English literature: an introduction and guide to the best English books: a handbook for schools and readers

Preface

All my life I have loved, owned, collected and read books. The motive back of these activities has not, however, been any desire on my part to improve my mind. Being satisfied with my mind as it is, I have read in the spirit in which boys play ball, girls dress their dolls, men attend prize fights, and women gossip about their neighbors. I have read, in other words, for fun; and I have found in the collection, the ownership, and the perusal of books a source of pleasure which, unlike most pleasures, is not only inexpensive and harmless but has grown deeper with time.

My object in writing this book has been, if possible, to convey to others the secret of the location of the source of this fountain of perpetual refreshment. I wish to show people how to extract from books the same kind and degree of satisfaction that they get from games, movies, and automobiles. I hope, therefore, that these pages will be read, not because they are instructive, but because they are entertaining. Of course, like the pages of Mark Twain's " Roughing It," they do have information in them. " Try as I will," he says, " information appears to stew out of me like the sweet ottar of roses out of the otter." It is so with me. I cannot help it. Judging, however, by what I know of the average person, I am inclined to believe that he will not absorb enough learning from this book to impair either his health or his character.

Seriously speaking, however, I trust that the following pages will be pleasant to read; that they "will arouse curiosity about books and authors; that they will incite people to read books; and that they will inoculate some of those who read them with the altogether proper, harmless and desirable mania for owning them. .The last assertion I make boldly, though I know that some persons of low character will probably charge me with being in league with those natural enemies of society who are commonly known as printers. To forestall their

4 PREFACE

criticism, I will add that, in my opinion, the most meritorious act ever performed by Napoleon was to order one of them shot. Though I perceive that the last sentence is a trifle ambiguous, I purposely leave it so.

The reader will note that some authors, who, in the encyclopedia of Hterature, should be treated at length, are scarcely mentioned, while others receive a relatively large amount of attention. This circumstance is due to the fact that my purpose is to stimulate the interest in beginners in literature rather than to convey information to experts. Thus there is a good deal about Pope and Macaulay and not much on the subject of Arnold and De Quincy. I am guided, in other words, in my choice of bait, not by my own taste, but by what I conceive to be the taste of the fish.

It is my belief that, of all the chapters in the book, the reader will find most satisfaction in those on Milton, Bunyan and Dryden. This need occasion no surprise, for I did not write them myself. They are from the pen of Miss Helen M. Hard.

Edwin L. Miller.

Detroit, July 14, 1917.

Contents

rHAPTER PAGE

I, A Definition of Literature 9

II. The Roots of English 13

Chapter I A Definition Of Literature

" Literary men arc a perpetual priesthood."

— Thomas Carlyle.

What is literature? Before we begin the study of English literature, let us ask ourselves in what sense we are to use the word. Dr. Johnson described it as something designed to make familia'- things new and new things familiar. Matthew Arnold called it a criticism of life. Shelley considered one branch of it, poetry, as a record of the best and happiest moments of the happiest and best lives. Milton said that a good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. To Carlyle it was the thought of thinking souls.

Though these sayings are all suggestive and inspiring, none of them, strictly speaking, is a definition, because none of them tells the two things which a definition of literature should tell: (1) all that it is; (2) all that it is not. Everybody remembers how Plato defined man as a featherless biped, and how Diogenes the next day brought to his lecture room a plucked fowl, which he exhibited to the assembled students with the ill-natured remark: " Behold Plato's man! " These definitions of literature are open to the same objection. If you analyze them carefully you will perceive that they all apply with practically equal exactness to other things as well as to literature. Pictures, statues, travel, often make familiar things new and new things familiar. Music, sculpture, and painting are criticisms of life. The steam-engine and the telephone are records of the best and happiest moments of great and happy lives. Milton's definition of a good book is equally applicable to a fine statue. An automobile is just as surely as a poem the thought of a thinking soul.

