English Literature: Its History and Significance for the Life of the English-Speaking World - William J. Long (book club books .TXT) 📗

and far the welkin's strength
Over the multitudes conveys me, then
With rushing whir and clear melodious sound
My raiment sings. And like a wandering spirit
I float unweariedly o'er flood and field.

(Brougham's version, in Transl. from Old Eng. Poetry.)

34. The source of Andreas is an early Greek legend of St. Andrew that found its way to England and was probably known to Cynewulf in some brief Latin form, now lost.

35. Our two chief sources are the famous Exeter Book, in Exeter Cathedral, a collection of Anglo-Saxon poems presented by Bishop Leofric (c. 1050), and the Vercelli Book, discovered in the monastery of Vercelli, Italy, in 1822. The only known manuscript of Beowulf was discovered c. 1600, and is now in the Cotton Library of the British Museum. All these are fragmentary copies, and show the marks of fire and of hard usage. The Exeter Book contains the Christ, Guthlac, the Phoenix, Juliana, Widsith, The Seafarer, Deor's Lament, The Wife's Complaint, The Lover's Message, ninety-five Riddles, and many short hymns and fragments,--an astonishing variety for a single manuscript.

36. From Alfred's Boethius.

37. It is not certain that the translation of Bede is the work of Alfred.

38. See Translations from Old English Poetry. Only a brief account of the fight is given in the Chronicle. The song known as "The Battle of Maldon," or "Byrhtnoth's Death," is recorded in another manuscript.

39. This is an admirable little book, containing the cream of Anglo-Saxon poetry, in free translations, with notes. Translations from Old English Prose is a companion volume.

40. For full titles and publishers of general reference books, and for a list of inexpensive texts and helps, see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

41. The chief object of these questions is not to serve as a review, or to prepare for examination, but rather to set the student thinking for himself about what he has read. A few questions of an advanced nature are inserted which call for special study and research in interesting fields.

42. A Romance language is one whose basis is Latin,--not the classic language of literature, but a vulgar or popular Latin spoken in the military camps and provinces. Thus Italian, Spanish, and French were originally different dialects of the vulgar Latin, slightly modified by the mingling of the Roman soldiers with the natives of the conquered provinces.

43. See p. 51.

44. It is interesting to note that all the chroniclers of the period, whether of English or Norman birth, unite in admiration of the great figures of English history, as it was then understood. Brutus, Arthur, Hengist, Horsa, Edward the Confessor, and William of Normandy are all alike set down as English heroes. In a French poem of the thirteenth century, for instance, we read that "there is no land in the world where so many good kings and saints have lived as in the isle of the English ... such as the strong and brave Arthur, Edmund, and Cnut." This national poem, celebrating the English Edward, was written in French by a Norman monk of Westminster Abbey, and its first heroes are a Celt, a Saxon, and a Dane. (See Jusserand, Literary History of the English People, I, 112 ff.)

45. English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer.

46. Anselm was an Italian by birth, but wrote his famous work while holding the see of Canterbury.

47. During the Roman occupancy of Britain occurred a curious mingling of Celtic and Roman traditions. The Welsh began to associate their national hero Arthur with Roman ancestors; hence the story of Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, the first king of Britain, as related by Geoffrey and Layamon.

48. Probably a Latin copy of Bede.

49. Wace's translation of Geoffrey.

50. Only one word in about three hundred and fifty is of French origin. A century later Robert Mannyng uses one French word in eighty, while Chaucer has one in six or seven. This includes repetitions, and is a fair estimate rather than an exact computation.

51. The matter of Britain refers strictly to the Arthurian, i.e. the Welsh romances; and so another division, the matter of England, may be noted. This includes tales of popular English heroes, like Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Horn Child, etc.

52. According to mediæval literary custom these songs were rarely signed. Later, when many songs were made over into a long poem, the author signed his name to the entire work, without indicating what he had borrowed

53. An English book in which such romances were written was called a Gest or Jest Book. So also at the beginning of Cursor Mundi (c. 1320) we read:

Men yernen jestis for to here
And romaunce rede in diverse manere,

and then follows a summary of the great cycles of romance, which we are considering.

54. Tennyson goes farther than Malory in making Gawain false and irreverent. That seems to be a mistake; for in all the earliest romances Gawain is, next to Arthur, the noblest of knights, the most loved and honored of all the heroes of the Round Table.

55. There were various French versions of the story; but it came originally from the Irish, where the hero was called Cuchulinn.

