English Literature - William J. Long
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ENGLISH LITERATURE
ITS HISTORY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
FOR THE LIFE OF THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING
WORLD
A TEXT-BOOK FOR SCHOOLS
BY
WILLIAM J. LONG, PH.D. (Heidelberg)
* * * * *
TO
MY FRIEND
C H T
IN GRATITUDE FOR
HIS CONTINUED HELP IN THE
PREPARATION OF
THIS BOOK
* * * * *
PREFACE
This book, which presents the whole splendid history of English literature
from Anglo-Saxon times to the close of the Victorian Era, has three
specific aims. The first is to create or to encourage in every student the
desire to read the best books, and to know literature itself rather than
what has been written about literature. The second is to interpret
literature both personally and historically, that is, to show how a great
book generally reflects not only the author's life and thought but also the
spirit of the age and the ideals of the nation's history. The third aim is
to show, by a study of each successive period, how our literature has
steadily developed from its first simple songs and stories to its present
complexity in prose and poetry.
To carry out these aims we have introduced the following features:
(1) A brief, accurate summary of historical events and social conditions in
each period, and a consideration of the ideals which stirred the whole
nation, as in the days of Elizabeth, before they found expression in
literature.
(2) A study of the various literary epochs in turn, showing what each
gained from the epoch preceding, and how each aided in the development of a
national literature.
(3) A readable biography of every important writer, showing how he lived
and worked, how he met success or failure, how he influenced his age, and
how his age influenced him.
(4) A study and analysis of every author's best works, and of many of the
books required for college-entrance examinations.
(5) Selections enough--especially from earlier writers, and from writers
not likely to be found in the home or school library--to indicate the
spirit of each author's work; and directions as to the best works to read,
and where such works may be found in inexpensive editions.
(6) A frank, untechnical discussion of each great writer's work as a whole,
and a critical estimate of his relative place and influence in our
literature.
(7) A series of helps to students and teachers at the end of each chapter,
including summaries, selections for reading, bibliographies, a list of
suggestive questions, and a chronological table of important events in the
history and literature of each period.
(8) Throughout this book we have remembered Roger Ascham's suggestion, made
over three centuries ago and still pertinent, that "'tis a poor way to make
a child love study by beginning with the things which he naturally
dislikes." We have laid emphasis upon the delights of literature; we have
treated books not as mere instruments of research--which is the danger in
most of our studies--but rather as instruments of enjoyment and of
inspiration; and by making our study as attractive as possible we have
sought to encourage the student to read widely for himself, to choose the
best books, and to form his own judgment about what our first Anglo-Saxon
writers called "the things worthy to be remembered."
To those who may use this book in their homes or in their class rooms, the
writer ventures to offer one or two friendly suggestions out of his own
experience as a teacher of young people. First, the amount of space here
given to different periods and authors is not an index of the relative
amount of time to be spent upon the different subjects. Thus, to tell the
story of Spenser's life and ideals requires as much space as to tell the
story of Tennyson; but the average class will spend its time more
pleasantly and profitably with the latter poet than with the former.
Second, many authors who are and ought to be included in this history need
not be studied in the class room. A text-book is not a catechism but a
storehouse, in which one finds what he wants, and some good things beside.
Few classes will find time to study Blake or Newman, for instance; but in
nearly every class there will be found one or two students who are
attracted by the mysticism of Blake or by the profound spirituality of
Newman. Such students should be encouraged to follow their own spirits, and
to share with their classmates the joy of their discoveries. And they
should find in their text-book the material for their own study and
reading.
A third suggestion relates to the method of teaching literature; and here
it might be well to consider the word of a great poet,--that if you would
know where the ripest cherries are, ask the boys and the blackbirds. It is
surprising how much a young person will get out of the _Merchant of
Venice_, and somehow arrive at Shakespeare's opinion of Shylock and Portia,
if we do not bother him too much with notes and critical directions as to
what he ought to seek and find. Turn a child and a donkey loose in the same
field, and the child heads straight for the beautiful spots where brooks
are running and birds singing, while the donkey turns as naturally to weeds
and thistles. In our study of literature we have perhaps too much sympathy
with the latter, and we even insist that the child come back from his own
quest of the ideal to join us in our critical companionship. In reading
many text-books of late, and in visiting many class rooms, the writer has
received the impression that we lay too much stress on second-hand
criticism, passed down from book to book; and we set our pupils to
searching for figures of speech and elements of style, as if the great
books of the world were subject to chemical analysis. This seems to be a
mistake, for two reasons: first, the average young person has no natural
interest in such matters; and second, he is unable to appreciate them. He
feels unconsciously with Chaucer:
And as for me, though that my wit be lyte,
On bookes for to rede I me delyte.
