 |
NOTE. For the best biographies of individual writers, see the Bibliographies at the ends of the preceding chapters.
SELECTIONS
Manly's English Poetry and Manly's English Prose (Ginn and Company) are the best single-volume collections, covering the whole field of English literature.
Pancoast's Standard English Poetry, and Pancoast's Standard English Prose (Holt).
Oxford Book of English Verse, and Oxford Treasury of English Literature, 3 vols. (Clarendon Press).
Page's British Poets of the Nineteenth Century (Sanborn).
Stedman's Victorian Anthology (Houghton, Mifflin).
Ward's English Poets, 4 vols.; Craik's English Prose Selections, 5 vols.; Chambers's Encyclopedia of English Literature, etc.
MISCELLANEOUS
The Classic Myths in English Literature (Ginn and Company).
Adams's Dictionary of English Literature.
Ryland's Chronological Outlines of English Literature.
Brewer's Reader's Handbook.
Botta's Handbook of Universal Literature.
Ploetz's Epitome of Universal History.
Hutton's Literary Landmarks of London.
Heydrick's How to Study Literature.
For works on the English language see Bibliography of the Norman period, p. 65.
* * * * *
INDEX
KEY TO PRONUNCIATION
ā, as in fate; ă, as in fat; ae, as in arm; a, as in all; ạ, as in what; a, as in care
ē, as in mete; ĕ, as in met; e, as in there
ī, as in ice; ĭ, as in it; i, as in machine
ō, as in old; ŏ, as in not; o, as in move; ȯ, as in son; o, as in horse; [=oo] as in food; [)oo], as in foot
ū, as in use; ŭ, as in up; u, as in fur; ü, as in rule; u, as in pull
ȳ, as in fly; y, as in baby
c, as in call; c, as in mice; ch, as in child; ȼh, as in school
g, as in go; ġ, as in cage
s, as in saw; s, as in is
th, as in thin; th, as in then
x, as in vex; x, as in exact.
NOTE. Titles of books, poems, essays, etc., are in italics.
Absalom and Achitophel (ā-chit'o-fel) Abt Vogler (aept vōg'ler) Actors, in early plays; Elizabethan Addison; life; works; hymns; influence; style Adonais (ad-ō-nā'is) Aesc (esk) Aidan, St. (ī'dan) Aids to Reflection Alastor (ă-lăs-tor) Alchemist, The Alexander's Feast Alfred, King; life and times; works All for Love Alysoun, or Alisoun (ael'y-sown or ael'y-zoon), old form of Alice Amelia American Taxation, Burke's speech on An Epistle Anatomy of Melancholy Ancren Riwle (angk'ren rol) Andrea del Sarto (aen-drā'yae del saer'tō) Andreas Angeln Angles, the Anglo-Norman Period; literature; ballads; lyrics; summary; selections for reading; bibliography; questions on; chronology Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Anglo-Saxon Period; early poetry; springs of poetry; language; Christian writers; source books; summary; selections for reading; bibliography; questions on; chronology Anglo-Saxons; the name; life; language; literature, see Anglo-Saxon Period. Annus Mirabilis Anselm Apologia, Newman's Apologie for Poetrie Arcadia Areopagitica (ăr'=ē-ŏp-ă-jĭt'ĭ-cae) Arnold, Matthew; life; poetry; prose works; characteristics Art, definition of Arthurian romances Artistic period of drama Artistic quality of literature Ascham, Roger Assonance Astraea Redux (ăs-trē'ae rē'duks) Astrophel and Stella (ăs'trō-fel) Atalanta in Calydon (ăt-ă-lăn'tae, kăl'ĭ-dŏn) Augustan Age, meaning. See Eighteenth-century literature Aurora Leigh (a-rō'rae lē) Austen, Jane; life; novels; Scott's criticism of
Bacon, Francis; life; works; place and influence Bacon, Roger Ballad, the Ballads and Sonnets Barchester Towers Bard, The Bard of the Dimbovitza (dim-bo-vitz'ae), Roumanian folk songs Battle of Agincourt (English, ăj'in-kōrt) Battle of Brunanburh Battle of the Books Baxter, Richard Beaumont, Francis (bō'mont) Becket Bede; his history; his account of Caedmon Bells and Pomegranates Benefit of clergy Beowulf (bā'ō-wulf), the poem; history; poetical form; manuscript of Beowulf's Mount Bibliographies, study of literature; Anglo-Saxon Period; Norman; Chaucer; Revival of Learning; Elizabethan; Puritan; Restoration; Eighteenth century; Romanticism; Victorian; general Bickerstaff Almanac Biographia Literaria Blackmore, Richard Blake, William; life; works Blank verse Blessed Damozel Blot in the 'Scutcheon, A Boethius (bō-ē'thi-us) Boileau (bwa-lō'), French critic Boke of the Duchesse Book of Martyrs Borough, The Boswell, James. See also Johnson Boy actors Breton, Nicholas Bronte, Charlotte and Emily Browne, Thomas; works Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Robert; life; works; obscurity of; as a teacher; compared with Shakespeare; with Tennyson; periods of work; soul studies; place and message Brut, Layamon's; quotation from Brutus, alleged founder of Britain Bulwer Lytton Bunyan, John; life; works; his style Burke, Edmund; life; works; analysis of his orations Burney, Fanny (Madame D'Arblay) Burns, Robert; life; poetry; Carlyle's essay on Burton, Robert Butler, Samuel Byron; life; works; compared with Scott
Caedmon (kăd'mon), life; works; his Paraphrase; school of Cain Callista Calvert, Raisley Camden, William Campaign, The Campion, Thomas Canterbury Tales; plan of; prologue; Dryden's criticism of Canynge's coffer Carew, Thomas Carlyle; life; works; style and message Carols, in early plays Casa Guidi Windows (kae'sae gwē'dē) Castell of Perseverance Castle of Indolence Cata Cavalier poets Caxton; specimen of printing Celtic legends Chanson de Gestes Chanson de Roland Chapman, George; his Homer; Keats's sonnet on Chatterton, Thomas Chaucer, how to read; life; works; form of his poetry; melody; compared with Spenser Chaucer, Age of: history; writers; summary; selections for reading; bibliography; questions on; chronology Chester plays Cheyne Row Childe Harold Child's Garden of Verses Chocilaicus (kō-kil-ā'ī-cus) Christ, The, of Cynewulf Christabel Christian Year Christmas Carol, A Christ's Hospital, London Chronicle, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle plays Chronicles, riming Chronology: Anglo-Saxon Period; Norman-French; Age of Chaucer; Revival of Learning; Elizabethan; Puritan; Restoration; Eighteenth Century; Romanticism; Victorian Citizen of the World Clarissa Classic and classicism Classic influence on the drama Cloister and the Hearth Clough, Arthur Hugh Cockaygne, Land of (kō-kān') Coleridge; life; works; critiqal writings Collier, Jeremy Collins, William Comedy, definition; first English; of the court Complete Angler, The Comus, Masque of Conciliation with America, Burke's speech Confessions of an English Opium-Eater Consolations of Philosophy Cotter's Saturday Night Couplet, the Court comedies Covenant of 1643 Coventry plays Cowley, Abraham Cowper, William; life; works Crabbe, George Cranford Crashaw, Richard Critic, meaning of Critical writing, Dryden; Coleridge; in Age of Romanticism; in Victorian Age Criticism, Arnold's definition Cross, John Walter Crown of Wild Olive Culture and Anarchy Curse of Jfehama (kē-hae'mae) Cursor Mundi Cycles, of plays; of romances Cynewulf (kin'ĕ-wulf), 36-38 Cynthia's Revels (sin'thi-ae)