Between the steam-engine, the telephone, and the automobile on the one hand, and the picture, the statue, and the song on the other, there is, however, a difference. The first three are designed primarily to promote our physical comfort and convenience; the latter three minister to our spiritual requirements. To which class do books belong?

Some books belong obviously in the first class: cook-books, algebras, scientific treatises, books on law and medicine, guide books. Others, such as poems, novels, plays, sermons, belong as clearly in the second class. To books of this class," to sculpture, to music, to certain forms of architecture, and to landscape gardening it is customary to apply the name Art. Literature, then, is an art, but not all writing is literature. But what is art?

There are two worlds. The one is of the senses, the other of the spirit. The one is of things seen, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched; the other of things understood, felt, imagined, and willed. The one is physical, the other spiritual. Between these worlds there is just the difference that there is between noise and music, a pile of bricks and a cathedral, a dictionary and a poem. The artist turns noise into music, paint into pictures, words into novels and plays. He accomplishes this by expressing in concrete form ideas that are abstract. Instead of writing a poem on wisdom, he carves a statue of Minerva; instead of composing a treatise on the sin of procrastination, he produces the play of " Hamlet." Priests and philosophers discuss the infinite and abstract in terms of the infinite and abstract; scientists discuss the concrete in terms of the concrete; artists express the infinite and the abstract in terms that are finite and concrete, giving to the finite the grace and dignity of the infinite, bestowing upon the abstract the precision, the color, and the interest of the concrete.

This is equally true of all the arts. They differ because they deal in different materials. The architect uses brick, the sculptor marble, the painter canvas, the writer words.

Literature therefore includes all writing which expresses spiritual truth by means of concrete imagery. For this reason, in common with other arts, it is often characterized as imaginative; that is, it

A DEFINITION OF LITERATURE 11

accomplishes its end by producing concrete images. It will be seen, then, that a piece of writing, in order to be classed in the strict sense as literature, must fulfil two conditions: first, it must have what is called local color; that is, it must be vivid, concrete, picturesque; second, it must present ideas that are interesting and intelligible in distant lands and times. A treatise on algebra, for instance, is perfectly intelligible to anybody of reasonable intelligence, but it is not in the strict sense of the word literature, because it has no local color. The " Merchant of Venice," on the other hand, gives us a picture of certain men and women of Shakespeare's generation, a picture that is as readily understood to-day as it was three hundred years ago, a picture that is as intelligible in San Francisco or Sydney as in London or Liverpool. It presents passions and ideas that are interesting always and everywhere, but it presents them in the guise of a story about particular people. This is what we call literature.

In its narrow sense, then, literature is that one of the arts which finds its expression in language. In common with painting, sculpture, architecture, and landscape gardening, it embodies abstract and universal ideas in concrete form, giving to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. It differs from other arts in that its medium of expression is language.

In a broader sense, the literature of a nation is the entire body of its thoughts, discoveries, memories, fancies, imaginations, reason-j ings, and aspirations as these find permanent expression in letters. The word " literature," it should be noted here, comes from the Latin word litera, which means " letter." The French term belles lettres (literally " beautiful letters ") is used sometimes to designate literature so far as it is an art.

In this book, English literature is treated in its broad sense. Many of the works noticed do not belong in the realm of belles lettres. Many of the important works belonging in the realm of bellei lettres are left unnoticed. The aim has been to exclude all those books which have no direct or immediate interest for the beginner and to omit nothing which has been proved to contain a real message for him.

u

1. VVho were Dr. Johnson, I\iatthew Arnold, Shelley, Milton, and Carlyle?

For answers consult the index of this volume.

2. How did each define literature?

3. In what respect is the definition of each faulty?

4. What two things must a definition do?

5. How did Plato get into trouble through carelessness in defining?

6. Who were Plato and Diogenes?

7. What is the fundamental difference between a steam-engine and a

song?

8. Are all books art? If not, what books?

9. What is art?

10. What is the fundamental dififertnce between literature and sculpture?

MEDIEVAL SCRIBE

Chapter II The Roots Of English

" He who is acquainted with no foreign tongue knows nothing of his own." — Goethe.

