DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE OR WORK.
DATES.
SOME REMARKS.
Poetry (other than drama):
(_a_) Satirical (didactic) Tales
_Reineke Fuchs_
_circa_ 1150
Formulation of Germanic Tales already taken up in France (_Roman
de Renart_).
Sebastian Brandt (_Narrenschiff_)
1494
Translated by Barclay (_Ship of Fools_). Other “Ships” followed.
(_b_) Romantic (chivalric) poems
_e.g._, _Rolandslied_
Later twelfth century
The influence was inward from France.
(_c_) Epic
_Nibelungenlied_
Shaped about 1200
Klopstock (_Messias_)
1773
Influence from Milton.
Wieland (_Oberon_)
1780
(_d_) Lyric
The Minnesänger
1150-1300
Influence inward from France.
The Meistersänger (Hans Sachs flor. 1550.)
1300-1550
_Volkslieder_
Fourteenth to sixteenth century
Luther (_Hymns_)
1524
A chief influence on the _Goostly Songs_ of Coverdale.
Göttingen Dichterbund (1772). Bürger (_Lenore_, etc.).
Goethe
1749-1832
Schiller
1759-1805
Heine
1799-1856
Uhland
1787-1862
The influence of German ballads and lyrics becomes clear in Scott
and Coleridge, and has affected all English work in this kind
during the nineteenth century. Translations have been numerous.
Drama
Lessing (_Minna von Barnhelm_, _Nathan der Weise_)
1729-1781
Schiller (_Wallenstein_, _Wilhelm Tell_)
Goethe (_Faust_, _Egmont_)
The influence of Goethe is not calculable. The effect of his
_Faust_ begins most clearly in Byron (_Manfred_).
Legends, Novels, and Tales
_Eulenspiegel_
Printed 1515
Translated by Copland (_Owlglasse_), 1550. References were
frequent in sixteenth century. Cf. the French derivative
_espiègle_.
Stories of _Bishop Hatto_, _Fortunatas_, etc.
Sixteenth century
Familiarized in England in the same century.
Stories of _Doctor Faustus_
1587
Source of Greene’s _Friar Bacon_, and Marlowe’s _Dr. Faustus_.
_Baron Münchhausen_ (partly by Bürger)
Goethe, _Sorrows of Werther_ (1774)
Influenced by Rousseau, but itself the source of “Wertherism.”
” _Wilhelm Meister_
Translated by Carlyle.
Philosophy, Theology, etc.
Luther (Pamphlets, Transl. of Bible, 1534)
1483-1546
Wide reaching effect on Protestant thought in England.
Leibnitz (_Théodicée_, etc.)
1646-1716
Pope’s _Essay on Man_ is derived, through Bolingbroke, from
thoughts of Leibnitz.
Kant (_Critique of Pure Reason_, 1781)
Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer
Nineteenth century
German philosophy has dominated England since the age of Coleridge
(who borrowed from Schelling), De Quincey, etc.
Criticism
Lessing (_Laocoon_, 1776)
Winckelmann (_Hist. of Ancient Art_, 1764)
A. W. Schlegel (_Lectures on Dramatic Art_)
1767-1845
(_c_) CELTIC LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
We are apt to forget how considerable a substratum of the “English”
people is Celtic. The first historical inhabitants of Britain were
mainly Celts. They filled England and Scotland as they now fill Wales;
they still occupy most of Ireland and of the Caledonian Highlands. The
conquering Romans with their settlers and legionaries affected the
population very little. When the Anglo-Saxons and Danes came in their
successive waves, and occupied the southern, eastern, and northern
portions of Great Britain, they did not arrive in numbers so great as
absolutely to sweep away the existing people, that blend of little Roman
with much Celt. They simply laid thicker strata on the ethnological
concretion. The Celtic strain was much thinned, particularly in England,
but it was by no means eliminated. The subsequent Norman invaders count
numerically for little in the mass. If, therefore, we take the whole body
of English literature, and think of the men who have produced it in Great
Britain and Ireland, we cannot but recognize that in those writers there
were probably certain Celtic elements, which must have had some potency
in determining their capacity for thought and feeling. Englishmen may
call themselves Anglo-Saxons, and we may be mostly made of Anglo-Saxon
clay, but we do not know how much of us is, after all, the contribution
of a Celtic strain, with its characteristic tendencies, the melancholy
sentiment and the chivalrous but inconstant ardour which mark the Celtic
race. Nevertheless it is one matter to speak of the Celtic spirit in our
literature, and another to display the influence of Celtic literature
upon our own. Celtic literature properly means the literature of peoples
speaking Celtic, and to that literature some debts are due, at least to
the Cymry of Wales and Brittany.
