Handbook of Universal Literature

Introduction

1. ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ITS DIVISIONS.—The original inhabitants of England, belonging to the great race of Celts, were not the true founders of the English nation; and their language, which is still spoken unchanged in various parts of the kingdom, has exerted but an incredibly small influence on the English tongue. During the period of the Roman domination (55 B.C.-447 A.D.), the relations between the conquerors and the natives did not materially alter the nationality of the people, nor did the Latin language permanently displace or modify the native tongue.

The great event of the Dark Ages which succeeded the fall of the Roman empire was the vast series of emigrations which planted tribes of Gothic blood over large tracts of Europe, and which was followed by the formation of all the modern European languages, and by the general profession of Christianity. The Anglo-Saxon invaders of England continued to emigrate from the Continent for more than a hundred years, and before many generations had passed away, their language, customs, and character prevailed throughout the provinces they had seized. During the six hundred years of their independence (448-1066), the nation made wonderful progress in the arts of life and thought. The Pagans accepted the Christian faith; the piratical sea-kings applied themselves to the tillage of the soil and the practice of some of the ruder manufactures; the fierce soldiers constructed, out of the materials of legislation common to the whole Teutonic race, a manly political constitution.

The few extant literary monuments of the Anglo-Saxons possess a singular value as illustrations of the character of the people, and have the additional attraction of being written in what was really our mother tongue.

In the Middle Ages (from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries), the painful convulsions of infant society gave way to the growing vigor of healthy though undisciplined youth. All the relations of life were modified, more or less, by the two influences predominant in the early part of the period, but decaying in the latter,—Feudalism and the Church of Rome,—and by the consolidation of the new languages, which were successively developed in all European countries, and were soon qualified as instruments for communicating the results of intellectual activity. The Middle Ages closed by two events occurring nearly at the same time: the erection of the great monarchies on the ruins of feudalism, and the shattering of the sovereignty of the Romish Church by the Reformation. At the same period, the invention of printing, the most important event in the annals of literature, became available as a means of enlightenment.

The Norman conquest of England (1066) subjected the nation at once to both of the ruling mediaeval impulses: feudalism, which metamorphosed the relative positions of the people and the nobles, and the recognition of papal supremacy, which altered not less thoroughly the standing of the church. While these changes were not unproductive of good at that time, they were distasteful to the nation, and soon became injurious, both to freedom and knowledge, until at length, under the dynasty of the Tudors, the ecclesiastical shackles were cast off, and the feudal bonds began gradually to be loosened.

The Norman invaders of England took possession of the country as military masters. They suppressed the native polity by overwhelming force, made Norman-French the fashionable speech of the court and the aristocracy, and imposed it on the tribunals. Their romantic literature soon weaned the hearts of educated men from the ancient rudeness of taste, but the mass of the English people clung so obstinately to their ancestral tongue, that the Anglo-Saxon language kept its hold in substance until it was evolved into modern English; and the Norman nobles were at length forced to learn the dialect which had been preserved among their despised English vassals.

Emerging from the Middle Ages into the illuminated vista of modern history, we find the world of action much more powerfully influenced by the world of letters than ever before. Among the causes which produced this change are the invention of printing, the use of a cultivated living language, and in England the vindication of freedom of thought and constitutional liberty.

The period from the accession of Elizabeth to the Restoration (1558-1660) is the most brilliant in the literary history of England. The literature assumes its most varied forms, expatiates over the most distant regions of speculation and investigation; and its intellectual chiefs, while they breathe the spirit of modern knowledge and freedom, speak to us in tones which borrow an irregular stateliness from the chivalrous past. But this magnificent panorama does not meet the eye at once; the unveiling of its features is as gradual as the passing away of the mists that shroud the landscape before the morning sun.

The first quarter of the century was unproductive in all departments of literature. Of the great writers who have immortalized the name of Elizabeth, scarcely one was born five years before she ascended the throne, and the immense and invaluable series of literary works which embellished the period in question may be regarded as beginning only with the earliest poem of Spenser, 1579.

“There never was anywhere,” says Lord Jeffrey, “anything like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of the reign of Elizabeth to the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles nor the age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., or of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison. In that short period we shall find the names of almost all the very great men that this nation has ever produced.”

Among the influences which made the last generation of the sixteenth century so strong in itself, and capable of bequeathing so much strength to those who took up its inheritance, was the expanding elasticity, the growing freedom of thought and action. The chivalry of the Middle Ages began to seek more useful fields of adventure in search of new worlds, and fame, and gold. There was an increasing national prosperity, and a corresponding advance of comfort and refinement, and mightier than all these forces was the silent working of the Reformation on the hearts of the people.

The minor writers of this age deserve great honor, and may almost be considered the builders of the structure of English literature, whose intellectual chiefs were Spenser, Shakspeare, and Hooker.

Spenser and Shakspeare were both possessed of thoughts, feelings, and images, which they could not have had if they had lived a century later, or much earlier; and, although their views were very dissimilar, they both bear the characteristic features of the age in which they lived. Spenser dwelt with animation on the gorgeous scenery which covered the elfin land of knighthood and romance, and present realities were lost in his dream of antique grandeur and ideal loveliness. He was the modern poet of the remote past; the last minstrel of chivalry, though incomparably greater than his forerunners.

Shakspeare was the poet of the present and the future, and of universal humanity. He saw in the past the fallen fragments on which men were to build anew—august scenes of desolation, whose ruin taught men to work more wisely. He painted them as the accessory features and distant landscape of colossal pictures, in whose foreground stood figures soaring beyond the limits of their place, instinct with the spirit of the time in which the poet lived, yet lifted out of it and above it by the impulse of potent genius prescient of momentous truths that lay slumbering in the bosom of futurity.

By the side of poetry contemporary prose shows poorly, with one great exception. In respect to style, Hooker stands almost alone in his time, and may be considered the first of the illustrious train of great prose writers. His “Ecclesiastical Polity” appeared in 1594. Sir Philip Sidney’s “Arcadia” had been written before 1587. Bacon’s Essays appeared in 1596, and also Spenser’s “View of Ireland,” But none of these are comparable in point of style to Hooker.

The reign of Elizabeth gave the key-note to the literature of the two succeeding reigns, that of James I. (1603-1625), and Charles (1625-1649), and the literary works of this period were not only more numerous, but stand higher in the mass than those which closed the sixteenth century. But Spenser remained un-imitated and Shakspeare was inimitable; the drama, however, which in this as in the last generation monopolized the best minds, received new developments, poetry was enriched beyond precedent, and prose writing blossomed into a harvest of unexampled eloquence. But although, under the rule of James, learning did good service in theology and the classics, English writing began to be infected with pedantic affectations. The chivalrous temper of the preceding age was on the wane, coarseness began to pass into licentiousness, and moral degeneracy began to diffuse its poison widely over the lighter kinds of literature. Bacon, the great pilot of modern science, gave to the world the rudiments of his philosophy. Bishop Hall exemplified not only the eloquence and talent of the clergy, but the beginning of that resistance to the tendencies by which the church was to be soon overthrown. The drama was headed by Ben Jonson, honorably severe in morals, and by Beaumont and Fletcher, who heralded the licentiousness which soon corrupted the art generally, while the poet Donne introduced fantastic eccentricities into poetical composition.

Some of the most eloquent prose writings of the English language had their birth amidst the convulsions of the Civil War, or in the strangely perplexed age of the Commonwealth and protectorate (1649-1660), that stern era which moulded the mind of one poet gifted with extraordinary genius. Although Milton would not, in all likelihood, have conceived the “Paradise Lost” had he not felt and acted with the Puritans, yet it would have been less the consummate work of art which it is, had he not fed his fancy with the courtly pomp of the last days of the monarchy.

The prose writers of this time are represented by Bishop Hall and Jeremy Taylor, among the clergy, and Selden and Camden among the laymen. The roughness of speech and manners of Elizabeth’s time, followed, in the next reign, by a real coarseness and lowness of sentiment, grew rapidly worse under Charles, whose reign was especially prolific in poetry, the tone of which varied from grave to gay, from devotion to licentiousness, from severe solemnity to indecent levity; but no great poet appeared in the crowd. The drama was still rich in genius, its most distinguished names being those of Ford, Massinger, and Shirley; but here depravity had taken a deeper root than elsewhere, and it was a blessing that, soon after the breaking out of the war, the theatres were closed, and the poets left to idleness or repentance.

The Commonwealth and Protectorate, extending over eleven years (1649-1660), made an epoch in literature, as well as in the state and church. The old English drama was extinct, and poetry had few votaries. Cowley now closed with great brilliancy the eccentric and artificial school of which Donne had been the founder, and Milton was undergoing the last steps of that mental discipline that was to qualify him for standing forth the last and all but the greatest of the poetical ancients. At the same time, the approach of a modern era was indicated by the frivolity of sentiment and ease of versification which prevailed in the poems of Waller.

In philosophy, Hobbes now uttered his defiance to constitutional freedom and ecclesiastical independence; Henry More expounded his platonic dreams in the cloisters of Cambridge; and Cudworth vindicated the belief in the being of the Almighty and in the foundations of moral distinctions. The Puritans, the ruling power in the state, became also a power in literature, nobly represented by Richard Baxter. Milton, like many of his remarkable contemporaries, lived into the succeeding generation, and he may be accepted as the last representative of the eloquence of English prose in that brilliant stage of its history which terminated about the date of the Restoration.

The aspect of the last forty years of the seventeenth century—the age of the Restoration and the Revolution—is far from being encouraging, and some features marking many of their literary works are positively revolting. Of the social evils of the time, none infected literature so deeply as the depravation of morals, into which the court and aristocracy plunged, and many of the people followed. The drama sunk to a frightful grossness, and the tone of all other poetry was lowered. The reinstated courtiers imported a mania for foreign models, especially French, literary works were anxiously moulded on the tastes of Paris, and this prevalence of exotic predilections lasted for more than a century. But amidst these and other weaknesses and blots there was not wanting either strength or brightness.

The literary career of Dryden covers the whole of this period and marks a change which contained many improvements. Locke was the leader of philosophical speculation; and mathematical and physical science had its distinguished votaries, headed by Sir Isaac Newton, whose illustrious name alone would have made the age immortal.

The Nonconformists, forbidden to speak, wrote and printed. A younger generation was growing up among them, and some of the elder race still survived, such as Baxter, Owen, and Calamy. But greatest of all, and only now reaching the climax of his strength, was Milton, in his neglected old age consoling himself for the disappointments which had darkened a weary life, by consecrating its waning years, with redoubled ardor of devotion, to religion, to truth, and to the service of a remote posterity.

In England, as elsewhere in Europe, the temper of the eighteenth century was cold, dissatisfied, and hypercritical. Old principles were called in question, and the literary man, the statesman, the philosopher, and the theologian found their tasks to be mainly those of attack or defence. The opinions of the nation and the sentiments which they prompted were neither speculative nor heroic, and they received adequate literary expression in a philosophy which acknowledged no higher motive than utility,—in a kind of poetry which found its field in didactic discussion, and sunk in narrative into the coarse and domestic. In all departments of literature, the form had come to be more regarded than the matter; and melody of rhythm, elegance of phrase, and symmetry of parts were held to be higher excellences than rich fancy or fervid emotion. Such an age could not give birth to a literature possessing the loftiest and most striking qualities of poetry or of eloquence; but it increased the knowledge previously possessed by mankind, swept away many wrong opinions, produced many literary works, excellent in thought and expression, and exercised on the English language an influence partly for good and partly for evil, which is shown in every sentence which we now speak or write.

The First Generation is named from Queen Anne (1702-1714), but it includes also the reign of her successor. Our notion of its literary character is derived from the poetry of Pope and the prose of Addison and his friends. In its own region, which, though not low, is yet far from the highest, the lighter and more popular literature of Queen Anne’s time is valuable; its lessons were full of good sense and correct taste, and as literary artists, the writers of this age attained an excellence as eminent as can be attained by art not inspired by the enthusiasm of genius nor employed on majestic themes. In its moral tone, the early part of the eighteenth century was much better than that of the age before it.

The Second Generation of the century may be reckoned as contained in the reign of George II. (1727-1760). It was more remarkable than the preceding for vigor of thinking and often for genuine poetic fancy and susceptibility, though inferior in the skill and details of literary composition. Samuel Johnson produced his principal works before the close of this period. Among the novelists, Richardson alone had anything in common with him. Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne are equally distant from the dignified pomp of his manner and the ascetic elevation of his morality. In contrast to the looseness of the novels and the skepticism of Hume, the reasoning of Butler was employed in defense of sacred truth, and the stern dissent of Whitefield and Wesley was entered against religious deadness. Poetry began to stir with new life; a noble ambition animated Young and Akenside, and in Thomson, Gray, and Collins a finer poetic sense was perceptible.

The Third Generation of the eighteenth century, beginning with the accession of George III. (1760), was by no means so fertile in literary genius as either of the other two. But the earliest of its remarkable writers, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, produced works which have rarely been exceeded as literary compositions of their class. In ethics, there were Paley and Adam Smith; in psychology and metaphysics, Reid and the founders of the Scottish school; and in the list of poets who adorned these forty years were Goldsmith, Cowper, and Burns.

The nineteenth century, for us naturally more interesting than any other period of English literature, is, in its intellectual character, peculiarly difficult of analysis, from its variety and novelty. For the reason that we have been moulded on its lessons, we are not favorably placed for comprehending it profoundly, or for impartially estimating the value of the monuments it has produced.

It has been a time of extraordinary mental activity more widely diffused than ever before throughout the nation at large. While books have been multiplied beyond precedent, readers have increased in a yet greater proportion, and the diffusion of enlightenment has been aimed at as zealously as the discovery of new truths. While no other time has exhibited so surprising a variety in the kinds of literature, none has been so distinguished for the prevalence of enlightened and philanthropic sentiment.

In point of literary merit, the half century presents two successive and dissimilar stages, of which the first or opening epoch of the century, embraced in its first thirty years, was by far the most brilliant. The animation and energy which characterized it arose from the universal excitation of feeling and the mighty collision of opinions which broke out over all Europe with the first French Revolution, and the fierce struggle so long maintained almost single-handed by England against Napoleon I. The strength of that age was greatest in poetry, but it gave birth to much valuable speculation and eloquent writing. The poetical literature of that time has no parallel in English literature, unless in the age of Shakspeare.

A marked feature in the English poetry of the nineteenth century is the want of skill in execution. Most of the poets not only neglect polishing in diction but also in symmetry of plan, and this fault is common to the most reflective as well as the most passionate of them. Byron, in his tales and sketches, is not more deficient in skill as an artist than Wordsworth in his “Excursion,” the huge fragment of an unfathomable design, cherished throughout a long and thoughtful lifetime.

Another feature is this, that the poems which made the strongest impression were of the narrative kind. That and the drama may be said to be the only forms of representation adequate to embody the spirit or to interest the sympathies of an age and nation immersed in the turmoil of energetic action.

Among the prose writings of this period, two kinds of composition employed a larger fund of literary genius than any other, and exercised a wider influence; these were the novels and romances, and the reviews and other periodicals. Novel-writing acquired an unusually high rank in the world of letters, through its greatest master, and was remarkable for the high character imprinted on it. By Scott and two or three precursors and some not unworthy successors, the novel was made for us nearly all that the drama in its palmy days had been for our fore-fathers, imbibing as much of its poetic spirit as its form and purpose allowed, thoughtful in its views of life, and presenting pictures faithful to nature.

In the beginning of the present century was founded the dynasty of the reviews, which now began to be chosen as the vehicles of the best prose writing and the most energetic thinking that the nation could command. Masses of valuable knowledge have been laid up, and streams of eloquence have been poured out in the periodicals of our century by authors who have often left their names to be guessed at. But the best writers have not always escaped the dangers of this form of writing, which is unfavorable to completeness and depth of knowledge, and strongly tempting to exaggeration of style and sentiment. This evil has worked on the ranks of inferior contributors with a force which has seriously injured the purity of the public taste. The strong points of periodical writers are their criticism of literary works and their speculation in social and political philosophy, which have nowhere been handled so skillfully as in the Reviews. After poetry, they are the most valuable departments in the literature of the first age.