As language is the material in which the literary artist works, it seems proper at this point to say a word about the English language as the medium of English literature. Whence cam'e it and what are its relations with other languages?

To anybody who has studied a little Latin, French, or German it is clear that English in some ways is related to all three. The English words " father," " mother," '' brother," and " sister," for example, are obviously like the Latin words pater, mater, jrater, and soror; the French words pere, mere, jrcre, and soeur; and the German words Vater, Mutter, Briider, and Schivester. Everybody has known this for a long time, but it is only since 1 783 that its fuller meaning has become clear.

In that year the British government sent out to India as a judge a young man named Sir William Jones. Being a student of languages he became familiar, while there, with Sanskrit; and, to his great surprise, discovered that, instead of being closely related, as he had expected, to the languages of the East, it bore every mark of being a cousin, so to speak, to the languages of Europe. The German scholar, Franz Bopp (1791-1867), by a scientific comparison of Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Gothic, and German, in his " Comparative Grammar," 1833-1852, proved Jones's guess to have been right, founded the science of comparative philology, and gave the world a vision of our ancestors that extends back many ages before the dawn of authentic history. His conclusions and those of his immediate successors amount to what follows:

Perhaps 6000, perhaps 60,000 years ago, there lived in the highlands of central Asia a sturdy, warlike, and progressive race. Their lands being too small for their needs, they took territory away from their neighbors until they had overrun India, Persia, Afghanistan, Beloochistan, Kurdistan, Armenia, and all of Europe except Finland and that small portion of northern Spain which is occupied by the Basques. Upon the lands thus conquered they imposed their language and their civilization. At the dawn of history, that is, in 776 B.C.. they were in possession of all Europe.

These movements must have taken ages. They took so much time that the memory of them was lost and the original Aryan lan-

The British Museum, London, The Repository of English Learning

guage became so changed that the different branches of the race could no longer understand one another. The result was that, at the dawn of history, Europe was occupied by live related Aryan races who were quite unconscious of the fact that they had all sprung from the same stock. These five races were the Greeks, who held much the same land which they possess to-day; the Romans, who were probably an offshot from the Greeks; the Celts, who were in possession of Spain, France, and the British Isles; the Teutons, who held Belgium and western Germany; and the Slavs, who. in the time of Julius Cffsar (55 B.C.), had possession of eastern Europe, including

THE ROOTS OF ENGLISH 15

the land on which both Berlin and Vienna stand to-day. These all carried on a constant struggle with one another for the possession of the continent, a struggle which, by the way, still bursts out every few years with undiminished fury.

All this will be made a little clearer by the following table, which is designed to show the genealogy, or family history, of the Aryan languages.

Aryan

Asiatic European

I I. I; I. I I

Sanskrit Persian Celtic Classical Teutonic Slavonic

Greek Lati

Russian Polish

Dutch German

Italian Spanish French

English

About 1860, however, the Asiatic origin of the Aryans began to be doubted. Owing to the fact that there are no words for " camel," " lion," " tiger," " ass," or " cat " common to all Aryan languages, it was argued that the original Aryans did not know these animals and hence did not live in a warm climate. The words " wolf," " bear," and " birch " being common, on the other hand, to all of the Aryan languages, it was inferred that they did live in a cold climate. All Europe is named with words of Aryan origin. Asia is not so named. The theory of the Asiatic origin of the race was therefore seriously shaken.

