LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



163 



German schools. From this time Polish fiction 

 took a freer, bolder, and more varied form. 

 Mickiewicz, born in 1798, published his first 

 volume of poetry in 1822. Banished to the 

 interior of Russia, on account of political 

 troubles, he wrote a series of sonnets which at- 

 tracted the attention of Prince Galizin, under 

 Avhose auspices his epic poem, Konrad W alien- 

 rod, was published in 1828. His Polish epic 

 of Pan Tadeusz first appeared in Paris in 1834. 

 Among his contemporary authors, the most 

 noted are Odyniec, author of the drama of 

 Izora ; Korsac, a lyric and elegiac poet ; 

 Garczynski, who wrote many fiery battle- 

 songs ; and Czajkowski, a noted writer of 

 Slavic romances. The later prose writers of 

 Poland are the historical Lelewel, and Count 

 Plater, and Henryk Sienkiewicz, author of 

 With Fire and tiword and 'Quo Vadis, who is 

 the first of Polish novelists, and second to none 

 in this generation. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



The English language, like other composite 

 modern tongues, such as the French and 

 Italian, passed through several phases before 

 reaching its present form and character. 

 During the prevalence of the Anglo-Saxon 

 tongue, from the fifth century to the Norman 

 conquest, England boasted several authors, 

 whose names and works have in part descended 

 to us. The venerable Bede, born in North- 

 umberland in 672, is distinguished for his 

 scholarship. He left an Ecclesiastical history 

 of the Angles, which forms the basis of early 

 English history. The monk Csedmon, \vlio 

 flourished in the seventh century, wrote a par- 

 aphrase of Genesis and some fragments which 

 are supposed to have given Milton the first 

 idea of Paradise Lost. The song of Beowulf, 

 which belongs to the eighth century, is a 

 spirited and stirring heroic. King Alfred's 

 poems belong to the best specimens of Anglo- 

 Saxon literature. The Norman conquest in- 

 troduced the French language and the litera- 

 ture of the Trouveres, while the Anglo-Saxon 

 was left to the peasants and thralls. Out of 

 these elements, however, the English langiiage 

 was gradually formed, and under the reign of 

 Edward III., in the fourteenth century, was 

 made the language of the court. It then as- 

 sumed a character which is intelligible to the 

 educated English of the present day, and that 

 period, therefore, may be considered as the 

 first age of English literature. 



The eai-liest English author is Chaucer, 

 "the morning-star of English song," who 

 was born in 1328, and produced his first poem, 

 The Court of Love, in 1347. During his life 

 he enjoyed the favor of Edward III., and his 



son, John of Gaunt. He filled various diplo- 

 matic stations, among others that of ambassa- 

 dor to Genoa. During his residence in Italy, 

 he became familiar with the works of Dante, 

 Boccaccio, and Petrarch, and is supposed to 

 have visited the latter. He also wrote Troilus 

 and Cressida, The House of Fame, and The 

 Canterbury Tales, his most famous work, an 

 imitation, in poetry, of the Decameron. He 

 died in 1400. The first prose works in the 

 English language were translations of the gos- 

 pels and of some of the classics. Wickliffe, 

 the Reformer, who first made an English 

 version of the Bible, was a contemporary of 

 Chaucer. Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Henry 

 Howard, Earl of Surrey, who flourished under 

 the reign of Henry VIII., in the beginning of 

 the sixteenth century, are the next English 

 poets of note. They wrote principally songs 

 and odes. Surrey was beheaded on charge of 

 treason in 1547. 



The reign of Elizabeth, at the close of the 

 sixteenth century, was the golden age of 

 English literature. Shakespeare, Spenser, 

 Raleigh, Sidney, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, and 

 Fletcher formed a constellation of poets and 

 dramatists, such as no other age or country 

 ever produced. Spenser, born in 1553, became 

 early associated with Sir Philip Sidney, to 

 whom, in 1579, he dedicated his first work, 

 the Shepherd's Calendar, a pastoral. From 

 1586 to 1598, he was sheriff of the county of 

 Cork, in Ireland, and resided at Kilcolman 

 Castle, where his greatest work, The Faery 

 Queen, was composed. This is an allegory in 

 twelve books, written in stanza of his own in- 

 vention (modeled, however, on the Italian 

 ottaca rim a), and which now bears his name. 

 He died in 1599. Sidney, who was born in 

 1554, is best known as the author of Arcadia, 

 a pastoral romance, and the Defence of Poetry. 

 He is the first writer who gave an elegant and 

 correct form to English prose. Shakespeare, 

 the greatest dramatic poet of any age, was 

 born in 1564. He commenced his career by 

 preparing for the stage the plays of some of 

 his predecessors, and this fact has thrown 

 some doubt about the authenticity of two or 

 three of the plays included among his works. 

 The order in which his own plays appeared 

 has never been satisfactorily ascertained. The 

 following, however, are known to have been 

 written before 1598 : The Tico Gentlemen of 

 Verona ; Love's Labor Lost ; The Comedy of 

 Errors; Midsummer Night's Dream ; Romeo and 

 Juliet ; Merchant of Venice ; Richard II. ; Rich- 

 ard If I. ; Henry IV. ; and King John. 



The Tempest, which appeared in 1611, is 

 believed to be his last dramatic work. He 

 also wrote the poems of Venus and Adonis and 