Since the Anglo-Saxon period, English literature has derived much of its materials and inspiration from the teaching of other countries. In the Middle Ages, France furnished the models of chivalrous poetry and much of the social system; the Augustan age of French letters, the reign of Louis XIV., ruled the literary taste of England from the Restoration to the middle of the eighteenth century; and from Germany, more than from any other foreign nation, have come the influences by which the intellect of Great Britain has been affected, especially during the last thirty years. Within this time, the study and translation of German literature have become fashionable pursuits, and on the whole, highly beneficial. The philology of Germany and its profound poetical criticism have taught much: the philosophical tendency of German theology has engaged the attention of teachers of religion, and had its effect both for good and evil, and the accurate study of the highest branches of German philosophy has tended decidedly to elevate the standard of abstract speculation.

The most hopeful symptom of English literature in the last thirty years is to be found in the zeal and success with which its teachings have been extended beyond the accustomed limits. Knowledge has been diffused with a zeal and rapidity never before dreamed of, and the spirit which prompted it has been worthily embodied in the enlarged and enlightened temper with which it has been communicated. In the midst of much error, there are many features prominent which presage the birth of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any that has ever yet pervaded society.

The present age possesses no poetry comparable to that of the preceding, and few men who unite remarkable eloquence with power of thought. Among the thinkers, there is greater activity of speculation in regard to questions affecting the nature and destiny of man; and problems have been boldly propounded, but the solutions have not been found, and amidst much doubt and dimness, the present generation seems to be struggling toward a new organization of social and intellectual life.

The literature of England may be divided into three periods: the first, extending from the departure of the Romans to the Norman Conquest (448-1066), comprises the literature in the Celtic, Latin, and Anglo-Saxon tongues.

The second period, extending from the Norman Conquest to the accession of Henry VIII. (1066-1509), contains the literature of the Norman period from 1066 to 1307, in the Latin, Norman-French, and Anglo-Saxon tongues, the transition of the Anglo-Saxon into English, and the literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The third period, extending from 1509 to 1884, includes the literature of the age of the Reformation, that of the age of Spenser, Shakspeare, Bacon, and Milton, of the Restoration and Revolution, and of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

2. THE LANGUAGE.—The English language is directly descended from the Anglo-Saxon, but derives much from the Norman-French, and from the Latin. Although the Celtic in its branches of Cymric and Gaelic still continues to be the speech of a portion of the inhabitants of Great Britain, it has never exercised any influence on the language of the nation.

The origin of the Anglo-Saxon tongue is involved in obscurity. It most nearly resembles the Frisic, a Low German dialect once spoken between the Rhine and the Elbe, and which is the parent of modern Dutch.

Before the battle of Hastings, the Anglo-Saxon tongue had been spoken in England for at least six hundred years, during which time it must have undergone many changes and dialectic variations. On the subjugation of the conflicting states by the kings of Wessex, the language of the West Saxons came to be the ruling one, and its use was extended and confirmed by the example of Alfred, himself a native of Berks. But it does not necessarily follow that this dialect is the parent of the English language. We must look for the probable ground-work of this in the gradual coalescence of the leading dialects.

The changes by which the Anglo-Saxon passed into the modern English assumed in succession two distinct types, marking two eras quite dissimilar. First came the Semi-Saxon, or transition period, throughout which the old language was suffering disorganization and decay, a period of confusion, perplexing alike to those who then used the tongue, and to those who now endeavor to trace its vicissitudes. This chaotic state came to an end about the middle of the thirteenth century, after a duration of nearly two hundred years. The second era, or period of reconstruction, follows, during which the language may be described as English.

A late critic divides the Old English Period, extending from 1250 to 1500, into the Early English (1250-1330) and the Middle English (1330-1500). The latter was used by Chaucer and Wickliffe, and is in all essentials so like the modern tongue, except in the spelling, that a tolerable English scholar may easily understand it. A great change was effected in the vocabulary by the introduction and naturalization of words from the French. The poems of Chaucer and Gower are studded with them, and the style of these favorite writers exercised a commanding influence ever after.

The grammar of the English language, in all points of importance, is a simplification of the grammar of the Anglo-Saxon. In considering the sources of the English vocabulary, we find that from the Anglo-Saxon are derived first, almost all those words which import relations; secondly, not only all the adjectives, but all the other words, nouns, and verbs which grammarians call irregular; thirdly, the Saxon gives us in most instances our only names, and in all instances those which suggest themselves most readily for the objects perceived through the senses; fourthly, all words, with a few exceptions, whose signification is specific, are Anglo-Saxon. For instance, we use a foreign, naturalized term when we speak of color, or motion, in general, but the Saxon in speaking of the particular color or motion, and the style of a writer becomes animated and suggestive in proportion to the frequency with which he uses these specific terms; fifthly, it furnishes a rich fund of expressions for the feelings and affections, for the persons who are the earliest and most natural objects of our attachment, and for those inanimate things whose names are figuratively significant of domestic union; sixthly, the Anglo-Saxon is, for the most part, the language of business; of the counting-house, the shop, the street, the market, the farm. Among an eminently practical people it is eminently the organ of practical action, and it retains this prerogative in defiance alike of the necessary innovations caused by scientific discovery and of the corruptions of ignorance and affectation. Seventhly, a very large proportion of the language of invective, humor, satire, and colloquial pleasantry is Anglo-Saxon. In short, the Teutonic elements of our vocabulary are equally valuable in enabling us to speak and write perspicuously and with animation; and besides dictating the laws which connect our words, and furnishing the cement which binds them together, they yield all our aptest means of describing imagination, feeling, and the every-day facts of life.

From the Latin the English has borrowed more or less for two thousand years, and freely for more than six centuries; but from the time of the Conquest it is difficult to distinguish words of Latin origin from those of French. The Latinisms of the language have arisen chiefly in three epochs. The first was the thirteenth century, which followed an age devoted to classical studies, and its theological writers and poets coined freely in the Roman mint. The second was the Elizabethan age, when, in the enthusiasm of a new revival of admiration for antiquity, the privilege of naturalization was used to an extent which threatened serious danger to the purity and ease of speech. In the third epoch, the latter part of the eighteenth century, Johnson was the dictator of form and style, and the pompous rotundity that then prevailed has been permanently injurious, although our Latin words, on the whole, have done much more good than harm.

The introduction of French words began with the Conquest, when the political condition of the country made it imperative that many words should be understood. The second stage began about a century later, when the few native Englishmen who loved letters entered on the study of French poetry. The third era of English Gallicisms opened in the fourteenth century, when the French tastes of the nobles, and the zeal with which Chaucer and other men of letters studied the poetry of France, greatly contributed to introduce that tide of French diction which flowed on to the close of the Middle Ages. By that time the new words were so numerous and so strongly ingrafted on the native stock that all subsequent additions are unimportant. The dictionaries of modern English are said to contain about 38,000 words, of which about 23,000 or five eighths of the whole number, come from the Anglo-Saxon.

The English language, by its remarkable combination of strength, precision, and copiousness, is worthy of being, as it already is, spoken by many millions, and these the part of the human race that appear likely to control, more than any others, the future destinies of the world.

Period First. From the Departure of the Romans to the Norman Conquest (448-1066)

1. CELTIC LITERATURE.—During this period four languages were used for literary communication in the British Islands; two Celtic tongues spoken by nations of that race, who still occupied large portions of the country; Latin, as elsewhere the organ of the church and of learning; and Anglo-Saxon. The first of the Celtic tongues, the Erse or Gaelic, was common only to the Celts of Ireland and Scotland, where it is still spoken. The second, that of the Cymrians or ancient Britons, has been preserved by the Welsh.

The literary remains of this period in Ireland consist of bardic songs and historical legends, some of which are asserted to be older than the ninth century, the date of the legendary collection called the “Psalter of Cashel,” which still survives. There exist, also, valuable prose chronicles which are believed to contain the substance of others of a very early date, and which furnish an authentic contemporary history of the country in the language of the people from the fifth century. No other modern nation of Europe is able to make a similar boast.

All the earliest relics of the Scotch Celts are metrical. The poems which bear the name of Ossian are professedly celebrations by an eye-witness of events which occurred in the third century. They were first presented to the world in 1762 by Macpherson, a Scotch poet, and represented by him to be translations from the ancient Gaelic poetry handed down by tradition through so many centuries and still found among the Highlands. The question of their authenticity excited a fierce literary controversy which still remains unsettled. By some recent English and German critics, however, Ossian’s poems are considered genuine. The existence of bards among the Celtic nations is well established, and their songs were preserved with pride. The name of Ossian is mentioned by Giraldus Cambrensis in the twelfth century, and that of Fingal, the hero of the legends, was so popular that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries many bishops complained that their people were more familiar with Fingal than with the catechism. The Gaelic original of Ossian was published in 1807.

The literature of the Cymric Celts is particularly interesting, as affording those fragments of British poetry and history from which the magnificent legends were built up to immortalize King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. In the bardic songs and elsewhere, frequent allusion is made to this heroic prince, who with his warriors resisted the Saxon enemies of his country, and who, we are told, died by domestic treason, the flower of the British nobles perishing with him. His deeds were magnified among the Welsh Britons, and among those who sought refuge on the banks of the Loire. The chroniclers wove these traditions into a legendary history of Britain. From this compilation Geoffrey of Monmouth, in the twelfth century, constructed a Latin historical work; and the poets of chivalry, allured by the beauty and pathos of the tale, made it for ages the centre of the most animated pictures of romance.

Many ancient Welsh writings are extant which treat of a wonderful variety of topics, both in prose and verse. The singular pieces called the Triads show a marked character of primitive antiquity. They are collections of historical facts, mythological doctrines, maxims, traditions, and rules for the structure of verse, expressed with extreme brevity, and disposed in groups of three. Among the Welsh metrical remains, some are plausibly assigned to celebrated bards of the sixth century. There is also a considerable stock of old Welsh romances, the most remarkable of which are contained in a series called the “Mabinogi,” or Tales of Youth, many of which have been translated into English. Some of these stories are very similar to the older Norse Sagas, and must have sprung from traditions of a very rude and early generation.

2. LATIN LITERATURE.—The Latin learning of the Dark Ages formed a point of contact between instructed men of all countries. At first it was necessarily adopted,—the native tongues being in their infancy; and it was afterwards so tenaciously adhered to, that the Latin literature of the Middle Ages far exceeds in amount all other. Its cultivation in England arose out of the introduction of Christianity, and its most valued uses related to the church.

Almost all who cultivated Latin learning were ecclesiastics, and by far the larger number of those who became eminent in it were natives of Ireland. Amidst the convulsions which followed the fall of the Roman empire, Ireland was a place of rest and safety to fugitives from England and the Continent, and it contained for some centuries a larger amount of learning than could have been collected in all Europe.

With the introduction of the Christian faith each nation became a member of the ecclesiastical community, and maintained its connection with other nations and with Rome as the common centre; thus communication between different countries received a new impulse. The churches and schools of England received many distinguished foreigners, and many of the native churchmen lived abroad. Of the three scholars who held the highest place in the literature of this period—Bede (d. 735), Alcuin (d. 804), and Erigena (d. 884), (celebrated for his original views in philosophy)—the two last gave the benefit of their talents to France. The writings of the Venerable Bede, as he is called, exhibit an extent of classical scholarship surprising for his time, and his “Ecclesiastical History of England” is to this day a leading authority not only for church annals, but for all public events that occurred in the earlier part of the Saxon period.

3. LITERATURE IN THE ANGLO-SAXON TONGUE.—The remains of Anglo-Saxon literature, both in prose and verse, differ essentially from the specimens of a similar age which come down to us from other nations. The ancestral legends, which were at once the poetry and history of their contemporaries, the Anglo-Saxons entirely neglected; they even avoided the choice of national themes for their poetry, which consisted of ethical reflections and religious doctrines or narratives. They eschewed all expression of impassioned fancy, and embodied in rough but lucid phrases practical information and every-day shrewdness.

Among the Anglo-Saxon metrical monuments three historical poems are still preserved, which embody recollections of the Continent, and must have been composed long before the emigrations to England; of these the most important is the tale of “Beowulf,” consisting of six thousand lines, which is essentially a Norse Saga.

After the introduction of Christianity there appeared many hymns, metrical lives of the saints, and religious and reflective poems. The most remarkable relics of this period are the works attributed to Caedmon (d. 680), whose narrative poems on scriptural events are inspired by a noble tone of solemn imagination.

The melody of the Saxon verse was regulated by syllabic accent or emphasis, and not by quantity, like the classical metres. Alliteration, or the use of several syllables in the same stanza beginning with the same letter, takes the place of rhyme. The alliterative metres and the strained and figurative diction common to the Anglo-Saxon poets was common to the Northmen, and seems to have been derived from them.

Anglo-Saxon prose was remarkable for its straightforward and perspicuous simplicity, and, especially after the time of Alfred, it had a marked preference over the Latin. Translations were early made from the Latin, particularly versions of parts of the Scriptures, which come next, in point of date, to the Moeso-Gothic translation of Ulphilas, and preceded by several generations all similar attempts in any of the new languages of Europe.

The most important monument of Saxon prose literature is the series of historical records arranged together under the name of “The Saxon Chronicle,” which is made up from records kept in the monasteries, probably from the time of Alfred, and brought down to the year 1154.

The illustrious name of Alfred (849-900) closes the record of Anglo-Saxon literature. From him went forth a spirit of moral strength and a thirst for enlightenment which worked marvels among an ignorant and half-barbarous people. Besides his translations from the Scriptures, he made selections from St. Augustine, Bede, and other writers; he translated “The Consolations of Philosophy,” by Boethius, and he incorporates his own reflections with all these authors. It is impossible, at this time, to estimate justly the labors of Alfred, since the obstacles which in his time impeded the acquisition of knowledge cannot even now be conceived. “I have wished to live worthily,” said he, “while I lived, and after my life, to leave to the men who should come after me, my remembrance in good works.”

Period Second. From the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Henry VIII. (1066-1509)

1. LITERATURE IN THE LATIN TONGUE.—The Norman Conquest introduced into England a foreign race of kings and barons, with their military vassals, and churchmen, who followed the conqueror and his successors. The generation succeeding the Conquest gave birth to little that was remarkable, but the twelfth century was particularly distinguished for its classical scholarship, and Norman-French poetry began to find English imitators.

The thirteenth century was a decisive epoch in the constitutional as well as in the intellectual history of England. The Great Charter was extorted from John; the representation of the commons from his successors; the universities were founded or organized; the romantic poetry of France began to be transfused into a language intelligible throughout England; and above all, the Anglo-Saxon tongue was in this century finally transformed into English. Three of the Crusades had already taken place; the other four fell within the next century; and these wars diffused knowledge, and kindled a flame of zeal and devotion to the church.

The only names which adorned the annals of erudition in England in the latter half of the eleventh century were those of two Lombard priests— Lanfranc (d. 1089) and Anselm (d. 1109). They prepared the means for diffusing classical learning among the ecclesiastics, and both acquired high celebrity as theological writers. Their influence was visible on the two most learned men whom the country produced in the next century—John of Salisbury (d. 1181). befriended by Thomas à Becket, and Peter of Blois, the king’s secretary, and an active statesman.

In the thirteenth century, when the teachings of Abelard and Rosellinus had made philosophy the favorite pursuit of the scholars of Europe, England possessed many names which, in this field, stood higher than any others—among them Alexander de Hales, called “the Irrefragable Doctor,” and Johannes Duns Scotus, one of the most acute of thinkers. In the same age, while Scotland sent Michael Scott into Germany, where he prosecuted his studies with a success that earned for him the fame of a sorcerer, a similar character was acquired by Roger Bacon (d. 1292), a Franciscan friar, who made many curious conjectures on the possibility of discoveries which have since been made.

Very few of the historical works of this period possess any merit, except as curious records of fact. Chronicles were kept in the various monasteries, which furnish a series extending through the greater part of the Middle Ages. Among these historians are William of Malmesbury, who belonged properly to the twelfth century; Geoffrey of Monmouth, who preserved for us the stories of Arthur, of Lear, and Cymbeline; Gerald de Barri, or Giraldus Cambrensis; Matthew Paris, a Benedictine monk, of St. Albans; Henry of Huntingdon; Gervase of Tilbury; and Roger de Hoveden.

