ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The language spoken in England from the settlement of the Anglo Saxons to the Norman Conquest (say 500 - 1066) is popularly known as Anglo-Saxon, though simply the earliest form of English. It was a highly inflected and purely Teutonic tongue presenting several dialects. The Conquest introduced the Norman-French, and from 1066 to about 1250 two languages were spoken, the native English speaking their own language, the intruders speaking French. During this period the grammatical structure of the native language was greatly broken up, inflexions fell away, or were assimilated to each other; and towards the end of the period we find a few works written in a language resembling the English of our own day in grammar, but differing from it by being purely Saxon or Teutonic in vocabulary. Finally, the two languages began to mingle, and form one intelligible to the whole population, Normans as well as English, this change being marked by a great infusion of Norman-French words, and English proper being the result. English is thus, in its vocabulary, a composite language, deriving part of its words from, Teutonic and part from Latin, Norman-French being in the main merely modified form of Latin. In its grammatical structure and general character, however, English is entirely Teutonic, and is classed with Dutch and Gothic among the Low German tongues. If we divide the history of the English language into periods we shall find three most distinctly marked :

1st, the Old English or Anglo - Saxon, extending down to about 1100;

2nd, the Middle English. 1100-1400 (to this period belong Chaucer, Wickliffe, Langland);

3rd, Modern English, ( A more detailed subdivision would give transition periods connecting the main ones.)

The chief change which the language has experienced during the modern period consists in its absorbing new words from all quarters in obedience to the requirements of advancing science, more complicated social relations, and increased subtlety of thought . At the present time the rapid growth of the sciences already existing, and the creation of new ones, have caused whole groups of words to be introduced, chiefly from the Greek.

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Before any English literature, in the strict sense of the term, existed, four literatures had arisen in England - the Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Norma The first includes such names as those of Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, Aneurin, and Merlin or Merddhin. The Latin literature, prior to the Conquest presents those of Aldhehm, Bede, Alcuin, Asser, Ethelwerd, and Nennius. With the coming of the Normans, although the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle was continued until 1154, the native language practically ceased for a time to be employed in literature, Latin being employed in law, history, and philosophy, French in the lighter forms of literature. The Norman trouvère displaced the Saxon scop, or gleeman, introducing the Fabliau and the Romance. By the Fabliau the literature was not greatly influenced until the time of Chaucer; but the Romance attained an early and striking development in the Arthurian cycle, founded upon the legends of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin History of the Britons (1147), by Geoffrey Gaimar, Maistre Wace, Walter Map, sad other writers of the 12th century. The Latin literature included important contributions to the Scholastic philosophy by Alexander Hales (d. 1245), Duns Scotus (d. 1308), and William of Occam (d. 1347), the philosophic works of Roger Bacon (1214-92), the Golias poems of Walter Map, and a long list of chronicles or histories, either in prose or verse, by Eadmer (d.1124), Ordericus Vitalis (d.1142), William of Malmesbury (d.1143), Geoffrey of Monmouth (d.1154), Henry of Huntingdon (d. after 1154 ), Joseph of Exeter (d.1195), Gervase of Tilbury (12th cent), Roger of Wendover (d. 1237), Roger de Hoveden (12th and 13th cents.), Giraldus Cambrensis (d. 1222), Joscelin de Brakelonde (12th and 13th cents.), and Matthew Paris (d. 1259).

Apart from a few brief fragments, the first English writings after the Conquest are the Brut of Layamon (about 1200), based on the Brut of Wace; and the Ormulum, a collection of metrical homilies attributed to Orm or Ormin, an Augustine monk. Next in Importance come the rhyming chroniclers Robert of Gloucester (time of Henry III. Edward I) and Robert of Brunne or Mannyng (d. 1340), other writers being Dan Michel of Northgate (Ayenbite of Inwyt, 1340); Richard Rolle of Hampole (Pricke of Conscience, 1340); Laurence Minot (author of eleven military ballads; d.1352); and several works of uncertain authorship, including the Ancren Riwle ( ? Richard Poor d. 1237), Dialogue between the Owl and the Nightingale (? Nicholas of Guildford), the Land of Cockayne (? Michael of Kildare), the Song against the King of Almaigne, and a Dialogue between the Body and the Soul. To this pre-Chaucerian period belong also several English translations of French romances - Horn, Tristrem, Alisaunder Havelok, and others. Between the beginning and middle of the 14th century the English speech had entered upon a new phase of development in the absorption of Norman-French words.