Indeed, many mature persons (including the writer of this history) are
often unable to explain at first the charm or the style of an author who
pleases them; and the more profound the impression made by a book, the more
difficult it is to give expression to our thought and feeling. To read and
enjoy good books is with us, as with Chaucer, the main thing; to analyze
the author's style or explain our own enjoyment seems of secondary and
small importance. However that may be, we state frankly our own conviction
that the detailed study and analysis of a few standard works--which is the
only literary pabulum given to many young people in our schools--bears the
same relation to true literature that theology bears to religion, or
psychology to friendship. One is a more or less unwelcome mental
discipline; the other is the joy of life.
The writer ventures to suggest, therefore, that, since literature is our
subject, we begin and end with good books; and that we stand aside while
the great writers speak their own message to our pupils. In studying each
successive period, let the student begin by reading the best that the age
produced; let him feel in his own way the power and mystery of _Beowulf_,
the broad charity of Shakespeare, the sublimity of Milton, the romantic
enthusiasm of Scott; and then, when his own taste is pleased and satisfied,
a new one will arise,--to know something about the author, the times in
which he lived, and finally of criticism, which, in its simplicity, is the
discovery that the men and women of other ages were very much like
ourselves, loving as we love, bearing the same burdens, and following the
same ideals:
Lo, with the ancient
Roots of man's nature
Twines the eternal
Passion of song.
Ever Love fans it;
Ever Life feeds it;
Time cannot age it;
Death cannot slay.
To answer the questions which arise naturally between teacher and pupil
concerning the books that they read, is one object of this volume. It aims
not simply to instruct but also to inspire; to trace the historical
development of English literature, and at the same time to allure its
readers to the best books and the best writers. And from beginning to end
it is written upon the assumption that the first virtue of such a work is
to be accurate, and the second to be interesting.
The author acknowledges, with gratitude and appreciation, his indebtedness
to Professor William Lyon Phelps for the use of his literary map of
England, and to the keen critics, teachers of literature and history, who
have read the proofs of this book, and have improved it by their good
suggestions.
WILLIAM J. LONG STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION--THE MEANING OF LITERATURE
The Shell and the Book. Qualities of Literature. Tests of Literature. The
Object in studying Literature. Importance of Literature. Summary of the
Subject. Bibliography.
CHAPTER II. THE ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD
Our First Poetry. "Beowulf." "Widsith." "Deor's Lament." "The Seafarer."
"The Fight at Finnsburgh." "Waldere." Anglo-Saxon Life. Our First Speech.
Christian Writers. Northumbrian Literature. Bede. Caedmon. Cynewulf. Decline
of Northumbrian Literature. Alfred. Summary. Bibliography. Questions.
Chronology.
CHAPTER III. THE ANGLO-NORMAN PERIOD
The Normans. The Conquest. Literary Ideals of the Normans. Geoffrey of
Monmouth. Work of the French Writers. Layamon's "Brut." Metrical Romances.
The Pearl. Miscellaneous Literature of the Norman Period. Summary.
Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.
CHAPTER IV. THE AGE OF CHAUCER
History of the Period. Five Writers of the Age. Chaucer. Langland. "Piers
Plowman." John Wyclif. John Mandeville. Summary. Bibliography. Questions.
Chronology.
CHAPTER V. THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING
Political Changes. Literature of the Revival. Wyatt and Surrey. Malory's
"Morte d'Arthur." Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.
CHAPTER VI. THE AGE OF ELIZABETH
Political Summary. Characteristics of the Elizabethan Age. The Non-Dramatic
Poets. Edmund Spenser. Minor Poets. Thomas Sackville. Philip Sidney. George
Chapman. Michael Drayton. The Origin of the Drama. The Religious Period of
the Drama. Miracle and Mystery Plays. The Moral Period of the Drama. The
Interludes. The Artistic Period of the Drama. Classical Influence upon the
Drama. Shakespeare's Predecessors in the Drama. Christopher Marlowe.