It was shaken still further by a series of discoveries which began to be made about 1865. These comprised, among other things, prehistoric burial mounds in the British Isles, prehistoric human remains in the region of Dordogne in France, prehistoric villages built on piles in the lakes of Switzerland, and huge prehistoric piles of bones known as kitchen middens in Denmark. From the geological strata in which the earliest of these relics were found it was concluded that Europe had been inhabited for a much longer period than had been supposed; and from the comparative study of the skulls unearthed it was seen that, instead of one race, at least four still existing races have held Europe since the ice age. Only one of these, of course, could have been the original Aryan stock. German scholars mostly hold that this was Teutonic, while French maintain it to have been Celtic. The fact that the Celtic skulls have a larger capacity than the Teutonic makes it appear probable that the latter inference is

C=Celtic; G = Germanic; L=Lettic; S=Slavonic; 5c = Scythian; 5a = Sarmatian; D = Dacian; r=Thracian; i = Illyrian; /( = Italic; i7= Hellenic; P=Phrygian; A = Armenian ; /r= Iranian; /« = Indian.

right. The evidence now available seems to indicate that the Celts conquered the races of Illyria, Italy, Dacia, and Germany, and imposed on them their culture and language. Then, after a time, the conquerors died out, became merged in the conquered, or were in turn themselves subdued. Their language, however, though changed in details, remained in its fundamental structure and vocabulary intact. The new races which had thus acquired the Aryan languages in turn communicated them to other races and so on until they had spread as far east as India. Exactly this same thing has continued into historic times. Thus the Romans, themselves a non- Aryan race, imposed their Aryan language on the Spaniards, a second non-

THE ROOTS OF ENGLISH

Aryan race; and they in turn carried it to South America, Mexico, and the Philippines, where it is now spoken by millions of Indians and Malays. English in the same fashion has spread over North America, South Africa, and Australasia, and is making some progress in India, China, and Japan. At the present time, therefore, it is yetCL bJtAi pJJileorccnJe- ktcrr^'onlense- hunJ>r-tor.jetcna^>tiicelnc(*se nem c^ now mrtn

Facsimile taken from an eleventh century manuscript containing descriptions of the wonders of the East. Probably such manuscripts inspired Sir John Mandeville believed that the relationship of the Aryan languages can be more accurately represented by the diagram on Page 16 than by the genealogical table on Page 15.

This diagram represents the situation when Rome was founded,

753 B.C. The Romans spoke Latin, which is a dialect of Italic. In

"^ course cf time, that is to say, about 150 b.c, they subdued Spain and imposed their language upon its inhabitants. A hundred years later, under Julius Caesar, they also conquered Gaul. Here, too, Latin gradually supplanted Celtic. When the Roman empire went to pieces about 400 A.D., the Latin language, however, remained in both Spain and Gaul the language of the people. But it was modernized and simplified in course of time until it ceased to be called Latin and became what we now call Spanish and French. Italian is also a modern dialect of Latin. Celtic survives in Welsh, Highland Scotch, and Irish. Dutch, German, Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian are similarly modern dialects of Germanic or Teutonic. Russian is a survival of Slavonic and Persian of Iranian, while in India there are no less than fourteen modern Aryan languages derived from Sanskrit. Modern English is a curious and interesting mixture of French and German. How this union came about is to be told in the next three chapters.

1. Find and copy into your note-book ten words which are common to

English and either French, German, or Latin.

2. With what does the science of comparative philology deal?

3. Make a two-minute speech about Sir William Jones.

4. Explain the exact nature of his contribution to comparative philology.

5. Discuss briefly the relationship of Sanskrit to Latin, French, and

German.

6. In what nation and by what men was the science of comparative phil-

olog>' developed?

7. Who were the Aryans ?

8. Where did they originate?

9. Are all Aryan-speaking races Aryan?

ID. Cite some modern examples of the transference of language from race to race.

Suggested Readings. — (a) Henry Morley's " English Writers," vol. i, Book I ; {b) " l""rom the Beginnings Till After the Norman Conquest," by Stopford A. Brooke, vol. i, p. i, of Chambers' Encyclopaedia of English Literature; (c) "A School History of England," by C. R. L. Fletcher and Rudyard Kipling, Chapter I; (d) "The Knife and the Naked Chalk," a story by Rudyard Kipling; (e) " Ab, the Cave Man," by Stanley Waterloo; (/) " Tlie Origin of the Aryans," by Isaac Taylor; (g) "The Story of Ung," a poem, by Rudyard Kipling; (h) " How the First Letter Was Written " and " How the Alphabet Was Made," two stories, by Rudyard Kipling.