Daniel, Samuel Daniel Deronda D'Arblay, Madame (Fanny Burney) Darwin and Darwinism Death, Raleigh's apostrophe to Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Defense of Poesie Defensio pro Populo Anglicano Defoe; life; works Dekker, Thomas Delia Democracy and Romanticism; in Victorian Age Dear's Lament De Quincey; life; works; style De Sapientia Veterum Deserted Village, The Dethe of Blanche the Duchesse Diary, Evelyn's; Pepys's; selections from Dickens; life; works; general plan of novels; his characters; his public; limitations Dictionary, Johnson's Discoverie of Guiana (gē-ae'nae) Divina Commedia (dē-vē'nae kom-mā'dē-ae) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Domestic drama Donne, John his poetry Dotheboys Hall (do-the-boys) Drama, in Elizabethan Age origin, periods of, miracle and mystery plays, interludes, classical influence on, unities, the English, types of, decline of. See also Elizabethan Age, Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe, etc. Dramatic unities Dramatists, methods of See Shakespeare, Marlowe, etc. Drapier's Letters Drayton, Michael Dream of Gerontius, The (jĕ-rŏn'shĭ-us) Dryden life, works, influence, criticism of Canterbury Tales Duchess of Malfi (mael'fē) Dunciad, The (dun'sĭ-ad)
Ealhild, queen (ē-ael'hild) Earthly Paradise Eastward Ho! Economic conditions, in Age of Romanticism Edgeworth, Maria Edward II Egoist, The Eighteenth-Century Literature: history of the period, literary characteristics, the Classic Age, Augustan writers, romantic revival, the first novelists, summary, selections for reading, bibliography, questions, chronology, Eikon Basilike (ī'kon bă-sil'ĭ-kē) Eikonoklastes (ī-kon-ō-klas'tēz) Elegy, Gray's Elene Elizabethan Age history, non-dramatic poets, first dramatists, Shakespeare's predecessors, Shakespeare, Shakespeare's contemporaries and successors, prose writers, summary, selections, bibliography, questions, chronology Endymion English Bards and Scotch Reviewers English Humorists English Idyls Eormanric (ē-or'man-ric) Epicaene (ĕp'ī-sen), or The Silent Woman Epithalamium (ĕp-ĭ-thā-lā'mĭ-um) Erasmus Essay concerning Human Understanding Essay of Dramatic Poesy Essay on Burns Essay on Criticism Essay on Man Essay on Milton Essays, Addison's, Bacon's Essays in Criticism Essays of Elia (ē'lĭ-ae) Ethics of the Dust Euphues and euphuism (ū'fū-ēz) Evans, Mary Ann. See George Eliot Evelyn, John Everlasting No, and Yea, The Every Man in His Humour Everyman Excursion, The Exeter Book
Faber, Frederick Fables, Dryden's Faery Queen Fall of Princes Faust (foust), Faustus (fas'tus) Ferrex and Porrex Fielding, novels, characteristics Fight at Finnsburgh Fingal (fing'gal) First-folio Shakespeare Fletcher, Giles Fletcher, John Ford, John Formalism Four Georges, The Foxe, John Fragments of Ancient Poetry French influence in Restoration literature French language in England French Revolution, influence of French Revolution, Carlyle's Fuller, Thomas
Gammer Gurton's Needle Gaskell, Mrs. Elizabeth Gawain and the Green Knight (gae'-wān) Gawain cycle of romances, 57 Gebir (gā-bēr') Geoffrey of Monmouth (jef'rĭ) George Eliot; life; works; characteristics; as a moralist Gest (or jest) books Geste of Robin Hood Gibbon, his history Gifts of God, The Girondists (jĭ-ron'dists) Gleemen, or minstrels Goldsmith; life; works Good Counsel Gorboduc (gor'bō-duk) Gorgeous Gallery Gower Grace Abounding Gray, Thomas; life; works Greatest English Poets Greene, Robert Gregory, Pope Grendel; story of; mother of Grubb Street Gulliver's Travels Gull's Hornbook
Hakluyt, Richard (hăk'loot) Hallam, his criticism of Bacon Hardy, Thomas Hastings, battle of Hathaway, Anne Hazlitt, William Hengist (hĕng'gist) Henry Esmond Herbert, George; life; poetry of Hero and Leander Heroes and Hero Worship Heroic couplet Heroic Stanzas Herrick, Robert Hesperides and Noble Numbers (hĕs-pĕr'ĭ-dēz) Heywood, John Heywood, Thomas Hilda, abbess Hildgund (hild'gund) Historical novel History, of England, Macaulay's; of Frederick the Great, Carlyle's; of Henry VIII, Bacon's; of the Reformation in Scotland, Knox's; of the Wortd, Raleigh's Hnaef (nef) Hobbes, Thomas Holofernes (hol-ō-fer'nēz) in Judith Holy and Profane State Holy Living Holy War Homer, Chapman's; Dryden's; Pope's; Cowper's Hooker, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hours in a Library Hours of Idleness House of Fame House of Life Hrothgar (rŏth'gar) Hudibras (hū'dĭ-bras) Humanism Humphrey Clinker Hunt, Leigh Husband's Message Huxley, Hygelac (hī-jē'lak) Hymn book, first English Hymn to Intellectual Beauty Hymns, Addison's; Cowper's Hypatia (hī-pā'shia) Hyperion (hī-pē'rĭ-on)
Idealism of Victorian Age Ideals Idols, of Bacon Idylls of the King Il Penseroso (il pen-sĕ-rō'sō) Iliad, Pope's translation; Chapman's; Dryden's Imaginary Conversations Impeachment of Warren Hastings In Memoriam Instauratio Magna (in-sta-rā'shi-o) Interludes Intimations of Immortality
Jacobean poets Jane Eyre (ar) Jeffrey, Francis Jest (or gest) books Jew of Malta John Gilpin Johnson, Samuel; life; works; his conversations; Boswell's Life of Johnson Jonathan Wild Jonson, Ben; life; works Joseph Andrews Journal of the Plague Year Journal to Stella Judith Juliana
Keats; life; works; place in literature Kilmarnock Burns, the Kings' Treasuries Kingsley, Charles Knight's Tale, The Knox, John Kubla Khan (kob'lae kaen) Kyd, Thomas
L'Allegro (lael-ā'grō) Lady of the Lake Lake poets, the Lamb, Charles; life; works; style Lamb, Mary Lamia (lā'mi-ae) Land of Cockaygne (kŏ-kaen') Land of Dreams Landor, Walter Savage; life; works Langland, William Language, our first speech; dual character of; Teutonic origin Last Days of Pompeii (pom-pā'yē) Law, Hooker's idea of Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Lay Sermons Layamon Lays of Ancient Rome Lead, Kindly Light Lectures on Shakespeare Legends of Goode Wimmen Leviathan Lewes, George Henry Liberty of Prophesying Life, compared to a sea voyage Life of Johnson Life of Savage Lindsay, David Literary Club, the Literary criticism. See also Critical writing. Literary Reminiscences Literature, definition; qualities; tests; object in studying; importance; Goethe's definition; spirit of modern Literature and Dogma Lives, Plutarch's; Walton's Lives of the Poets Locke, John Lockhart, John Lorna Doone Lost Leader, The Lovelace, Richard Lycidas (lis'ĭ-das) Lydgate, John Lyly, John (lil'ĭ) Lyra Apostolica Lyrical Ballads Lytton, Edward Bulwer
Macaulay; life; works; characteristics Macpherson, James (mak-fer'son) Magazines, the modern Maldon, The Battle of Malory Mandeville's Travels Manfred Marlowe; life; works; and Milton; and Shakespeare Marmion Marvell, Andrew Massinger, Philip Matter of France, Rome, and Britain Melodrama Memoirs of a Cavalier Meredith, George Merlin and the Gleam Metaphysical poets Metrical romances Middleton, Thomas Miles Gloriosus (mē'les glō-rĭ-ō'sus) Mill on the Floss Milton; life; early or Horton poems; prose works; later poetry; and Shakespeare; Wordsworth's sonnet on Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border Miracle plays Mirror for Magistrates Mr. Badman, Life and Death of Modern literature, spirit of Modern Painters Modest Proposal, A Moral Epistles Moral period of the drama Moral purpose in Victorian literature Morality plays More, Hannah More, Thomas Morris, William Morte d'Arthur (mort daer'ther) Mother Hubbard's Tale Muleykeh (mū-lā'kă) My Last Duchess Mysteries of Udolpho, The (ū-dol'fō) Mystery plays