A rapid expansion of the literature followed, having as the foremost figure that of Chaucer (1340 - 1400), who, writing at first under French influences, and then under Italian, became in the end the most representative English writer of the time. Contemporary with him were the poets William or Robert Langland (1332 - 1400), John Gower ( l325 -1408 ), John Barbour (1316 - 95). In prose the name of John Wickliffe (1824 - 84) is pre-eminent, the English version of Mandeville's Travels being apparently of later date.

The period from the time of Chaucer to the appearance of Spenser, that is, from the end of the 14th to near the end of the 16th century, is a very barren one in English literature, in part probably owing to foreign and domestic wars, the struggle of the people towards political power, and the religious controversies preceding and attending the Reformation. The immediate successors of Chaucer, Occleve (1370 - 1454) and Lydgate (d. 1460), were neither men of genius, and the centre of poetic creation was for the time transferred to Scotland, where James I. (1394 - 1437 ) headed the list which comprises Andrew de Wyntoun (15th cent.), Henry the Minstrel or Blind Harry (d.after 1492), Robert Henryson (d. before 1508), William Dunbar (1460 - 15 - ), Gavin Douglas (1474 - 1522), and Sir David Lyndsay (1490 - 1557). In England the literature was chiefly polemical, the only noteworthy prose prior to that of More being that of Reginald Pecock (1390 - 1460), Sir John Fortescue (1395 - 1485), the Paston letters (1422 - 1505), and Malory's Morte D arthur (completed 1469-70) ; the only noteworthy verse, that of John Skelton (1460 - 1529).

It was now that several events of European importance combined to stimulate life and enlarge the mental horizon - the invention of printing, or rather of movable types, the promulgation of the Copernicus system of astronomy, the discovery of America, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. The Renaissance spread from Florence to England by means of such men as Colet, Linacre, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More (1480 - 1535), the last noteworthy as at the head of a new race of historians, Important contributions to the prose of the time were the Tyndale New Testament printed in 1525, and the Coverdale Bible 1(1535). The first signs of an artistic advance in poetic literature are to be found in Wyatt (1503 - 42) and Surrey (1516 - 47), who nationalized the sonnet, and of whom the latter is regarded as the introducer of blank verse -

The drama, too, had by this time reached a fairly high stage of development. The mystery and miracle plays, after the adoption of the vernacular in the 14th century, passed from the hands of the clergy into those of the laity, and both stage and drama underwent a rapid secularization. The morality began to embody matters of religious and political controversy, historical characters mingled with the personification of abstract qualities, real characters from contemporary life were in-introduced, and at length farces on the French model were constructed, the Interludes. of John Heywood (d. 1565) being the most important examples. To Nicholas Udall (1504-56) the first genuine comedy, Roister Doister, was due, this being shortly afterwards followed by John Still's Gammer Gurton's Needle (1566). The first tragedy, the Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc of Sackville (d. 1608) and Norton (d.1600), was performed in 1561, and the first prose play, the Supposes of Gascoigne (d.1577) in 1566. (Gascoigne and Sackville were in other regards than drama note worthy amongst the earlier Elizabethans; but the figures which bulk most largely are those of Sidney (1554 - 86) and Spenser (1552 - 99).

In drama Lyly, Peele, Greene, Nash, and Marlowe (1564 - 93) are the chief immediate precursors of Shakspere (1564 - 1606), Marlowe alone, however, being at all comparable with the great master. Contemporary and later dramatic writers were Ben Jonson (1573 - 1637), the second great Elizabethan dramatist, Middleton (d. 1627), Marston (better known - satirist ), Chapman (1557 - 1634), Thomas Heywood, Dekker (d. 1639), Webster (17th cent.), Ford (1586 - 1639), Beaumont (1586 - 1616) and Fletcher (1576 - 1625), and Massinger (1584 - 1640).

The minor poets include Michael Drayton (1563 - 1631), Samuel Daniel (1562 -1619), John Davies (1570 - 1626). John Donne (1573 - 1631), Giles Fletcher (1580 - 1623). and Phineas Fletcher (1584 - 1650), Drummond of Hawthornden (1585 - 1649).

