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

tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">The Religious Period of the Drama. Miracle and Mystery Plays. The Moral Period of the Drama. The Interludes. The Artistic Period of the Drama. Classical Influence upon the Drama. Shakespeare's Predecessors in the Drama. Christopher Marlowe. Shakespeare. Decline of the Drama. Shakespeare's Contemporaries and Successors. Ben Jonson. Beaumont and Fletcher. John Webster. Thomas Middleton. Thomas Heywood. Thomas Dekker. Massinger, Ford, Shirley. Prose Writers. Francis Bacon. Richard Hooker. Sidney and Raleigh. John Foxe. Camden and Knox. Hakluyt and Purchas. Thomas North. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. CHAPTER VII. THE PURITAN AGE The Puritan Movement. Changing Ideals. Literary Characteristics. The Transition Poets. Samuel Daniel. The Song Writers. The Spenserian Poets. The Metaphysical Poets. John Donne. George Herbert. The Cavalier Poets. Thomas Carew. Robert Herrick. Suckling and Lovelace. John Milton. The Prose Writers. John Bunyan. Robert Burton. Thomas Browne. Thomas Fuller. Jeremy Taylor. Richard Baxter. Izaak Walton. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. CHAPTER VIII. PERIOD OF THE RESTORATION History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. John Dryden. Samuel Butler. Hobbes and Locke. Evelyn and Pepys. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. CHAPTER IX. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE History of the Period. Literary Characteristics. The Classic Age. Alexander Pope. Jonathan Swift. Joseph Addison. "The Tatler" and "The Spectator." Samuel Johnson. Boswell's "Life of Johnson." Later Augustan Writers. Edmund Burke. Edward Gibbon. The Revival of Romantic Poetry. Thomas Gray. Oliver Goldsmith. William Cowper. Robert Burns. William Blake. The Minor Poets of the Romantic Revival. James Thomson. William Collins. George Crabbe. James Macpherson. Thomas Chatterton. Thomas Percy. The First English Novelists. Meaning of the Novel. Precursors of the Novel. Discovery of the Modern Novel. Daniel Defoe. Samuel Richardson. Henry Fielding. Smollett and Sterne. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. CHAPTER X. THE AGE OF ROMANTICISM Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics of the Age. The Poets of Romanticism. William Wordsworth. Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Robert Southey. Walter Scott. Byron. Percy Bysshe Shelley. John Keats. Prose Writers of the Romantic Period. Charles Lamb. Thomas De Quincey. Jane Austen. Walter Savage Landor. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. CHAPTER XI. THE VICTORIAN AGE Historical Summary. Literary Characteristics. Poets of the Victorian Age. Alfred Tennyson. Robert Browning. Minor Poets of the Victorian Age. Elizabeth Barrett. Rossetti. Morris. Swinburne. Novelists of the Victorian Age. Charles Dickens. William Makepeace Thackeray. George Eliot. Minor Novelists of the Victorian Age. Charles Reade. Anthony Trollope. Charlotte Brontë. Bulwer Lytton. Charles Kingsley. Mrs. Gaskell. Blackmore. Meredith. Hardy. Stevenson. Essayists of the Victorian Age. Macaulay. Carlyle. Ruskin. Matthew Arnold. Newman. The Spirit of Modern Literature. Summary. Bibliography. Questions. Chronology. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS

CANTERBURY PILGRIMS From Royal MS., 18 D.ii, in the British Museum

LITERARY MAP OF ENGLAND

THE MANUSCRIPT BOOK After the painting in the Congressional Library, by John W. Alexander

GEOFFREY CHAUCER After the Rawlinson Pastel Portrait in the Bodleian Library, Oxford

PORTIA After the portrait by John Everett Millais. Property of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

AMERICAN MEMORIAL WINDOW, STRATFORD

EDMUND BURKE From an old print

ALFRED TENNYSON After the portrait by George Frederic Watts

SIR GALAHAD After the painting by George Frederic Watts

CHARLES DICKENS After the portrait by Daniel Maclise

THOMAS CARLYLE After the portrait by James McNeill Whistler

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A PAGE FROM THE MANUSCRIPT OF BEOWULF

STONEHENGE, ON SALISBURY PLAIN

INITIAL LETTER OF A MS. COPY OF ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL

