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THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



studied with both pleasure and profit. No man, for instance, 

 could read " Hamlet " without enjoyment, whether he knows 

 anything of Shakespeare and his times or not. But the pleasure 

 we receive and the benefit we derive from a great work is in 

 proportion as we understand the author's meaning ; and we 

 understand his meaning in proportion as we are able by an 

 effort of imagination to place ourselves in his position, to see 

 things as he saw them, and judge them as he judged them. 

 And we shall be able to do this to a very small extent indeed 

 if we are not fully acquainted with the circumstances under 

 which he wrote and the influences by which he was surrounded. 

 For all reasons, therefore, we would impress upon our readers 

 the importance, when reading any English author, of doing so 

 with as full a knowledge as >hey can obtain of his character, his 

 history, and his times. 



But in order that English literature may be studied in the 

 manner and from the point of view which we advise, it is 

 necessary that the student, when he enters upon the study of 

 any work, should have the means of at once assigning to it 

 its proper place in the catalogue of literature. This he cannot 

 do without having the history of our literature, at least in its 

 broader features, mapped out in his mind, knowing the sequence 

 of the great writers, and their connection with one another, 

 and the characteristics of each literary period. Such a know- 

 ledge is the more easily attained, because our literature easily 

 and naturally divides itself into several well-marked periods, 

 corresponding very closely to the most important stages in our 

 political history. And the object of the following lessons will 

 be to enable students of English literature to acquire this know- 

 ledge, so necessary for a thoroughly useful system of reading, 

 as well as to direct their choice of books to read, and give 

 them such assistance as may be possible in understanding and 

 appreciating what they read. 



In laying out the outline of a history of English literature, 

 the first thing to be determined is the point from which to date 

 its commencement. And as to this there is, wo think, little 

 room for hesitation. English literature, for the purposes of the 

 student, begins with the age of Chaucer, the latter half of the 

 fourteenth century, the reign of Edward III. Before that 

 time there had been many works written in England, and in 

 different languages, but it could not be said that there was any 

 literature addressing itself to the whole people of England; or 

 written in a language which was that of the whole people. 



The population of England, as our readers are well aware, had 

 been recruited from many sources. The oldest inhabitants of the 

 island of whom history gives us any account were of Celtic blood, 

 akin to the Celts of Ireland and the Highlanders of Scotland, but 

 much more nearly akin to those now of Wales and Cornwall. They 

 fell under the yoke of the Roman empire, and for five hundred 

 years Roman institutions and Roman civilisation prevailed in the 

 country. The Romans abandoned their occupation of Britain 

 in the middle of the fifth century, but they did not leave the 

 Britons to the enjoyment of peace or security. Immediately 

 after, if not before, the departure of the Romaois a dangerous 

 friend, soon to become a formidable enemy, had appeared on the 

 coasts of Britain. The Saxons, a people from the banks of the 

 Elbe and the shores of the German Ocean, had commenced their 

 long series of invasions. The history of the struggle between the 

 Saxons and the Britons is lost in obscurity, but it ended in the 

 complete subjugation of Britain under the Saxon dominion ; and 

 some form of their language a language of the German stock, 

 and the parent of our modern English has ever since been the 

 language of the great bulk of the inhabitants of this island. The 

 Danes were the next invaders ; but though they established their 

 dominion for long, and although their tongue no doubt materially 

 modified the dialect of those parts of England with which they 

 had most to do, the language of the country remained sub- 

 stantially unchanged ; and it may be said that at the date of 

 the Norman conquest, with the exception of the Celtic-speaking 

 districts, which we need not here consider, the language of 

 England was one, and that was Anglo-Saxon. 