In Elizabethan prose the prominent names are those of Roger Ascham (1515 - 68), Lyly the Euphuist (1553 - 1606), Hooker (1554 - 1600), Raleigh (1552 - 1618), Bacon (1561 - 1626), the founder in some regards of modern scientific method, Burton (1576 - 1640), Herbert of Cherbury (1581 - 1648), and Selden (1584 - 1654), with Overbury, Knolles, Holinshed, Stowe, Camden, Florio, and North. The issue of the authorized version of the Bible in 1611 may be said to close the prose list of the period.

After the death of James I. the course of literature breaks up into three stages, the first from 1625 to 1640, in which the survivals from the Elizabethan age slowly die away. The 'metaphysical poets,' Cowley, Wither, Herbert, Crashaw, Habbington, and Quarles, and the cavalier poets, Suckling, Carew, Denham, all published poems before the close of this period, in which also Milton's early poems were composed, and the Comus and Lycidas published.

The second stage (1640 - 60) was almost wholly given up to controversial prose, the Puritan revolution checking the production of pure literature. In this controversial prose of the time Milton was easily chief.

With the restoration a third stage was begum Milton turned his new leisure to the composition of his great poems; the drama was revived, and Davenant and Dryden, with Otway, Southerne, Etherege, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar in their first plays, and minor playwrights, are the most representative writers of the period. Butler established a genre in satire, and Marvell as a satirist in some respects anticipated Swift; Roscommon, Rochester, and Dorset contributed to the little poetry; while in prose we have Hobbes, Clarendon, Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, Walton, Cotton, Pepys and Evelyn, John Bunyan, Locke, Sir William Temple, Owen Feltham, Sir Henry Wotton, James Harrington, and a crowd of theological writers, of whom the best known are Jeremy Taylor ( ' Spenser of prose ' and ' Shakspere of divines ' ), Richard Baxter, Robert Barclay, William Penn, George Fox, Isaac Barrow, John Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Bishop Pearson, Sherlock, South, Sprat, Cudworth, and Burnet. Other features of the last part of the 17th century were the immense advance in physical science under Boyle, Isaac Newton, Harvey, and others, and the rise of the newspaper press.

Dryden's death in 1700 marks the commencement of the so-called Augustan age in English literature. During it, however, no greater poet appeared than Pope (1688 - 1744), in whom sagacity, wit, and fancy take the place of the highest poetic faculty, but who was a supreme artist within the formal limits of his conception of metrical art. Against these formal limits signs of reaction are apparent in the verse of Thomson (1700 - 48), Gray (1716 - 71), Collins (1720 - 59), Goldsmith (1728 - 74), and in the productions of Macpherson and Chatterton. The poets Prior (1664-1721), Gay (1688 - 1732), and Ambrose Phillips (1671 - 1749) inherit from the later 17th century, Gay being memorable in connection with English opera; and there are a large number of small but respectable poets - Garth, John Philips, Blackmore, Parnell, Dyer, Somerville, Green, Shenstone, Blair, Akenside, Falconer, Anstey, Beattie, Allan Ramsay, and Robert Fergusson. It is in prose that the chief development of the 18th century is to he found. Defoe (1661 - 1731) and Swift (1667 - 1745) led the way in fiction and prose satire; Steele (1672 - 1729) and Addison (1672 - 1719), working on a suggestion of Defoe, established the periodical essay; Richardson (1689 - 1761), Fielding (1707 - 54), Smollett (1721 - 71), and Sterne raised the novel to sudden perfection. Goldsmith also falls into the fictional group as well as into those of the poets and the essayists. Johnson (1709 - 84) exercised during the latter part of his life the power of a literary dictator, with Boswell (1740 - 95) as literary dependent. The other chief prose writers were Bishop Berkeley (1685 - 1753), Arbuthnot (1675 - 1785), Shaftesbury (1671 - 1713), Bolingbroke(1678 - 1751), Burke, the historians David Hume (1711 - 76), William Robertson (1721 - 93), Edmund Gibbon ( 1737 - 94); the political writers Wilkes and Junius, the economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723 - 90); the philosophical writers Hume, Bentham (1749 - 1832), and Dugald Stewart (1753 - 1828), the scholars Bentley (1662 - 1742), Sir William Jones (1746 - 94), and Richard Porson (1759 - 1808); the theologians Atterbury, Butler (1692 - 1752), Warburton, and Paley; and Rome inferior playwrights, of whom Rowe, John Home, Colley Cibber, Colman the elder, Foote, and Sheridan were the most important.

