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ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF ENGLISH POETRY.

It is difficult to define any exact period when the Anglo-Saxon language assumed the form which we term English. A process of disintegration seems to have been slowly proceeding, even before the Norman conquest; and this event perhaps merely precipitated what would have inevitably happened. The Norman became the fashionable and the law language of the country; its influence gradually affected the speech of the middle classes; the substrata of society clung more doggedly to the forms of their mother tongue. During its era of transition,' the English language was in a state totally inapplicable to literary purposes, and accordingly, during the two centuries that succeeded the conquest, the written literature of England was, with few exceptions, either French or Latin. The Saxon chronicle, begun in the seventh century, ceases with the accession of Henry 11. (1154); and in the latter half of the twelfth century, Layamon, a priest of Ernley on Severn, the translator of Wace of Jersey's French poetic chronicle "Brut," has much more of the Saxon form than of what can be termed English. The earliest specimens of decided English have been referred to the conclusion of the thirteenth century, or about half a century before the period of Chaucer. In that age, in the reign of Edward III., the force of the conquered nation's vernacular had absorbed the speech of the conquerors, the qualities of which refined and polished the rudeness, without destroying the strength and picturesqueness of the original structure. The loss of the AngloNorman territories in France, and the wars of Edward III. with that country, effectually prevented the future growth of French literature in England. The turbid waters had settled into Chaucer's "well of pure English undefiled."

Some obscurity exists in the history of the structure of the Scottish form

1 For the different stages of its progress, and its relations to its cognate tongues, see Latham's "English Language," and his "Grammar."

* Brut, an alleged Trojan hero, Brutus, from whom the genealogy of the Welsh princes is deduced in the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The subject was a favourite one among the Armorican and Anglo-Norman minstrels of the thirteenth century. Many of the western nations were, like the Romans, fond of tracing their descent from Troy.

3 In that period the peculiarities of Saxon inflection and construction had gradually disappeared. Many of the Saxon alphabetic symbols had been abandoned, and English differed nearly as much from its parent speech as it does from the modern German; the labours of philologists have lately established its "kindly osculation" with the latter tongue.-See Latham's "English Language," and M'Douall's "Discourse on the Study of Oriental Languages," p. 8.

of the Saxon language. The Saxon conquests extended over the east coast of Scotland, including Berwickshire and the Lothians, and even across the Frith of Forth along the north-eastern counties (see Thomson's Scotland, p. 4). A Saxon basis was thus laid for the language of these districts.' When the Norman refugees flocked into Scotland, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, an influence on the language, similar to that described with regard to England, came into operation. From these circumstances, we find in the fourteenth century a closer resemblance between the tongues, than in succeeding periods, when their political relations had more separated the countries in interest and feeling, and when Scottish chiefs were no longer English vassals, to serve according to their interest in the armies of either power. The long alliance between Scotland and France, which traditionally dates as far back as Charlemagne and Achaius, infused during the fifteenth and succeeding centuries a large portion of a French element into the Scottish dialect. But the rapidly altering interests of the two countries, and the absence of the influences to which the nearer situation of England to the continent made her more accessible, gradually separated Scotland's Saxon dialect from that of her sister, until the former has come to represent more truly, with the exception of its French admixture, the original language imported by the invading Germans in the fifth century. This dialect, with possibly its beautiful literature, is rapidly perishing before the amalgamating influence which the English tongue has exerted since the Union; and as for the Gaelic-the speech of Ossian, and of centuries of departed kings and chiefs-when the British court is recreating on the skirts of Lochnagar, Echo will soon answer "Where" to the question, "Where is it ?"

The history of a country's poetry is in most cases the chief vehicle for the history of its language, both because it is known that the earliest efforts of infant nations have been made in this direction, and because poetry, more nice in the selection of its expressions than prose, acts as a more powerful agent in refining and conserving the character of a national speech, in cherishing the better parts of the changing structure, and enriching it with importations of words and phraseologies from foreign literatures.

The Saxon literature preserved to us is scanty; the poetry is in general rude, meagre in fancy and imagery, and "inferior to the Northern in depth of feeling." It consisted, according to Mr Turner's division, of,—1.

The western districts, comprehending Lanark and Ayr, seem to have been long in acquiring the Saxon tongue, and their language remained inferior to the purer speech of the East. Dunbar reproaches his western opponent, Kennedy, with the barbarism of his language; and it has been remarked as singular, that the purest writer of the Scottish dialect should have been a native of Ayrshire.-See Lockhart's Life of Burns.