* * * * *
Already before the Anglo-Saxon invasion there were doubtless floating
among the British Celts legends of mystery and marvel congenial to the
racial taste. After the conflicts with the Saxons a great chieftain,
Arthur, grew into prominence, and around him were destined to gather both
these older legends, and also new stories of adventures with human foes,
with dragons, or with mysterious powers and spells. Christianity, working
upon the natural temperament of the Celt, encouraged that idealizing
self-dedication to the cause of love or piety, which belongs to knights
with a mission to “right the wrong.” It is this spirit which is the most
important Celtic contribution to the literature of the middle ages.
In the sixth century Gildas, called by Gibbon the “British Jeremiah,” who
had at least been educated in Wales, writes in Latin his _Destruction and
Conquest of Britain_, a dirge in the true tone of Celtic remonstrance
against the hardship of ruthless circumstance. In the ninth century
Nennius composes a summary of Welsh traditions, in which we meet with the
story of Brutus as the legendary colonizer of primitive Britain. In 1132
appeared the Latin _History of the Britons_ by Geoffrey of Monmouth,
who pretends to base his interesting but unhistoric compilation upon
materials gathered in Brittany by Walter of Oxford, but who probably
collected at least as many from the neighbouring Celts of Wales. In this
work are to be found not only the legendary Brutus, but also the stories
of Gorboduc and Lear, afterwards to figure in Elizabethan drama. The
cycle of Arthur is as yet incomplete; the Holy Grail is not mentioned nor
the Round Table.
In 1155 the Jersey Norman, Robert Wace, converts and amplifies Geoffrey’s
work into the French romance _Brut d’Engleterre_ or _Geste des Bretons_,
introducing for the first time the Table Round. This again is developed
in English verse by Layamon in his _Brut_ of 1205. From various sources,
and by various hands, the Arthurian legends are increased, first in the
romances in verse, next in the romances in prose. Though the infusion of
Celtic chivalrous sentiment appears in all, there are naturally various
degrees in the mysticism and asceticism which they display. The vogue
of these romances was not confined to France and England. As with other
portions of the epic verse of France, it passed into Italy, and inspired
both the predecessors of Ariosto and also that great poet himself.
Thence, as well as from the sources nearer home, it awoke the interest
of Spenser. To the same subjects Milton also was for awhile strongly
attracted. In his _Epitaphium Damonis_ he shows the hold which the
Arthurian legends had taken upon him, and he explicitly proposes to make
Arthur and the British knights the subject of an epic. In the Sabrina of
the _Comus_, and in various references, the same poet reveals how well
read he was in the matter of Geoffrey.
In Spain “matter of Britain” took a new lease of life. In that country
was produced the series of chivalric romances in prose, which began
soon after the year 1300 with the _Amadis of Gaul_ (_i.e._, _Wales_),
and continued for nearly three centuries, until, from their increasing
extravagance, they fell into disrepute, and were finally slain by
the satire of Cervantes. How these operated together with pastoral,
to produce the sentimental _longueurs_ of La Calprenède and Scudéry
in France of the seventeenth century, and thence affected the novel
and drama of post-Restoration England, is told in the sketch of the
literature of Spain. The affiliation to Celtic origins is in this
case clear enough, but with the circuitous route there goes a gradual
defection in that real Celtic spirit which was possessed by the original
_Amadis_.