The spirit of resistance to secular and ecclesiastical tyranny, which now began to show itself among the English people, found also a medium of expression in the Latin tongue. The most biting satires against the church, and the most lively political pasquinades, were thus expressed, and written almost always by churchmen. To give these satires a wider circulation, the Norman-French came to be frequently used, but at the close of the period the English dialect was almost the only organ of this satirical minstrelsy.

The Latin tongue also became the means of preserving and transmitting an immense stock of tales, by which the later poetry of Europe profited largely. One of these legends, narrated by Gervase of Tilbury, suggested to Scott the combat of Marmion with the spectre knight.

A series of fictions called the “Gesta Romanorum” attained great celebrity. It is composed of fables, traditions, and familiar pictures of society, varying with the different countries it passed through. The romance of Apollonius, in the Gesta, furnished the plot of two or three of Chaucer’s tales, and of Gower’s most celebrated poem, which again gave the ground-work of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The Merchant of Venice, the Three Black Crows, and Parnell’s Hermit, are indebted also to the Gesta Romanorum.

4. LITERATURE IN NORMAN-FRENCH.—From the preference of the Norman kings of England for the poets of their own country, the distinguished literary names of the first two centuries after the Conquest are those of Norman poets. One of the chief of these is Wace (fl. 1160), who composed in French his “Brut d’Angleterre” (Brutus of England), the mythical son of Aeneas and founder of Britain. The Britons settled in Cornwall, Wales, and Bretagne had long been distinguished for their traditionary legends, which were at length collected by Geoffrey of Monmouth (fl. 1138), and gravely related by him in Latin as serious history. This production, composed of incredible stories, furnished the ground-work for Wace’s poem, and proved an unfailing resource for writers of romantic narration for two centuries; at a later period Shakspeare drew from it the story of Lear; Sackville that of Ferrex and Porrex; Drayton reproduced it in his Poly-Olbion, and Milton and other poets frequently draw allusions from it. The Romances of chivalry, drawn from the same source, were composed for the English court and nobles, and the translation of them was the most frequent use to which the infant English was applied. They imprinted on English poetry characteristics which it did not lose for centuries, if it can be said to have lost them at all.

A poetess known as Marie of France made copious use of British materials, and addressed herself to a king, supposed to have been Henry VI. Her twelve lays, which celebrate the marvels of the Round Table, are among the most beautiful relics of the Middle Ages, and were freely used by Chaucer and other English poets.

The romances are, many of them, in parts at least, delightfully imaginative, spirited, or pathetic, and their history is important as illustrating mediaeval manners and customs, and for their connection with early English literature. Among the oldest of these romances is “Havelok,” relating to the early Norse settlement in England, the “Gest of King Horn,” and “Guy of Warwick.”

But of all the French romances, the most interesting by far are those that celebrate the glory and fall of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. The order in which they were composed seems to have been the same with that of the events narrated.

First comes the romance of “The Saint Graal,” relating the history of this sacred relic which was carried by Joseph of Arimathea or his descendants into Britain, where it vanished for ages from the eyes of sinful men.

Second, the romance of “Merlin,” which derives its name from the fiend-born prophet and magician, celebrates the birth and exploits of Arthur, and the gathering round him of the Knights of the Round Table. The historic origin of this story is from Geoffrey of Monmouth, though it is disguised by its supernatural and chivalrous features.

In the third romance, that of Launcelot, the hero nurtured by the Lady of the Lake in her fairy realm beneath the waters, grows up the bravest champion of chivalry, admired for all its virtues, although guilty of treachery to Arthur, and from his guilt is to ensue the destruction of the land.

Fourth, the “Quest of the Saint Graal” relates the solitary wanderings of the knights in this search, and how the adventure is at last achieved by Sir Gallahad, who, while the vision passes before him, prays that he may no longer live, and is immediately taken away from a world of calamity and sin.

Fifth, “The Mort Artus,” or Death of Arthur, winds up with supernatural horrors the tale into which the fall of the ancient Britons had been thus transformed. Arthur, wounded and dying, is carried by the fairy of the lake to the enchanted island of Avalon, there to dream away the ages that must elapse before his return to reign over the perfected world of chivalry.

Sixth, “The Adventures of Tristram,” or Tristan, is a repetition of those which had been attributed to Launcelot of the Lake.

These six romances of the British cycle, the originals of all others, were written in the latter half of the twelfth century for the English court and nobles, some of them at the suggestion of king Henry II. Although, composed in French, the authors were Englishmen, and from these prose romances the poets of France constructed many metrical romances which in the fifteenth century reappeared as English metrical romances.

5. SAXON ENGLISH.—The Saxon tongue of England decayed, but like the healthy seed in the ground it germinated again. The Saxon Chronicle which had been kept in the monasteries ceased abruptly on the accession of Henry II., 1154, and at the same period the Saxon language began to take a form in which the beginning of the present English is apparent.

During the thirteenth century appeared a series of rhyming chroniclers, the chief of whom were Layamon and Robert of Gloucester. All the remains of the English tongue, in its transition state, are chiefly in verse; among them are the “Ormulum” (so called from the name of the author, Ormin), which is a metrical harmony of passages from the gospels contained in the service of the mass, and the long fable of “The Owl and the Nightingale,” one of the most pleasing of these early relics. “The Land of Cockayne,” a satirical poem, said to have been written by Michael of Kildare, belongs also to the thirteenth century, as well as many anonymous poems, both amatory and religious.

The old English drama was almost contemporaneous with the formation of the Old English language; but all dramatic efforts previous to the sixteenth century were so rude as to deserve little notice.

6. LITERATURE IN THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.—The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the afternoon and evening of the Middle Ages, are the picturesque period in English history. In the contemporary chronicle of Froissart, the reign of Edward III. shines with a long array of knightly pageants, and a loftier cast of imaginative adornment is imparted by the historical dramas of Shakspeare to the troubled rule of the house of Lancaster and the crimes and fall of the brief dynasty of York.

The reign of Edward II. was as inglorious in literature as in the history of the nation. That of his son was not more remarkable for the victories of Poictiers and Cressy than for the triumphs in poetry and thought. The Black Prince, the model of historic chivalry, and Occam, the last and greatest of the English scholastic philosophers, lived in the same century with Chaucer, the father of English poetry, and Wickliffe, the herald of the Reformation.

The earlier half of the fourteenth century, in its literary aspects, may be regarded as a separate period from the later. The genius of the nation seemed to sleep. England, indeed, was the birth-place of Occam (1300-1347), but he neither remained in his own country, nor imparted any strong impulse to his countrymen. Educated abroad, he lived chiefly In France, and died in Munich. While the writings of his master, Duns Scotus (d. 1308), were the chief authorities of the metaphysical sect called Realists, Occam himself was the ablest and one of the earliest writers among the Nominalists. While the former of these sects was held especially favorable to the Romish Church, the latter was discouraged as heretical, and Occam was persecuted for enunciating those opinions which are now held in one form or another by almost all metaphysicians. No eminent names appear in the ecclesiastical literature of this period, nor in that of the spoken tongue; but the dawn of English literature was close at hand.

The latter half of this century was a remarkable era in the ecclesiastical and intellectual progress of England. Many colleges were founded, and learning had munificent patrons. The increase of papal power led to claims which were resisted by the clergy as well as by the parliament. Foremost among those who called for reform was the celebrated John Wickliffe (1324-1384). A priest of high fame for his knowledge and logical dexterity, he was placed at the head of several of the colleges of Oxford, and there, and from the country parsonages to which he was afterwards compelled to retreat, he thundered forth his denunciations against the abuses of the church, attacked the papal supremacy, and set forth doctrinal views of his own nearly approaching to Calvinism. Although repeatedly called to account for his opinions he was never even imprisoned, and he enjoyed his church-livings to the last. But the church was weakened by the Great Schism, and he was protected by powerful nobles. Soon after his death, however, a storm of persecution burst on his disciples, which crushed dissent till the sixteenth century. We owe to Wickliffe the earliest version of the Scriptures into English, which is among the first prose writings in the old tongue.

The very oldest book in English prose, however, is the account given by Sir John Mandeville of his thirty-three years’ travel in the East, from which he returned about 1355. It is an odd and amusing compound of facts and marvelous stories. But the best specimens of English prose of this period are Chaucer’s translation of Boethius, his “Testament of Love,” and two of his Canterbury Tales.

In poetical literature, “The Vision of Piers Plowman,” written (1362) by a priest named Robert Langland, is one of the highest works in point of genius and one of the most curious as illustrating manners and opinions. The poet supposes himself falling asleep on Malvern Hills, and in his vision he describes the vices of the times in an allegorical form, which has been compared to “The Pilgrim’s Progress.” The poetical vigor of many passages is extraordinary.

John Gower (d. 1408), a contemporary and friend of Chaucer, is chiefly remembered for his “Confessio Amantis,” or Lover’s Confession, a long English poem, containing physical, metaphysical, and ethical reflections and stories taken from the common repertories of the Middle Ages. It is tedious, and often feeble, but it has many excellences of language and description.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400) was born in London. He was early thrown into public life and intimacy with men of high rank. John of Gaunt was his chief patron, and he was several times employed in embassies to France and Italy. A very large proportion of Chaucer’s writings consists of free versions from the Latin and French, and perhaps also from the Italian; but in some of these he has incorporated so much that is his own as to make them the most celebrated and valuable of his works. His originals were not the chivalrous romances, but the comic Fabliaux, and the allegorical poetry cultivated by the Trouvères and Troubadours. Three of his largest minor works are thus borrowed; the “Romance of the Rose,” from one of the most popular French poems of the preceding century; “Troilus and Cressida,” a free translation, probably, from Boccaccio; and the “Legend of Good Women,” founded on Ovid’s Epistles. The poetical immortality of Chaucer rests on his “Canterbury Tales,” a series of stories linked together by an ingenious device. A party of about thirty persons, the poet being one, are bound on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury; each person is to tell two tales, one in going, and the other in returning. Twenty-four only of the stories are related, but they extend to more than 17,000 lines. In the prologue, itself a poem of great merit, the poet draws up the curtain from a scene of life and manners which has not been surpassed in subsequent literature, a picture whose figures have been studied with the truest observation, and are outlined with the firmest, yet most delicate pencil. The vein of sentiment in these tales is always unaffected, cheerful, and manly, the most touching seriousness varying with the keenest humor. In some the tone rises to the highest flight of heroic, reflective, and even religious poetry; while in others it sinks below coarseness into positive licentiousness of thought and sentiment.

LITERATURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—The fifteenth century, usually marked in continental history as the epoch of the Revival of Classical Learning, was not in England a period of erudition or of original invention. The unwise and unjust wars with France, the revolts of the populace, and the furious struggles between the partisans of the rival houses desolated the country, and blighted and dwarfed all intellectual growth. For more than a hundred years after the death of Chaucer, scarcely any names of mark distinguish the literary annals of England, and the poetical compositions of this period are principally valuable as specimens of the rapid transition of the language into modern English. Almost all the literary productions previous to the time of Chaucer were designed only for a limited audience. Neither comprehensive observation of society nor a wish to instruct or please a wide circle of readers was observable before this period. Chaucer was indeed a national poet, an active and enlightened teacher of all classes of men who were susceptible of literary instruction.

John Lydgate (d. 1430), a Benedictine monk, the best and most popular poet of the fifteenth century, began to write before the death of Chaucer, but in passing from the works of the latter to those of Lydgate, we seem to be turning from the open highway into the dark, echoing cloisters. If he was the pupil of Chaucer in manner and style, his masters in opinion and sentiment were the compilers of the “Gesta Romanorum.”

Stephen Hawes, who wrote in the reign of Henry VII., is the author of “The Pastime of Pleasure,” an allegorical poem in the same taste as the “Romance of the Rose.” This allegorical school of poetry, so widely spread through the Middle Ages, reappears in the Elizabethan age, where the same turn of thought is seen in the immortal “Faerie Queene.”

In leaving this period we bid adieu to metrical romances, which, introduced into English in the latter half of the thirteenth century, continued to be composed until the middle of the fifteenth century, and were to the last almost always translations or imitations. Chivalrous stories next began to be related in prose. The most famous of these, one of the best specimens of Old English, and the most delightful of all repositories of romantic fiction is the “Mort Arthur,” in which Sir Thomas Mallory, a priest in the reign of Edward IV., combined into one narrative the leading adventures of the Round Table.

As the romances ceased to be produced, the ballads gradually took their place, many of which indeed are either fragments or abridgments of them. The ballad-poetry was to the popular audience what the recital of the romances had been among the nobles. The latter half of the fifteenth century appears to have been fertile in minstrels and minstrelsy. “Chevy Chase,” of which Sir Philip Sidney said it would move him like the blast of a trumpet, is one of the most ancient; but, according to Hallam, it relates to a totally fictitious event. The ballad of “Robin Hood” had probably as little origin in fact.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a mighty revolution took place. William Caxton, a merchant of London residing abroad, became acquainted with the recently invented art of printing, and embraced it as a profession. He introduced it into England about 1474, and practiced it for nearly twenty years. He printed sixty-four works in all, and the low state of taste and information in the public for which they were designated is indicated by the selection. But the enterprise and patience of Caxton hastened the time when this mighty discovery became available in England, and his name deserves to stand with honor at the close of the survey of English literature in the Middle Ages. Thenceforth literary works were to undergo a total change of character, brought about by many causes, but none more active than the substitution of the printed book for the manuscript.

6. THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES IN SCOTLAND.—From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there might be collected the names of a few scholastic theologians of Scottish birth, whose works have survived; but they spent their lives mostly on the continent, as was the case with Michael Scott, who gained his fame as a wizard at the court of the Emperor Frederic II. His extant writings are wholly inferior to those of Friar Bacon, his contemporary.

Two metrical romances of note belong to the fourteenth century, the “Original Cronykil” of Andrew Wyntoun (d. 1420), a long history of Scotland, and of the world at large; and “The Bruce” of John Barbour (d. 1396), a narrative of the adventures of King Robert in more than thirteen thousand rhymed lines. Dramatic vigor and occasional breadth of sentiment entitle this poem to a high rank. Sir Walter Scott, in his “Lord of the Isles,” owes much to “The Bruce.”

The earliest Scottish poem of the fifteenth century, “The King’s Quair,” or Book, in which James I. (d. 1437) celebrates the lady whom he afterwards married, presents no traces of a distinct Scottish dialect. But James was educated in England, and probably wrote there, and his pleasing poem exhibits the influence of those English writers whom he acknowledges as his masters. From this time, however, the development of the language of Scotland into a dialect went rapidly on. The “Wallace” of Henry the Minstrel, or Blind Harry, rivaled the “Bruce” in popularity, on account of the more picturesque character of the incidents, its passionate fervor, and the wildness of fancy by which it is distinguished.

Towards the close of this century, and in the beginning of the next, Scottish poetry, now couched in a dialect decidedly peculiar, was cultivated by men of high genius. Robert Henryson (d. 1400) wrote “The Testament of the Faire Cresside,” a continuation of Chaucer’s poem, and “Robin and Makyne,” a beautiful pastoral, preserved in Percy’s “Reliques.”

More vigorous in thought and fancy, though inferior in skill and expression, was Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld (d. 1522). His “King Hart” and “Palace of Honor” are complex allegories; and his translation of the Aeneid is the earliest attempt to render classical poetry into the living language of the country.

William Dunbar (d. 1520), the best British poet of his age, exhibits a versatility of talent which has rarely been equaled; but in his comic and familiar pieces, the grossness of language and sentiment destroys the effect of their force and humor. Allegory is his favorite field. In his “Golden Terge,” the target is Reason, a protection against the assaults of love. “The Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins” is wonderfully striking; but the design even of this remarkable poem could not be decorously described.

While Scotland thus redeemed the poetical character of the fifteenth century, her living tongue was used only in versified compositions. Scottish prose does not appear in any literary shape until the first decade of the sixteenth century.

Period Third

From the accession or HENRY VIII. TO THE PRESENT TIME (1509-1884).