2 We leave out of view the influence of the Danish invaders.

3 See note 4, p. 394.

The relations of the Jacobites with France perpetuated these French partialities. 5 Witness such words as ashet (assiette), fasheous, (facheux), jigot, &c. In illustration of the French influence produced by the Jacobite party, see Scott's novels, especially "Waverley," in the character of Bradwardine.

Hist. Ang. Saxons, vol. iii. p. 270, et seq., where specimens and translations will be found: consult also D'Israeli's "Amenities of Literature;" and Warton's History of English Poetry, edit. 1824.

Songs and Ballads; 2. Romance-like Narratives; 3. Miscellaneous Lyrics. Its versification, the principles of which are extremely doubtful, is short; the meagreness of idea is indicated by repetitions and periphrasis of epithet, and is ornamented along the line with alliterations. Inversion of grammatical arrangement, and the omission of particles, may also be mentioned among the ornaments of the Saxon poetry. Its themes are drawn from war and religion," the absorbing subjects of this period;" love, in the phase of the poetry of succeeding centuries, never occurs. This circumstance may perhaps be deduced from the peculiarities in the relation of the German nations towards their women alluded to by Roman writers.2 The greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poems are " Caedmon's Paraphrase ;” the subject is the same with Milton's Paradise Lost; and the Hero-poem Beowulph, both which may be reckoned to ascend to the dignity of Epic. The line of Saxon poets reaches from Caedmon in the seventh century, to a period below Alfred, himself a poet, in the tenth. The epic spirit of Caedmon is supposed by Turner to have been transmitted through the Latin poets of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries, who had caught a faint tone of the muse of Homer and Virgil, ere it was lost for ages to western Europe in the crash of the Roman empire. The authors and dates of many of the Saxon remains are unknown."

The state of society and manners which ensued in Europe after the establishment of the northern nations, in its southern and western provinces, and the form which the existing Christianity, or that which was called so, had assumed, had produced in Europe classes of literature totally dissimilar in scope, spirit, and character, from those which had subsisted in the preChristian period in the nations of the east and west. The traditions of the Church, the scholastic philosophy, founded on that of Aristotle, which had been filtered in a distorted shape through Arabian translations,—these influences and others conspired to give a new complexion to literature, in various departments. The national associations of the northern tribes, the dim glimmering that faintly tinged the minds of writers, from the classical remains preserved in the monasteries, coloured in particular the literature of poetry. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries accordingly display the progress of metrical romance; the subjects are derived from ancestral traditions, or from the legends of Greece and Italy." The Provençal poetry of the south, and the Norman poetry of the north of France, gave in these directions the tone to the literature of western Europe. The crusades opened up a new field of association and subject, and these two centuries accordingly exhibit the perfection of ballad and minstrelsy; the minstrels constituted a regu

I Alliteration long afterwards continued a favourite ornament with English poets; see page 58. For an account of the English alliterative poetry, see D'Israeli.

"Though the romantic gallantry of chivalry has by some been deduced from the Germanic tribes, yet our impressions of their feeling towards their more than Doric females are very different from those suggested by the term chivalry.

* See Turner and D'Israeli's "Amenities," &c.

4 See Turner, vol. iii. p. 316.

• We omit reference to the Latin Poetry of the Saxons. See Turner, iii. p. 332. • For the sources of romance, see Warton and D'Israeli.

lar order, and princes delighted to honour the votaries of the gay science. But in the age of Chaucer this taste had begun to decline, or rather had assumed a more civilised shape in other channels. The romances were gradually surrendered to prose; the Italian literature had received an impulse from the Provençal (especially when the seat of the papacy had been removed to Avignon), and shone with sudden and perfect lustre in the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. The grand epic complexion of the Italian poetry contrasts powerfully with the meagre and minute poetised chronicles of the north-west.