New Atalantis Newcomes, The Newman, Cardinal; life; prose works; poems; style Newspapers, the first Nibelungenlied (nē'bĕ-lung-en-lēd) Noah, Play of Norman Conquest Norman pageantry Norman period. See Anglo-Norman Normans; union with Saxons; literature of North, Christopher (John Wilson) North, Thomas Northanger Abbey (north'ān-jer) Northern Antiquities Northumbrian literature; decline of; how saved Novel, meaning and history; precursors of; discovery of modern Novelists, the first English. See Scott, Dickens, etc. Novum Organum (or'gă-num)
Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity Ode to Dejection Ode to the West Wind Odes, Pindaric Odyssey, Pope's; Chapman's; Dryden's Old Fortunatus (for-tū-nā'tus) Oliver Cromwell, Carlyle's Oliver Twist Origin of Species Orlando Furioso (or-lan'dō foo-rē-ō'sō) Orm, or Orme; his Ormulum Orosius (ō-rō'si-us), his history Ossian (osh'ian) and Ossianic poems Owl and Nightingale, The Oxford movement
P's, The Four Palamon and Arcite (pal'a-mon, aer'-sīte) Pamela (pam'e-lae) Pantisocracy (pan-tī-sok'rā-se), of Coleridge, Southey, etc. Paradise Lost Paradise Regained Paradyse of Daynty Devises Paraphrase, of Caedmon Parish Register, The Pauline Pearl, The Pelham Pendennis Pepys, Samuel (pep'is, peeps, pips) Percy, Thomas Peregrine Pickle (per'e-grin) Pericles and Aspasia (per'i-klēz, as-pā'shi-ae) Philistines, the Phoenix (fē'nix) Pickwick Papers Piers Plowman (peers) Pilgrim's Progress Pindaric odes (pin-daer'ic) Pippa Passes Plain Man's Pathway to Heaven Plutarch's Lives Poems by Two Brothers Poetaster, The Polyolbion (pol-ĭ-ol'bĭ-on) Pope, Alexander; life; works Porter, Jane Practice of Piety Praeterita (prē-ter'ĭ-tae) Praise of Folly Prelude, The Pre-Raphaelites (rae'fā-el-ites) Pride and Prejudice Princess, The Prometheus Unbound (prō-mē'thūs) Prose development in eighteenth century Pseudo-classicism (sū'dō) Purchas, Samuel; Purchas His Pilgrimes Puritan Age: history; literary characteristics; poets; prose writers; compared with Elizabethan; summary; selections for reading; bibliography, questions; chronology Puritan movement Puritans, wrong ideas of
Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet Queen's Gardens
Rabbi Ben Ezra Radcliffe, Mrs. Anne Raleigh, Walter Ralph Royster Doyster Rambler essays Rape of the Lock Reade, Charles Realism Recluse, The Reflections on the French Revolution Religio Laici Religio Medici Religious period of the drama Reliques of Ancient English Poetry Reminiscences, Carlyle's Remorse Renaissance, the (re-nā'saens, rē'nās-sans, etc.) Restoration Period: history; literary characteristics; writers; summary; selections for reading; bibliography; questions; chronology Revival of Learning Period: history; literature; summary; selections for reading; bibliography; questions; chronology Revolt of Islam Revolution, French; of 1688; age of Richardson, Samuel; novels of Rights of Man Rime of the Ancient Alariner Rime Royal Ring and the Book, The Robin Hood Robinson Crusoe Roderick Roderick Random Romance; Greek Romances Romance languages Romance of the Rose Romantic comedy and tragedy Romantic enthusiasm Romantic poetry Romanticism, Age of; history; literary characteristics; poets; prose writers; summary; selections for reading; bibliography; questions; chronology Romanticism, meaning Romola Rosalynde Rossetti, Christina (ros-set'tē) Rossetti, Dante Gabriel Rowley Papers Royal Society Runes Ruskin; life; works; characteristics; message
Sackville, Thomas St. Catherine, Play of St. George's Guild Saints' Everlasting Rest Samson Agonistes (ag-o-nis'tēz) Sartor Resartus (sar'tor re-sar'tus) Satire; of Swift; of Thackeray Saxon. See Anglo-Saxon School of Shooting Science, in Victorian Age Scop, or poet (skop) Scott, Walter; life; poetry; novels; criticism of Jane Austen Scottish Chiefs Scyld (skild), story of Sea, names of, in Anglo-Saxon, 25 Seafarer, The Seasons, The Selections for reading: Anglo-Saxon period; Norman; Chaucer; Revival of Learning; Elizabethan; Puritan; Restoration; Eighteenth Century; Romanticism; Victorian Sentimental Journey Sesame and Lilies (ses'a-mē) Shakespeare; life; works; four periods; sources of plays; classification of plays; doubtful plays; poems; place and influence She Stoops to Conquer Shelley; life; works; compared with Wordsworth Shepherds' Book Shepherd's Calendar Shirley, James Shoemaker's Holiday, The Short View of the English Stage Sidney, Philip Sigurd the Volsung Silas Marner Silent Woman, The Sir Charles Grandison Skelton, John Sketches by Boz Smollett, Tobias Social development in eighteenth century Sohrab and Rustum (soo'rhab, or sō'hrab) Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience Sonnet, introduction of Sonnets, of Shakespeare; of Milton Sonnets from the Portuguese Southey; works Spanish Gypsy Spanish Tragedy Specimens of English Dramatic Poets Spectator, The Spenser; life; works; characteristics; compared with Chaucer Spenserian poets Spenserian stanza Stage, in early plays; Elizabethan Steele, Richard Stephen, Leslie Sterne, Lawrence Stevenson, Robert Louis Style, a test of literature Suckling, John Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of Swan, The Swift; life; works; satire; characteristics Swinburne Sylva Symonds, John Addington
Tabard Inn Tale of a Tub Tale of Two Cities Tales from Shakespeare Tales in Verse Tales of the Hall Tam o' Shanter Tamburlaine (tam'bur-lane) Task, The Tatler, The Taylor, Jeremy Temora (te-mō'rae) Tempest, The Temple, The Tennyson; life; works; characteristics; message Tenure of Kings and Magistrates Terra Tests of literature Teufelsdroeckh (toy'felz-droek) Thackeray; life; works; characteristics; style; and Dickens Thaddeus of Warsaw Thalaba (tael-ae'bae) Theater, the first Thomson, James Thyrsis (ther'sis) Timber Tintern Abbey Tirocinium (tī-rō-sin'ĭ-um), or A Review of Schools Tom Jones Tories and Whigs Tottel's Miscellany Townley plays Toxophilus (tok-sof'ĭ-lus) Tractarian movement Tracts for the Times Tragedy, definition, of blood Transition poets Traveler, The Treasure Island Treatises on Government Tristram Shandy Troilus and Cressida (trō'ĭ-lus, kres'-ĭ-dae) Trollope, Anthony Troyes, Treaty of Truth, or Good Counsel Tyndale, William (tin'dal)
Udall, Nicholas (ū'dal) Udolpho (ū-dol'fō) Unfortunate Traveller, The Universality, a test of literature University wits Unto This Last Utopia
Vanity Fair Vanity of Human Wishes Vaughan, Henry Vercelli Book Vicar of Wakefield Vice, the, in old plays Victorian Age, history, literary characteristics, poets, novelists, essayists, etc., spirit of, summary, selections for reading, bibliography, questions, chronology View of the State of Ireland Village, The Vision of the Rood Volpone (vol-pō'ne) Voyages, Hakluyt's
Wakefield plays Waldere (vael-dā're, or vael'dare) Waller, Edmund Walton, Izaak Waverley Wealth of Nations Weather, The, play of Webster, John Wedmore, Treaty of Westward Ho Whigs and Tories Whitby (hwit'bĭ) Widsith (vid'sith) Wiglaf (vig'laef) Wilson, John (Christopher North), Wither, George Women, in literature Wordsworth, life, poetry, poems of nature, poems of life, last works Wordsworth, Dorothy Worthies of England Wuthering Heights (wuth'er-ing) Wyatt (wī'at), Thomas Wyclif (wik'lif) Wyrd (vird), or fate
York plays
Footnote 1: From The Bard of the Dimbovitza, First Series, p. 73.
