Introductory Remarks, R. T. Paine, Fessenden, Cox, Thornwell, Sprague, J. Jones, L. Beecher, Moses Stuart, Ed. Robinson, Upham, Bethune, Channing, Thoreau, Dana, Mitchell, Kimball, Gilmore, Simms, J. E. and Ph. P. Cooke, Bird, Peterson, Melville, J. S. C. Abbott, Stowe, Warners, ENGLISH LITERATURE, strictly speaking, does not mean the literature of England. There have been in England several successive races, each having a literature of its own. The old Celts, still represented by the Welsh in the west of England, had a literature, rather extensive too, which is no more English than the Hebrew is. The Anglo-Saxons, through a period of several centuries, culminating in the time of Alfred the Great, had a literature, some of it of a high order. This, though nearer to the English than any of the others are, though indeed the parent of the English, is not itself English; it is Anglo-Saxon. The Normans, who settled in England in the twelfth century, brought with them a noble literature. But it was Norman-French, not English. The ecclesiastics of the English Church, from the second century, possibly from the first, down to the time of the Reformation, and even a little later, had among them a literature of their own, which is very copious, and some of it of a high order. But it is Church-Latin, not English. A literature is named, not from the soil on which it thrives, but from the language in which it is written. As Latin literature is that written in the Latin language, as Greek literature is that written in the Greek language, so English Literature is that written in the English language. What it Includes. It includes works written by Americans, as well as those written by Englishmen. It includes the works even of foreigners, provided those works are written in the English language. How Divided. For convenience of treatment, however, the subject is divided into two parts. The works in English written in England and its dependencies are considered under the head of English Literature; the works in English written in the United States are considered under the head of American Literature. Point of Beginning. -To fix a precise point when English Literature may be said to have begun, we must first ascertain how far back the English Language goes. assume Beginning of the Language. In one sense, Language, being in a constant state of transition, has no beginning — none, that is, which may be traced to some precise point in historical times. And yet, if we follow any language from its present condition back through successive changes, we find, after a while, that the documents which appear in it are no longer intelligible to ordinary readers. The stream is lost. We are obliged, therefore, for convenience of treatment, to point, somewhat arbitrarily, where each language, in its present form, may be said to begin. Happily, in the case of the English language, historical events have defined this point more sharply than is the case with most languages. The Saxons in England maintained their language comparatively unimpaired until the coming of the Normans, A. D. 1066. For one or two centuries after the coming of the Normans, a sharp conflict took place, not only between the two races, but also between the two languages. The final result was a mixed race and a mixed language-predominantly Saxon, but with a large Norman element. The mixed language resulting from the Conquest, neither pure Saxon, such as Alfred spoke and wrote, still less pure Norman-French, such as William and his barons spoke, is our English. The Precise Point. In a change so gradual and continuous as that of the transition of a language from its ancient form to its modern form, it is not easy, as already stated, to fix a precise point where the language ceases to be one, and becomes clearly the other. But, in the case of the English, The date, A. D. 1200, may be assumed as a convenient dividing line between the old language and the new. Documents written much earlier than that are either Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French, according to the birth and the proclivities of the writer; documents later than that, become soon unmistakably English. |