Chaucer, in the latter half of the fourteenth century-though with no models in his own language, except the rhyming chronicles and the Norman metrical romances, many of which must be counted English products though written in French-had the benefit of the better Italian models,' and of the extended knowledge which the intercourse of nations, the results of the crusades, the progress of Italian commerce, and the wars of Edward III. had communicated to western Europe. Accordingly his writings display a vast fund of varied knowledge, beyond that of his ruder predecessors; his mind expatiates with greater ease in a more expanded field, his language is enriched with a wealthier fund of epithet, picture, and description than is to be found in the lumbering tedium of the romances that preceded and followed him in English literature. Whatever be the external circumstances which act upon genius, they may act on it without affecting the mass of the people immediately, on whom influences work more slowly than on the rapidly germinating mind of genius. Hence, although Chaucer displayed the most varied forms of poetry, in all the sprightliness of Italian vivacity, in an enriched tongue and in melodious verse; although he must have poured on the literary mind of his day a multitude of new ideas and images,-yet his coming was followed by no corresponding improvement in poetry: Warton's comparison of Chaucer to "a genial day in spring," whose promise of sunny skies is so frequently broken by succeeding cheerless weather, is well known. Campbell, besides noticing the deficiency of patronage of literature in England, for we had no Nicholas Fifths nor Medicis,-hints at the stern repression of novelty in the persecution of the Lollards, as one of the causes that blighted the poetic blossom; there may be something in this reflection, for the poets, and among others Chaucer himself, were dangerous satirical enemies to the clergy. The Church had more than once looked dark on the minstrels, and they retaliated in no measured strains; witness "The Vision of Piers Ploughman" by Langland, Chaucer's cotemporary. That the clergy were sagacious in their hostility, may be seen in the results of Skelton's and of Sir David Lyndsay's writings in a future century, and of Butler's, still lower down. The Wars of the Roses distracted the island during the latter portion of the succeeding century, and England retrograded in literature

1 Shaw has remarked that the tendency of infant literature to translation is exemplified in Chaucer's earlier works.

2 Wycliffe had already lighted the torch of the Reformation, no mean element among the causes that have evolved our modern literature. Chaucer himself may be ranked among at least his well-wishers. See the notice of Chaucer, pp. 1, 2.

far behind the continental nations. The contemporaries and successors of Chaucer are hardly to be named in distant comparison with him ;' Gower himself, who, though conjectured to be younger, claims the honour of having been Chaucer's master in poetry, is immensely inferior in grasp and dignity to his alleged pupil. Gower's three poems, written respectively in English, French, and Latin (see notice of Gower, p. 18), would seem to mark the circumstance, that, the literary fate of each tongue being, towards the conclusion of the fourteenth century, suspended in uncertainty, the poet determined to embark a venture for immortality in each of them. The French and Latin had fallen from their dignity, as the exclusive languages of fashion and law, while the English had not yet so advanced in firm growth from infancy, that its vigour and beauty could guarantee its length of literary life. Occleve, and Lydgate the monk of Bury, the two most conspicuous names of the middle of the fifteenth century, display a still greater inferiority than Gower compared with the splendour of Chaucer. The reign of Henry VII presents a promise, although a feeble one, of improvement. The vigour and prudence of that wise though unamiable prince, had secured his throne and crushed every effort of the vanquished House of York to regain their position. The nation, notwithstanding the long family contest for the crown, had yet prospered in the advance of its industry and wealth. Printing, during the conclusion of the "Rose" convulsions, had been introduced by Caxton (1471). The feudal age, with its peculiarities of manners, government, and literature, was rapidly passing, and the period was one of stirring political enterprise among the continental nations. The expedition of Charles VIII. of France into Italy, so important in its political and historical consequences, was undertaken in 1494; and the great geographical discoveries of the Portuguese and Spaniards distinguish the concluding years of the century. All things wore the appearance of the approach of a period of extensive progress and improvement among civilized mankind; but the vestiges of rudeness still clung around the age, and the poetry of England had yet received no watering.

But the fifteenth century, if deficient in poetic genius in the south, was rich in the northern portion of the island. It opened with the works of King James I., and closed with Dunbar and Douglas in their full reputation. The progress of taste and learning in Scotland is visible in the foundation of the Universities of St Andrews and Glasgow, the former in 1411 by Bishop Wardlaw, the latter in 1450 by Bishop Turnbull. Literary improvements more slowly reached the more remote portion of the island, but they produced admirable results. The century is the era of the commencement of what is technically in history termed the "Re

Laurence Minot, an author discovered by Tyrwhitt, who displayed remarkable vigour of thought and excellence of language, was a contemporary of Chaucer. He wrote poems in celebration of the victories of Edward III.-See Ritson's edition (1796); and Craik's "Literature and Learning of England."

2 Chatterton's fictitious Monk Rowley used to be ranked timidly along with them. The invention of printing is commonly dated 1440.

4 This enterprise is reckoned by Hallam to be the turning point of the subsequent events, and to mark the commencement of modern history.

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