Footnote 2: There is a mystery about this old hero which stirs our imagination, but which is never explained. It refers, probably, to some legend of the Anglo-Saxons which we have supplied from other sources, aided by some vague suggestions and glimpses of the past in the poem itself.
Footnote 3: This is not the Beowulf who is hero of the poem.
Footnote 4: Beowulf, ll. 26-50, a free rendering to suggest the alliteration of the original.
Footnote 5: Grendel, of the Eoten (giant) race, the death shadow, the mark stalker, the shadow ganger, is also variously called god's foe, fiend of hell, Cain's brood, etc. It need hardly be explained that the latter terms are additions to the original poem, made, probably, by monks who copied the manuscript. A belief in Wyrd, the mighty power controlling the destinies of men, is the chief religious motive of the epic. In line 1056 we find a curious blending of pagan and Christian belief, where Wyrd is withstood by the "wise God."
Footnote 6: Summary of ll. 710-727. We have not indicated in our translation (or in quotations from Garnett, Morley, Brooke, etc.) where parts of the text are omitted.
Footnote 7: Grendel's mother belongs also to the Eoten (giant) race. She is called brimwylf (sea wolf), merewif (sea woman), grundwyrgen (bottom master), etc.
Footnote 8: From Garnett's Beowulf, ll. 1384-1394.
Footnote 9: From Morley's version, ll. 1357-1376.
Footnote 10: Beowulf, ll. 2417-2423, a free rendering.
Footnote 11: Lines 2729-2740, a free rendering.
Footnote 12: Morley's version, ll. 2799-2816.
Footnote 13: Lines 3156-3182 (Morley's version).
Footnote 14: Probably to the fourth century, though some parts of the poem must have been added later. Thus the poet says (II. 88-102) that he visited Eormanric, who died cir. 375, and Queen Ealhhild whose father, Eadwin, died cir. 561. The difficulty of fixing a date to the poem is apparent. It contains several references to scenes and characters in Beowulf.
Footnote 15: Lines 135-143 (Morley's version).
Footnote 16: A lyric is a short poem reflecting some personal emotion, like love or grief. Two other Anglo-Saxon poems, "The Wife's Complaint" and "The Husband's Message," belong to this class.
Footnote 17: First strophe of Brooke's version, History of Early English Literature
Footnote 18: Seafarer, Part I, Iddings' version, in Translations from Old English Poetry.
Footnote 19: It is an open question whether this poem celebrates the fight at which Hnaef, the Danish leader, fell, or a later fight led by Hengist, to avenge Hnaef's death.
Footnote 20: Brooke's translation, History of Early English Literature, For another early battle-song see Tennyson's "Battle of Brunanburh."
Footnote 21: William Camden (1551-1623), one of England's earliest and greatest antiquarians. His first work, Britannia, a Latin history of England, has been called "the common sun whereat our modern writers have all kindled their little torches."
Footnote 22: From Iddings' version of The Seafarer.
Footnote 23: From Andreas, ll. 511 ff., a free translation. The whole poem thrills with the Old Saxon love of the sea and of ships.
Footnote 24: From Beowulf, ll. 1063 ff., a free translation.
Footnote 25: Translated from The Husband's Message, written on a piece of bark. With wonderful poetic insight the bark itself is represented as telling its story to the wife, from the time when the birch tree grew beside the sea until the exiled man found it and stripped the bark and carved on its surface a message to the woman he loved. This first of all English love songs deserves to rank with Valentine's description of Silvia:
Why, man, she is mine own, And I as rich in having such a jewel As twenty seas, if all their sand were pearl, The water nectar and the rocks pure gold. Two Gentlemen of Verona, II, 4.
Footnote 26: From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, record of the year 457.
Footnote 27: According to Sweet the original home of the Aryans is placed in central or northern Europe, rather than in Asia, as was once assumed. See The History of Language, p. 103.
Footnote 28: "Caedmon's Hymn," Cook's version, in Translations from Old English Poetry.
Footnote 29: Ecclesiastical History, IV, xxiv.
Footnote 30: Genesis, 112-131 (Morley).
Footnote 31: Exodus, 155 ff. (Brooke).
Footnote 32: Runes were primitive letters of the old northern alphabet. In a few passages Cynewulf uses each rune to represent not only a letter but a word beginning with that letter. Thus the rune-equivalent of C stands for cene (keen, courageous), Y for yfel (evil, in the sense of wretched), N for nyd (need), W for ivyn (joy), U for ur (our), L for lagu (lake), F for feoh (fee, wealth). Using the runes equivalent to these seven letters, Cynewulf hides and at the same time reveals his name in certain verses of The Christ, for instance:
Then the Courage-hearted quakes, when the King (Lord) he hears Speak to those who once on earth but obeyed Him weakly, While as yet their Yearning fain and their Need most easily Comfort might discover.... Gone is then the Winsomeness Of the earth's adornments! What to Us as men belonged Of the joys of life was locked, long ago, in Lake-flood. All the Fee on earth. See Brooke's History of Early English Literature, pp. 377-379, or The Christ of Cynewulf, ed. by Cook, also by Gollancz.
Footnote 33: My robe is noiseless while I tread the earth, Or tarry 'neath the banks, or stir the shallows; But when these shining wings, this depth of air, Bear me aloft above the bending shores Where men abide, and far the welkin's strength Over the multitudes conveys me, then With rushing whir and clear melodious sound My raiment sings. And like a wandering spirit I float unweariedly o'er flood and field. (Brougham's version, in Transl. from Old Eng. Poetry.)
Footnote 34: The source of Andreas is an early Greek legend of St. Andrew that found its way to England and was probably known to Cynewulf in some brief Latin form, now lost.
Footnote 35: Our two chief sources are the famous Exeter Book, in Exeter Cathedral, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems presented by Bishop Leofric (c. 1050), and the Vercelli Book, discovered in the monastery of Vercelli, Italy, in 1822. The only known manuscript of Beowulf was discovered c. 1600, and is now in the Cotton Library of the British Museum. All these are fragmentary copies, and show the marks of fire and of hard usage. The Exeter Book contains the Christ, Guthlac, the Phoenix, Juliana, Widsith, The Seafarer, Deor's Lament, The Wife's Complaint, The Lover's Message, ninety-five Riddles, and many short hymns and fragments,—an astonishing variety for a single manuscript.
Footnote 36: From Alfred's Boethius.
Footnote 37: It is not certain that the translation of Bede is the work of Alfred.
Footnote 38: See Translations from Old English Poetry. Only a brief account of the fight is given in the Chronicle. The song known as "The Battle of Maldon," or "Byrhtnoth's Death," is recorded in another manuscript.
Footnote 39: This is an admirable little book, containing the cream of Anglo-Saxon poetry, in free translations, with notes. Translations from Old English Prose is a companion volume.
Footnote 40: For full titles and publishers of general reference books, and for a list of inexpensive texts and helps, see General Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 41: The chief object of these questions is not to serve as a review, or to prepare for examination, but rather to set the student thinking for himself about what he has read. A few questions of an advanced nature are inserted which call for special study and research in interesting fields.
Footnote 42: A Romance language is one whose basis is Latin,—not the classic language of literature, but a vulgar or popular Latin spoken in the military camps and provinces. Thus Italian, Spanish, and French were originally different dialects of the vulgar Latin, slightly modified by the mingling of the Roman soldiers with the natives of the conquered provinces.
Footnote 43: See p. 51.
Footnote 44: It is interesting to note that all the chroniclers of the period, whether of English or Norman birth, unite in admiration of the great figures of English history, as it was then understood. Brutus, Arthur, Hengist, Horsa, Edward the Confessor, and William of Normandy are all alike set down as English heroes. In a French poem of the thirteenth century, for instance, we read that "there is no land in the world where so many good kings and saints have lived as in the isle of the English ... such as the strong and brave Arthur, Edmund, and Cnut." This national poem, celebrating the English Edward, was written in French by a Norman monk of Westminster Abbey, and its first heroes are a Celt, a Saxon, and a Dane. (See Jusserand, Literary History of the English People, I, 112 ff.)