* * * * *
When we are asked at what date English literature is most distinctly
affected by the creations of Celtic countries, we may reply that it is
chiefly before the age of Chaucer, when the romantic legends of Arthur
and his Table came through two channels; on the one hand through Breton
sources, on the other through Wales. This is, in point of subject
matter, the largest Celtic contribution on which we can lay our hand. To
it we owe not only the Arthurian cycle of romances as we find them in
Geoffrey, the _trouvères_, Layamon, and later in the compilation of Sir
Thomas Malory (called _Morte D’Arthur_), which was one of the earliest
books that Caxton chose to print; but also much reference in Spenser and
Milton, as well as the whole substance of Tennyson’s _Idylls of the
King_. To a once independent group of legends, afterwards brought into
relation with the Arthurian, we owe the exquisite _Tristram and Iseult_
of Matthew Arnold.
It was in “matter of Britain” that appeared the special vein of tender
chivalry which passed into the romances, first of France, then of Italy
and Spain. Not in Germany, not in Italy, not in Provence, not in Spain,
did these stories of knightly loyalty and uttermost honour and devotion
take their rise. It was in Northern France, where Franks and Normans were
in contact with the large Celtic remnants of the Bretons. In all these
legends there speaks the Celtic voice, rememberable and distinguishable
everywhere by its prevailing melancholy, its devotion to a cause, be that
cause right or wrong, be it strong or weak.
For the rest, we are in no position to fix the first invention of the
Quest of the Holy Grail, or any other legend of the cycle, upon any
definite author. What we allow to Tennyson in his liberties with the
details of the stories and the form they take, we must perforce allow to
the many who had told and retold the same stories scores of times since
the Celt of Britain first passed them on to Brittany.
A very dubious, if not wholly mythical, figure in Celtic literature,
is the once hugely admired Ossian. Macpherson, a contemporary of Dr.
Johnson, came into prominence at the time when the eighteenth century was
growing weary of the “classicism” of the school of Pope, and was ready
to be interested in the simple, frank, romantic world. Macpherson was
a Scotsman, who pretended to have collected from manuscripts, and from
the memory of Highlanders, sundry poems of a certain Ossian, a Gaelic
poet of the third century. These he translated into pompous declamatory
prose, attempting something like the style and imagery of the Hebraic
scriptures, but overstraining both. They were received with immense
enthusiasm in England, France, and Germany, and were Napoleon’s favourite
odes. Unhappily the alleged originals will, for the most part, not bear
the light of criticism. Johnson did not scruple to call Macpherson an
impostor. That there was an Ossian is probable, but the few poems which
can with tolerable safety be assigned to him belong to a much later date
than Macpherson claimed. Nevertheless, though Macpherson’s Ossian may
be as great an imposture as Chatterton’s _Rowley Poems_, he, no doubt,
did gather from the Celtic fragments and the Celtic folklore a mass of
imagery and fire of words, which came in most fitting time to lend some
help in ridding the weary world of the stereotyped coldnesses of the
followers of Pope.
(_d_) HEBREW INFLUENCE
For those who are not Hebrews, Hebrew literature means the Bible, and
especially the old Testament of that Bible. It would be a vain pretence
to attempt to show precisely how far the Bible has influenced the thought
of English writers. It is not our province here to deal with morals and
moral influence, however much we may recognize that, since out of the
fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, our English literature could
not have been the literature it is, if the moral disposition and attitude
at the back of it had been other than they are. And these have been in
the largest measure determined by the Old Testament of the Hebrews.
Imagine for a moment that the Bible did not exist, that no Englishman had
ever read one line of it, that the religious notions which it inculcates
were without expression in any such established standard. Our way of
looking at life and at things suprasensual, our maxims of conduct, our
ideals of feeling, would obviously be something widely unlike those
which we now entertain. A nation’s literature is the expression of a
nation’s soul. Give us a different soul, and the expression will convey
that difference. We cannot separate literature from moral conceptions
and moral tone, and therefore, in a sense, the Hebrews have determined
our literature more than all other influences combined. And there is
this manifest and vastly important difference between the influence of
the Bible and the influence of any other work. The Biblical thoughts
have become part of our earliest, youngest, and most plastic selves.
