ENGLISH LITERATURE. 



45 



In Spanish, nonns have bnt two oatee, the nominative and 

 objective - tho former being tho agent or subject of the verb ; 



.. object of an action expreaMd by the verb, 

 i pressed by a preposition. 



Tii. TO iii no pouetnw case in SpanUh ; property or possession 

 U expressed by means of the proposition de ; as, 

 El hijo de Joan, the ton of John ; i.e., John'* ton. 

 La CUM de la muger, th* AOUM of the woman ; i.e., (to woman'i houtt. 

 ): I hbro o de Maria, tin book it of Uary ; i.e., tht book u Jtfary'i. 



umn cannot servo as an adjective for another noun, as in 



h. Thus, saoh phrases M tho York road, a pujior hat, 



an ivory spoon, are in Spanish to be rendered : ol camino do 



York, un Hombrero do papel, nna cuchara de marfll ; i.e., the 



rou it of (to or from) York, a hat of paper, a spoon of ivory. 



rk. It in neoeasary to mention that of the few verbs for 

 -ont given in the vocabulary, those ending with n are iu 

 the third person plural, and those not ending with n are in tho 

 third person singular. 



The learner will bo able to distinguish the gender of nouns, 

 either from their sex or from their termination. Any noun 

 forming an exception to the general rules of gender, will have 

 its gender specified in the vocabulary, and should be remembered 

 by the learner. 



VOCABULARY. 



The Spanish for ship carpenter is carpintero de navio, 

 carpenter of ship. 



It cannot bo said in Spanish, I am hungry, I am thirsty, I am 

 afraid, but I have hunger, I have thirst, I have fear. 



EXERCISE 3. SPANISH-ENGLISH. 



1. Los Impresores tienen dinero. 2. Las mugeres tienen hambre. 

 3. Los pintores tienen libros. 4. Los jueces tienen sod. 5. Las 

 mugeres dieron libros al padre de la Francesa. 6. Los hoinbres dierou 

 dinero a la madre del Americano. 7. Los carpiuteros fueron a casa* 

 del pintor. 8. Los jueces escribierou cartas 4 la madre del piutor. 

 9. Los carpiuteros de navio tienen diucro. 



EXERCISE 4. ENOLISH-SPANISH. 



1. The painters have money. 2. The women have husbands. 3. 

 The carpenters gave a book to the son of the judge. 4. The daughters 

 of the Frenchwoman wrote letters to the sons of the judge. 5. The 

 physician wrote letters to the mother of the painter. 6. The male 

 servants of the physician wrote letters to the female servants of the 

 Frenchwoman. 7. The printers went to (the) house of the judge. 8. 

 The horses are hungry. 9. The oxen are thirsty. 



ENGLISH LITERATURE. IX. 



THE ELIZABETHAN PERIOD: PEOSE. 



MUCH of what we have said of the development of poetical 

 literature in England during the Elizabethan age applies equally 

 to the prose of the same period. We have, in common with 

 almost every writer on the subject, treated the Elizabethan 

 age as including not only the reign of the queen herself, but 

 also that of her suocessor. In prose literature, as in poetry, 

 the great brilliancy of the period belongs to the later more 

 than to the earlier portion of it. Most of the great writers 

 who adorned it were either still unborn, or mere children, 

 when Queen Elizabeth began her reign. And the contrast is 

 striking between the scantiness in amount, and meagreness 

 in quality, of tho prose literature of tho first years of her 

 reign, and the variety and power of the close of the period of 

 which we speak. A few of the writers, whom we have thought 

 it better to treat as belonging to tho preceding age, such as 



Casa, when it means a house, aa a place of residence, or home, does 

 not take tho article before It, as in English. 



Asoham, were still living at the tune at the queen's accession. 