Footnote 45: English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer.
Footnote 46: Anselm was an Italian by birth, but wrote his famous work while holding the see of Canterbury.
Footnote 47: During the Roman occupancy of Britain occurred a curious mingling of Celtic and Roman traditions. The Welsh began to associate their national hero Arthur with Roman ancestors; hence the story of Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, the first king of Britain, as related by Geoffrey and Layamon.
Footnote 48: Probably a Latin copy of Bede.
Footnote 49: Wace's translation of Geoffrey.
Footnote 50: Only one word in about three hundred and fifty is of French origin. A century later Robert Mannyng uses one French word in eighty, while Chaucer has one in six or seven. This includes repetitions, and is a fair estimate rather than an exact computation.
Footnote 51: The matter of Britain refers strictly to the Arthurian, i.e. the Welsh romances; and so another division, the matter of England, may be noted. This includes tales of popular English heroes, like Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Horn Child, etc.
Footnote 52: According to mediaeval literary custom these songs were rarely signed. Later, when many songs were made over into a long poem, the author signed his name to the entire work, without indicating what he had borrowed
Footnote 53: An English book in which such romances were written was called a Gest or Jest Book. So also at the beginning of Cursor Mundi (c. 1320) we read:
Men yernen jestis for to here And romaunce rede in diverse manere,
and then follows a summary of the great cycles of romance, which we are considering.
Footnote 54: Tennyson goes farther than Malory in making Gawain false and irreverent. That seems to be a mistake; for in all the earliest romances Gawain is, next to Arthur, the noblest of knights, the most loved and honored of all the heroes of the Round Table.
Footnote 55: There were various French versions of the story; but it came originally from the Irish, where the hero was called Cuchulinn.
Footnote 56: It is often alleged that in this romance we have a very poetical foundation for the Order of the Garter, which was instituted by Edward III, in 1349; but the history of the order makes this extremely doubtful. The reader will be chiefly interested in comparing this romance with Beowulf, for instance, to see what new ideals have taken root in England.
Footnote 57: Originally Cockaygne (variously spelled) was intended to ridicule the mythical country of Avalon, somewhat as Cervantes' Don Quixote later ridicules the romances of chivalry. In Luxury Land everything was good to eat; houses were built of dainties and shingled with cakes; buttered larks fell instead of rain; the streams ran with good wine; and roast geese passed slowly down the streets, turning themselves as they went.
Footnote 58: Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads is the most scholarly and complete collection in our language. Gummere's Old English Ballads is a good short work. Professor Kittredge's Introduction to the Cambridge edition of Child's Ballads is the best summary of a very difficult subject. For an extended discussion of the literary character of the ballad, see Gummere's The Popular Ballad.
Footnote 59: little bird.
Footnote 60: in her language.
Footnote 61: I live
Footnote 62: fairest
Footnote 63: I am
Footnote 64: power, bondage.
Footnote 65: a pleasant fate I have attained.
Footnote 66: I know
Footnote 67: gone
Footnote 68: lit, alighted
Footnote 69: For titles and publishers of reference books see General Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 70: The reader may perhaps be more interested in these final letters, which are sometimes sounded and again silent, if he remembers that they represent the decaying inflections of our old Anglo-Saxon speech.
Footnote 71: House of Fame, II, 652 ff. The passage is more or less autobiographical.
Footnote 72: Legend of Good Women, Prologue, ll. 29 ff.
Footnote 73: wealth.
Footnote 74: the crowd.
Footnote 75: success.
Footnote 76: blinds.
Footnote 77: act.
Footnote 78: trouble.
Footnote 79: i.e. the goddess Fortune.
Footnote 80: kick.
Footnote 81: awl.
Footnote 82: judge.
Footnote 83: For the typography of titles the author has adopted the plan of putting the titles of all books, and of all important works generally regarded as single books, in italics. Individual poems, essays, etc., are in Roman letters with quotation marks. Thus we have the "Knight's Tale," or the story of "Palamon and Arcite," in the Canterbury Tales. This system seems on the whole the best, though it may result in some inconsistencies.
Footnote 84: Troilus and Criseyde, III.
Footnote 85: See p. 107.
Footnote 86: For a summary of Chaucer's work and place in our literature, see the Comparison with Spenser, p. 111.
Footnote 87: clad.
Footnote 88: wonder.
Footnote 89: brook.
Footnote 90: sounded.
Footnote 91: theirs
Footnote 92: rule
Footnote 93: righteousness
Footnote 94: called
Footnote 95: theirs
Footnote 96: yield
Footnote 97: say
Footnote 98: them
Footnote 99: hate
Footnote 100: persecute
Footnote 101: slander
Footnote 102: rains
Footnote 103: In its English form the alleged Mandeville describes the lands and customs he has seen, and brings in all the wonders he has heard about. Many things he has seen himself, he tells us, and these are certainly true; but others he has heard in his travels, and of these the reader must judge for himself. Then he incidentally mentions a desert where he saw devils as thick as grasshoppers. As for things that he has been told by devout travelers, here are the dog-faced men, and birds that carry off elephants, and giants twenty-eight feet tall, and dangerous women who have bright jewels in their heads instead of eyes, "and if they behold any man in wrath, they slay him with a look, as doth the basilisk." Here also are the folk of Ethiopia, who have only one leg, but who hop about with extraordinary rapidity. Their one foot is so big that, when they lie in the sun, they raise it to shade their bodies; in rainy weather it is as good as an umbrella. At the close of this interesting book of travel, which is a guide for pilgrims, the author promises to all those who say a prayer for him a share in whatever heavenly grace he may himself obtain for all his holy pilgrimages.
Footnote 104: For titles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 105: Constitutional History of England.
Footnote 106: Symonds, Revival of Learning.
Footnote 107: Sismondi attributes this to two causes: first, the lack of general culture; and second, the absorption of the schools in the new study of antiquity. See Literature of the South of Europe, II, 400 ff.
Footnote 108: Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the Renaissance, was not an Englishman, but seems to belong to every nation. He was born at Rotterdam (c. 1466), but lived the greater part of his life in France, Switzerland, England, and Italy. His Encomium Moriae was sketched on a journey from Italy (1509) and written while he was the guest of Sir Thomas More in London.
Footnote 109: Unless, perchance, the reader finds some points of resemblance in Plato's "Republic."
Footnote 110: See Wordsworth's sonnet, On the Sonnet. For a detailed study of this most perfect verse form, see Tomlinson's The Sonnet, Its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry.
Footnote 111: William Caxton (c. 1422-1491) was the first English printer. He learned the art abroad, probably at Cologne or Bruges, and about the year 1476 set up the first wooden printing press in England. His influence in fixing a national language to supersede the various dialects, and in preparing the way for the literary renaissance of the Elizabethan age, is beyond calculation.
Footnote 112: Malory has, in our own day, been identified with an English country gentleman and soldier, who was member of Parliament for Warwickshire in 1445.
Footnote 113: For titles and publishers of general works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 114: Eastward Ho! a play given in Blackfriars Theater about 1603. The play was written by Marston and two collaborators.
Footnote 115: Lie so faint.
Footnote 116: The View was not published till 1633.
Footnote 117: clad.
Footnote 118: handsome.
Footnote 119: jousts, tournaments.
Footnote 120: countenance.
Footnote 121: dreaded.
Footnote 122: took off.
Footnote 123: pity.
Footnote 124: know.
Footnote 125: In the nineteenth century men learned again to appreciate Chaucer.
Footnote 126: The most dramatic part of the early ritual centered about Christ's death and resurrection, on Good Fridays and Easter days. An exquisite account of this most impressive service is preserved in St. Ethelwold's Latin manual of church services, written about 965. The Latin and English versions are found in Chambers's Mediaeval Stage, Vol. II. For a brief, interesting description, see Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers, pp. 14 ff.