Chapter III

THE SAXONS (55 B.C. TO iioo A.D.)

"An overwhelming proportion of the words which make up our daily speech is drawn from Anglo-Saxon' roots, and our syntax is as distinctly and as generally to be traced to the same source."

— George P. Marsh.

The year 55 B.C. is the 1492 of England. The British Isles in that year emerged from the mists of tradition into the clear sunlight of authentic history. For this event we are indebted to the adventurous spirit of that Julius Caesar whose fate has been immortalized by Shakespeare and in whose Commentaries those who are fortunate enough to study Latin may still read how he with his Roman legions crossed the British Channel. Julius Caesar may therefore in a sense be called the Christopher Columbus of England. In this connection it is worth noting that both of the great homes of the Anglo-Saxon race were revealed, as it were, by natives of the Italian peninsula.

Caesar, however, did not find any Anglo-Saxons in Britain. It was peopled in his time by the same Celtic race which inhabited Gaul and Spain. These Celts, while by no means savages, were still barbarians. They had no property but arms and cattle. War was their favorite business. Their favorite pastime was a game played with balls made of a mixture of lime and the brains of their fallen foes. They buried their dead, as did the Indians of North America, with their weapons by their sides. One of the characteristics of their religion was human sacrifice. Caesar says that they used innocent persons for this purpose when the supply of criminals ra/i short. On the other hand, there was in their natures, as there is in that of their descendants, the Welsh and Irish of to-day, much to admire and to love. As a race they were tender, vivacious, and melancholy; they held poets and poetry in high esteem; and they thought it infamous for a chieftain to close the door of his house at all, lest a stranger come and behold his contracting soul. This indisposition to close the door may still be noted in their descendants. A few years ago, when a reform administration in Chicago undertook to enforce an ordinance requiring all saloons to be locked up at certain hours, it was found that one proprietor of unmistakably Celtic origin had lost his key; his hospitable door had stood open day, night, and Sunday for twenty years.

Caesar did not subdue these fierce islanders. It is probable that he left their shores in some haste. At all events, it was not until almost a century more had elapsed (43 a.d.) that the Romans effected a permanent lodgement in Britain, and it was not until 81 a.d. that they can be said to have conquered the country. Even then their subjugation of the islands appears to have been incomplete. The remains of a great wall which they built, 140 a.d., from the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Fo'rth bear mute but eloquent testimony to the limits of their power.

Under Roman rule the characteristics of the Celts were softened by humane laws and a milder worship. Roads were built, schools established, fine buildings arose, and agriculture flourished to such an extent that, in the fourth century, warehouses were built in Rome for the storage of British corn. Along with the rest of the Roman world, Britain toward the end of this period was gradually Christian-' ized. The student who wishes to obtain a vivid conception of the island under Roman rule should read in Mr. Rudyard Kipling's " Puck of Pook's Hill " the fascinating stories entitled "A Centurion of the Thirtieth," " On the Wall," and the " White Hats." In these tales, as Dr. Johnson with great felicity says of another book, are illustrated two of the most agreeable functions of literature: familiar things are made new and new things familiar.

The story of our literature begins with the Celts. As Henry Morley says, it cannot be dissociated from the lively Celtic wit in which it has one of its sources. Without this element England could never have produced a Shakespeare. Its fantastic but fascinating nature may be inferred from the story of the slanga-pig, which had the magical power of being alive again and in good condition after it had been killed and eaten. The story of the banquet of Dun na n-Gedh, which led to the battle of Magh Rath, shows likewise in every line the effervescent spirit of these early inhabitants of Britain. It is, in brief, as follows:

" There were no eggs for that banquet, and eggs were scarce. Those sent in search of them carried off a tub of goose-eggs belonging to a holy man, whose custom was to spend the day in the Boyne up to his arm-pits praying from his Psalter open on the shore before him and then go home and dine on an egg and a half and three cresses. When this saint found his eggs gone he cursed the banquet as powerfully as he could. Unfortunately one of the guests cracked an egg without waiting for grace to be said. Thence came a great crack in the peace of Ireland, though the king summoned the twelve apostles of Erin to bless and consecrate it. They came and each brought a hundred saints and they said grace powerfully but they could not avert the curse because one greedy guest had tasted of the feast before it had been blest.