1. AGE OF THE REFORMATION.—In the early part of the sixteenth century human intellect began to be stirred by impulses altogether new, while others, which had as yet been held in check, were allowed, one after another, to work freely. But there was no sudden or universal metamorphosis in literature, or in those phenomena by which its form and spirit were determined. It was not until 1568, when the reign of Elizabeth was within thirty years of its close, that English literature assumed a character separating it decisively from that of the ages which had gone before, and took its station as the worthy organ of a new epoch in the history of civilization. But the literary poverty of the age of the Reformation was the poverty which the settler in a new country experiences, while he fells the woods and sows his half-tilled fields; a poverty, in the bosom of which lay rich abundance.

The students of classical learning profited at first more than others by the diffusion of the art of printing, from the greater number of classical works which, were given to the press. Foreign men of letters visited England; Erasmus, especially, gave a strong impulse to study, and Greek and Latin were learned with an accuracy never before attained. Among the scholars of the time were Cardinals Pole and Wolsey, Ridley, Ascham, and Sir Thomas More, the author of the “Utopia,” a romance in the scholastic garb. It describes an imaginary commonwealth, the chief feature of which is a community of property, on an imaginary island, from which the book takes its name. The epithet “Utopian” is still used as descriptive of chimerical schemes.

The most important works in the living tongue were those devoted to theology, and first among them were the translations of the Scriptures into English, none of which had been publicly attempted since that of Wickliffe. In 1526, William Tyndale (afterwards strangled and burnt for heresy, at Antwerp), translated the New Testament, and the five books of Moses. In 1537, after the final breach of Henry VIII. with Rome, there was published the first complete translation of the Bible, by Miles Coverdale. Many others followed until the accession of Mary, when the circulation of the translation was made in secrecy and fear. The theological writers of this period are chiefly controversial. Among them are Ridley, famous as a preacher; Cranmer, remarkable for his patronage of theological learning, and Latimer (d. 1555), whose sermons and letters are highly instructive and interesting. The “Book of Martyrs,” by John Fox (d. 1527), was printed towards the close of this period.

The miscellaneous writings of this age in prose are most valuable as specimens of the language in its earliest maturity. None of them are entitled to high rank as monuments of English literature. The style of Sir Thomas More (1480-1535) had great excellence; but his works were only the recreation of an accomplished man in a learned age. The writings of the learned Ascham (1515-1565) have a value not to be measured by their inconsiderable bulk. Their language is pure, idiomatic, vigorous English; and they exhibit a great variety of knowledge, remarkable sagacity, and sound common sense. His most celebrated work, the “Schoolmaster,” proposes improvements in education for which there is still both room and need. Thomas Wilson, who wrote a treatise on the “Art of Logic” and “Rhetoric,” may be considered the first critical writer in the living tongue.

The poetry of England during the reigns of Henry VIII. and his immediate successors is like the prose, valuable for its relation to other things, rather than for its own merit. Yet it occupies a higher place than the prose; it exhibits a decided contrast to that of the times past, and in many points bears a close resemblance to the poetry of the energetic age that was soon to open.

The names of the poets of this age may be arrayed in three groups, headed by Skelton, Surrey, and Sackville. The poems of Skelton (d. 1529) are singularly though coarsely energetic. He was the tutor of Henry VIII., and during the greater part of the reign of his pupil he continued to satirize social and ecclesiastical abuses. His poems are exceedingly curious and grotesque, and the volubility with which he vents his acrid humors is truly surprising. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516-1547), opened a new era in English poetry, and by his foreign studies, and his refinement of taste and feeling, was enabled to turn poetical literature into a path as yet untrodden, although in vigor and originality this ill-fated poet was inferior to others who have been long forgotten. His works consist of sonnets and poems of a lyrical and amatory cast, and a translation of the Aeneid. He first introduced the sonnet, and the refined and sentimental turn of thought borrowed from Petrarch and the other Italian masters. In his Aeneid he introduced blank verse, a form of versification in which the noblest English poetry has since been couched. This was also taken from Italy, where it had appeared only in the century. Surrey’s versions of some of the Psalms, and those of his contemporary, Sir Thomas Wyatt, are the most polished of the many similar attempts made at that time, among which was the collection of Sternhold and Hopkins.

Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst (1686-1608) wrote those portions most worthy of notice, of the “Mirror for Magistrates,” a collection of poems celebrating illustrious but unfortunate personages who figure in the history of England. From his “Induction,” or preparatory poem, later writers have drawn many suggestions.

The dramatic exhibitions of the Middle Ages, which originated in the church, or were soon appropriated by the clergy, were of a religious cast, often composed by priests and monks who were frequently the performers of them in the convents. All the old religious plays called Mysteries were divided into Miracles, or Miracle plays, founded on Bible narratives or legends of the saints; and Moralities or Moral plays, which arose out of the former by the introduction of imaginary features and allegorical personages, the story being so constructed as to convey an ethical or religious lesson. They became common in England about the time of the reign of Henry VI. (1422-1461). Some of the Miracle plays treated of all the events of Bible history, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment; they were acted on festivals, and the performance often lasted more than one day. The most sacred things are here treated with undue freedom, and the broadest and coarsest mirth is introduced to keep the attention of the rude audience. Many of them had a character called Iniquity, whose avowed function was that of buffoonery. The Mysteries were not entirely overthrown by the Reformation, the Protestant Bishop Bale having composed several, intended to instruct the people in the errors of popery. After the time of Henry VIII. these plays are known by the name of Interludes, the most celebrated of which are those by John Heywood (the epigrammatist). They deal largely in satire, and are not devoid of spirit and humor. But they have little skill in character-painting, and little interest in the story.

About the middle of the century (sixteenth) the drama extricated itself completely from its ancient fetters, and both comedy and tragedy began to exist in a rude reality. The oldest known comedy was written by Nicholas Udall (d. 1556); it has the title of “Ralph Roister Doister,” a personage whose misadventures are represented with much comic force.

Ten years later the earliest tragedy, known by two names, “Gorboduc” and “Ferrex and Porrex,” was publicly played in the Lower Temple. It is founded on the traditions of fabulous British history, and is believed to have been written by Thomas Norton and Lord Buckhurst. The chief merit of this earliest English tragedy lies in its stately language and solemnly reflective tone of sentiment.

2. THE AGE OF SPENSER, SHAKSPEARE, BACON, AND MILTON (1558-1660).—The prose of this illustrious period is vast in amount and various in range. The study of the Oriental languages and other pursuits bearing on theology were prosecuted with success, and many of the philosophical and polemical writings were composed in Latin. A second series of translations of the Scriptures were among the most important works of the time. The first of the three versions which now appeared (1560), came from a knot of English and Scotch exiles who sought refuge in Geneva, and their work, known as the Geneva Bible, though not adopted by the Church of England, long continued in favor with the English Puritans and Scotch Presbyterians. Cranmer’s version was next revised (1568) under the superintendence of Matthew Parker, archbishop of Canterbury, eminent among the fathers of the English church, and called the Bishops’ Bible, a majority of fifteen translators having been selected from the bench. The Catholic version, known as the Douay Bible, appeared in 1610. Our current translation, which also appeared in 1610, during the reign of James I., occupied forty-seven learned men, assisted by other eminent scholars, for a period of three years.

Among theological writings, the “Ecclesiastical Polity” of Hooker (1553-1600) is a striking effort of philosophical thinking, and in point of eloquence one of the noblest monuments of the language. More than Ciceronian in its fullness and dignity of style, it wears with all its richness a sober majesty which is equally admirable and rare. The sermons of Bishop Andrews (1565-1626), though corrupt as models of style, made an extraordinary impression, and contain more than any other works of the kind the inwrought materials of oratory. The sermons of Donne (1573-1631), while they are superior in style, are sometimes fantastic, like his poetry, but they are never coarse, and they derive a touching interest from his history.

But the most eloquent of all the old English divines are the two celebrated prelates of the reign of Charles I., Joseph Hall (1574-1656) and Jeremy Taylor (1613-1671), alike eminent for Christian piety and conscientious zeal. Besides his pulpit discourses, Bishop Hall has left a series of “Contemplations” on passages of the Bible, and “Meditations,” which are particularly rich in beautiful descriptions. Among the most practical and popular of Taylor’s works are his “Holy Living” and “Holy Dying,” while his sermons distinguish him as one of the great ornaments of the English pulpit. The chief theologian of the close of the period was Richard Baxter (1615-1691). His works have great value for their originality and acuteness of thought, and for their vigorous and passionate though unpolished eloquence. His “Call to the Unconverted” and “The Saint’s Everlasting Rest” deserve their wide popularity. Among the semi-theological writers of the time are Fuller, Cudworth, and Henry More, Fuller (1608-1661) is most widely known through his “Worthies of England,” a book of lively and observant gossip. Cudworth and More, his contemporaries, deviated in their philosophical writings from the tendencies of Bacon and the sensualistlc doctrines of Hobbes, and regarded existence rather from the spiritual point of view of Plato; in the preceding generation, the skepticism of Lord Herbert of Cherbury taught a different lesson from theirs.

In this period we encounter in the philosophical field two of the strongest thinkers who have appeared in modern Europe, Bacon and Hobbes. Bacon (1561-1620) aimed at the solution of two great problems, the answers to which were intended to constitute the “Instauratio Magna,” the great Restoration of Philosophy, that colossal work, towards which the chief writings of this illustrious author were contributions. The first problem was an Analytic Classification of all departments of Human Knowledge, which occupies a portion of his treatise “On the Advancement of Learning.” Imperfect and erroneous as his scheme may be allowed to be, D’Alembert and his coadjutors in the last century were able to do no more than to copy and distort it. In his “Novum Organum” he undertakes to supply certain deficiencies of the Aristotelian system of logic, and expounds his mode of philosophizing; he was the first to unfold the inductive method, which he did in so masterly a way, that he has earned, with posterity, the title of the father of experimental science. His “Essays,” from the excellence of their style and the interesting nature of the subjects, are the most generally read of all the author’s productions. No English writer surpasses Bacon in fervor and brilliancy of style, in force of expression, or in richness and significance of imagery. His writings, though they received during his lifetime the neglect for which he had proudly prepared himself, gave a mighty impulse to scientific thought for at least a century after his time. In his will, the following strikingly prophetic passage is found: “My name and memory I leave to foreign nations, and to mine own country, after some time is passed over.”

The influence of Hobbes on philosophy in England has been greater than that of Bacon. In politics, his theory is that of uncontrolled absolutism, subjecting religion and morality to the will of the sovereign; in ethics he resolves all our impulses regarding right and wrong into self-love. His reasoning is close and consistent, and if his premises are granted, it is hardly possible to avoid his conclusions. Other departments in the prose literature of this period were amply filled and richly adorned. Speculations upon the Theory of Society and Civil Polity were frequent. Among them are the Latin works of Bellenden “On the State,” the “New Atlantis,” a romance by Lord Bacon, the “Oceana” of Harrington, and the “Leviathan” of Hobbes.

In the collection of materials for national history the period was exceedingly active. Camden and Selden stand at the head of the band of antiquaries. Hobbes wrote in his old age “Behemoth, or a History of the Civil Wars,” and the “Turkish History” of Knolles has been pronounced one of the most spirited narratives in the language.

Sir Walter Raleigh (1552-1618), while lying in the Tower under sentence of death, wrote a “History of the World,” from the Creation to the Republic of Rome. The narrative is spirited and pervaded by a tone of devout sentiment.

The accomplished Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), in his “Defense of Poesy,” pays an eloquent tribute to the value of the most powerful of all the literary arts. His “Arcadia” is a ponderous combination of romantic and pastoral incidents, the unripe production of a young poet, but it abounds in isolated passages beautiful alike in sentiment and language.

Towards the close of the period, Milton manifested extraordinary power in prose writing; his defense of the “Liberty of Unlicensed Printing” is one of the most impressive pieces of eloquence in the English tongue. His style is more Latinized than that of most of his contemporaries, and this exotic infection pervades both his terms and his arrangement; yet he has passages marvelously sweet, and others in which the grand sweep of his sentences emulates the cathedral music of Hooker.

The press now began to pour forth shoals of short novels, romances, and essays, and pamphlets on various subjects. Among other productions is Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy,” a storehouse of odd learning and quaintly-original ideas; it is deficient, however, in style and power of consecutive reasoning. Far above Burton in eloquence and strength of thought is Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682), whose writings have all the characteristics of the age in a state of extravagant exaggeration. The thoughtful melancholy, the singular mixture of skepticism and credulity, and the brilliancy of imaginative illustration, give his essays a peculiarity of character that renders them exceedingly fascinating. The poet Cowley, in his prose writings, is distinguished for his undeviating simplicity and perspicuity, and for smoothness and ease, of which hardly another instance could be produced from any other book written before the Restoration.

The English drama has been called Irregular in contrast to the Regular drama of Greece and that of modern France, founded upon the Greek, by the French critics of the age of Louis XIV. The principal law of this system, as we have seen, prescribed obedience to the Three Unities, of Time, of Place, and of Action; the two first being founded on the desire to imitate in the drama the series of events which it represents, the time of action was allowed to extend to twenty-four hours, and the scene to change from place to place in the same city. But by Shakspeare and his contemporaries no fixed limits were acknowledged in regard either of time or place, the action stretching through many years, and the scene changing to very wide distances. The rule prescribing unity of action, that everything shall be subordinate to the series of events which is taken as the guiding-thread, is a much more sound one; and in most of Shakspeare’s works, as well as those of his contemporaries, this unity of impression, as it has been called, is fully preserved.

Before the year 1585 no perceptible advance had been made in the drama, and for the period of sixty years, from that date to the closing of the theatres in 1645, on the breaking out of the Civil War, the history of Shakspeare’s works forms the leading thread. Men of eminent genius lived around and after him, but there were none who do not derive much of their importance from the relation in which they stand to him, and hardly any whose works do not owe much of their excellence to the influence of his.

Thus considered, the stages through which the drama now passed may be said to have been four, three of which occurred chiefly during the life of the poet, the fourth after his death. The first of these periods witnessed the early manhood of Shakspeare, and closes about 1593. Among his immediate predecessors and coadjutors were Marlowe and Greene. The plays of Marlowe (1562-1593) are stately tragedies, serious in purpose, energetic and often extravagant in passion and in language, and richly and pompously imaginative. His “Tragical History of Doctor Faustus” is one of the finest poems in the language. The productions of Greene are loose, legendary plays of a form exemplified in Cymbeline.

To the first period of the dramatic life of Shakspeare (1564-1616) belong the “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” the “Comedy of Errors,” and “Love’s Labor’s Lost,” which show that the mighty master, even in these juvenile essays, had taken a wide step beyond the dramas of the time. Pure comedy had no existence in England until he created it, and in these comedies it is evident that everything is juvenile, unripe, and marvelously unlike the grand pictures of life which he soon afterwards began to paint. But if he was more than a student in this first stage of his progress, he was a teacher and model ever after. The second period for Shakspeare and the drama closes with the year 1600. During this most active part of his literary life, he produced eight comedies, and re-wrote “Romeo and Juliet.” But the most elevated works of these six years were his magnificent series of historical plays. The series after 1600 began with the great tragedies, Othello, Hamlet (recomposed), Macbeth, and Lear, followed by Henry VIII., the three tragedies on Roman subjects, and the three singular pieces, “Timon of Athens,” “Troilus and Cressida,” and “Measure for Measure,” apparently of the same date. “Cymbeline” and the “Winter’s Tale” were probably composed after he had retired from the turmoil of his profession to the repose of his early home. In the “Tempest.” doubtless his last work, he peopled his haunted island with a group of beings whose conception indicates a greater variety of imagination, and in some points a greater depth of thought than any others which he has bequeathed to us.

