Halleck's New English Literature Part 2

Manly's _English Poetry_ (from 1170). (Manly I.)

Manly's _English Prose_ (from 1137). (Manly II.)

_Century Readings for a Course in English Literature_. (Century.)

CHAPTER I: FROM 449 A.D. TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066

Subject Matter and Aim.--The history of English literature traces the development of the best poetry and prose written in English by the inhabitants of the British Isles. For more than twelve hundred years the Anglo-Saxon race has been producing this great literature, which includes among its achievements the incomparable work of Shakespeare.

This literature is so great in amount that the student who approaches the study without a guide is usually bewildered. He needs a history of English literature for the same reason that a traveler in England requires a guidebook. Such a history should do more than indicate where the choicest treasures of literature may be found; it should also show the interesting stages of development; it should emphasize some of the ideals that have made the Anglo-Saxons one of the most famous races in the world; and it should inspire a love for the reading of good literature.

No satisfactory definition of "literature" has ever been framed.

Milton's conception of it was "something so written to after times, as they should not willingly let it die." Shakespeare's working definition of literature was something addressed not to after times but to an eternal present, and invested with such a touch of nature as to make the whole world kin. When he says of Duncan:--

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,"

he touches the feelings of mortals of all times and opens the door for imaginative activity, causing us to wonder why life should be a fitful fever, followed by an incommunicable sleep. Much of what we call literature would not survive the test of Shakespeare's definition; but true literature must appeal to imagination and feeling as well as to intellect. No mere definition can take the place of what may be called a feeling for literature. Such a feeling will develop as the best English poetry and prose: are sympathetically read. Wordsworth had this feeling when he defined the poets as those:--

"Who gave us n.o.bler loves and n.o.bler cares."

The Mission of English Literature.--It is a pertinent question to ask, What has English literature to offer?

In the first place, to quote Ben Jonson:--

"The thirst that from the soul cloth rise Doth ask a drink divine."

English literature is of preeminent worth in helping to supply that thirst. It brings us face to face with great ideals, which increase our sense of responsibility for the stewards.h.i.+p of life and tend to raise the level of our individual achievement. We have a heightened sense of the demands which life makes and a better comprehension of the "far-off divine event" toward which we move, after we have heard Swinburne's ringing call:--

"...this thing is G.o.d, To be man with thy might, To grow straight in the strength of thy spirit, and live out thy life as the light."

We feel prompted to act on the suggestion of--

"...him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on striping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things."[4]

In the second place, the various spiritual activities demanded for the interpretation of the best things in literature add to enjoyment. This pleasure, unlike that which arises from physical gratification, increases with age, and often becomes the princ.i.p.al source of entertainment as life advances. Shakespeare has Prospero say:--

"...my library Was dukedom large enough."

The suggestions from great minds disclose vistas that we might never otherwise see. Browning truly says:--

"...we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have pa.s.sed Perhaps a hundred tunes nor cared to see."

Sometimes it is only after reading Shakespeare that we can see--

"...winking Mary buds begin To ope their golden eyes.

With everything that pretty is."

and only after spending some time in Wordsworth's company that the common objects of our daily life become invested with--

"The glory and the freshness of a dream."

In the third place, we should emphasize the fact that one great function of English literature is to bring deliverance to souls weary with routine, despondent, or suffering the stroke of some affliction.

In order to transfigure the everyday duties of life, there is need of imagination, of a vision such as the poets give. Without such a vision the tasks of life are drudgery. The dramas of the poets bring relief and incite to n.o.bler action.

"The soul hath need of prophet and redeemer.

Her outstretched wings against her prisoning bars She waits for truth, and truth is with the dreamer Persistent as the myriad light of stars."[5]

We need to listen to a poet like Browning, who--

"Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph.

Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake."

In the fourth place, the twentieth century is emphasizing the fact that neither happiness nor perpetuity of government is possible without the development of a spirit of service,--a truth long since taught by English literature. We may learn this lesson from _Beowulf_, the first English epic, from Alfred the Great, from William Langland, and from Chaucer's _Parish Priest_. All Shakespeare's greatest and happiest characters, all the great failures of his dramas, are sermons on this text. In _The Tempest_ he presents Ariel, tendering his service to Prospero:--

"All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come To answer thy best pleasure."

Shakespeare delights to show Ferdinand winning Miranda through service, and Caliban remaining an abhorred creature because he detested service. Much of modern literature is an illuminated text on the glory of service. Coleridge voiced for all the coming years what has grown to be almost an elemental feeling to the English-speaking race:--

"He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small."