" At the banquet there were two remarkable guests, a woman and a man. Each limb of their limbs was larger than the summit of a rock on a mountain, sharper than a shaving-knife each edge of their shins. Their heels and hams were in front of them. Had a sackful of apples been thrown on their heads not one of them would have fallen to the ground, for they would have stuck on the points of their strong bristly hair. A lock of the lower beard went up over the head and a lock of the upper beard went down over the knees; the woman had whiskers and the man had none. They carried a basket of goose-eggs and informed the king that they brought them as their share of the banquet. Meat and ale for three hundred was then set before them. When they had consumed it, they said, ' Give us food.' ' You can have no more,' said the steward, ' till the men of Erin join in the feast.' ' It shall be an evil feast for them,' they answered and vanished.

"■ A goose-egg was then set on a silver dish before every king in the house, but when the dish and egg were placed before Congal, who was the greedy one who had broken his fast before grace, the silver dish changed to a wooden dish and the goose-egg to the egg of a red-feathered hen. And one of Congal 's followers urged him to resent the insult, until his bird Of valor fluttered over him and he struck at friend and foe."

^^ ENGLISH LITERATURE .

The nature of the Roman influence on British life may be to some extent inferred from the words which they brought into the country. '' Street," " wine," '' butter," " pepper," " cheese," " silk," " alum," " pound," " inch," " mile," and " mint " are all of Latin origin and probably found their way into British speech during the Roman occupation. In Chester and Manchester we still possess the Roman word castra, which means camp. To this same class of words belong likewise a number of church terms—" bishop," " candle," " creed," " font," " mass," '' monk," and '' priest." The names of the months are all Roman. " January " comes from Januarius, which is derived from janua, " door," and has obviously given us the word "janitor"; "February" from jebriiare, "to purify"; "March" from " Mars "; " April " from " Aphrodite "; " May " from " Maia "; " June " from " Juno "; " July " from " Julius " Caesar; " August " from his successor "Augustus"; "September" from septem, "seven"; "October" from octo, "eight"; "November" from novcm, " nine "; and " December " from decern, " ten." In all about 400 Latin words became fixed in the British Isles during the first thousand years of the Christian era.

On the other hand, very few Celtic words have passed over into English. Up to the twelfth century probably not more than twenty of these in all had become a part of our ancestors' speech. Among our common words of Celtic origin are " brag," " brat," " brawl," "bump," "dad," "dagger," "fun," "gridiron," "jag," "job," " lad," " lass," " mug," " nap," and " pet."

Early in the fifth century, that is to say, in 410 a.d., the Romans, hard pressed on the continent by the Goths, withdrew their last legion from Britain. The Celts who had submitted to their domination were almost immediately attacked and finally well nigh overwhelmed by their more warlike kinsmen, the Scots of Ireland and the Picts who lived beyond the Roman wall. To these were soon added a swarm of pirates belonging to three Teutonic tribes who dwelt in that district of southern Denmark which is now called Schleswig. These tribes, all closely related in manner, blood, and speech, were then known as Jutes, Angles, and Saxons.

In an unhappy moment for themselves the British leaders decided to try to save their country by inviting these freebooters to join with them against the Picts and Scots. Accordingly, in 449 a.d., there landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Island of Thanet, a band of warriors from Jutland, with their leaders, Hengist and Horsa, at their head. With this event begins English history. " No spot of English ground," says John Richard Green, " should be so sacred to Englishmen as that which first felt the print of English feet."