The name of Shakspeare is the greatest in all literature. No man ever came near him in creative power—no man had ever such strength combined with such variety of imagination. Of all authors, he is the most natural in his style, and yet there is none whose words are so musical in arrangement, so striking and picturesque in themselves, or contain so many thoughts. Every page furnishes instances of that intensifying of expression, where some happy word conveys a whole train of ideas condensed into a single luminous point—words so new, so full of meaning, yet so unforced and natural, that the rudest mind intuitively perceives their meaning, and yet which no study could improve or imitate. This constitutes the most striking peculiarity of the Shakspearean language, and while it justifies the almost idolatrous veneration of his countrymen, renders him, of all writers, the most untranslatable. Of all authors, Shakspeare has least imitated or repeated himself. While he gives us, in many places, portraits of the same passion, the delineations are as distinct and dissimilar as they are in nature; all his personages involuntarily, and in spite of themselves, express their own characters. From his works may be gleaned a complete collection of precepts adapted to every condition of life and every conceivable circumstance of human affairs. His wit is unbounded, his passion inimitable, and over all he has thrown a halo of human sympathy no less tender than his genius was immeasurable and profound.

The effect of Shakspeare’s influence on his contemporaries was predominating in everything but the moral aspect of his plays. The licentiousness, begun in the earlier years of the seventeenth century, increased with accelerated speed down to the closing of the theatres by the Civil War.

Highest by far, in poetical and dramatic value, stand the works of Beaumont (1586-1615) and Fletcher (1576-1625). Many of them are said to have been written by the two jointly, a few by the former alone, and a large number by the latter after he had lost his friend; such alliances in dramatic poetry were common in England at this period. But the looseness of fancy which deformed the drama, and which degenerated at last into deliberate licentiousness, is nowhere so glaring as in these finest and most imaginative productions of their day, and which are poetically superior to all of the kind in the language, except those of Shakspeare.

The classical model was closely approached by Ben Jonson (1574-1637) in both tragedy and comedy, and he deserves immortality for other reasons than his comparative purity of morals. He was the one man of his time besides Shakspeare who deserves to be called a reflective artist, who perceived the rules of art and worked in obedience to them. His tragedies are stately, eloquent, and poetical; his comedies are more faithful poetic portraits of contemporary English life than those of any other dramatist, Shakspeare excepted.

Jonson wrote for men of sense and knowledge; Beaumont and Fletcher for men of fashion and the world. A similar audience to that of Jonson may have been aimed at in the stately tragedies of Chapman, and the other class would have relished the plays of Middleton and Webster.

Among the dramatists of the commonalty may be named Thomas Heywood, one of the most moral play writers of his time, who has sometimes been called the prose Shakspeare, and Decker, a voluminous writer, who cooperated in several plays of more celebrated men, especially those of Massinger.

The closing period of the old English drama is represented by Massinger, Ford, and Shirley. Massinger (1584-1640) is by some critics ranked next to Shakspeare. The theatres have retained unaltered his “New Way to Pay Old Debts,” and his “Fatal Dowry” is preserved in Rowe’s plagiarism from it, in the “Fair Penitent.” But the low moral tone of the time is indicated in all these works, in which heroic sentiments, rising often even to religious rapture, are mingled with scenes of the grossest ribaldry.

By Ford, incidents of the most revolting kind are laid down as the foundation of his plots, upon which he wastes a pathos and tenderness deeper than is elsewhere found in the drama; and with Shirley vice is no longer held up as a mere picture, but it is indicated, and sometimes directly recommended, as a fit example. When the drama was at length suppressed, the act destroyed a moral nuisance.

Spenser (1553-1599), among the English poets, stands lower only than Shakspeare, Chaucer, and Milton. His works unite rare genius with moral purity, exquisite sweetness of language, luxuriant beauty of imagination, and a tenderness of feeling rarely surpassed, and never elsewhere conjoined with an imagination so vivid. His magnificent poem, the “Faerie Queene,” though it contains many thousand lines, is yet incomplete, no more than half of the original design being executed. The diction is studded purposely with forms of expression already become antiquated, and many peculiarities are forced upon the author from the difficulties of the complex measure which he was the first to adopt, and which still bears his name.

The Fairy Land of Spenser is rather the Land of Chivalry than the region we are accustomed to understand by that term; a scene in which heroic daring and ideal purity are the objects chiefly presented to our imagination, in which the principal personages are knights achieving perilous adventures, ladies rescued from frightful miseries, and good and evil enchanters, whose spells affect the destiny of those human persons. Spenser would probably not have written precisely as he did, if Ariosto had not written before him; nor is it unlikely that he was also guided by the later example of Tasso; but his design was in many features nobler and more arduous than that of either. His deep seriousness is unlike the mocking tone of the “Orlando Furioso,” and in his moral enthusiasm he rises higher than the “Jerusalem;” although the poetic effect of his work is marred by his design of producing a series of ethical allegories.

The hero is the chivalrous Arthur of the British legends, but wrapt in a cloud of symbols. Gloriana, the Faërie Queene, who was to be the object of the prince’s warmest love, was herself an emblem of Virtuous Renown, and designed also to represent the poet’s queen, Elizabeth. All the incidents are significant of moral truth, and all the personages are allegorical. The adventures of the characters, connected by no tie, except the occasional interposition of Arthur, form really six independent poetic tales. The First Book, by far the finest of all, relates the Legend of the Red Cross Knight, who is a type of Holiness, and who shadows forth the history of the Church of England. In the second, which abounds in exquisite painting of picturesque landscapes, we have the Legend of Sir Guyon, illustrating the virtue of Temperance. The theme of the Third Book is the Legend of Britomart, or of Chastity, in which we are introduced to Belphoebe and Amoret, two of those beautiful female characters which the poet takes such pleasure in delineating. Next comes the Legend of Friendship, personified in the knights Cambel and Triamond. In the Fifth Book, containing the Legends of Sir Artegal, the emblem of Justice, there is a perceptible falling off. The Sixth Book, the Legend of Sir Calidore, or Courtesy, though it lacks unity, is in some scenes inspired with the warmest glow of fancy.

The mind of Spenser embraced a vast range of imaginary creation, but the interest of real life is wanting. His world is ideal, abstract, and remote, yet affording in its multiplied scenes ample scope for those nobler feelings and heroic virtues which we love to see even in transient connection with human nature.

The non-dramatic poets of this time begin with Spenser and end with Milton, and between these two there were writers of great excellence. The vice of the age was a laboring after conceits or novel turns of thought, usually false, and resting upon some equivocation of language or remote analogy. No poet of the time was free from it; Shakspeare indulged in it occasionally, others incessantly, holding its manifestations to be their finest strokes of art.

The poetical works of this age were metrical translations from the classics—narrative, historical, descriptive, didactic, pastoral, and lyrical poems. One of the most beautiful religious poems in any language is “Christ’s Victory and Triumph,” by Giles Fletcher (d. 1623): it is animated in narrative, lively in fancy, and touching in feeling. Drayton (d. 1631) was the author of the “Poly-Olbion,” a topographical description of England, and a signal instance of fine fancy and great command of language, almost thrown away from its prosaic design. Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke), the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, exhibits great powers of philosophical thought, in pointed and energetic diction, in his poem on “Human Learning.” Among the religious poets are “Holy George Herbert” (d. 1632), who, by his life and writings, presented the belief and offices of the church in their most amiable aspect, and Quarles (d. 1644), best known by his “Divine Emblems,” which abound in quaint and grotesque illustrations.

The lyrical poems of the time were numerous, and were written by almost all the poets eminent in other departments. In those of Donne, in spite of their conceits and affectations, are many passages wonderfully fine. Those of Herrick (b. 1591), in graceful fancy and delicate expression, are many of them unsurpassed; in subject and tone they vary from grossly licentious expression to the utmost warmth of devout aspiration. Cowley (1618-1667), the latest and most celebrated of the lyric poets, was gifted with extraordinary poetic sensibility and fancy, but he was prone to strained analogies and unreal refinements. Among the minor lyrical poets are Carew, Ayton, Habington, Suckling, and Lovelace. Denham (1615-1668) and Waller (1605-1687) form a sort of link between the time before the Restoration and that which followed. The “Cooper’s Hill” of the first is a reflective and descriptive poem in heroic verse, and the diversified poems of the last were remarkable advances in ease and correctness of diction and versification.

The poetry of that imaginative period which began with Spenser closes yet more nobly with Milton (1608-1674). He, standing in some respects apart from his stern contemporaries of the Commonwealth as from those who debased literature in the age of the Restoration, yet belongs rather to the older than the newer period. In the midst of evil men and the gloom of evil days the brooding thought of a great poetical work was at length matured, and the Christian epic, chanted at first when there were few disposed to hear, became an enduring monument of genius, learning, and art. His early poems alone would indicate his superiority to all the poets of the period, except Shakspeare and Spenser. The most popular of them, “L’Allegro” and “Il Penseroso,” are the best of their kind in any language. In the “Comus” there are passages exquisite for imagination, for sentiment, and for the musical flow of the rhythm, in which the majestic swell of the poet’s later blank verse begins to be heard. The “Paradise Regained” abounds with passages in themselves beautiful, but the plan is poorly conceived, and the didactic tendency prevails to weariness as the work proceeds. The theme of the “Paradise Lost” is the noblest of any ever chosen. The stately march of its diction; the organ peal with which its versification rolls on; the continual overflowing of beautiful illustrations; the brightly-colored pictures of human happiness and innocence; the melancholy grandeur with which angelic natures are clothed in their fall, are features which give the mind images and feelings not soon or easily effaced.

3. THE AGE OF THE RESTORATION AND THE REVOLUTION (1660-1702).—Among the able churchmen who passed from the troubles of the Commonwealth and Protectorate to the Restoration were Jeremy Taylor, Archbishop Leighton, and others of eminence. South, Tillotson, and Barrow were more able theologians, but their writings lack the charm of sentiment which Leighton’s warmth of heart diffuses over all his works. South (d. 1716) was a man of remarkable oratorical endowments, sarcastic, intolerant, and fierce in polemical attacks. The writings of Tillotson (d. 1694) are pervaded by a higher and better spirit, and the sermons of Barrow (d. 1677) combine comprehensiveness, sagacity, and clearness. Other divines, such as Stillingfleet, Pearson, Burnet, Bull, hold a more prominent place in the history of the church than in that of letters. But all the writers of this age are wanting in that impressiveness and force of undisciplined eloquence which distinguished the first half of the seventeenth century. Among the nonconformist clergy, Howe (d. 1715) wrote the “Living Temple,” which is ranked among the religious classics.

The great though untrained genius of John Bunyan (1628-1688) produced the “Pilgrim’s Progress,” which holds a distinguished place in permanent English literature.

John Locke (1632-1704) may be taken as the representative of the English Philosophy of the time, and his influence on the speculative opinions of his day was second only to that of Hobbes. His “Essay on the Understanding” contains the germ of utter skepticism and was the ground on which Berkeley denied the existence of the material world, and Hume involved all human knowledge in doubt.

In classical learning the greatest of the scholars of this period was Bentley (1662-1742).

In history Lord Clarendon (1608-1774) wrote the “History of the Rebellion,” and Burnet (1643-1715) his “History of the Reformation,” one of the most thoroughly digested works of the century. His “History of his own Times” is valuable for its facts, and for the shrewdness with which he describes the state of things around him.

In miscellaneous prose, John Evelyn wrote several useful and tasteful works, and Izaak Walton (1593-1688), a London tradesman, wrote his interesting Biographies and the quaint treatise “On Angling.” Both in diction and sentiment these works remind us of the preceding age; and Walton, surviving Milton, closes the series of old English prose writers.

Samuel Butler (1612-1680), the unfortunate, ill-requited laureate of the Royalists, who satirized the Puritans and Republicans in his celebrated “Hudibras,” left some exceedingly witty and vigorous prose writings; and Andrew Marvell (1620-1678), the friend and protector of Milton, was most successful in sarcastic irony, and in his attacks on the High Church opinions and doings.

John Dryden (1631-1700) was the literary chief of the interval between Cromwell and Queen Anne. His prose writings, besides comedies, are few, but in these he taught principles of poetical art previously unknown to his countrymen, and showed the capabilities of the tongue in a new light. Inferior to Dryden in vigor of thought was Sir William Temple (1628-1698), who may yet share with him the merit of having founded regular English prose. His literary character rests chiefly on his “Miscellaneous Essays.”

The symmetrical structure and artificial polish of contemporaneous French literature, while it was not without some good influence on English prose, was less beneficial to poetry, and its worst effect was on the drama, which soon ceased to be pictures of human beings in action and became only descriptive of such pictures. In this walk as in others Dryden was the literary chief, and of his plays it can truly be said that the serious ones contain many striking and poetical pieces of declamation, finely versified. His comedies are bad morally, and as dramas even worse than those of his rival Shadwell. Lee was only a poor likeness of Dryden.

In the “Orphan” and “Venice Preserved” of Otway we have southing of the revival of the ancient strength of feeling though alloyed by false sentiment and poetic poverty.

Congreve showed great power of language in tragedy, and Southerne not a little nature and pathos.

In comedy the fame of these writers was eclipsed by a knot of dramatists who adopted prose, but whose works are the foulest that ever disgraced the literature of a nation. They are excellent specimens of that which has been called the comedy of manners; vice is inextricably interwoven in the texture of all alike, in the broad humor of Wycherly (the most vigorous of the set), in the wit of Congreve, in the character painting of Vanbrugh, and the lively invention of Farquhar.

In other kinds of poetry we find similar changes of taste which affected the art injuriously, although the increased attention paid to correctness and refinement was a step in improvement. These mischievous changes related both to the themes and forms of poetry, and in neither can the true functions of art be forgotten without injury to the work. An age must be held unpoetical, and cannot produce great poetical works, if its poetry chooses insufficient topics; and the aims of the age of the Restoration were low, producing only a constant crop of poems celebrating contemporary events or incidents in the lives of individuals. The dramatic and narrative forms of poetry are undoubtedly those in which that imaginative excitement of pleasing emotion, which is the immediate and characteristic end of the art, may be most powerfully worked out, and to one of these forms all the greatest poems have belonged. But in the age of the Restoration the drama had lost its elevation and poetic significance, and original narrative poetry was hardly known. Almost all the poems of the day were didactic, and the prevalence of this style of poetry is a palpable symptom of an unpoetical age. The verse-making of these forty years, after setting aside a very few works, maintains a dead level. Among the dwarfish rhymers of the day there lingered some of the august shapes of a former age. Milton still walked his solitary course, and Waller wrote his occasional odes and verses, but of names not already given there are no more than two or three that require commemoration. One of the famous poems of the day was an “Essay on Translated Verse,” by Lord Roscommon; and the smaller poems of Marvell are felicitous in feeling and diction; both writers are distinguished for their moral purity.

The “Hudibras” of Butler, which properly belongs to the age before, is a phenomenon in the history of English literature. His pungent wit, his extraordinary ingenuity, and his command of words are rare endowments, but he has no poetic vein that yields jewels of the first water, and his place is not a high one in the path which leads upward to the ethereal regions of the imagination.

Pryor (1661-1721) in his lighter pieces shows wit of a less manly kind. His serious poems have great facility of phrase and melody.

Dryden was a man of high endowments as a poet and thinker, condemned to labor for a corrupt generation, and he has received from posterity no higher fame than that of having improved English prose style and versification. His poems are rather essays couched in vigorous verse, with here and there passages of great poetical beauty. His “Annus Mirabilis,” celebrating with great animation the year 1666, is an effusion of historical panegyric. The “Absalom and Achitophel” is a satire on the unfortunate Duke of Monmouth and his adviser Shaftesbury. “The Hind and Panther,” full of poetical and satirical force, was an argument to justify the author’s recent change of religion. One of the most thoroughly sustained poems is the “Ode on Alexander’s Feast.” His translation of the Aeneid, as imperfect a picture of the original as Pope’s translation of the Iliad, is yet full of vigor and one of his best specimens of the heroic couplet, a measure never so well written in English as by Dryden.

4. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.—The influence of the eighteenth century on prose style has been great and permanent, and the two dissimilar manners of writing which were then formed, have contributed to all that is distinctive in our modern form of expression. The earlier of these is found in the language of Addison and Swift, the later in that of Johnson. The style of Addison and his friends reproduced those genuine idiomatic peculiarities of our speech which had been received into the conversation of intelligent men. The style of which Johnson was the characteristic example abandons in part the native and familiar characteristics of the Saxon for those expressions and forms common to the modern European tongues. Large use was made of words derived from the Latin, which, in addition to the effect of novelty, gave greater impressiveness and pomp to the style.