RUINS AT WHITBY

CÆDMON CROSS AT WHITBY ABBEY

LEIF ERICSON'S VESSEL

CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL AS IT WAS COMPLETED LONG AFTER THE CONQUEST

REMAINS OF THE SCRIPTORIUM OF FOUNTAINS ABBEY

TABARD INN

JOHN WYCLIF

SPECIMEN OF CAXTON'S PRINTING IN THE YEAR 1486

EDMUND SPENSER

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

ANNE HATHAWAY COTTAGE

BIRTHPLACE OF SHAKESPEARE

TRINITY CHURCH, STRATFORD-ON-AVON

BEN JONSON

JOHN MILTON

JOHN BUNYAN

LIBRARY AT TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE

WESTMINSTER

JONATHAN SWIFT

TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN

JOSEPH ADDISON

SAMUEL JOHNSON

THOMAS GRAY

CHURCH AT STOKE POGES

OLIVER GOLDSMITH

WILLIAM COWPER

ROBERT BURNS

BIRTHPLACE OF BURNS

THE AULD BRIG, AYR (AYR BRIDGE)

DANIEL DEFOE

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

WORDSWORTH'S HOME AT RYDAL MOUNT

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

ROBERT SOUTHEY

WALTER SCOTT

ABBOTSFORD

GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

CHARLES LAMB

CHRIST'S HOSPITAL, LONDON

THOMAS DE QUINCEY

ROBERT BROWNING

MRS. BROWNING

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

GEORGE ELIOT

THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

JOHN RUSKIN

QUADRANGLE OF ORIEL COLLEGE, OXFORD

Illustration: A LITERARY MAP OF ENGLAND
A LITERARY MAP OF ENGLAND

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION--THE MEANING OF LITERATURE Hold the hye wey, and lat thy gost thee lede.
            Chaucer's Truth
    On, on, you noblest English, ...
    Follow your spirit.
                Shakespeare's Henry V

The Shell and the Book. A child and a man were one day walking on the seashore when the child found a little shell and held it to his ear. Suddenly he heard sounds,--strange, low, melodious sounds, as if the shell were remembering and repeating to itself the murmurs of its ocean home. The child's face filled with wonder as he listened. Here in the little shell, apparently, was a voice from another world, and he listened with delight to its mystery and music. Then came the man, explaining that the child heard nothing strange; that the pearly curves of the shell simply caught a multitude of sounds too faint for human ears, and filled the glimmering hollows with the murmur of innumerable echoes. It was not a new world, but only the unnoticed harmony of the old that had aroused the child's wonder.

Some such experience as this awaits us when we begin the study of literature, which has always two aspects, one of simple enjoyment and appreciation, the other of analysis and exact description. Let a little song appeal to the ear, or a noble book to the heart, and for the moment, at least, we discover a new world, a world so different from our own that it seems a place of dreams and magic. To enter and enjoy this new world, to love good books for their own sake, is the chief thing; to analyze and explain them is a less joyous but still an important matter. Behind every book is a man; behind the man is the race; and behind the race are the natural and social environments whose influence is unconsciously reflected. These also we must know, if the book is to speak its whole message. In a word, we have now reached a point where we wish to understand as well as to enjoy literature; and the first step, since exact definition is impossible, is to determine some of its essential qualities.

ArtisticQualities of Literature. The first significant thing is the essentially artistic quality of all literature. All art is the expression of life in forms of truth and beauty; or rather, it is the reflection of some truth and beauty which are in the world, but which remain unnoticed until brought to our attention by some sensitive human soul, just as the delicate curves of the shell reflect sounds and harmonies too faint to be otherwise noticed. A hundred men may pass a hayfield and see only the sweaty toil and the windrows of dried grass; but here is one who pauses by a Roumanian meadow, where girls are making hay and singing as they work. He looks deeper, sees truth and beauty where we see only dead grass, and he reflects what he sees in a little poem in which the hay tells its own story:

    Yesterday's flowers am I,
And I have drunk my last sweet draught of dew.
Young maidens came and sang me to my death;
The moon looks down and sees me in my shroud,
    The shroud of my last dew.
Yesterday's flowers that are yet in me
Must needs make way for all to-morrow's flowers.
The maidens, too, that sang me to my death
Must even so make way for all the maids
    That are to come.
And as my soul, so too their soul will be
Laden with fragrance of the days gone by.
The maidens that to-morrow come this way
Will not remember that I once did bloom,
For they will only see the new-born flowers.
Yet will my perfume-laden soul bring back,
As a sweet memory, to women's hearts
        Their days of maidenhood.
And then they will be sorry that they came
        To sing me to my death;
And all the butterflies will mourn for me.
        I bear away with me
The sunshine's dear remembrance, and the low
        Soft murmurs of the spring.
My breath is sweet as children's prattle is;
I drank in all the whole earth's fruitfulness,
To make of it the fragrance of my soul
    That shall outlive my death.[1]

One who reads only that first exquisite