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SIMPLE HISTORY OF

ENGLISH

LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT WE MEAN BY ENGLISH LITERATURE.

1. Many of those who read this book have probably learned some Latin, and have come upon the word litera, “ a letter of the alphabet," and its plural litera, which, besides standing for "letters," has the singular meaning, "a letter," an epistle. You can easily see the connection between both these meanings and our English word literature. When we speak of "English literature," we mean the thoughts of English-speaking people put into words by the aid of letters; or perhaps the word may have arisen because so much of the earliest literature was written in the form of letters-for example, most of the New Testament scriptures are epistles or letters, and they may be considered some of the first and purest specimens of that kind of writing.

2. We may use the words "English literature" in one or other of two meanings. We may mean by English literature everything that was ever written in manuscript or printed in type in the English language; even private letters to our friends, and daily newspapers, might be included in this meaning. But the other and higher meaning is the one more usually denoted by the words—not all that has ever been written in the English language, but only that part of it which will never grow old, which will always live, always be read and read again by generation after generation of English-speaking people over the world as long as any exist.

The story of our country's acts—

that story which is being made year by year, abroad on the battle-field, at home in Parliament, and in our national lifewe may read in English history; the history of the nation's thoughts and feelings, which find expression in song and story, is told in our English literature.

3. A great nation like England has not only a grand history -and we must all remember that each of us by his or her individual life and work is helping to make that history—but also a grand and noble literature, numbering many books and names that will never be forgotten. And it is from such books that we get noble thoughts and good counsel to make us worthy citizens. Hundreds of years have come and gone since Chaucer wrote his Canterbury Tales, since Wiclif translated the Bible into English, since Spenser wrote his Faerie Queene and Shakespeare his beautiful plays; yet those books are still remembered, still read. They never decay nor grow old, but, like the rocky shores of England, or the rugged mountains of Scotland, they still endure, showing no trace of the ravages of time.

4. If you are an English boy or girl, and live in London, you have only to go to the British Museum Library, and there you may see room after room, with shelves all round up to the lofty ceilings, crowded with thousands of volumes, to which every year new books are added. Scottish boys and girls may see the same at the Advocates' Library in the Parliament House in Edinburgh; and some other towns in Great Britain, and many in America, have also great libraries, where all the books and newspapers ever published are stored for the benefit of the British people and their American cousins. If you are a wise boy or girl, you will resolve to know more than the mere outside of these books; but you will also see that it would be impossible, even in the longest lifetime, to learn the contents of anything like the whole or even the greater part of them. You will rather set about finding out which are most worthy to be read-most likely to help their reader to a good and useful life-which, in fact, of all those books are the best and noblest of our English literature.

5. To do this, you will need to know a little about their writers, and how the books came to be written; and as you

grow older, you will be more and more able to choose out the books most likely to do you good, and to give you pleasure in your leisure hours. In the following chapters you will find some help, but you must always try to learn more about the books of which you read from some older friend who has studied them, and can tell you about them, until you are old enough to read them for yourselves; and so bit by bit you will be making acquaintance with English literature.

CHAPTER II.

CELTIC LITERATURE.

1. Although every British boy and girl may learn to write, and although every one may learn to put down on paper what he thinks and feels, so that others may read it, it is not every one, but only a very few in each age, who can write a really good book-a book that will always live and be read. Nay, in some ages of our country's history there has not been a single very great book written; there has not lived a single man or woman wise enough to write one of the truly great works of English literature. It seems, indeed, as if a very wise and clever writer were God's special messenger-like the prophets of old whom God sent from time to time to his chosen people Israel to teach them how to live rightly and wisely. God gives the message; the great writer only delivers it. Such a message is a very special gift. Just as in Hebrew times there were some born to be warriors, others to be priests, others chroniclers, and only a few to be prophets or sweet singers, like King David, so it is in every age and in every country.

2. The earliest literature of our land is not English but Celtic. You all know that long, long ago, while Britain was a great forest, with swamps or morasses here and there, and wild beasts prowling beneath the forest trees, the only inhabitants were savage tribes who painted their bodies (hence some of them were called Picts, or painted men), and lived by hunting and fishing. But

by-and-by a people called Celts came over, perhaps from France, and took possession of the country. These Celts were divided into two great families the Gaels, whose descendants still dwell in Ireland and in the Highlands of Scotland, and speak Erse and Gaelic; and the Cymri, the ancestors of the Welsh. Each of these two families was divided into clans; and often those clans would fight with each other, or with another race from Germany called Teutons, who crossed the sea and tried to drive the Celts out of Britain.

3. Now there was no printing in those days; and if there was any writing, it was only of a very rough kind, on the bark of trees or on stones-those large Druid stones which are still to be seen in some parts of the island. How, then, did those people keep account of their history? All the history, all the literature of those Celts, was a kind of rough poetry which was handed down from father to son, not in writing, but by memory. Those who made and sang these songs were called Bards. They were the singers as well as the poets of the nation, first putting into words the thoughts and feelings of the people, then singing the songs to the music of their harps, and sometimes teaching them to the people.

4. Besides their quick temper, their great love of the beautiful, and their wild fancies, which the Irish, the Welsh, and the Highland people have inherited from their Celtic forefathers, the Celts had a great admiration for brave deeds; and most of the Celtic poetry that has come down to us consists of stories of battles and warlike deeds. One of the longest pieces tells of the great Gaelic Battle of Gabhra, which was fought about the year 284. Part of it is a beautiful lament, in which a bard Fergus tells his father, the great chief Fingal, of the death of Fingal's grandson Oscar, son of Ossian.

5. Another long Celtic poem, of ninety-seven stanzas, called the Gododin, is full of laments for the Cymric chiefs who fell in the great struggle with the Teutons, who came over and conquered Britain, and from whom we English and Lowland Scots are descended. It was a terrible battle, that battle of Cattraethe, fought in Yorkshire thirteen hundred years ago. All

the tribes joined, and the battle lasted for a week. The Celts fought very bravely, but they were defeated, and three hundred and sixty of their chiefs were left dead on the battlefield. The most famous Celtic warrior chiefs were two-Urien, lord of the north, and Arthur, the leader in the south.

6. Around each of these two chiefs was gathered a band of bards, many of whom were also warriors; and it is from fragments of their poems that we learn of those terrible times, of their failing hopes, and finally of the slaughter and downfall of their race, until at last their spirit was broken and they could sing no more. One of Arthur's bards, MERLIN, still lived on for some time, a mad old man driven distracted by the horrible sights he had seen, singing sad, mournful songs, until one day he was found lying dead by a river's side.

7. When the struggle ended, the country was no longer that of the Celts but that of their conquerors, the Teutons, a people from the north of Germany. The principal tribe of these Teutons was the Englisc or Angles, so we find them calling the country Angle-land or England, and themselves English.

CHAPTER III.

EARLY ENGLISH LITERATURE.

1. As the Gaelic and the Cymric Celts had been driven to the mountainous parts of Britain-Wales, the Highlands of Scotland, Ireland, and a few to Cornwall and the Isle of Man -while the Angles or Englisc took possession of the rest of Britain, we have no longer a Celtic literature, but what we may call First or Early English, written in a language so different from the English we now use, that it is almost as difficult to read as a foreign tongue. The Celts have left us their love of the beautiful; but perhaps it was the Teutons that brought into our literature and our national character the strong love and struggle for whatever is good, and right, and God-like, that is the pride and strength of our country and its

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