A Brief History of the English Language and Literature Part 22

"In mortals, there is a care for trifles, which proceeds from love and conscience, and is most holy; and a care for trifles, which comes of idleness and frivolity, and is most base. And so, also, there is a gravity proceeding from dulness and mere incapability of enjoyment, which is most base."

His power of painting in words is incomparably greater than that of any other English author: he almost infuses colour into his words and phrases, so full are they of pictorial power. It would be impossible to give any adequate idea of this power here; but a few lines may suffice for the present:--

"The noonday sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of La Riccia, and its ma.s.ses of enlarged and tall foliage, whose autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it colour; it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like the curtains of G.o.d's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivered with buoyant and burning life; each, as it turned to reflect or to transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald."

19. GEORGE ELIOT (the literary name for +Marian Evans, 1819-1880+), one of our greatest writers, was born in Warwickshire in the year 1819. She was well and carefully educated; and her own serious and studious character made her a careful thinker and a most diligent reader. For some time the famous Herbert Spencer was her tutor; and under his care her mind developed with surprising rapidity. She taught herself German, French, Italian-- studied the best works in the literature of these languages; and she was also fairly mistress of Greek and Latin. Besides all these, she was an accomplished musician. --She was for some time a.s.sistant-editor of the 'Westminster Review.' The first of her works which called the attention of the public to her astonishing skill and power as a novelist was her +Scenes of Clerical Life+. Her most popular novel, +Adam Bede+, appeared in 1859; +Romola+ in 1863; and +Middlemarch+ in 1872. She has also written a good deal of poetry, among other volumes that ent.i.tled +The Legend of Jubal, and other Poems+. One of her best poems is +The Spanish Gypsy+. She died in the year 1880.

20. +George Eliot's Style.+-- Her style is everywhere pure and strong, of the best and most vigorous English, not only broad in its power, but often intense in its description of character and situation, and always singularly adequate to the thought. Probably no novelist knew the English character-- especially in the Midlands-- so well as she, or could a.n.a.lyse it with so much subtlety and truth. She is entirely mistress of the country dialects. In humour, pathos, knowledge of character, power of putting a portrait firmly upon the canvas, no writer surpa.s.ses her, and few come near her. Her power is sometimes almost Shakespearian. Like Shakespeare, she gives us a large number of wise sayings, expressed in the pithiest language. The following are a few:--

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."

"It is easy finding reasons why other people should be patient."

"Genius, at first, is little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline."

"Things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

"Nature never makes men who are at once energetically sympathetic and minutely calculating."

"To the far woods he wandered, listening, And heard the birds their little stories sing In notes whose rise and fall seem melted speech-- Melted with tears, smiles, glances-- that can reach More quickly through our frame's deep-winding night, And without thought raise thought's best fruit, delight."

TABLES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

[Transcriber's Note:

In the original book, the following table-- spanning 14 pages-- was laid out in four columns: Writers; Works; Contemporary Events; Centuries (through 1500) or Decades (beginning 1550).

Missing punctuation has been silently supplied.]

+Centuries/Decades+ WRITERS Works Contemporary Events

+500+

(_Author unknown._) +Beowulf+ (brought over by Saxons and Angles from the Continent).

+600+

CAEDMON. A secular monk of Whitby. Died about +680+.

+Poems+ on the Creation and other subjects taken from the Old and the New Testament.

Edwin (of Deira), King of the Angles, baptised 627.

+700+

BAEDA. +672-735+. "The Venerable Bede," a monk of Jarrow-on-Tyne.

An +Ecclesiastical History+ in Latin. A translation of +St John's Gospel+ into English (lost).

First landing of the Danes, 787.

+800+

ALFRED THE GREAT. +849-901+. King; translator; prose-writer.

Translated into the English of Wess.e.x, Bede's Ecclesiastical History and other Latin works. Is said to have begun the +Anglo-Saxon Chronicle+.

The University of Oxford is said to have been founded in this reign.

Compiled by monks in various monasteries.

+Anglo-Saxon Chronicle+, 875-1154.

+900+

a.s.sER. Bishop of Sherborne. Died +910+.

+Life of King Alfred+.

+1000+

(_Author unknown._) A poem ent.i.tled +The Grave+.

+1100+

LAYAMON. +1150-1210+. A priest of Ernley-on-Severn.

+The Brut+ (1205), a poem on Brutus, the supposed first settler in Britain.

John ascended the throne in 1199.

ORM or ORMIN. +1187-1237+. A canon of the Order of St Augustine.

+The Ormulum+ (1215), a set of religious services in metre.

+1200+

ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER. +1255-1307+.

+Chronicle of England+ in rhyme (1297).

Magna Charta, 1215.

Henry III. ascends the throne, 1216.

ROBERT OF BRUNNE. (Robert Manning of Brun.) +1272-1340+.

+Chronicle of England+ in rhyme; _Handlyng Sinne_ (1303).

University of Cambridge founded, 1231.

Edward I. ascends the throne, 1272.

Conquest of Wales, 1284.

+1300+