Shakespeare. Decline of the Drama. Shakespeare's Contemporaries and
Successors. Ben Jonson. Beaumont and Fletcher. John Webster. Thomas
Middleton. Thomas Heywood. Thomas Dekker. Massinger, Ford, Shirley. Prose
Writers. Francis Bacon. Richard Hooker. Sidney and Raleigh. John Foxe.
Camden and Knox. Hakluyt and Purchas. Thomas North. Summary. Bibliography.
Questions. Chronology.
CHAPTER VII. THE PURITAN AGE
The Puritan Movement. Changing Ideals. Literary Characteristics. The
Transition Poets. Samuel Daniel. The Song Writers. The Spenserian Poets.
The Metaphysical Poets. John Donne. George Herbert. The Cavalier Poets.
Thomas Carew. Robert Herrick. Suckling and Lovelace. John Milton. The Prose
Writers. John Bunyan. Robert Burton. Thomas Browne. Thomas Fuller. Jeremy
Taylor. Richard Baxter. Izaak Walton. Summary. Bibliography. Questions.
Chronology.
CHAPTER VIII. PERIOD OF THE RESTORATION
History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. John Dryden. Samuel
Butler. Hobbes and Locke. Evelyn and Pepys. Summary. Bibliography.
Questions. Chronology.
CHAPTER IX. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. The Classic Age. Alexander
Pope. Jonathan Swift. Joseph Addison. "The Tatler" and "The Spectator."
Samuel Johnson. Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Later Augustan Writers. Edmund
Burke. Edward Gibbon. The Revival of Romantic Poetry. Thomas Gray. Oliver
Goldsmith. William Cowper. Robert Burns. William Blake. The Minor Poets of
the Romantic Revival. James Thomson. William Collins. George Crabbe. James
Macpherson. Thomas Chatterton. Thomas Percy. The First English Novelists.
Meaning of the Novel. Precursors of the Novel. Discovery of the Modern
Novel. Daniel Defoe. Samuel Richardson. Henry Fielding. Smollett and
Sterne. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.
CHAPTER X. THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM
Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics of the Age. The Poets of
Romanticism. William Wordsworth. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Robert Southey.
Walter Scott. Byron. Percy Bysshe Shelley. John Keats. Prose Writers of the
Romantic Period. Charles Lamb. Thomas De Quincey. Jane Austen. Walter
Savage Landor. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.
CHAPTER XI. THE VICTORIAN AGE
Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics. Poets of the Victorian Age.
Alfred Tennyson. Robert Browning. Minor Poets of the Victorian Age.
Elizabeth Barrett. Rossetti. Morris. Swinburne. Novelists of the Victorian
Age. Charles Dickens. William Makepeace Thackeray. George Eliot. Minor
Novelists of the Victorian Age. Charles Reade. Anthony Trollope. Charlotte
Bronte. Bulwer Lytton. Charles Kingsley. Mrs. Gaskell. Blackmore. Meredith.
Hardy. Stevenson. Essayists of the Victorian Age. Macaulay. Carlyle.
Ruskin. Matthew Arnold. Newman. The Spirit of Modern Literature. Summary.
Bibliography. Questions. Chronology.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
* * * * *
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--THE MEANING OF LITERATURE
Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede.
Chaucer's _Truth_
On, on, you noblest English, ...
Follow your spirit.
Shakespeare's _Henry V_
THE SHELL AND THE BOOK. A child and a man were one day walking on the
seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear.
Suddenly he heard sounds,--strange, low, melodious sounds, as if the shell
were remembering and repeating to itself the murmurs of its ocean home. The
child's face filled with wonder as he listened. Here in the little shell,
apparently, was a voice from another world, and he listened with delight to
its mystery and music. Then came the man, explaining that the child heard
nothing strange; that the pearly curves of the shell simply caught a
multitude of sounds too faint for human ears, and filled the glimmering
hollows with the murmur of innumerable echoes. It was not a new world, but
only the unnoticed harmony of the old that had aroused the child's wonder.