In the First Generation, named from Queen Anne, but including also the reign of George I. (d. 1727), the drama scarcely deserves more than a parenthesis. Although the moral tone had improved, it was still not high, when Gray’s “Beggar’s Opera” and Cibber’s “Careless Husband” were the most famous works. The “Fair Penitent” has been noticed as a clever plagiarism from Massinger; in Addison’s “Cato” the strict rules of the French stage were preserved, but its stately and impressive speeches cannot be called dramatic. The “Revenge” of Young had more of tragic passion; but it wanted the force of characterization which seemed to have been buried with the old dramatists.

The heroic measure, as it was now used, aimed at smoothness of melody and pointedness of expression, and in this the great master was Pope.

In the poems of Pope (1688-1744), we find passages beautifully poetical, exquisite thoughts, vigorous portraits of character, shrewd observation, and reflective good sense, but we are wafted into no bright world of imagination, rapt in no dream of strong passion, and seldom raised into any high region of moral thought. Like all the poets of his day, he set a higher value on skill of execution than on originality of conception, and systematically abstained from all attempts to excite imagination or feeling. The taste of the poet and of his times is most clearly shown in his “Essay on Criticism,” published before his twenty-first year. None of his works unites more happily, regularity of plan, shrewdness of thought, and beauty of verse. His most successful effort, the “Rape of the Lock,” assumed its complete shape in his twenty-sixth year, and is the best of all mock-heroic poems. The sharpest wit, the keenest dissection of the follies of fashionable life, the finest grace of diction, and the softest flow of melody, come appropriately to adorn a tale in which we learn how a fine gentleman stole a lock of a lady’s hair. In the “Epistle of Eloisa to Abelard,” and in the “Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady,” he attempted the pathetic not altogether in vain. The last work of his best years was his “Translation of the Iliad;” of the Odyssey he translated only half. Both misrepresent the natural and simple majesty of manner which the ancient poet never lost; yet if we could forget Homer, we might be proud of them. In the “Dunciad” he threw away an infinity of wit upon writers who would not otherwise have been remembered. His “Essay on Man” contains much exquisite poetry and finely solemn thought; it abounds in striking passages which, by their felicities of fancy, good sense, music, and extraordinary terseness of diction, have gained a place in the memory of every one.

Among the philosophical writers none holds so prominent a place as Bishop Berkeley (1684-1753), whose refinement of style and subtlety of thought have seldom been equaled. His philosophical Idealism exercised much influence on the course of metaphysical inquiry.

Lord Shaftesbury’s brilliant but indistinct treatises have also been the germ of many discussions in ethics.

Bolingbroke wrote with great liveliness, but with equal shallowness of thought and knowledge.

Daniel Defoe (1661-1731) is not likely to be forgotten on account of one of his many novels, “Robinson Crusoe.” His idiomatic English style is not one of the least of his merits.

Among the prose writings of Swift (1667-1745) there is none that is not a masterpiece of strong Saxon-English, and none quite destitute of his keen wit or cutting sarcasm. His satirical romances are most pungent when human nature is his victim, as in “Gulliver’s Travels;” and not less amusing in “The Battle of the Books,” or where he treats of church disputes in the “Tale of a Tub.” The burlesque memoir of “Martinus Scriblerus” was the joint production of Swift, Pope, and Arbuthnot.

It contains more good criticism than any of the serious writings of the generation, and it abounds in the most biting strokes of wit. Arbuthnot is supposed to have been the sole author of the whimsical, national satire called the “History of John Bull,” the best work of the class produced in that day. The “Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu” belong to this age.

Of all the popular writers, however, that adorned the reign of Queen Anne and her successor, those whose influence has been the greatest and most salutary are the Essayists, among whom Joseph Addison and Richard Steele are preeminently distinguished.

“The Tatler,” begun in Ireland by Steele, aided first by Swift, and afterwards by Addison, appeared three times a week from 1709 to 1711; “The Spectator,” in which Addison took the lead, from 1711 to 1712; and “The Guardian,” a part of the next year. Steele (1676-1729) had his merits somewhat unfairly clouded by the fame of his coadjutor. The extraordinary popularity of those periodicals, especially “The Spectator,” was creditable to the reading persons of the community, then much fewer than now. The writers discarded from their papers all party-spirit, and designed to make them the vehicle of judicious teaching in morals, manners, and literary criticism. Thus they widened the circle of readers, and raised the standard of taste and thinking.

Of some of the more serious papers of the “Spectator,” those of Addison (1672-1719) on the “Immortality of the Soul” and the “Pleasures of the Imagination” may be cited.

Among the theological writers of the Second Generation of the eighteenth century (the reign of George II., 1726-1760), one of the most famous in his day, though not the most meritorious, was Bishop Warburton; Bishop Butler (d. 1752), wrote his “Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature,” a work of extraordinary force of thought; and there is much literary merit in the writings of the pious Watts and the devout Doddridge. The increasing zeal both in the Church of England and among the Dissenters, and the more cordial recognition of the importance of religion, greatly affected the literature of the times.

Philosophy had also its distinguished votaries. The philosophical works of Hume (1711-1776) are allowed by those who dissent most strenuously from their results to have constituted an epoch in the history of the science. In accepting the principles which had been received before him, and showing that they led to no conclusion but universal doubt, he laid bare the flaws in the system, and prepared the way for the subtle speculations of Kant and the more cautious systems of Reid and the Scottish school.

The miscellaneous literature of this, the age of Johnson, cannot stand comparison with that of the preceding, which was headed by Addison.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), one of the most celebrated of the professional authors of the eighteenth century, however, belongs to this period. Compelled by poverty to leave his education uncompleted, he sought the means of living in London, where, for a long time, unpatronized and obscure, he labored with dogged perseverance, until at length he won a fame which must have satisfied the most grasping ambition, but when, as he says, “most of those whom he had wished to please had sunk into the grave, and he had little to fear from censure or praise.” That the reputation of his writings was above their deserts, cannot be denied, though it must also be admitted that the literature of our time is deficient in many of their excellences, both of thought and expression. They are the fruit of a strong and original mind, working with imperfect knowledge and an inadequate scope for activity. The language of Johnson is superior to his matter; he has striking force of diction, and many of his sentences roll on the ear like the sound of the distant sea, while the thoughts they convey impress us so vividly that we are slow to scrutinize them. His great merit lies in the two departments of morals and criticism, but everywhere he is inconsistent and unequal. His Dictionary occupied him for eight years, but it is of little value now to the student of language, being poor and incorrect in etymology and unsatisfactory though acute in definition. His poems, which are of Pope’s school, would scarcely have preserved his name. The “Rambler,” and “Rasselas,” are characteristic of his merits and defects. The “Tour to the Hebrides” is one of the most pleasant and easy of his writings. His “Lives of the Poets” is admirable for its skill of narration, but it is alternately enlightened and unsound in criticism, and frequently marred by political prejudices and personal jealousies.

Of the novels of the time, the series begun by Richardson’s (1689-1761) “Pamela,” “Clarissa Harlowe,” and “Sir Charles Grandison” have a virtuous aim, but they err by the plainness with which they describe vice. The tediousness and overwrought sentimentality of these works go far towards disqualifying the reader from appreciating their extraordinary skill in invention and in the portraiture of character.

Fielding (1707-1757) unites these qualities with greater knowledge of the world, pungent wit, and idiomatic strength of style. His mastery in the art of fictitious narrative has never been excelled; but his living pictures of familiar life, as well as the whimsical caricatures of Smollett and the humorous fantasies of Sterne, are disfigured by faults of which the very smallest are coarseness of language and bareness of licentious description, in which they outdid Richardson. Not only is their standard of morality low, but they display indifference to the essential distinctions of right and wrong, in regard to some of the cardinal relations of society.

The drama of the period has little literary importance. In non-dramatic poetry, several men of distinguished genius appeared, and changes occurred which indicated more just and comprehensive views of the art than those that had been prevalent in the last generation.

Young (1681-1765), in his “Night Thoughts,” produced a work eloquent rather than poetical, dissertative when true poetry would have been imaginative, but suggesting much of imagery and feeling as well as religious reflection.

Resembling it in some points, but with more force of imagination, is the train of gloomy scenes which appears in Blair’s “Grave.” In Akenside’s “Pleasures of Imagination,” a vivid fancy and an alluring pomp of language are lavished on a series of pictures illustrating the feelings of beauty and sublimity; but, theorizing and poetizing by turns, the poet loses his hold of the reader.

The more direct and effective forms of poetry now came again into favor, such as the Scottish pastoral drama of Ramsay, and Falconer’s “Shipwreck.” But the most decisive instance of the growing insight into the true functions of poetry is furnished by Thomson’s (1700-1748) “Seasons.” No poet has ever been more inspired by the love of external nature, or felt with more keenness and delicacy those analogies between the mind and the things it looks upon, which are the fountains of poetic feeling. The faults of Thomson are triteness of thought when he becomes argumentative and a prevalent pomposity and pedantry of diction; though his later work, “The Castle of Indolence,” is surprisingly free from these blemishes.

But the age was an unpoetical one, and two of the finest poetical minds of the nation were so dwarfed and weakened by the ungenial atmosphere as to bequeath to posterity nothing more than a few lyrical fragments. In the age which admired the smooth feebleness of Shenstone’s pastorals and elegies, and which closed when the libels of Churchill were held to be good examples of poetical satire, Gray turned aside from the unrequited labors of verse to idle in his study, and Collins lived and died almost unknown. Gray (1716-1771) was as consummate a poetical artist as Pope. His fancy was less lively, but his sympathies were warmer and more expanded, though the polished aptness of language and symmetry of construction which give so classical an aspect to his Odes bring with them a tinge of classical coldness. The “Ode on Eton College” is more genuinely lyrical than “The Bards,” and the “Elegy In a Country Churchyard” is perhaps faultless.

The Odes of Collins (1720-1759) have more of the fine and spontaneous enthusiasm of genius than any other poems ever written by one who wrote so little. We close his tiny volume with the same disappointed surprise which overcomes us when a harmonious piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished. His range of tones is very wide, and the delicacy of gradation with which he passes from thought to thought has an indescribable charm. His most popular poem, “The Passions,” conveys no adequate idea of some of his most marked characteristics. All can understand the beauty and simplicity of his odes “To Pity,” “To Simplicity,” “To Mercy;” and the finely woven harmonies and the sweetly romantic pictures in the “Ode to Evening” recall the youthful poems of Milton.

Between the period just reviewed and the reign of George III., or the Third Generation of the eighteenth century, there were several connecting links, one of which was formed by a group of historians whose works are classical monuments of English literature. The publication of Hume’s “History of England” began in 1754. Robertson’s “History of Scotland” appeared in 1759, followed by his “Reign of Charles V.” and his “History of America;” Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” was completed in twelve years from 1776. The narrative of Hume is told with great clearness, good sense, and quiet force of representation, and if his matter had been as carefully studied as his manner, if his social and religious theories had been as sound as his theory of literary art, his history would still hold a place from which no rival could hope to degrade it.

The style of Robertson and Gibbon is totally unlike that of Hume. They want his seemingly unconscious ease, his delicate tact, and his calm yet lively simplicity. Hume tells his tale to us as a friend to friends; his successors always seem to hold that they are teachers and we pupils. This change of tone had long been coming on, and was now very general in all departments of prose. Very few writers of the last thirty years of Johnson’s life escaped this epidemic desire of dictatorship. Robertson (1722-1793) is an excellent story-teller, perspicuous, lively, and interesting. His opinions are wisely formed and temperately expressed, his disquisitions able and instructive, and his research so accurate that he is still a valuable historical authority.

The learning of Gibbon (1737-1794), though not always exact, was remarkably extensive, and sufficient to make him a trustworthy guide, unless in those points where he was inclined to lead astray. There is a patrician haughtiness in the stately march of his narrative and in the air of careless superiority with which he treats his heroes and his audience. He is a master in the art of painting and narration, nor is he less skillful in indirect insinuation, which is, indeed, his favorite mode of communicating his own opinions, but he is most striking in those passages in his history of the church, where he covertly attacks a religion which he neither believed nor understood.

Other historians produced works useful in their day, but now, for the most part, superseded; and in various other departments men of letters actively exerted themselves.

Johnson, seated at last in his easy-chair, talked for twenty years, the oracle of the literary world, and Boswell, soon after his death, gave to the world the clever record of these conversations, which has aided to secure the place in literature he had obtained by his writings. Goldsmith (1728-1774), had he never written poems, would stand among the classic writers of English prose from the few trifles on which he was able, in the intervals of literary drudgery, to exercise his powers of observation and invention, and to exhibit his warm affections and purity of moral sentiment. Such is his inimitable little novel, “The Vicar of Wakefield,” and that good-natured satire on society, the “Citizen of the World.”

Among the novelists, Mackenzie (1745-1831) wrote his “Man of Peeling,” not unworthy of the companionship of Goldsmith’s masterpiece; and among later novelists, Walpole, Moore, Cumberland, Mrs. Inchbald, and Charlotte Smith, Miss Burney and Mrs. Radcliffe may also be named.

In literary criticism, the authoritative book of the day was Johnson’s “Lives of the Poets.” Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry” (1765) was a delightful compilation, which, after being quite neglected for many years, became the poetical text-book of Sir Walter Scott and the poets of his time. A more scientific and ambitious effort was Warton’s (1729-1790) “History of English Poetry,” which has so much of antiquarian learning, poetical taste, and spirited writing, that it is not only an indispensable and valuable authority, but an interesting book to the mere amateur. With many errors and deficiencies, it has yet little chance of being ever entirely superseded.

In parliamentary eloquence, before the middle of the eighteenth century, we have the commanding addresses of the elder Pitt (Lord Chatham), and at the close, still leading the senate, are the younger Pitt, Fox, Sheridan, and Burke. Burke (1730-1797) must be remembered not only for his speeches but for his writing on political and social questions, as a great thinker of comprehensive and versatile intellect, and extraordinary power of eloquence.

The letters of “Junius,” a remarkable series of papers, the authorship of which is still involved in mystery, appeared in a London daily journal from 1769 to 1772. They were remarkable for the audacity of their attacks upon the government, the court, and persons high in power, and from their extraordinary ability and point they produced an indelible impression on the public mind. The “Letters” of Walpole are poignantly satirical; those of Cowper are models of easy writing, and lessons of rare dignity and purity of sentiment.

In the history of philosophy, the middle of the eighteenth century was a very important epoch; before the close of the century, almost all of those works had appeared which have had the greatest influence on more recent thinking. These works may be divided into four classes. Under the first, Philosophical Criticism, may be classed Burke’s treatise “On the Sublime and Beautiful,” Sir Joshua Reynolds’s “Discourse on Painting,” Campbell’s “Philosophy of Rhetoric,” Kames’s “Elements of Criticism,” Blair’s “Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres,” and Horne Tooke’s “Philosophy of Language.”

In the second department, Political Economy, Adam Smith’s great work, “The Wealth of Nations,” stands alone, and is still acknowledged as the standard text-book of this science.

In the third department, Ethics, are Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiment,” Tucker’s “Light of Nature,” and Paley’s “Moral and Political Philosophy.”

In the fourth or Metaphysical department, we have only to note the rise of the Scottish School, under Thomas Reid (1710-1796), who combats each of the three schools, the Sensualistic evolved from Locke, holding that our ideas are all derived from sensation; the Idealistic, as proposed by Berkeley, which, allowing the existence of mind, denies that of matter; and the Skeptical, headed by Hume, which denies that we can know anything at all. Reid is a bold, dry, but very clear and logical writer, a sincere lover of truth, and a candid and honorable disputant; his system is original and important in the history of philosophy.

In the theological literature of this time are found Campbell’s “Essay on Miracles,” Paley’s “Evidences of Christianity” and “Natural Theology,” and Bishop Watson’s “Apology for Christianity.”

Among the devout teachers of religion was John Newton of Olney, the spiritual guide of Cowper; and of the moral writers, Hannah More and Wilberforce may be mentioned.