 Thus Asoham's "Schoolmaster," which we have already men- 

 tioned, though probably written before, WM published in the 

 reign of Elisabeth. Bnt the prose literature of thin earlier period 

 has been generally described by Halhun, and it* merit* and 

 defeat* are sufficiently pointed out in a single sentence : " We 

 should search in Tain for any elegance or eloquence in writing 

 Yet there is an increasing expertne** and fluency; and the 

 language insensibly rejecting obsolete forms, the r"^m*r of 

 oar writers is less uncouth, and their sense more pointed and 

 perspicuous than before." 



But in the later years of Elizabeth, not only wan literature 

 abundant, but literary taste was the fashion ; and tbi* led to one 

 curious phenomenon which deforms a portion of the literature 

 of the period, and had a very extensive and corrupting in- 

 fluenoe upon the taste of the court, and hence of the nation. 

 Tho style of writing known an Euphuitm derived its name from 

 the most conspicuous example of the style itself, the Etiphuet 

 of Lilly. John Lilly, whom we shall have to mention again as 

 a dramatist, was the author of a tedious prose romance in 

 two parts, containing tho adventures of a young Athenian, first 

 at Naples, described in the first part, " Enphnes, the Anatomy 

 of Wit," and secondly in England, described in the second 

 part, "Enphues and his England." The style is affected and 

 unnatural, made up of laboured antithesis, far-fetched and 

 inappropriate illustrations, artificially inverted sentence* of 

 everything which is most at war with ease, simplicity, and 

 grace of language. The book would scarcely be worth notic- 

 ing in the present day were it not for the great influence it 

 exercised in its own time. It at once became a favourite at 

 the court of Elizabeth, every one who aspired to a reputa- 

 tion for literary taste and culture imitated ita absurdities in 

 his conversation, and the taint of Euphuism is found among a 

 very large part of tho lesser writers of the period ; while aomo 

 of tho greater, perhaps even Shakespeare himself, tho greatest 

 of them all, can hardly bo said to have always escaped it. 

 Shakespeare, in "Love's Labour's Lost," through the lips 

 of Holof ernes, caricatures this affectation of style ; and Scott, 

 more broadly still, in the character of Sir Piercy Shafton, in 

 the " Monastery." 



To a very different class belong the writings of Sir Philip 

 Sidney. Sidney was perhaps the purest example of the highest 

 type of character which that age ever produced; a type 

 which combined the high courage, generosity, and adventurous 

 devotion of the ages of chivalry, with the learning, culture, and 

 tolerance of a later day. We shall not speak here of his fame 

 as a soldier, of his universal popularity, or of the general grief 

 at his aarly death on the field of Zntphen in 1586. We have 

 already had occasion to mention him as a poet, and as the friend 

 and patron of poets, especially as the generous and faithful 

 friend of Spenser. But in the history of literature Sir Philip 

 Sidney's place depends mainly on his prose works, which are 

 two in number the "Arcadia" and the "Apology for Poesy." 

 Both were first published after the death of the author ; of the 

 date at which they were written we cannot be certain. Tho 

 " Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia," so called by the writer 

 from his sister, to whom it is addressed, is a romance with 

 much variety of incident, some conception of character, and 

 in parts, a good deal of power of depicting the gentler emotions, 

 being in all these respects far superior to~ any prose work of 

 fiction which had been produced in England previously, or was 

 produced for a long time afterwards. The " Apology for Poeay," 

 or " Defence of Poetry," is a short essay on poetry (using poetry 

 in a wide sense to include all works of mere imagination, 

 whether in verse or in prose), its uses and pleasures, and the 

 reasons why poets and poetry were not held in higher esteem. 

 As a work of criticism this work is not, and does not profess to 

 be, profound or systematic ; but it is full of good sense and 

 good taste, and there are probably few of Sidney's judgments 

 which a critic of the nineteenth century would be inclined to 

 reverse. But the great merit of Sidney's works consisted not 

 so much in what he had to say, as in the mode in which he said 

 it. His style combines clearness and simplicity with dignity 

 and variety, to a degree quite unknown till then ; and from the 

 great popularity which his works obtained, especially the 

 " Arcadia," there can be little doubt that he contributed more 

 than any previous writer had done to the formation of a sound 

 standard of taste in the matter of style. A few extracts from 