Footnote 127: How much we are indebted to the Norman love of pageantry for the development of the drama in England is an unanswered question. During the Middle Ages it was customary, in welcoming a monarch or in celebrating a royal wedding, to represent allegorical and mythological scenes, like the combat of St. George and the dragon, for instance, on a stage constructed for the purpose. These pageants were popular all over Europe and developed during the Renaissance into the dramatic form known as the Masque. Though the drama was of religious origin, we must not overlook these secular pageants as an important factor in the development of dramatic art.
Footnote 128: Miracles were acted on the Continent earlier than this. The Normans undoubtedly brought religious plays with them, but it is probable that they began in England before the Conquest (1066). See Manly, Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, I, xix.
Footnote 129: See Jusserand, A Literary History of the English People, I, iii, vi. For our earliest plays and their authors see Gayley, Plays of Our Forefathers.
Footnote 130: These three periods are not historically accurate. The author uses them to emphasize three different views of our earliest plays rather than to suggest that there was any orderly or chronological development from Miracle to Morality and thence to the Interludes. The latter is a prevalent opinion, but it seems hardly warranted by the facts. Thus, though the Miracles precede the Moralities by two centuries (the first known Morality, "The Play of the Lord's Prayer," mentioned by Wyclif, was given probably about 1375), some of the best known Moralities, like "Pride of Life," precede many of the later York Miracles. And the term Interlude, which is often used as symbolical of the transition from the moral to the artistic period of the drama, was occasionally used in England (fourteenth century) as synonymous with Miracle and again (sixteenth century) as synonymous with Comedy. That the drama had these three stages seems reasonably certain; but it is impossible to fix the limits of any one of them, and all three are sometimes seen together in one of the later Miracles of the Wakefield cycle.
Footnote 131: In fact, Heywood "cribbed" from Chaucer's Tales in another Interlude called "The Pardoner and the Frere."
Footnote 132: Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, 86.
Footnote 133: That these gallants were an unmitigated nuisance, and had frequently to be silenced by the common people who came to enjoy the play, seems certain. Dekker's Gull's Hornbook (1609) has an interesting chapter on "How a Gallant should behave Himself in a Playhouse."
Footnote 134: The first actors were classed with thieves and vagabonds; but they speedily raised their profession to an art and won a reputation which extended far abroad. Thus a contemporary, Fynes Moryson, writes in his Itinerary: "So I remember that when some of our cast despised stage players came ... into Germany and played at Franckford ... having nether a complete number of actors, nor any good aparell, nor any ornament of the stage, yet the Germans, not understanding a worde they sayde, both men and wemen, flocked wonderfully to see their gesture and action."
Footnote 135: Schelling, Elizabethan Drama.
Footnote 136: Baker, in his Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist, pp. 57-62, takes a different view, and shows how carefully many of the boy actors were trained. It would require, however, a vigorous use of the imagination to be satisfied with a boy's presentation of Portia, Juliet, Cordelia, Rosalind, or any other of Shakespeare's wonderful women.
Footnote 137: These choir masters had royal permits to take boys of good voice, wherever found, and train them as singers and actors. The boys were taken from their parents and were often half starved and most brutally treated. The abuse of this unnatural privilege led to the final withdrawal of all such permits.
Footnote 138: So called from Euphues, the hero of Lyly's two prose works, Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1579), and Euphues and his England (1580). The style is affected and over-elegant, abounds in odd conceits, and uses hopelessly involved sentences. It is found in nearly all Elizabethan prose writers, and partially accounts for their general tendency to artificiality. Shakespeare satirizes euphuism in the character of Don Adriano of Love's Labour's Lost, but is himself tiresomely euphuistic at times, especially in his early or "Lylian" comedies. Lyly, by the way, did not invent the style, but did more than any other to diffuse it.
Footnote 139: See Schelling, I, 211.
Footnote 140: See p. 114.
Footnote 141: In 1587 the first history of Johann Faust, a half-legendary German necromancer, appeared in Frankfort. Where Marlowe found the story is unknown; but he used it, as Goethe did two centuries later, for the basis of his great tragedy.
Footnote 142: We must remember, however, that our present version of Faustus is very much mutilated, and does not preserve the play as Marlowe wrote it.
Footnote 143: The two dramatists may have worked together in such doubtful plays as Richard III, the hero of which is like Timur in an English dress, and Titus Andronicus, with its violence and horror. In many strong scenes in Shakespeare's works Marlowe's influence is manifest.
Footnote 144: Gammer Gurton's Needle appeared c. 1562; Love's Labour's Lost, c. 1591.
Footnote 145: King John, IV, 2.
Footnote 146: Queen Mab, in Romeo and Juliet.
Footnote 147: By Archdeacon Davies, in the seventeenth century.
Footnote 148: In 1709, nearly a century after the poet's death.
Footnote 149: Robert Greene, one of the popular playwrights of the time, who attacked Shakespeare in a pamphlet called "A Groat's Worth of Wit Bought with a Million of Repentance." The pamphlet, aside from its jealousy of Shakespeare, is a sad picture of a man of genius dying of dissipation, and contains a warning to other playwrights of the time, whose lives were apparently almost as bad as that of Greene.
Footnote 150: Love's Labour's Lost, Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Footnote 151: Henry VI, Richard III, Richard II, King John. Prior to 1588 only three true Chronicle plays are known to have been acted. The defeat of the Armada in that year led to an outburst of national feeling which found one outlet in the theaters, and in the next ten years over eighty Chronicle plays appeared. Of these Shakespeare furnished nine or ten. It was the great popular success of Henry VI, a revision of an old play, in 1592 that probably led to Greene's jealous attack.
Footnote 152: See Lee's Life of William Shakespeare, pp. 188-196.
Footnote 153: Like Henry VIII, and possibly the lost Cardenio.
Footnote 154: A name given to the privilege—claimed by the mediaeval Church for its clergy—of being exempt from trial by the regular law courts. After the Reformation the custom survived for a long time, and special privileges were allowed to ministers and their families. Jonson claimed the privilege as a minister's son.
Footnote 155: A similar story of quackery is found in Chaucer, "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale."
Footnote 156: In this and in A Fair Quarrel Middleton collaborated with William Rowley, of whom little is known except that he was an actor from c. 1607-1627.
Footnote 157: The reader will find wholesome criticism of these writers, and selections from their works, in Charles Lamb's Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, an excellent book, which helps us to a better knowledge and appreciation of the lesser Elizabethan dramatists.
Footnote 158: The first five books were published 1594-1597, and are as Hooker wrote them. The last three books, published after his death, are of doubtful authorship, but they are thought to have been completed from Hooker's notes.
Footnote 159: For titles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 160: See, for instance, the "Hymn to St. Theresa" and "The Flaming Heart."
Footnote 161: So called from Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of Greece.
Footnote 162: See, for instance, "Childhood," "The Retreat," "Corruption," "The Bird," "The Hidden Flower," for Vaughan's mystic interpretation of childhood and nature.
Footnote 163: There is some doubt as to whether he was born at the Castle, or at Black Hall. Recent opinion inclines to the latter view.
Footnote 164: "On his being arrived to the Age of Twenty-three."
Footnote 165: "It is remarkable," says Lamartine, "how often in the libraries of Italian princes and in the correspondence of great Italian writers of this period you find mentioned the name and fame of this young Englishman."
Footnote 166: In Milton's work we see plainly the progressive influence of the Puritan Age. Thus his Horton poems are joyous, almost Elizabethan in character; his prose is stern, militant, unyielding, like the Puritan in his struggle for liberty; his later poetry, following the apparent failure of Puritanism in the Restoration, has a note of sadness, yet proclaims the eternal principles of liberty and justice for which he had lived.
Footnote 167: Of these sixty were taken from the Bible, thirty-three from English and five from Scotch history.
Footnote 168: The latter was by Lewis Bayly, bishop of Bangor. It is interesting to note that this book, whose very title is unfamiliar to us, was speedily translated into five different languages. It had an enormous sale, and ran through fifty editions soon after publication.
Footnote 169: Abridged from Grace Abounding, Part 3; Works (ed. 1873), p. 71.