But the Norman conquest brought a great change. The 

 Normans, or Northmen, who invaded and conquered England 

 under William of Normandy, were a Scandinavian race, nearly 

 akin to the Danes ; but during their long abode in the province 

 of Normandy they had abandoned their original tongue, and 

 adopted the French language, the language of those they had 

 vanquished ; and French was the language which they carried 



with them into England. From this time onward there were 

 two spoken languages in England, the Norman-French of the 

 court and the feudal castles, and the Saxon of the mass of the 

 people. Each of these languages had its writers, books intended 

 for the nobles being written for the most part in French, those 

 intended for the people in Saxon. But there was also a third 

 kind of literature in this country. In the monasteries, which 

 were scattered over all parts of the country, chroniclers and 

 religious writers used Latin as their literary tongue. 



We have spoken of the Saxon tongue as the parent of our 

 modern English, and we have just spoken of the Saxon litera- 

 ture which preceded the period at which the history of English 

 literature properly begins. And it may therefore be asked why 

 we arbitrarily select a particular point of time after which we 

 say the literature was English, while what went before was not ? 

 In answer to this, we say that we do not draw the line at the 

 point at which we have drawn it on the ground of any sudden 

 or marked change in the language, though the language did 

 undergo much modification at the very period in question; 

 but for the reason we have given above, that the Saxon or 

 English literature before Chaucer's day was not the literature 

 of the whole English nation, but of the English-speaking 

 portion of the nation : in his time it became that of the 

 nation. The changes by which the language of the first Saxon 

 invaders has in the course of centuries been transformed into 

 the English of our day have been very gradual ; and there is 

 no one point of time at which it can be said that Anglo-Saxon 

 became English. But in order to the better understanding of 

 what we shall have to say in future lessons, it is well that our 

 readers should be acquainted with the several stages into which 

 the progress of the language is divided by most modern scholars. 

 It must be remembered, however, that these divisions are not 

 always very clearly marked, and are not given in quite the same 

 way by all the authorities. The language is said to be Anglo- 

 Saxon down to the middle of the twelfth century. The name of 

 Semi-Saxon is given to it for the next hundred years, down to 

 the middle of the thirteenth century. From that time until the 

 latter end of the fourteenth century it is called Old English. 

 Then the name of Middle English is applied to the English in 

 use down to the reign of Elizabeth. And after that period the 

 language is said to be Modern English. 



In our next lesson we shall give a brief account of the re- 

 mains which have come down to us of those various forms of 

 literature Saxon, French, and Latin previous to the date at 

 which we commence the history of English literature proper. 



But by the days of Edward III. the English language had 

 completely supplanted, while it partly absorbed, the French of 

 the Norman nobles, and had become the language of the whole 

 nation. And that period, the age of Chaucer, is our first period 

 in the history of English literature. 



The second period extends from the death of Chaucer over a 

 space of about a hundred years, down to the time of the first 

 revival of literary energy under the Tudor sovereigns. 



The third period extends from the first revival of literature, 

 at the period we have mentioned, through the reigns of Elizabeth 

 and James I., and includes within it the most brilliant 

 portion of our literary history. 



The fourth period is that which includes the reign of Charles I., 

 the Civil War, and the Commonwealth. 



The fifth period is that of the Restoration, beginning with that 

 event, and extending down to the Revolution of 1688. 



The sixth period extends from the Revolution, through the reign 

 of Queen Anne and the earlier portion of those of the Georges, 

 and includes what has been habitually called the Augustan 

 age of English literature, or the age of the correct school. 



The seventh period is that which is intermediate between 

 the last-mentioned and the great revival of romantic literature 

 at the end of the eighteenth century. 



The eighth period is that of the revival of the romantic 

 school of literature, which began in the reign of George III., 

 under the impulse of the same intellectual movement which 

 immediately preceded the great French Revolution, the period 

 to which belong Scott, Byron, and Shelley, and which may be 

 said scarcely yet to have come to an end. 



In the following course of lessons we shall treat of these 

 periods in order, and of the principal writers belonging to each 

 of them, examining as fully as we can the most important works 

 of these writers. 