We are born into them, and brought up in them, as something natural to
ourselves. The English heart and mind are now partly made of Hebrew
thoughts and ideals. This fact is so obvious that we need not pursue
it further. To other literatures we have looked for models to imitate
and notions to borrow; to the Biblical literature we have looked for a
transfusion of all our thinking.
But there is also a purely literary effect of the Bible, concerning which
a few words must be said. Who can estimate the immense extent to which
Biblical imagery and Biblical phrase—what one may call Biblical style
and Hebrew style—have determined the style of English writers? Remember
that the average English child is brought up on the Bible, that he reads,
marks, learns, and inwardly digests it; that its diction and its figures
of speech persist, however loosely, in his memory. What is the result?
Is it not that, though in a less degree than with the Puritans, there
remains, consciously or unconsciously, a habit of imitating those figures
and further developing them; of imitating that diction, and carrying
it into his higher forms of speech and his writings? Take the great
preachers and religious prose writers from Jeremy Taylor to Cardinal
Newman, and observe how their language unconsciously follows the rhythm,
clothes itself in the dignity, and repeats the very phraseology, of the
authorized version of the scriptures. Take poets like Milton, or mere
verse-writers like Akenside, and see how their language seems to echo the
language of the Testaments, Old and New.
It is true that the language of the “Authorized Version” is English and
not Hebrew. None the less the imagery, the similes and metaphors, the
fiery turns of exhortation and denunciation, the fervent question and
the apostrophe, all these and other elements which make up style, are,
apart from the rhythm, Hebrew and not English. And it is to these things
we refer when we speak of the purely “literary” effect of the Bible on
our writers. Quite apart from the spiritual effect which is sought for
without reference to the qualities of the style, there are, all the time,
powerful qualities in the Hebraic style itself, qualities often reaching
to the poetical sublime. Take, for instance, the passage, “Whither shall
I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy Presence?
If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: if I go down to hell, Thou
art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hand lead me, and
Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say ‘Peradventure the darkness shall
cover me,’ then shall my night be turned to day. Yea, the darkness is
no darkness with Thee: but the night is clear as the day: the darkness
and the light to Thee are both alike.” And once again: “Ye mountains
of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you, nor fields of
offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the
shield of Saul, as though not anointed with oil. From the blood of
the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not
back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were
lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not
divided. They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with
other delights; who put on ornaments of gold on your apparel. How are the
mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!”
What we are here concerned with is the way in which the diction of every
English writer has been dominated from his youth up by echoes of words
like these, which he received into his plastic mind in childhood, and
which mix themselves with his thoughts as he shapes the words and the
images of his English prose or verse.
If, indeed, we were to take our greater authors and read them through,
pencil in hand; if we were to mark those words and images and turns of
expression which we feel to be derived consciously or unconsciously from
the English version of the Hebrew Bible, we should be amazed to find how
much of purely literary strength and dignity that one book has added to
our tongue.
And this Hebrew influence has existed ever since we were a nation, nay,
even before. There was, indeed, no translated English Bible till the
days of Wyclif, the contemporary of Chaucer; nevertheless the images and
thoughts of the Latin Vulgate had become part of every good ecclesiastic,
and in all preaching and exhortation the Biblical phrases were heard
in English, perhaps rougher and less rhythmical than those of our own
version, but still with their essential quality retained. Remember again
that, still in these days, in all Christian churches, the language
employed is deliberately Biblical, that the prayers are Biblical in
expression, and that the language is considered the more apt and more
effective in proportion as it more distinctly bears the Hebraic impress.
Put all these considerations together, and it will be recognized without
need of further words than on literary style, as well as on moral
sentiment, the influence of the one Hebrew book has been unparalleled.
Meanwhile the writings in English verse and prose which have taken their
titles, their subject matter, their suggestions, or their inspiration,
from the Bible, would form an interminable list.