56. It is often alleged that in this romance we have a very poetical foundation for the Order of the Garter, which was instituted by Edward III, in 1349; but the history of the order makes this extremely doubtful. The reader will be chiefly interested in comparing this romance with Beowulf, for instance, to see what new ideals have taken root in England.

57. Originally Cockaygne (variously spelled) was intended to ridicule the mythical country of Avalon, somewhat as Cervantes' Don Quixote later ridicules the romances of chivalry. In Luxury Land everything was good to eat; houses were built of dainties and shingled with cakes; buttered larks fell instead of rain; the streams ran with good wine; and roast geese passed slowly down the streets, turning themselves as they went.

58. Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads is the most scholarly and complete collection in our language. Gummere's Old English Ballads is a good short work. Professor Kittredge's Introduction to the Cambridge edition of Child's Ballads is the best summary of a very difficult subject. For an extended discussion of the literary character of the ballad, see Gummere's The Popular Ballad.

59. little bird.

60. in her language.

61. I live

62. fairest

63. I am

64. power, bondage.

65. a pleasant fate I have attained.

66. I know

67. gone

68. lit, alighted

69. For titles and publishers of reference books see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

70. The reader may perhaps be more interested in these final letters, which are sometimes sounded and again silent, if he remembers that they represent the decaying inflections of our old Anglo-Saxon speech.

71. House of Fame, II, 652 ff. The passage is more or less autobiographical.

72. Legend of Good Women, Prologue, ll. 29 ff.

73. wealth.

74. the crowd.

75. success.

76. blinds.

77. act.

78. trouble.

79. i.e. the goddess Fortune.

80. kick.

81. awl.

82. judge.

83. For the typography of titles the author has adopted the plan of putting the titles of all books, and of all important works generally regarded as single books, in italics. Individual poems, essays, etc., are in Roman letters with quotation marks. Thus we have the "Knight's Tale," or the story of "Palamon and Arcite," in the Canterbury Tales. This system seems on the whole the best, though it may result in some inconsistencies.

84. Troilus and Criseyde, III.

85. See p. 107.

86. For a summary of Chaucer's work and place in our literature, see the Comparison with Spenser, p. 111.

87. clad.

88. wonder.

89. brook.

90. sounded.

91. theirs

92. rule

93. righteousness

94. called

95. theirs

96. yield

97. say

98. them

99. hate

100. persecute

101. slander

102. rains

103. In its English form the alleged Mandeville describes the lands and customs he has seen, and brings in all the wonders he has heard about. Many things he has seen himself, he tells us, and these are certainly true; but others he has heard in his travels, and of these the reader must judge for himself. Then he incidentally mentions a desert where he saw devils as thick as grasshoppers. As for things that he has been told by devout travelers, here are the dog-faced men, and birds that carry off elephants, and giants twenty-eight feet tall, and dangerous women who have bright jewels in their heads instead of eyes, "and if they behold any man in wrath, they slay him with a look, as doth the basilisk." Here also are the folk of Ethiopia, who have only one leg, but who hop about with extraordinary rapidity. Their one foot is so big that, when they lie in the sun, they raise it to shade their bodies; in rainy weather it is as good as an umbrella. At the close of this interesting book of travel, which is a guide for pilgrims, the author promises to all those who say a prayer for him a share in whatever heavenly grace he may himself obtain for all his holy pilgrimages.

104. For titles and publishers of reference works see General Bibliography at the end of this book.

105. Constitutional History of England.

106. Symonds, Revival of Learning.

107. Sismondi attributes this to two causes: first, the lack of general culture; and second, the absorption of the schools in the new study of antiquity. See Literature of the South of Europe, II, 400 ff.

108. Erasmus, the greatest scholar of the Renaissance, was not an Englishman, but seems to belong to every nation. He was born at Rotterdam (c. 1466), but lived the greater part of his life in France, Switzerland, England, and Italy. His Encomium Moriae was sketched on a journey from Italy (1509) and written while he was the guest of Sir Thomas More in London.

109. Unless, perchance, the reader finds some points of resemblance in Plato's "Republic."

110. See Wordsworth's sonnet, On the Sonnet. For a detailed study of this most perfect verse form, see Tomlinson's The Sonnet, Its Origin, Structure, and Place in Poetry.

111. William Caxton (c. 1422-1491) was the first English printer. He learned the art abroad, probably at Cologne or Bruges, and about the year 1476 set up the first wooden printing press in England. His influence in fixing a national language to supersede the various dialects, and in preparing the way for