Footnote 170: For titles and publishers of reference works, see General Bibliography at the end of this book.
Footnote 171: Guizot's History of the Revolution in England.
Footnote 172: Jeremy Collier (1650-1726), a clergyman and author, noted for his scholarly Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain (1708-1714) and his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698). The latter was largely instrumental in correcting the low tendency of the Restoration drama.
Footnote 173: The Royal Society, for the investigation and discussion of scientific questions, was founded in 1662, and soon included practically all of the literary and scientific men of the age. It encouraged the work of Isaac Newton, who was one of its members; and its influence for truth—at a time when men were still trying to compound the philosopher's stone, calculating men's actions from the stars, and hanging harmless old women for witches—can hardly be overestimated.
Footnote 174: If the reader would see this in concrete form, let him read a paragraph of Milton's prose, or a stanza of his poetry, and compare its exuberant, melodious diction with Dryden's concise method of writing.
Footnote 175: Edmund Waller (1606-1687), the most noted poet of the Restoration period until his pupil Dryden appeared. His works are now seldom read.
Footnote 176: From Divine Poems, "Old Age and Death."
Footnote 177: Following the advice of Boileau (1676-1711), a noted French critic, whom Voltaire called "the lawgiver of Parnassus."
Footnote 178: By a critic we mean simply one who examines the literary works of various ages, separates the good from the bad, and gives the reasons for his classification. It is noticeable that critical writings increase in an age, like that of the Restoration, when great creative works are wanting.
Footnote 179: Two other principles of this book should be noted: (1) that all power originates in the people; and (2) that the object of all government is the common good. Here evidently is a democratic doctrine, which abolishes the divine right of kings; but Hobbes immediately destroys democracy by another doctrine,—that the power given by the people to the ruler could not be taken away. Hence the Royalists could use the book to justify the despotism of the Stuarts on the ground that the people had chosen them. This part of the book is in direct opposition to Milton's Defense of the English People.
Footnote 180: Locke's Treatises on Government should also be mentioned, for they are of profound interest to American students of history and political science. It was from Locke that the framers of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution drew many of their ideas, and even some of their most striking phrases. "All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights"; "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; "the origin and basis of government is in the consent of the governed,"—these and many more familiar and striking expressions are from Locke. It is interesting to note that he was appointed to draft a constitution for the new province of Carolina; but his work was rejected,—probably because it was too democratic for the age in which he lived.
Footnote 181: A few slight changes and omissions from the original text, as given in Wheatley's edition of Pepys (London, 1892, 9 vols.), are not indicated in these brief quotations.
Footnote 182: The first daily newspaper, The Daily Courant, appeared in London in 1702.
Footnote 183: See Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century.
Footnote 184: Addison's "Campaign" (1704), written to celebrate the battle of Blenheim.
Footnote 185: Great writers in every age, men like Shakespeare and Milton, make their own style. They are therefore not included in this summary. Among the minor writers also there are exceptions to the rule; and fine feeling is often manifest in the poetry of Donne, Herbert, Vaughan, and Herrick.
Footnote 186: We have endeavored here simply to show the meaning of terms in general use in our literature; but it must be remembered that it is impossible to classify or to give a descriptive name to the writers of any period or century. While "classic" or "pseudo-classic" may apply to a part of eighteenth-century literature, every age has both its romantic and its classic movements. In this period the revolt against classicism is shown in the revival of romantic poetry under Gray, Collins, Burns, and Thomson, and in the beginning of the English novel under Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. These poets and novelists, who have little or no connection with classicism, belong chronologically to the period we are studying. They are reserved for special treatment in the sections following.
Footnote 187: Pope's satires, for instance, are strongly suggested in Boileau; his Rape of the Lock is much like the mock-heroic Le Lutrin; and the "Essay on Criticism," which made him famous, is an English edition and improvement of L'Art Poetique. The last was, in turn, a combination of the Ars Poetica of Horace and of many well-known rules of the classicists.
Footnote 188: These are the four kinds of spirits inhabiting the four elements, according to the Rosicrucians,—a fantastic sect of spiritualists of that age. In the dedication of the poem Pope says he took the idea from a French book called Le Comte de Gabalis.
Footnote 189: Compare this with Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage," in As You Like it, II, 7.
Footnote 190: It is only fair to point out that Swift wrote this and two other pamphlets on religion at a time when he knew that they would damage, if not destroy, his own prospects of political advancement.
Footnote 191: See Tennyson's "Merlin and the Gleam."
Footnote 192: Of the Tatler essays Addison contributed forty-two; thirty-six others were written in collaboration with Steele; while at least a hundred and eighty are the work of Steele alone.
Footnote 193: From "The Vanity of Human Wishes"
Footnote 194: A very lovable side of Johnson's nature is shown by his doing penance in the public market place for his unfilial conduct as a boy. (See, in Hawthorne's Our Old Home, the article on "Lichfield and Johnson.") His sterling manhood is recalled in his famous letter to Lord Chesterfield, refusing the latter's patronage for the Dictionary. The student should read this incident entire, in Boswell's Life of Johnson.
Footnote 195: In Johnson's Dictionary we find this definition: "Grub-street, the name of a street in London much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems; whence any mean production is called Grub-street."
Footnote 196: From Macaulay's review of Boswell's Life of Johnson.
Footnote 197: Many of the writers show a mingling of the classic and the romantic tendencies. Thus Goldsmith followed Johnson and opposed the romanticists; but his Deserted Village is romantic in spirit, though its classic couplets are almost as mechanical as Pope's. So Burke's orations are "elegantly classic" in style, but are illumined by bursts of emotion and romantic feeling.
Footnote 198: A much more interesting work is Thomas Paine's Rights of Man, which was written in answer to Burke's essay, and which had enormous influence in England and America.
Footnote 199: In the same year, 1775, in which Burke's magnificent "Conciliation" oration was delivered, Patrick Henry made a remarkable little speech before a gathering of delegates in Virginia. Both men were pleading the same cause of justice, and were actuated by the same high ideals. A very interesting contrast, however, may be drawn between the methods and the effects of Henry's speech and of Burke's more brilliant oration. Burke makes us wonder at his learning, his brilliancy, his eloquence; but he does not move us to action. Patrick Henry calls us, and we spring to follow him. That suggests the essential difference between the two orators.
Footnote 200: The romantic revival is marked by renewed interest in mediaeval ideals and literature; and to this interest is due the success of Walpole's romance, The Castle of Otranto, and of Chatterton's forgeries known as the Rowley Papers.
Footnote 201: From The Task, Book II.
Footnote 202: See, for instance, Phelps, Beginnings of the Romantic Movement, for a list of Spenserian imitators from 1700 to 1775.
Footnote 203: Such is Goldsmith's version of a somewhat suspicious adventure, whose details are unknown.
Footnote 204: Goldsmith's idea, which was borrowed from Walpole, reappears in the pseudo Letters from a Chinese Official, which recently attracted considerable attention.
Footnote 205: Fitz-Greene Halleck's poem "To a Rose from near Alloway Kirk" (1822) is a good appreciation of Burns and his poetry. It might be well to read this poem before the sad story of Burns's life.
Footnote 206: Introduction, Songs of Innocence.
Footnote 207: Swinburne's William Blake.
Footnote 208: There are several omissions from the text in this fragment from Fingal.
Footnote 209: Several fragments of Gaelic poetry, attributed to Ossian or Oisin, are now known to have existed at that time in the Highlands. Macpherson used these as a basis for his epic, but most of the details were furnished by his own imagination. The alleged text of "Ossian" was published in 1807, some eleven years after Macpherson's death. It only added another mystery to the forgery; for, while it embodied a few old and probably genuine fragments, the bulk of it seems to be Macpherson's work translated back into Gaelic.
Footnote 210: For various other collections of songs and ballads, antedating Percy's, see Phelps's Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement, ch. vii.
Footnote 211: The first books to which the term "novel," in the modern sense, may be applied, appeared almost simultaneously in England, France, and Germany. The rapid development of the English novel had an immense influence in all European nations.