Some such experience as this awaits us when we begin the study of
literature, which has always two aspects, one of simple enjoyment and
appreciation, the other of analysis and exact description. Let a little
song appeal to the ear, or a noble book to the heart, and for the moment,
at least, we discover a new world, a world so different from our own that
it seems a place of dreams and magic. To enter and enjoy this new world, to
love good books for their own sake, is the chief thing; to analyze and
explain them is a less joyous but still an important matter. Behind every
book is a man; behind the man is the race; and behind the race are the
natural and social environments whose influence is unconsciously reflected.
These also we must know, if the book is to speak its whole message. In a
word, we have now reached a point where we wish to understand as well as to
enjoy literature; and the first step, since exact definition is impossible,
is to determine some of its essential qualities.
QUALITIES OF LITERATURE. The first significant thing is the essentially
artistic quality of all literature. All art is the expression of life in
forms of truth and beauty; or rather, it is the reflection of some truth
and beauty which are in the world, but which remain unnoticed until brought
to our attention by some sensitive human soul, just as the delicate curves
of the shell reflect sounds and harmonies too faint to be otherwise
noticed. A hundred men may pass a hayfield and see only the sweaty toil and
the windrows of dried grass; but here is one who pauses by a Roumanian
meadow, where girls are making hay and singing as they work. He looks
deeper, sees truth and beauty where we see only dead grass, and he reflects
what he sees in a little poem in which the hay tells its own story:
Yesterday's flowers am I,
And I have drunk my last sweet draught of dew.
Young maidens came and sang me to my death;
The moon looks down and sees me in my shroud,
The shroud of my last dew.
Yesterday's flowers that are yet in me
Must needs make way for all to-morrow's flowers.
The maidens, too, that sang me to my death
Must even so make way for all the maids
That are to come.
And as my soul, so too their soul will be
Laden with fragrance of the days gone by.
The maidens that to-morrow come this way
Will not remember that I once did bloom,
For they will only see the new-born flowers.
Yet will my perfume-laden soul bring back,
As a sweet memory, to women's hearts
Their days of maidenhood.
And then they will be sorry that they came
To sing me to my death;
And all the butterflies will mourn for me.
I bear away with me
The sunshine's dear remembrance, and the low
Soft murmurs of the spring.
My breath is sweet as children's prattle is;
I drank in all the whole earth's fruitfulness,
To make of it the fragrance of my soul
That shall outlive my death.[1]
One who reads only that first exquisite line, "Yesterday's flowers am I,"
can never again see hay without recalling the beauty that was hidden from
his eyes until the poet found it.
In the same pleasing, surprising way, all artistic work must be a kind of
revelation. Thus architecture is probably the oldest of the arts; yet we
still have many builders but few architects, that is, men whose work in
wood or stone suggests some hidden truth and beauty to the human senses. So
in literature, which is the art that expresses life in words that appeal to
our own sense of the beautiful, we have many writers but few artists. In
the broadest sense, perhaps, literature means simply the written records of
the race, including all its history and sciences, as well as its poems and
novels; in the narrower sense literature is the artistic record of life,
and most of our writing is excluded from it, just as the mass of our
buildings, mere shelters from storm and from cold, are excluded from
architecture. A history or a work of science may be and sometimes is
literature, but only as we forget the subject-matter and the presentation
of facts in the simple beauty of its expression.
The second quality of literature is its suggestiveness, its appeal to our
emotions and imagination rather than to our intellect. It is not so much
what it says as what it awakens in us that constitutes its charm. When
Milton makes Satan say, "Myself am Hell," he does not state any fact, but
rather opens up in these three tremendous words a whole world of
speculation and imagination. When Faustus in the presence of Helen asks,
"Was this the face that launched a thousand ships?" he does not state a
fact or expect an answer. He opens a door through which our imagination
enters a new world, a world of music, love, beauty, heroism,--the whole
splendid world of Greek literature. Such magic is in words. When
Shakespeare describes the young Biron as speaking
In such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
he has unconsciously given not only an excellent description of himself,
but the measure of all literature, which makes us play truant with the
present world and run away to live awhile in the pleasant realm of fancy.
The province of all art is not to instruct but to delight; and only as
literature delights us, causing each reader to build in his own soul that
"lordly pleasure house" of which Tennyson dreamed in his "Palace of Art,"
is it worthy of its name.
The third characteristic of literature, arising directly from the other
two, is its permanence. The world does not live by bread alone.
