A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. EW of us realize how much we owe to literature. From the moment when a little child first asks some one to tell him a story, to the time when the old man finds reading almost the only pleasure he has left, and really a solace for the loss of all the others; a large proportion of what makes life agreeable comes through those thoughts of men which have been embalmed in the written word and preserved for our benefit. He who first invented letters, who conceived the idea of making thoughts matured at one time and place, available at other times and places, was the greatest of benefactors. Since his invention it is said, and truly said, "Words are the only things that last forever." It would be gratifying to be able to do anything toward encouraging and fostering in young people a real fondness for literature. By this is not meant what commonly passes for a love of reading, which is often nothing more than a desire to have a vacant mind entertained without the slightest trouble to itself. One who loves the best reading may be and possibly is a great reader; yet on the other hand, one may be a "great reader," as the words are often used, whose reading is a mere form of mental dissipation. Reading, to do us any good, should be discriminative. We must learn to know why we prefer one author's style to another's; why the thoughts of the one seem to become a part of our own minds, while our eyes wander over the other with no sense of gratification. We must learn to appreciate the various kinds of imagery and take pleasure in books which minister to our sense of the beautiful. Our souls must be open to the lovely influences of poetry, and we must draw from it that inspiration which shall transfigure for us the prose of common life. We are all accustomed to the idea of the sprouting of seeds in the spring; but when Lowell writes: Every clod feels a stir of might, An instinct within it which reaches and towers, And grasping blindly above it for light, Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers, the common event is glorified for us. No prose can express repose as does Tennyson's Music, that gentlier on the spirit lies Whoever first applied the term "musical" to the sound of poetry, told in one word the secret of its charm. It is the music of the mind, and for this harmony our taste can be cultivated as well as for that made by instruments. Many nations have taken in verse their first literary steps, probably because, having no written works, they were obliged to trust to oral tradition, and rhythm helped them to remember the words. Homer's immortal epics were no doubt handed down by the voice of wandering minstrels for generations. before they were committed to writing. In reading and talking about literature, it is well for us to have a clear idea of what the word means. Not all that is written and printed comes under this head: All technical those peculiar to any art or science works - all text books, and nearly all that goes to fill the innumerable columns of the modern newspaper, should be excluded from it. Besides the classes of books already mentioned, we can not, in the highest sense of the word, apply the name literature to books which are frivolous or intended merely for temporary amusement. Such books, doubtless, have their place; but do not let us confound them with what is enduring. There must be some appeal to the fancy, the imagination or the reflective part of man to give what we read a claim to this title; something tending to elevate the mind above material things, to warm the heart, to cultivate the taste, to inspire the imagination in order to bring what is written within its range. It is in this sense alone that we shall enter upon our acquaintance with literature. Reading in its highest sense-not merely an amusement of the moment, which leaves no results except a craving for more dissipation of the same sort, but that which informs and elevates the mind while drawing out its fullest powers —this kind of reading is one of our purest enjoyments; and to make the most of it we must look carefully over the field spread out before us, and see how we can cultivate it to the best advantage. The first classification that forces itself on our plan of work is the dividing of English literature into two parts; that which we can read as our own vernacular and that which we can not read except as we read a foreign tongue. To the latter division-what we can not read-belongs all that was written by our Anglo-Saxon forefathers before the middle of the fourteenth century. Until that time, all writing in England was in Latin except a few precious books written in Anglo-Saxon, which latter language some writers prefer to call Early English, and which is the rude, untutored beginning of our own language. A convenient division of English literature, made by a distinguished writer on the subject, arranges it in four periods, as follows: 1. Saxon 2. English, or all that comes before the Norman Conquest; Transitional English, or that from 1066 to about 1350, during which time the two languages, Norman-French and Anglo-Saxon, were gradually becoming fused into one; 3. Early Modern English, from Chaucer to the writers of Queen Elizabeth's time; 4. Modern English, from the middle of the sixteenth century to our own day. After the "transitional" period a secondary division is naturally made by the close of a century, as it happens that each of the centuries has a character of its own, differing from that which precedes and that which follows it. The earliest British writer whose name has come down to us is Gildas, supposed to have been a Welsh monk of the sixth century, who wrote in Latin a history of Britain from the first invasion of Julius Cæsar to his own time. It is in his book that we find the famous letter to the Roman consul in Gaul, begging for help against the unruly Scots and Picts. Gildas was not an Englishman, for the Angles from whom England takes its name had not yet arrived there; but he was a Briton and belonged to the country, and, as its first native writer must have a place in our literature. CHAPTER II. B THE FIRST ANGLO-SAXON WRITERS. EFORE beginning on the systematic study of that literature which we are to make our own by assimilation, we must take a hasty glance at the earlier writers—those who wrote for the pleasure and benefit of the people of their own times. And what a pleasure it was! It is hard for us, to whom reading comes as naturally and as easily as eating, to understand the eagerness with which people who did not know Latin, and were therefore shut |