The only tragedy that has survived from these last forty years of the eighteenth century is the “Douglas” of Home, whose melody and romantic pathos lose much of their effect from its monotony of tone and feebleness in the representation of character. Comedy was oftener successful. There was little merit in the plays of the elder Colman or those of Mrs. Cowley, or of Cumberland. The comedies of Goldsmith abound in humor and gayety, and those of Sheridan have an unintermitted fire of epigrams, a keen insight into the follies and weaknesses of society, and great ingenuity in inventing whimsical situations. Of the verse-writers in the time of Johnson’s old age, Goldsmith has alone achieved immortality. “The Traveller” and “The Deserted Village” cannot be forgotten while the English tongue is remembered.

The foundations of a new school of poetry were already laid. Percy’s “Reliques” and Macpherson’s “Fingal” attracted great attention, and many minor poets followed.

The short career of the unhappy Chatterton (1752-1770) held out wonderful promise of genius.

Darwin, in his “Botanic Garden,” went back to the mazes of didactic verse. Seattle’s (1735-1803) “Minstrel” is the outpouring of a mind exquisitely poetical in feeling; it is a kind of autobiography or analytic narrative of the early growth of a poet’s mind and heart, and is one of the most delightful poems in our language.

Opening with Goldsmith, our period closes with Cowper and Burns. The unequaled popularity of Cowper’s (1731-1800) poems is owing, in part, to the rarity of good religious poetry, and also to their genuine force and originality. He unhesitatingly made poetry use, always when it was convenient, the familiar forms of common conversation, and he showed yet greater boldness by seeking to interest his readers in the scenes of everyday life. In spite of great faults, the effect of his works is such as only a genuine poet could have produced. His translation of the Iliad has the simplicity of the original, though wanting its warlike fervor, and portions of the Odyssey are rendered with exceeding felicity of poetic effect.

Our estimate of Cowper’s poems is heightened by our love and pity for the poet, writing not for fame but for consolation, and uttering from the depths of a half-broken heart his reverent homage to the power of religious truth. Our affection is not colder, and our compassion is more profound, when we contemplate the agitated and erring life of Robert Burns (1759-1796), the Scottish peasant, who has given to the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race some of its most precious jewels, although all which this extraordinary man achieved was inadequate to the power and the vast variety of his endowments. It is on his songs that his fame rests most firmly, and no lyrics in any tongue have a more wonderful union of thrilling passion, melting tenderness, concentrated expressiveness of language, and apt and natural poetic fancy. But neither the song nor the higher kinds of lyrical verse could give scope to the qualities he has elsewhere shown; his aptness in representing the phases of human character, his genial breadth and keenness of humor, and his strength of creative imagination, indicate that if born under a more benignant star he might have been a second Chaucer.

5. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.—In the illustrious band of poets who enriched the literature of England during the first generation of the present century, there are four who have gained greater fame than any others, and exercised greater influence on their contemporaries. These are Coleridge, Wordsworth, Scott, and Byron, who, though unlike, yet in respect of their ruling spirit and tendencies may be classed in pairs as they have been named; and all whose works call for exact scrutiny may be distributed into four groups. In the first of them stand Thomas Campbell and Robert Southey, dissimilar to each other, and differing as widely from their contemporaries. Campbell (1777-1844) employed an unusually delicate taste in elaborating his verses both in diction and melody. His “Pleasures of Hope” was written between youth and manhood, and “Gertrude of Wyoming,” the latest of his productions worthy of him, appeared soon after his thirtieth year. His mind, deficient in manly vigor of thought, had worked itself out in the few first bursts of youthful emotion, but no one has clothed with more of romantic sweetness the feelings and fancies which people the fairy-land of early dreams, or thrown around the enchanted region a purer atmosphere of moral contemplation.

Southey (1774-1843), with an ethical tone higher and sterner than Campbell’s, offers in other features a marked contrast to him. He is careless in details, and indulges no poetical reveries; he scorns sentimentalism, and throws off rapid sketches of human action with great pomp of imagery, but he seldom touches the key of the pathetic. In much of this he is the man of his age, but in other respects he is above it. He is the only poet of his clay who strove to emulate the great masters of epic song, and to give his works external symmetry of plan. He alone attempted to give poetry internal union, by making it the representation of one leading idea; a loftier theory of poetic art than that which ruled the irregular outbursts of Scott and Byron. But the aspiration was above the competency of the aspirer. He wanted spontaneous depth of sympathy; his emotion has the measured flow of the artificial canal, not the leaping gush of the river in its self-worn channel. In two of the three best poems he has founded the interest on supernatural agency of a kind which cannot command even momentary belief and the splendid panoramas of “Thalaba the Destroyer” pass away like the shadows of a magic lantern. In the “Curse of Kehama,” he strives to interest us in the monstrous fables of the Hindoo mythology, and in “Roderick, the Last of the Goths,” the story contains circumstances that deform the fairest proof the author gave of the practicability of his poetic theory.

The second group of poets, unless Moore find a place in it, will contain only Scott and Byron, who were in succession the most popular of all, and owed their popularity mainly to characteristics which they had in common. They are distinctively the poets of active life. They portray idealized resemblances of the scenes of reality, events which arise out of the universal relations of society, hopes, fears, and wishes which are open to the consciousness of all mankind. The originals of Scott were the romances of chivalry, and this example was applied by Byron to the construction of narratives founded on a different kind of sentiment. Scott, wearying of the narrow round that afforded him no scope for some of his best and strongest powers, turned aside to lavish them on his prose romances, and Byron, as his knowledge grew and his meditations became deeper, rose from Turkish tales to the later cantos of “Childe Harold.”

Scott (1771-1832), in his poetical narratives, appealed to national sympathies through ennobling historic recollections. He painted the externals of scenery and manners with unrivaled picturesqueness, and embellished all that was generous and brave in the world of chivalry with an infectious enthusiasm. “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” a romance of border chivalry, has a more consistent unity than its successors, and is more faithful to the ancient models. “Marmion” seeks to combine the chivalrous romance with the metrical chronicle. “The Lady of the Lake” is a kind of romantic pastoral, and “Rokeby” is a Waverley novel in verse.

The moral faults of the poetry of Byron (1788-1824) became more glaring as he grew older. Starting with the carelessness of ill-trained youth in regard to most serious truths, he provoked censure without scruple, and was censured not without caprice; thus placed in a dangerous and false position, he hardened himself into a contempt for the most sacred laws of society, and although the closing scenes of his life give reason for a belief that purer and more elevated views were beginning to dawn upon his mind, he died before the amendment had found its way into his writings. He endeavored to inculcate lessons that are positively bad; his delinquency did not consist in choosing for representation scenes of violent passion and guilty horror, it lay deeper than in his theatrical fondness for identifying himself with his misanthropes, pirates, and seducers. He sinned more grievously still, against morality as against possibility, by mixing up, in one and the same character, the utmost extremes of vice and virtue, generosity and vindictiveness, of lofty heroism and actual grossness. But with other and great faults, he far excelled all the poets of his time in impassioned strength, varying from vehemence to pathos. He was excelled by few of them in his fine sense of the beautiful, and his combination of passion with beauty, standing unapproachable in his own day, has hardly ever been surpassed.

His tales, except “Parisina” and the “Prisoner of Chillon,” rise less often than his other poems into that flow of poetic imagery, prompted by the loveliness of nature, which he had attempted in the two first cantos of “Childe Harold,” and poured forth with added fullness of thought and emotion in the last two. “Manfred,” with all its shortcomings, shows perhaps most adequately his poetic temperament; and his tragedies, though not worthy of the poet, are of all his works those which do most honor to the man.

The third section of this honored file of poets contains the names of Coleridge and Wordsworth; they are characteristically the poets of imagination, of reflection, and of a tone of sentiment that owes its attraction to its ideal elevation. Admired and emulated by a few zealous students, Coleridge became the poetical leader from the very beginning of his age, and effects yet wider have since been worked by the extended study of Wordsworth.

Coleridge (1772-1834) is the most original of the poets of his very original time, and among the most original of its thinkers. His most frequent tone of feeling is a kind of romantic tenderness or melancholy, often solemnized by an intense access of religious awe. This fine passion is breathed out most finely when it is associated with some of his airy glimpses of external nature, and his power of suggestive sketching is not more extraordinary than his immaculate taste and nervous precision of language. His images may be obscure, from the moonlight haze in which they float, but they are rarely so through faults of diction. It is disappointing to remember that this gifted man executed little more than fragments; his life ebbed away in the contemplation of undertakings still to be achieved, the result of weakness of will rather than of indolence. The romance of “Christabel,” the most powerful of all his works, and the prompter of Scott and Byron, was thrown aside when scarce begun, and stands as an interrupted vision of mysterious adventures clothed in the most exquisite fancies. His tragedy of “Remorse” is full of poetic pictures; the “Ode to the Departing Year” shows his force of thought and moral earnestness; “Khubla Khan” represents in its gorgeous incoherence his singular power of lighting up landscapes with thrilling fancies; and “The Dark Ladye” is one of the most tender and romantic love-poems ever written.

The most obvious feature of Wordsworth (1770-1850) is the intense and unwearied delight which he takes in all the shapes and appearances of rural and mountain scenery. He is carried away by an almost passionate rapture when he broods over the grandeur and loveliness of the earth and air; his verse lingers with fond reluctance to depart on the wild flowers, the misty lake, the sound of the wailing blast, or the gleam of sunshine breaking through the passes among the hills, and the thoughts and feelings these objects suggest flow forth with an enthusiasm of expression which in a man less pious and rational might be interpreted as a raising of the inanimate world to a level with human dignity and intelligence. The tone which prevails in his contemplation of mortal act and suffering is a serene seriousness, on which there never breaks in anything rightly to be called passion; yet it often rises to an intensely solemn awe, and is not less often relieved by touches of a quiet pathos. Almost all his poems may be called poems of sentiment and reflection, and his own ambition was that of being worthy to be honored as a philosophical poet. His theory that the poet’s function is limited to an exact representation of the real and the natural, a heresy which his own best poems triumphantly refute, often led him to triviality and meanness in the choice both of subjects and diction, and marred the beauty of many otherwise fine poems. A fascinating airiness and delicacy of conception prevail in these poems, and the tender sweetness of expression is often wonderfully touching. They were the effusions of early manhood, and the imperfect embodiments of a strength which found a freer outlet in prose. “Laodamia” and “Dion” are classical gems without a flaw; many of the sonnets unite original thought and poetic vividness with a perfection hardly to be surpassed; above all, “The Excursion” rolls on its thousands of blank verse lines with the soul-felt harmony of a divine hymn pealed forth from a cathedral organ. We forget the insignificance characterizing the plan, which embraces nothing but a three days’ walk among the mountains, and we refuse to be aroused from our trance of meditative pleasure by the occasional tediousness of dissertation. “The Excursion” abounds in verses and phrases once heard never to be forgotten, and it contains trains of poetical musing through which the poet moves with a majestic fullness of reflection and imagination not paralleled, by very far, in anything else of which our century can boast.

Wilson, Shelley, and Keats make up the fourth poetical group. The principal poems of Professor Wilson (1785-1854) are the “Isle of Palms,” a romance of shipwreck and solitude, full of rich pictures and delicate pathos, and the “City of the Plague,” a series of dramatic scenes, representing with great depth of emotion a domestic tragedy from the plague of London.

Shelley was the pure apostle of a noble but ideal philanthropy; yet it is easy to separate his poetry from his philosophy, which, though hostile to existing conditions of society, is so ethereal, so imbued with love for everything noble, and yet so abstract and impracticable, that it is not likely to do much harm.

Keats poured forth with great power the dreams of his immature youth, and died in the belief that the radiant forms had been seen in vain. In native felicity of poetic adornment these two were the first minds of their time, but the inadequacy of their performance to their poetic faculties shows how needful to the production of effective poetry is a substratum of solid thought, of practical sense, and of manly and extensive sympathy.

If we would apprehend the fullness and firmness of the powers of Shelley (1792-1822) without remaining ignorant of his weakness, we might study the lyrical drama of “Prometheus Unbound,” a marvelous galaxy of dazzling images and wildly touching sentiments, or the “Alastor,” a scene in which the melancholy quiet of solitude is visited but by the despairing poet who lies down to die. We find here, instead of sympathy with ordinary and universal feelings, warmth for the abstract and unreal, or, when the poet’s own unrest prompts, as in the “Stanzas Written in Dejection near Naples,” a strain of lamentation which sounds like a passionate sigh. Instead of clearness of thinking, we find an indistinctness which sometimes amounts to the unintelligible. In the “Revolt of Islam,” his most ambitious poem, it is often difficult to apprehend even the outlines of the story.

No youthful poet ever exhibited more thorough possession of those faculties that are the foundation of genius than Keats (1798-1820), and it is impossible to say what he might have been had he lived to become acquainted with himself and with mankind. It was said of his “Endymion” most truly, that no book could be more aptly used as a test to determine whether a reader has a genuine love for poetry. His works have no interest of story, no insight into human nature, no clear sequence of thought; they are the rapturous voice of youthful fancy, luxuriating in a world of beautiful unrealities.

It may be questioned whether Crabbe and Moore are entitled to rank with the poets already reviewed.

Crabbe’s (1754-1832) “Metrical Tales,” describing everyday life, are striking, natural, and sometimes very touching, but they are warmed by no kindly thoughts and elevated by nothing of ideality.

Moore (1780-1851), one of the most popular of English poets, will long be remembered for his songs, so melodious and so elegant in phrase. His fund of imagery is inexhaustible, but oftener ingenious than poetical. His Eastern romances in “Lalla Rookh,” with all their occasional felicities, are not powerful poetic narratives. He was nowhere so successful as in his satirical effusions of comic rhyme, in which his fanciful ideas are prompted by a wit so gayly sharp, and expressed with a neatness and pointedness so unusual, that it is to be regretted that these pieces should be condemned to speedy forgetfulness, as they must be, from the temporary interest of their topics.

Among the works of the numerous minor poets, the tragedies of Joanna Baillie, with all their faults as plays, are noble additions to the literature, and the closest approach made in recent times to the merit of the old English drama. After these may be named the stately and imposing dramatic poems of Milman, Maturin’s impassioned “Bertram,” and the finely-conceived “Julian” of Miss Mitford.

Rogers and Bowles have given us much of pleasing and reflective sentiment, accompanied with great refinement of taste.

To another and more modern school belong Procter (Barry Cornwall) and Leigh Hunt; the former the purer in taste, the latter the more original and inventive.

Some of the lyrical and meditative poems of Walter Savage Landor are very beautiful; his longer poems sometimes delight but oftener puzzle us by their obscurity of thought and want of constructive skill.

The poems of Mrs. Hemans breathe a singularly attractive tone of romantic and melancholy sweetness, and many of the ballads and songs of Hogg and Cunningham will not soon be forgotten.

The poems of Kirke White are more pleasing than original. Montgomery has written, besides many other poems, not a few meditative and devotional pieces among the best in the language. Pollok’s “Course of Time” is the immature work of a man of genius who possessed very imperfect cultivation. It is clumsy in plan and tediously dissertative, but it has passages of genuine poetry. The pleasing verses of Bishop Heber and the more recent effusions of Keble may also be named.

Of the Scotch poets, James Hogg (d. 1835) is distinguished for the beauty and creative power of his fairy tales, and Allan Cunningham (d. 1842) for the fervor, simplicity, and natural grace of his songs.

Edward Lytton Bulwer (Lord Lytton) deserves honorable mention for his high sense of the functions of poetic art; for the skill with which his dramas are constructed, and for the overflowing picturesqueness which fills his “King Arthur.” Elliott, the Corn-Law Rhymer, is vigorous in conception, and Hood has a remarkable union of grotesque humor with depth of serious feeling.

Henry Taylor (b. 1800) deserves notice for the fine meditativeness and well-balanced judgment shown in his dramas and prose essays. “Philip Van Artevelde” is his masterpiece.

The poems of Arthur Hugh Clough (d. 1861) are worthy of attention, although it may be doubted if his genius reached its full development; in those of Milnes (Lord Houghton, b. 1809), emotion and intellect are harmoniously blended. R.H. Horne (d. 1884) is the author of some noble poems; Aytoun (d. 1865), of many ballads of note; and in Kingsley (d. 1875) the poetic faculty finds its best expression in his popular lyrics.