Notwithstanding its hurry and bustle and apparent absorption in material
things, it does not willingly let any beautiful thing perish. This is even
more true of its songs than of its painting and sculpture; though
permanence is a quality we should hardly expect in the present deluge of
books and magazines pouring day and night from our presses in the name of
literature. But this problem of too many books is not modern, as we
suppose. It has been a problem ever since Caxton brought the first printing
press from Flanders, four hundred years ago, and in the shadow of
Westminster Abbey opened his little shop and advertised his wares as "good
and chepe." Even earlier, a thousand years before Caxton and his printing
press, the busy scholars of the great library of Alexandria found that the
number of parchments was much too great for them to handle; and now, when
we print more in a week than all the Alexandrian scholars could copy in a
century, it would seem impossible that any production could be permanent;
that any song or story could live to give delight in future ages. But
literature is like a river in flood, which gradually purifies itself in two
ways,--the mud settles to the bottom, and the scum rises to the top. When
we examine the writings that by common consent constitute our literature,
the clear stream purified of its dross, we find at least two more
qualities, which we call the tests of literature, and which determine its
permanence.
TESTS OF LITERATURE. The first of these is universality, that is, the
appeal to the widest human interests and the simplest human emotions.
Though we speak of national and race literatures, like the Greek or
Teutonic, and though each has certain superficial marks arising out of the
peculiarities of its own people, it is nevertheless true that good
literature knows no nationality, nor any bounds save those of humanity. It
is occupied chiefly with elementary passions and emotions,--love and hate,
joy and sorrow, fear and faith,--which are an essential part of our human
nature; and the more it reflects these emotions the more surely does it
awaken a response in men of every race. Every father must respond to the
parable of the prodigal son; wherever men are heroic, they will acknowledge
the mastery of Homer; wherever a man thinks on the strange phenomenon of
evil in the world, he will find his own thoughts in the Book of Job; in
whatever place men love their children, their hearts must be stirred by the
tragic sorrow of _Oedipus_ and _King Lear_. All these are but shining
examples of the law that only as a book or a little song appeals to
universal human interest does it become permanent.
The second test is a purely personal one, and may be expressed in the
indefinite word "style." It is only in a mechanical sense that style is
"the adequate expression of thought," or "the peculiar manner of expressing
thought," or any other of the definitions that are found in the rhetorics.
In a deeper sense, style is the man, that is, the unconscious expression of
the writer's own personality. It is the very soul of one man reflecting, as
in a glass, the thoughts and feelings of humanity. As no glass is
colorless, but tinges more or less deeply the reflections from its surface,
so no author can interpret human life without unconsciously giving to it
the native hue of his own soul. It is this intensely personal element that
constitutes style. Every permanent book has more or less of these two
elements, the objective and the subjective, the universal and the personal,
the deep thought and feeling of the race reflected and colored by the
writer's own life and experience.
THE OBJECT IN STUDYING LITERATURE. Aside from the pleasure of reading, of
entering into a new world and having our imagination quickened, the study
of literature has one definite object, and that is to know men. Now man is
ever a dual creature; he has an outward and an inner nature; he is not only
a doer of deeds, but a dreamer of dreams; and to know him, the man of any
age, we must search deeper than his history. History records his deeds, his
outward acts largely; but every great act springs from an ideal, and to
understand this we must read his literature, where we find his ideals
recorded. When we read a history of the Anglo-Saxons, for instance, we
learn that they were sea rovers, pirates, explorers, great eaters and
drinkers; and we know something of their hovels and habits, and the lands
which they harried and plundered. All that is interesting; but it does not
tell us what most we want to know about these old ancestors of ours,--not
only what they did, but what they thought and felt; how they looked on life
and death; what they loved, what they feared, and what they reverenced in
God and man. Then we turn from history to the literature which they
themselves produced, and instantly we become acquainted. These hardy people
were not simply fighters and freebooters; they were men like ourselves;
their emotions awaken instant response in the souls of their descendants.
At the words of their gleemen we thrill again to their wild love of freedom
and the open sea; we grow tender at their love of home, and patriotic at
their deathless loyalty to their chief, whom they chose for themselves and
hoisted on their shields in symbol of his leadership. Once more we grow
respectful in the presence of pure womanhood, or melancholy before the
sorrows and problems of life, or humbly confident, looking up to the God
whom they dared to call the Allfather. All these and many more intensely
real emotions pass through our souls as we read the few shining fragments
of verses that the jealous ages have left us.