin and Italian works. The comic Fabliaux and the allegorical poetry
of the Trouveres and Troubadours furnished him with many of his
incidents and characters. The Romance of the Rose was taken from a
French poem of the thirteenth century.
Troilus and Cressida is regarded as a translation from Boccaccio, and
Chaucer's Legend of Good Women is founded on Ovid's Epistles. John
Lydgate, a Benedictine monk in the fifteenth century, wrote poetry in
imitation of Chaucer, taking his ideas from the Gesta Romanorum, while
Thomas Mallory, a priest in the time of Edward IV, has given us one of
the best specimens of old English in the romantic prose fiction of
Morte d'Arthur, in which the author has told in one tale the whole
history of the Round Table.
The "Bruce" of the Scotch John Barbour in the same century, gives the
adventures of King Robert, from which Sir Walter Scott has drawn
largely for his "Lord of the Isles."
The close of the fifteenth century saw a passion develop for Scotch
poetry, which speedily became the fashion. Henry the Minstrel, or Blind
Harry, wrote his "Wallace," which is full of picturesque incident and
passionate fervor.
Robert Henryson wrote his Robin and Makyne, a charming pastoral, which
has come down to us in Percy's Reliques.
Gavin Douglas, Scotch Bishop of Dunkeld in the beginning of the
sixteenth century, translated the Aeneid into English. This is the
earliest known attempt in the British Isles to render classical poetry
into the national language.
In the sixteenth century Erasmus gave a new impulse in England to the
study of Latin and Greek, and Sir Thomas More in his "Utopia" (wherein
he imagines an ideal commonwealth with community of property),
unconsciously gave birth to a word (utopia), which has ever since been
used to designate the ideally impossible.
Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, in the same century made a translation of
the Aeneid and wrote sonnets and lyrical poems. The sonnet he borrowed
from Petrarch, giving it the amatory tone common to the Italians. He
also took from the Italian poets the blank verse of his Aeneid, a style
in which the best poetry of England has since been written.
The genius of John Milton has been greatly hampered by the
self-inflicted laws under which he labored, conditions which did not
affect Dante and Tasso, who were his models; for Milton denied in a
great measure the use of history, tradition and symbolism. Of this
defect he was sensible, so he tried to make amends for it by borrowing
fables and allegories out of the Koran and Talmud. English poetry has
inclined more to the style of Milton than to that of Spenser, who was
thoroughly embued with the romantic spirit of the Teutons and the
Troubadours, though, like Milton, he was influenced by Tasso; and
unlike him, by Ariosto. His Faerie Queene, Gloriana, is supposed to be
the beloved of the courtly Arthur of the British legends.
The English poets of the Elizabethan age were under deep obligations to
the Italian poets, especially Tasso; and this is particularly true of
Spenser, many critics think his eighty-first sonnet is almost a literal
translation of Tasso. Be that as it may, the obligations of many
English poets of the age to the Italians, is unmistakable.
After the Puritan period the English language and literature was
strongly influenced by the French, and in both Pope and Addison there
is a marked leaning toward French poetry. Pope's translation of Homer
while it lacks the simple majesty and naturalness of the original (a
trait which Bryant in the nineteenth century happily caught),
nevertheless gave to the English world the opportunity to become
somewhat acquainted with the incomparable poet of antiquity.
Thomson's descriptive poetry of nature found many imitators in Germany
and France, and a taste for outdoor life and simplicity became the
rage, so that some years after the author of the "Castle of Indolence"
had passed away, Marie Antoinette in her rustic bower, "Little
Trianon," pretended to like to keep sheep and pose as a shepherdess, as
has been said elsewhere.
Percy's Reliques of ancient English poetry, in 1765 opened a storehouse
of the fine old English ballads, which speedily became popular through
the patronage of Scott, who made them his textbook for a variety of
subjects. These poems, with Macpherson's "Fingal" introduced a new
school of poetry into England. The originals of Scott were these
romances of chivalry, and even Byron has not disdained to follow the
same trend in the pilgrimage of his "Childe Harold." The nineteenth
century poets and novelists do not seem to have borrowed especially
from any foreign element; but in history Niebuhr's researches in
Germany have greatly influenced Arnold in his "Roman History." The
close of the nineteenth century and opening of the twentieth is chiefly
remarkable for the interdependence of literature through the magazines
and reviews. Translations of any striking or brilliant articles are
immediately made, and appear in the magazines of different countries
almost as soon as the originals, so that the literature of the future
bids fair to become more cosmopolitan, and perhaps less strongly
directed by racial and social influence than in the past.
And yet--in studying the literature of ancient and modern times--we are
struck by the unity in diversity of its history, just as a world-wide
traveller comes to see the similarity of nature everywhere. In
literature strange analogies occur in ages and races remote from each
other, as, when the mother in the old North country Scotch ballad sings
to her child, and says:
"The wild wind is ravin,' thy minnies heart's sair,
The wild wind is ravin,' but ye dinna care."
And we find nearly the same verse in the song of Danae to the infant
Perseus:
"The salt spume that is blown o'er thy locks,
Thou heedst not, nor the roar of the gale;
Sleep babe, sleep the sea,
And sleep my sea of trouble."
There is also the story of the Greek child who in ancient times sang
nearly the same invocation for fair weather that we used in our nursery
days, when, with noses flattened against the window pane, we uttered
our sing-song:
"Rain, rain, go to Spain."
And in blindman's buff, perhaps the most ancient of games, we have
words that have come down from remote times. The blindfolded one says:
"I go a-hunting a brassy fly."
To which the others answer:
"A-hunting thou goest; but shalt not come nigh."
And there are the marvellous stories of the Giant Killer, and the
wonders of Puss in Boots and Cinderella, which have descended to us
from that vast cloud-country of bygone ages; that dreamland of fairy
imagery, which is as real to the little maid in the twentieth century
as it was to her young sisters in the shadow of the Pyramids, on the
banks of the Tiber and the Ganges, in the neighborhood of solemn Druid
Temples, or among the fjords and floes of the far-off Icelandic
country, in centuries long since gone by.