With the French Revolution, or a few years earlier, the modern movement in literature may be said to have commenced. The departure from the old traditions, traceable in Gray and Collins, was more clearly exhibited in the last years of the century in Cowper (1731 - 1800) and Burns (1759 - 96), and was developed and perfected in the hands of Blake (1757 - 1828), Bowles (1762 - 1850), and the 'lake poets' Wordsworth (1770 - 1850), Coleridge (1772 - 1834), and Southey (1774 - 1843); but there were at First many survivals from the poetic manner of the 17th century, such as Erasmus Darwin (1731 - 1802), Dr. John Wolcot (1738 - 1819), Robert Bloomfield (1766 - 1823), and Samuel Rogers (1763 - 1855).

Amongst the earlier poets of the century, also, were George Crabbe (1754 - 1832), Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1882), Hogg (1772 - 1835), Campbell (1777 - 1844), James Montgomery, Mrs. Hemans, Bryan Waller Procter ( 'Barry Cornwall), Milman, L E. Landon, Joanna Baillie, Robert Montgomery. A more important group was that of Byron (1788 - 1824), Shelley (1792 - 1822), and Keats (1796 -1821), with which may be associated the names of Leigh Hunt (1784 - 1859), Thomas Moore (1779 - 1852), and Landor (1775 - 1864).

Among the earlier writers of fiction there were several women of note, such as Maria Edgeworth (1767 - 1849) and Jane Austen (1775 1817). The greatest name in fiction is unquestionably that of Scott Other prose waiters were Mackintosh, Malthus, Hallam, James Mill, Southey, Robert Hall, John Foster, Thomas Chalmers, Hannah More, Cobbett, William Hazlitt, Sydney Smith, Francis Jeffrey, Lord Brougham. In the literature since 1830 poetry has included as its chief names those of Praed, Hood, Aytoun, Lord Houghton, Sidney Dobell, Alexander Smith, Gerald Massey, Charles Mackay, Philip James Bailey, William Allingham, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Coventry Patmore, Lord Lytton (Owen Meredith), Arthur Hugh Clough, Matthew Arnold, Dante G. Rossetti, Robert Buchanan, Wm.. Morris, Lewis Morris, Jean Ingelow, Swinburne, and last and greatest, Tennyson and Browning.

A brilliant list of novelist, for the same period includes Marryat Michael Scott, Lord Lytton, Ainsworth, Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield), Dickens, Thackeray, Charles Kingsley, Charlotte Bronte, Lover, Lever, Wilkie Collins, Mayne Reid, George Macdonald, Charles Reade, George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, William Black, Thomas Hardy, R. D. Blackmore, George Meredith, Miss Braddon, Mrs Craik (Miss Mulock), Mrs. Oliphant, Miss Yonge, Miss Thackeray. and others

To the historical and biographical list belong Alison, Macaulay, Buckle, Carlyle, Cornewall Lewis, Thirwall, Grote, Milman, Froude, Lecky, S. R. Gardiner, Kinglake, John Richard Green, E. A. Freeman, Hill Burton, Stubbs, Dean Stanley, David Masson, John Morley, Leslie Stephen.

Prominent amongst the theological writers have been Dr. Newman, Whately, Augustus and Julius Hare, Trench, Stanley, Maurice, Hamilton, Alford, F. W. Robertson, Stopford Brooke, Liddon. Isaac Taylor Jowett, James Martineau, Tulloch, and Caird .

In science and philosophy among the chief writers have been Whewell, Sir W. Hamilton, Mansel, John Stuart Mill, Alexander Bain, Hugh Miller, Charles Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, Max Muller, Herbert Spencer, T. H. Green.
Of the other prose writers of importance the chief are De Quincey, Harriet Martineau, Sir Arthur Helps, Ruskin, Matthew Arnold, W. E. Gladstone.

There is of course a large number of writers of American and colonial birth to be added to the native contributors .