LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 



171 



him the object of his search ; but Jealousy 

 seizes Welcome and locks her in Fear Castle. 

 Here the original poem ends. The sequel 

 takes up the tale at this point, and is an ex- 

 traordinary mixture of erudition and satire. 

 The poem reached the height of its popularity 

 in the sixteenth century. 



A Curious Book. A book belonging to 

 the family of Prince De Ligne of France is 

 said to be the most curious book in the world, 

 because it is neither written nor printed. The 

 letters of the text are cut out of each folio 

 upon the finest vellum ; and, being interleaved 

 with blue paper, it is as easy to read as print. 

 The labor bestowed upon it was excessive. 

 Rudolph II. of Germany offered for it, in 

 1640, $60,000. 



Koran, The, in the Arabic language sig- 

 nifies "The Reading." That Mohammed is 

 the real author of the Koran there is no doubt ; 

 but the Mohammedans steadfastly deny it to 

 be the work of their prophet, the orthodox 

 among them believing it to be of divine origin. 

 Mohammed left his revelations written upon 

 palm leaves and skin, which were thrown 

 promiscuously into a chest, bearing no dates 

 but merely the places of revelation ; some are 

 marked Mecca and some Medina. Three years 

 after the death of the prophet, in 635, Aby- 

 Bekr collected and published these articles in 

 the form of what is now called the Koran. 



Goethe, the acknowledged prince of Ger- 

 man literature, was born at Frankfort-on-the- 

 Main, August 28, 1749, and died in Weimar 

 on March 22, 1832. His greatest work is 

 Faust, but it can never become popular, be- 

 cause its wisdom does not lie on the surface. 

 When he had finished it, he said the work of 

 his life was done. Hermann and Dorothea is 

 as immortal as the Vicar of Wakefidd. The 

 Sorrows of Wertlter brought him equal fame. 

 It is said that the Werther fever ran so high 

 that in some countries booksellers were for- 

 bidden by law to sell it. Young women cried 

 over it, and young men shot themselves with 

 a copy of Werther in their hand. 



Classic and Romantic Literature. 

 The term classic has, ever since the second cen- 

 tury, been applied to writers of the highest 

 rank. Latterly it has come to designate the 

 best writers of ancient Greece and Rome. 

 Romantic literature was the term first used in 

 Germany, about the beginning of the present 

 century, by a number of young poets and 

 critics who wished. to indicate that they sought 

 the essence of art and poetry in the wonderful 

 and fantastic. 



Telemachus was written by Frangois Fen- 

 elon, Archbishop of Cambrey. It is a French 

 prose epic, in 24 books, and contains the 



adventures of Telemachus, the only son of 

 Ulysses and Penelope, while in search of his 

 father, who had been absent thirty years from 

 his home. Telemachus is accompanied by the 

 j god of wisdom under the form of Mentor. 

 There is perhaps no book in the French lan- 

 guage which has been more read, and it is a 

 class-book in almost every European school. 



Dante is called the father of Italian litera- 

 ture. Before his time the poets of northern 

 Italy wrote in the ProvenQal language, which 

 was the dialect spoken chiefly in southern 

 France. But Dante wrote in Italian, and from 

 his time the Italian became a real language. 



His great work is the "Divine Comedy," 

 an epic poem consisting of three parts, viz. : 

 hell, purgatory, and paradise. This poem is 

 an allegory conceived in the form of a vision, 

 which was the most popular style of poetry in 

 that age. As a poem, it is of the highest 

 order, and ranks Dante with Homer and 

 Milton. 



Songs of the Gondoliers. For more 

 than two hundred years the gondoliers of 

 Venice sang no other songs than strophes from 

 Tasso's immortal epic, "Jerusalem Delivered." 

 This poem commemorates the delivery of Jeru- 

 salem from the Saracens ; and the hero of the 

 poem is Godfrey de Bouillon, the first Christian 

 king of Jerusalem. Tasso was born at Sorrento 

 in 1544. He became melancholy, and was for 

 seven years confined by the Duke Alfonso^in 

 an insane asylum. When released he went to 

 Naples. Pope Clement VIII. invited him to 

 Rome to receive the laurel crown of poet ; but 

 he died before the ceremony took place, April, 

 1595, and was buried on the day on which he 

 was to have been crowned. 



Writing, History of. The very first 

 origin of the art of writing has been a matter 

 of speculation from the earliest times. The 

 myths of antiquity ascribe it to Thoth, or to 

 Cadmus, which only denotes their belief in its 

 being brought from the East, or being, per- 

 haps, primeval. The Talmud ascribes it to a 

 special revelation. Unquestionably the first 

 step toward writing was rude pictorial repre- 

 sentations of objects, the next the application 

 of a symbolic meaning to some of these pic- 

 tures, and gradually all pictures became sym, 

 bolic, and for convenience were abbreviated. 

 Later they became conventional signs, and in 

 time they were made to stand for the sounds 

 of spoken language. The various systems of 

 writing of the ancient world had probably at 

 least three sources the Egyptian, the Assyr- 

 ian, and the Chinese systems all of which 

 were originally hieroglyphics, or made up of 

 pictures. The Egyptians had four distinct 

 styles of writing the hieroglyphics, hieratic, 