Footnote 212: The name "romance" was given at first to any story in one of the Romance languages, like the French metrical romances, which we have considered. Because these stories were brought to England at a time when the childish mind of the Middle Ages delighted in the most impossible stories, the name "romance" was retained to cover any work of the unbridled imagination.
Footnote 213: This division of works of fiction into romances and novels is a somewhat arbitrary one, but it seems, on the whole, the most natural and the most satisfactory. Many writers use the generic term "novel" to include all prose fiction. They divide novels into two classes, stories and romances; the story being a form of the novel which relates certain incidents of life with as little complexity as possible; and the romance being a form of novel which describes life as led by strong emotions into complex and unusual circumstances. Novels are otherwise divided into novels of personality, like Vicar of Wakefield and Silas Marner; historical novels, Ivanhoe; novels of romance, like Lorna Doone and novels of purpose, like Oliver Twist and Uncle Tom's Cabin. All such classifications are imperfect, and the best of them is open to objections.
Footnote 214: One of these tales was called The Wonderful Things beyond Thule. It is the story of a youth, Dinias, who for love of a girl, Dercyllis, did heroic things and undertook many adventures, including a journey to the frozen north, and another to the moon. A second tale, Ephesiaca, is the story of a man and a maid, each of whom scoffs at love. They meet and fall desperately in love; but the course of true love does not run smooth, and they separate, and suffer, and go through many perils, before they "live happily ever after." This tale is the source of the mediaeval story, Apollonius of Tyre, which is used in Gower's Confessio Amantis and in Shakespeare's Pericles. A third tale is the pastoral love story, Daphnis and Chloe, which reappeared in many forms in subsequent literature.
Footnote 215: Minto's Life of Defoe, p. 139.
Footnote 216: These were not what the booksellers expected. They wanted a "handy letter writer," something like a book of etiquette; and it was published in 1741, a few months after Pamela.
Footnote 217: See p. 315.
Footnote 218: For titles and publishers of general reference works, and of inexpensive texts, see General Bibliography at end of this book.
Footnote 219: Mrs. Radcliffe's best work is the Mysteries of Udolpho. This is the story of a tender heroine shut up in a gloomy castle. Over her broods the terrible shadow of an ancestor's crime. There are the usual "goose-flesh" accompaniments of haunted rooms, secret doors, sliding panels, mysterious figures behind old pictures, and a subterranean passage leading to a vault, dark and creepy as a tomb. Here the heroine finds a chest with blood-stained papers. By the light of a flickering candle she reads, with chills and shivering, the record of long-buried crimes. At the psychologic moment the little candle suddenly goes out. Then out of the darkness a cold, clammy hand—ugh! Foolish as such stories seem to us now, they show, first, a wild reaction from the skepticism of the preceding age; and second, a development of the mediaeval romance of adventure; only the adventure is here inward rather than outward. It faces a ghost instead of a dragon; and for this work a nun with her beads is better than a knight in armor. So heroines abound, instead of heroes. The age was too educated for medieval monsters and magic, but not educated enough to reject ghosts and other bogeys.
Footnote 220: The Lyrical Ballads were better appreciated in America than in England. The first edition was printed here in 1802.
Footnote 221: The Prelude was not published till after Wordsworth's death, nearly half a century later.
Footnote 222: The Prelude, Book IV.
Footnote 223: Dowden's Selections from Wordsworth is the best of many such collections. See Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end of this chapter.
Footnote 224: See "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in Essays of Elia.
Footnote 225: See Scott's criticism of his own work, in comparison with Jane Austen's, p. 439.
Footnote 226: Scott's novels were not the first to have an historical basis. For thirty years preceding the appearance of Waverley, historical romances were popular; but it was due to Scott's genius that the historical novel became a permanent type of literature. See Cross, The Development of the English Novel.
Footnote 227: See Selections for Reading, and Bibliography, at the end of this chapter.
Footnote 228: Shelley undoubtedly took his idea from a lost drama of Aeschylus, a sequel to Prometheus Bound, in which the great friend of mankind was unchained from a precipice, where he had been placed by the tyrant Zeus.
Footnote 229: This idea is suppported by Shelley's poem Adonais, and by Byron's parody against the reviewers, beginning, "Who killed John Keats? I, says the Quarterly."
Footnote 230: See "Christ's Hospital Five and Thirty Years Ago," in Essays of Elia.
Footnote 231: See Essays of Elia, "The Superannuated Man."
Footnote 232: In the first essay, "The South Sea House," Lamb assumed as a joke the name of a former clerk, Elia. Other essays followed, and the name was retained when several successful essays were published in book form, in 1823. In these essays "Elia" is Lamb himself, and "Cousin Bridget" is his sister Mary.
Footnote 233: See histories for the Congress of Vienna (1814) and the Holy Alliance (1815).
Footnote 234: For full titles and publishers of general reference books, see General Bibliography at end of this book.
Footnote 235: An excellent little volume for the beginner is Van Dyke's "Poems by Tennyson," which shows the entire range of the poet's work from his earliest to his latest years. (See Selections for Reading, at the end of this chapter.)
Footnote 236: Tennyson made a distinction in spelling between the Idylls of the King, and the English Idyls, like "Dora."
Footnote 237: An excellent little book for the beginner is Lovett's Selections from Browning. (See Selections for Reading, at the end of this chapter.)
Footnote 238: This term, which means simply Italian painters before Raphael, is generally applied to an artistic movement in the middle of the nineteenth century. The term was first used by a brotherhood of German artists who worked together in the convent of San Isodoro, in Rome, with the idea of restoring art to its mediaeval purity and simplicity. The term now generally refers to a company of seven young men,—Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, James Collinson, Frederick George Stevens, and Thomas Woolner,— who formed the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood in England in 1848. Their official literary organ was called The Germ, in which much of the early work of Morris and Rossetti appeared. They took for their models the early Italian painters who, they declared, were "simple, sincere, and religious." Their purpose was to encourage simplicity and naturalness in art and literature; and one of their chief objects, in the face of doubt and materialism, was to express the "wonder, reverence, and awe" which characterizes mediaeval art. In its return to the mysticism and symbolism of the mediaeval age, this Pre-Raphaelitism suggests the contemporary Oxford or Tractarian movement in religion. (See footnote, p. 554).
Footnote 239: Arnold was one of the best known poets of the age, but because he has exerted a deeper influence on our literature as a critic, we have reserved him for special study among the essayists. (See p. xxx)
Footnote 240: It should be pointed out that the English Humorists is somewhat too highly colored to be strictly accurate. In certain cases also, notably that of Steele, the reader may well object to Thackeray's patronizing attitude toward his subject.
Footnote 241: See pp. 260-261.
Footnote 242: Emily Bronte (1818-1848) was only a little less gifted than her famous sister. Her best known work is Wuthering Heights (1847), a strong but morbid novel of love and suffering. Matthew Arnold said of her that, "for the portrayal of passion, vehemence, and grief," Emily Bronte had no equal save Byron. An exquisite picture of Emily is given in Charlotte Bronte's novel Shirley.
Footnote 243: Essays, Riverside edition, I, 318.
Footnote 244: The student should remember that Carlyle's literary opinions, though very positive, are to be received with caution. Sometimes, indeed, they are so one-sided and prejudiced that they are more valuable as a revelation of Carlyle himself than as a study of the author he is considering.
Footnote 245: The Oxford movement in religion has many points of resemblance to the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art. Both protested against the materialism of the age, and both went back for their models to the Middle Ages. Originally the movement was intended to bring new life to the Anglican church by a revival of the doctrine and practices of an earlier period. Recognizing the power of the press, the leaders chose literature for their instrument of reform, and by their Tracts for the Times they became known as Tractarians. To oppose liberalism and to restore the doctrine and authority of the early Church was the center of their teaching. Their belief might be summed up in one great article of the Creed, with all that it implies,—"I believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church." The movement began at Oxford with Keble's famous sermon on "National Apostasy," in 1833; but Newman was the real leader of the movement, which practically ended when he entered the Catholic church in 1845.
THE END |
|