The Home and Migrations of the Anglo-Saxon Race.--Just as there was a time when no English foot had touched the sh.o.r.es of America, so there was a period when the ancestors of the English lived far away from the British Isles. For nearly four hundred years prior to the coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain had been a Roman province. In 410 A.D. the Romans withdrew their legions from Britain to protect Rome herself against swarms of Teutonic invaders. About 449 a band of Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet (in the north-eastern part of Kent), and began the conquest of Britain.

Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed, and drove westward the original inhabitants, the Britons or Welsh, _i.e._ foreigners, as the Teutons styled the natives.

Before the invasion of Britain, the Teutons inhabited the central part of Europe as far south as the Rhine, a tract which in a large measure coincides with modern Germany. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons were different tribes of Teutons. These ancestors of the English dwelt in Denmark and in the lands extending southward along the North Sea.

The Angles, an important Teutonic tribe, furnished the name for the new home, which was called Angle-land, afterward shortened into England. The language spoken by these tribes is generally called Anglo-Saxon or Saxon.

The Training of the Race.--The climate is a potent factor in determining the vigor and characteristics of a race. Nature reared the Teuton like a wise but not indulgent parent. By every method known to her, she endeavored to render him fit to colonize and sway the world.

Summer paid him but a brief visit. His companions were the frost, the fluttering snowflake, the stinging hail. For music, instead of the soft notes of a shepherd's pipe under blue Italian or Grecian skies, he listened to the north wind whistling among the bare branches, or to the roar of an angry northern sea upon the bleak coast.

The feeble could not withstand the rigor of such a climate, in the absence of the comforts of civilization. Only the strongest in each generation survived; and these transmitted to their children increasing vigor. Warfare was incessant not only with nature but also with the surrounding tribes. Nature kept the Teuton in such a school until he seemed fit to colonize the world and to produce a literature that would appeal to humanity in every age.

The Early Teutonic Religion.--In the early days on the continent, before the Teuton had learned of Christianity, his religious beliefs received their most p.r.o.nounced coloring from the rigors of his northern climate, from the Frost Giants, the personified forces of evil, with whom he battled. The kindly, life-bringing spring and summer, which seemed to him earth's redeeming divinity, were soon slain by the arrows that came from the winter's quivers. Not even Thor, the wielder of the thunderbolt, nor Woden, the All-Father, delayed the inevitable hour when the dusk of winter came, when the voice of Baldur could no longer be heard awaking earth to a new life.

The approach of the "twilight of the G.o.ds," the _Gotterdammerung_, was a stern reality to the Teuton.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WODEN.]

Although instinct with gloomy fatalism, this religion taught bravery.

None but the brave were invited to Valhalla to become Woden's guest.

The brave man might perish, but even then he won victory; for he was invited to sit with heroes at the table of the G.o.ds. "None but the brave deserves the fair," is merely a modern softened rendering of the old spirit.

The Christian religion, which was brought to the Teuton after he had come to England, found him already cast in a semi-heroic mold. But before he could proceed on his matchless career of world conquest, before he could produce a Shakespeare and plant his flag in the suns.h.i.+ne of every land, it was necessary for this new faith to develop in him the belief that a man of high ideals, working in unison with the divinity that shapes his end, may rise superior to fate and be given the strength to overcome the powers of evil and to mold the world to his will. The intensity of this faith, swaying an energetic race naturally fitted to respond to the great moral forces of the universe, has enabled the Anglo-Saxon to produce the world's greatest literature, to evolve the best government for developing human capabilities, and to make the whole world feel the effect of his ideals and force of character. At the close of the nineteenth century, a French philosopher wrote a book ent.i.tled _Anglo-Saxon Superiority, In What Does it Consist?_ His answer was, "In self-reliance and in the happiness found in surmounting the material and moral difficulties of life." A study of the literature in which the ideals of the race are most artistically and effectively embodied will lead to much the same conclusion.

The History of Anglo-Saxon England.--The first task of the Anglo-Saxons after settling in England was to subdue the British, the race that has given King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to English literature. By 600 A.D., after a century and a half of struggle, the Anglo-Saxons had probably occupied about half of England.

They did not build on the civilization that Rome had left when she withdrew in 410, but destroyed the towns and lived in the country. The typical Englishman still loves to dwell in a country home. The work of Anglo-Saxon England consisted chiefly in tilling the soil and in fighting.

The year 597 marks an especially important date, the coming of St.