English Literature Part 1

English Literature.

by William J. Long.

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 a.n.a.lysis 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 cla.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce as to tell the story of Tennyson; but the average cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s room. A text-book is not a catechism but a storehouse, in which one finds what he wants, and some good things beside.

Few cla.s.ses will find time to study Blake or Newman, for instance; but in nearly every cla.s.s 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 cla.s.smates 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 cla.s.s rooms, the writer has received the impression that we lay too much stress on second-hand criticism, pa.s.sed 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 a.n.a.lysis. 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 Pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sumption that the first virtue of such a work is to be accurate, and the second to be interesting.

The author acknowledges, with grat.i.tude 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

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION--THE MEANING OF LITERATURE

Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede.

Chaucer's _Truth_ On, on, you n.o.blest English, ...

Follow your spirit.

Shakespeare's _Henry V_

THE Sh.e.l.l AND THE BOOK. A child and a man were one day walking on the seash.o.r.e when the child found a little sh.e.l.l and held it to his ear.

Suddenly he heard sounds,--strange, low, melodious sounds, as if the sh.e.l.l 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 sh.e.l.l, 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 sh.e.l.l simply caught a mult.i.tude 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 a.n.a.lysis and exact description. Let a little song appeal to the ear, or a n.o.ble 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 a.n.a.lyze 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 sh.e.l.l reflect sounds and harmonies too faint to be otherwise noticed. A hundred men may pa.s.s a hayfield and see only the sweaty toil and the windrows of dried gra.s.s; 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 gra.s.s, 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 b.u.t.terflies 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 ma.s.s 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 const.i.tutes its charm. When Milton makes Satan say, "Myself am h.e.l.l," 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 sc.u.m rises to the top. When we examine the writings that by common consent const.i.tute 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 pa.s.sions 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 gla.s.s, the thoughts and feelings of humanity. As no gla.s.s 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 const.i.tutes 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.