Alfred Tennyson (b. 1810) is by eminence the representative poet of his era. The central idea of his poetry is that of the dignity and efficiency of law in its widest sense and of the progress of the race. The elements which form his ideal of human character are self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, the recognition of a divine order, of one’s own place in that order, and a faithful adhesion to the law of one’s highest life. “In Memoriam” is his most characteristic work, distinctly a poem of this century, the great threnody of our language. The “Idylls of the King” present in epic form the Christian ideal of chivalry.

In Browning (b. 1812) the greatness and glory of man lie not in submission to law, but in infinite aspiration towards something higher than himself. He must perpetually grasp at things attainable by his highest striving, and, finding them unsatisfactory, he is urged on by an endless series of aspirations and endeavors. In his poetry strength of thought struggles through obscurity of expression, and he is at once the most original and unequal of living poets.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (d. 1861) may be regarded as the representative of her sex in the present age. The instinct of worship, the religion of humanity, and a spiritual unity of zeal, love, and worship preside over her work.

To this period belong the writings of Mrs. Norton, Mrs. Blackwood, Mrs. Crosland, Mary Howitt, and Eliza Cook.

FICTION.—Previous to the appearance of Scott’s novels the department of prose writing had undergone an elevating process in the hands of Godwin, Miss Austen, Miss Porter, and Miss Edgeworth. “Waverley” appeared in 1814, and the series which followed with surprising rapidity obtained universal and unexampled popularity. The Waverley Novels are not merely love stories, but pictures of human life animated by sentiments which are cheerful and correct, and they exhibit history in a most effective light without degrading facts or falsifying them beyond the lawful stretch of poetical embellishment. These novels stand in literary value as far above all other prose works of fiction as those of Fielding stand above all others in the language except these.

The novels of Lockhart are strong in the representation of tragic passion. Wilson, in his “Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life,” shows the visionary loveliness and pathos which appear in his poems, though they give no scope to those powers of sarcasm and humor which found expression elsewhere. Extremes in the tone of thought and feeling are shown in the despondent imagination of Mrs. Shelley and the coarse and shrewd humor of Galt. To this time belong Hope’s “Anastasius,” which unites reflectiveness with pathos, and the delightful scenes which Miss Mitford has constructed by embellishing the facts of English rural life.

Among the earlier novels of the time, those of Bulwer had more decidedly than the others the stamp of native genius. Though not always morally instructive, they have great force of serious passion, and show unusual skill of design. In some of his later works he rises into a much higher sphere of ethical contemplation. The novels of Theodore Hook, sparkling as they are, have no substance to endure long continuance, nor is there much promise of life in the showy and fluent tales of James, the sea-stories of Marryat, or the gay scenes of Lever. The novels and sketches of Mrs. Marsh and Mrs. Hall are pleasing and tasteful; Mrs. Trollope’s portraits of character are rough and clever caricatures. In describing the lower departments of Irish life, Banim is the most original, Griffin weaker, and Carleton better than either. The novels of Disraeli are remarkable for their brilliant sketches of English life and their embodiment of political and social theories. Miss Martineau’s stories are full of the writer’s clearness and sagacity. Kingsley, the head of the Christian socialistic school, is the author of many romances, and the eloquent preacher of a more earnest and practical Christianity. The narrative sketches of Douglas Jerrold deserve a place among the speculative fictions of the day.

Charlotte Bronté (1816-1855) had consummate mastery of expression, and a perception of the depth of human nature that is only revealed through suffering experience. The works of her sister Emily show a powerful imagination, regulated by no consideration of beauty of proportion, or of artistic feeling.

Among those writers who aim at making the novel illustrate questions that agitate society most powerfully are the founders of a new school of novelists, Thackeray and Dickens (1812-1870). The former has given his pictures of society all that character they could receive from extraordinary skill of mental analysis, acute observation, and strength of sarcastic irony, but he has never been able to excite continuous and lively sympathy either by interesting incidents or by deep passion. Dickens has done more than all which Thackeray has left unattempted; while his painting of character is as vigorous and natural, his power of exciting emotion ranges with equal success from horror sometimes too intense, to melting pathos, and thence to a breadth of humor which degenerates into caricature. He cannot soar into the higher worlds of imagination, but he becomes strong, inventive, and affecting the moment his foot touches the firm ground of reality, and nowhere is he more at ease, more sharply observant, or more warmly sympathetic, than in scenes whose meanness might have disgusted, or whose moral foulness might have appalled. Of the later novelists, the names of Mrs. Craik (Miss Muloch) and Charles Reade (d. 1884) may be mentioned as having acquired a wide popularity.

HISTORY.—In history Niebuhr’s masterly researches have communicated their spirit to the “Roman History” of Arnold; the history of Greece has assumed a new aspect in the hands of Thirlwall and Grote; and that of Grecian literature has been In part excellently related by Muir (d. 1860). Modern history has likewise been cultivated with great assiduity, and several works of great literary merit have appeared which are valuable as storehouses of research. Macaulay, in his great work, “The History of England,” showed that history might be written as it had not been before, telling the national story with accuracy and force, making it as lively as a novel, through touches of individual interest and teaching precious truths with fascinating eloquence. Alison’s “History of Europe” takes its place among the highest works of its kind. Carlyle’s “History of the French Revolution” and “Life of Frederic the Great” are most picturesque, attractive, and original works. The History of the Norman Conquest of England is the most important work of Freeman. Buckle (d. 1882) in his Introduction to the projected History of Civilization in Europe reiterated the theory that all events depend upon the action of inevitable law.

CRITICISM AND REVIEWS.—In the art of criticism, Hallam’s (d. 1859) “Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries” has taken its place as a classical standard. Among the fragments of criticism, the most valuable are those of De Quincey (d. 1860). The essays of Macaulay (d. 1860) are among the most impressive of all the periodical papers of our century.

In Carlyle, a generous sentiment alternates with despondent gloom and passionate restlessness and inconsistency. But it is impossible to hear, without a deep sense of original power, the oracular voices that issue from the cell; enigmatical, like the ancient responses, and like them illuminating doubtful vaticination with flashes of wild and half poetic fantasy. His language and thoughts alike set aside hereditary rules, and are compounded of elements, English and German, and elements predominant over all, which no name would fit except that of the author.

Among numerous other writers may he mentioned the names of William and Mary Howitt, Isaac Taylor, Arthur Helps, and the brothers Hare, and in art-criticism the brilliant and paradoxical Ruskin (b. 1819) and the accomplished Mrs. Jameson (d. 1860).

The writings of Christopher North (Professor Wilson) are characterized by the quaintest humor and the most practical shrewdness combined with tender and passionate emotion (d. 1854). Those of Charles Lamb (d. 1835) it is impossible to describe intelligibly to those who have not read them. Some of his scenes are in sentiment, imagery, and style the most anomalous medleys by which readers were ever alternately perplexed and amused, moved and delighted.

No man of his time influenced social science so much as Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Of his immediate pupils James Mill is the ablest, Cobbett, a vigorous and idiomatic writer of English, in the course of his long life advocated all varieties of political principle. In political science we have the accurate McCulloch; Malthus, known through his Theory of Population; and Ricardo, the most original thinker in science since Adam Smith.

Foster (1770-1843) had originality and a wider grasp of mind than the other two. Hall (1761-1831) is more eloquent, but in oratorical power Chalmers (1780-1847) was one of the great men of our century, which has produced few comparable to him in original keenness of intuition, and who combined so much power of thought with so much power of impressive communication.

In philosophy, Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) is one of the most attractive writers. Thomas Brown (1778-1820), his successor in the chair of Edinburgh, exhibited a subtlety of thought hardly ever exceeded in the history of philosophy; probably no writings on mental philosophy were ever so popular.

Equally worthy of a place in the annals of their era are those dissertations on the History of Philosophy contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica by Playfair, Leslie, and Mackintosh, and a system of Ethics by Bentham. Among the speculations in mental philosophy must also be placed a group of interesting treatises on the “Theory of the Sublime and Beautiful,” a matter deeply important to poetry and the other fine arts, represented by Alison’s essays on Taste, Jeffrey’s on Beauty, and by contributions from Stewart, Thomas Brown, and Payne Knight.

In political economy John Mill is one of the most powerful and original minds of the nineteenth century. The pure sciences of mind have been enriched by important accessions; logic has been vigorously cultivated in two departments; on the one hand by Mill and Whewell, the former following the tendencies of Locke and Hobbes, the latter that of the German school; on the other hand, Archbishop Whately has expounded the Aristotelian system with clearness and sagacity, and De Morgan has attempted to supply certain deficiencies in the old analysis. But by far the greatest metaphysician who has appeared in the British empire during the present century is Sir William Hamilton. In his union of powerful thinking with profound and varied erudition, he stands higher, perhaps, than any other man whose name is preserved in the annals of modern speculation.

REVIEWS AND MAGAZINES.—A most curious and important fact in the literary history of the age is the prominence acquired by the leading Reviews and Magazines. Their high position was secured and their power founded beyond the possibility of overturn by the earliest of the series, the “Edinburgh Review.” Commenced in 1802, it was placed immediately under the editorship of Francis Jeffrey, who conducted it till 1829. In the earlier part of its history there were not many distinguished men of letters in the empire who did not furnish something to its contents; among others were Sir Walter Scott, Lord Brougham, Malthus, Playfair, Mackintosh, and Sydney Smith. Differences of political opinion led to the establishment of the “London Quarterly,” which advocated Tory principles, the Edinburgh being the organ of the Whigs. Its editors were first Gifford and then Lockhart, and it numbered among its contributors many of the most famous men of the time. The “Westminster Review” was established in 1825 as the organ of Jeremy Bentham and his disciples.

“Blackwood’s Magazine,” begun 1817, has contained articles of the highest literary merit. It was the unflinching and idolatrous advocate of Wordsworth, and some of its writers were the first translators of German poetry and the most active introducers of German taste and laws in poetical criticism.

The best efforts in literary criticism—the most brilliant department of recent literature, have been with few exceptions essays in the periodicals. Among the essayists the name of Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) stands highest. In his essays selected for republication we find hardly any branch of general knowledge untouched, and while he treated none without throwing on them some brilliant ray of light, he contributed to many of them truths alike valuable and original. His criticisms on Poetry are flowing and spirited, glittering with a gay wit and an ever-ready fancy, and often blossoming into exquisite felicities of diction. While Macaulay uses poets and their works as hints for constructing picturesque dissertations on man and society, and while poetical reading prompts Wilson to enthusiastic bursts of original poetry, Jeffrey, fervid in his admiration of genius, but conscientiously stern in his respect for art, tries poetry by its own laws, and his writings are invaluable to those who desire to learn the principles of poetical criticism. A high place among the critical essayists must also be assigned to William Hazlitt, who in his lectures and elsewhere did manful service towards reviving the study of ancient poetry, and who prompts to study and speculation all readers, and not the least those who hesitate to accept his critical opinions.

PHYSICAL SCIENCE.—The spirit of philosophical inquiry and discovery is increasing in England, and is everywhere accompanied by a growing tendency to popularize all branches of science, and to bring them before the general mind in an attractive form.

The physical sciences have made marvelous advances; many brilliant discoveries have been made during the present and last generation, and many scientific men have brought much power of mind to bear on questions lying apart from their principal studies; among them are Sir David Brewster, Sir John Herschel, Sir John Playfair, Sir Charles Lyell, Hugh Miller, Buckland, and Professor Whewell.

Since 1860

1. POETRY.—Matthew Arnold (b. 1822) has written some of the most refined verse of our day, and among critics holds the first rank. Algernon Swinburne (b. 1837) excels all living poets in his marvelous gift of rhythm and command over the resources of the language. Dante Rossetti (d. 1883) had great lyrical power; Robert Buchanan has large freedom and originality of style; Edwin Arnold has extraordinary popularity in the United States for his remarkable poem, “The Light of Asia,” and for other poems on Oriental subjects; Lord Lytton (“Owen Meredith”) has a place of honor among poets as the author of “Lucile” and other poems; William Morris writes in the choicest fashion of romantic narrative verse. Among other poets of the present generation whose writings are marked by excellences of various kinds are Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, Cosmo Monkhonse, Andrew Lang, Philip Marston, and Arthur O’Shaughnessy.

The poems of Jean Ingelow have a merited popularity; those of Adelaide Procter (d. 1864) are pervaded by a beautiful spirit of faith and hope; Christina Rossetti shows great originality and deep and serious feeling. The lyrics and dramas of Augusta Webster are marked by strength and breadth of thought; the ballads, sonnets, and other poems of Mary Robinson show that she possesses the true gift of song.

2. FICTION.—The writings of Mrs. Lewes, “George Eliot” (1815-1880), are the work of a woman of rare genius, and place her among the greatest novelists England has produced. They are in sympathy with all the varieties of human character, and written in a spirit of humanity that is allied with every honest aspiration.

Anthony Trollope (d. 1884) has produced many works remarkable for their accurate pictures of English life and character. George Macdonald and Wilkie Collins are novelists of great merit, as are William Black, Richard Blackmore, Mrs. Oliphant, Edmund Yates, Justin McCarthy.

3. SCIENCE.—Herbert Spencer (b. 1820) as early as 1852 advanced the theory of the natural and gradual coalition of organic life upon this globe. In 1855, in his “Principles of Psychology,” he gave a new exposition of the laws of mind, based upon this principle, and held that it is by experience, registered in the slowly perfecting nervous system, that the mental faculties have been gradually evolved through long courses of descent, each generation inheriting all that had been previously gained, and adding its own increment to the sum of progress; that all knowledge, and even the faculties of knowing, originate in experience, but that the primary elements of thought are a priori intuitions to the individual derived from ancestral experience. Thus the intuitional and experience hypotheses, over which philosophers had so long disputed, were here for the first time reconciled. This work, the first permanent scientific result of the application of the law of evolution, formed a turning-point in the thought of the scientific world. Spencer’s prospectus of a philosophical system, in which the principles of evolution were applied to the subjects of life, mind, society, and morals, appeared in 1858, maturely elaborated in its scientific proofs and applications, thus preceding the works of other evolutionary writers, the most distinguished of whom, Charles Darwin (1809-1883), has been more identified in the popular mind with the theories of evolution than Spencer himself. The writings of Darwin have had a wider influence and have been the subject of more controversy than those of any other contemporary writer. In his “Origin of Species” he accounts for the diversities of life on our globe by means of continuous development, without the intervention of special creative fiats at the origin of each species, and to this organic evolution he added the important principle of natural selection. He may be regarded as the great reformer of biology and the most distinguished naturalist of the age. Tyndall (b. 1810) has done more than any other writer to popularize great scientific truths. Huxley (b. 1825) stands foremost among physiologists and naturalists.

Among numerous other writers distinguished in various branches of science a few only can be here named. Walter Bagehot writes on Political Society; Alexander Bain on Mind and Body; Henry Maudsley on Brain and Mind; Norman Lockyer on Spectrum Analysis; and Sir John Lubbock on Natural History.

4. MISCELLANEOUS.—The most distinguished historian of the times is James Anthony Froude (b. 1818), who, in his “Short Studies,” shows the same vigor of thought and power of description that render his history so fascinating. The histories of John Richard Green are valuable for their original research, and have a wide celebrity. Max Müller has rendered important services to the sciences of Philology and Ethnology, by his researches in Oriental languages and literatures. Lecky is eminent for his history of “Rationalism in Europe” and “History of Morals.” Leslie Stephen, John Morley, and Addington Symonds are distinguished in various departments of criticism and history. Justin McCarthy, in his “History of our own Times,” has skillfully presented an intellectual panorama of the period.

Hamerton writes on Art and on general topics with keen and critical observation. Lewes (d. 1878) is the able expounder of the philosophy of Comte. Frances Power Cobbe, in her “Intuitive Morals” and other works, shows strong reasoning powers and great earnestness of purpose. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) holds a high place as a writer on Political Economy, Liberty, and on the Subjection of Women. The periodicals and newspapers of the day show remarkable intellectual ability, and represent the best contemporary thought in England in all departments.