HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER I FROM 449 A.D. TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066 The Subject Matter. The history of English literature is a record of the best thoughts that have been expressed in the English language. Literature appeals especially to the imagination and the emotions. Literature aims not so much to state a fact after the manner of a text-book on science as to start imaginative activity and to appeal to the emotions. When Macbeth says of the dead King: "After life's fitful fever he sleeps well," our feelings are touched and the door is opened for imaginative activity, as we wonder why life is called a fitful fever and try to realize the mystery of that long and restful sleep. True literature calls for such activity. If we would broaden ourselves and increase our capacity for appreciating the manifold sides of the life of the spirit, we must become familiar with the thoughts and ideals of those who have given us our inspiring literature. For nearly fifteen hundred years the Anglo-Saxon race has been producing the greatest of all literatures. The most boastful of other nations make no claim to having a Shakespeare on the list of their immortals. The Home and Migrations of the Anglo-Saxon Race. Just as there was a time when no Anglo-Saxon foot had touched the shores of America, so there was a period when the ancestors of the English lived far away from the British Isles, and were rightly looked upon as foreigners there. For nearly four hundred years prior to the coming of the English, Britain had been a Roman province. In 410 A.D. the Romans withdrew their legions from Britain to protect Rome herself against swarms of Teutonic invaders. About 449 a band of Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet (northeastern part of Kent), and began the conquest of Britain. Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed, and drove westward the original inhabitants, the Britons or Welsh, i.e. foreigners, as the Teutons styled the natives. Before the invasion of Britain, the Teutons inhabited the central part of Europe as far south as the Rhine, a tract which in a large measure coincides with modern Germany. The Jutes, Angles, and Saxons were different tribes of Teutons. These ancestors of the English dwelt in Denmark and in the lands extending southward along the North Sea. The Angles, an important Teutonic tribe, furnished the name for the new home, which was called Angle-land, afterward shortened into England. The language spoken by these tribes is generally called Anglo-Saxon or Saxon. The Training of the Race. The climate is a potent factor in determining the vigor and characteristics of a race. Nature had reared the Teuton like a wise but not indulgent parent. By every method known to her, she endeavored to render him fit to colonize and sway the world. Summer paid him but a brief visit. His companions were the frost, the fluttering snowflake, the stinging hail. For music, instead of the soft notes of a shepherd's pipe under blue Italian or Grecian skies, he listened to the north wind whistling among the bare branches, or to the roar of an angry northern sea upon the bleak coast. The feeble could not withstand the rigor of such a climate in the absence of the comforts of civilization. Only the strongest in each generation survived; and these transmitted to their children increasing vigor. Warfare was incessant, not only with nature but also with the surrounding tribes. Nature kept the Teuton in such a school until he seemed fit to colonize the world, and to produce a literature which would appeal to humanity in every age. The Early Teutonic Religion. Our ancestors were heathen for some time after they came to England. Their principal deity was Woden, the All-father, from whom Wednesday is named. Thor, the invincible god of the thunder, has also given his name to a day of the week. Their religion was such as to inspire bravery. Their heaven was Valhal, which only the brave man could enter. Woden's daughters were called Valkyries, and it was their mission to ride their cloudlike steeds over earthly battlefields, to note the bravest warriors, and to conduct to Valhal such as were selected to fall. Death while courageously fighting on the battlefield made the hero sure of being taken to Valhal to become Woden's guest. There at the table of the gods, the warrior ate of the flesh of the magic boar, drank from a river of ale, and indulged to his heart's content in the sword game. We may accordingly expect to find the earliest poetry of the race full of the rush of war. But the spring and summer of Valhal were destined to be fleeting. This religion of our northern ancestors was instinct with a gloomy fatalism. Upon Valhal and the throng of heroes whom Woden summoned to help him fight his foes, could be seen a ravenlike shadow, growing ever larger and threatening to wrap all in lasting darkness. Loki, the spirit of evil, was fated to break his chains, and he, with the life-destroying giants of the frost, would devour the very gods. The coming of the winter with inevitable death to bud and flower has thrown its shadow over much of English poetry. Somber Cast of the Teutonic Mind. — The early religious beliefs of the Teuton received their gloomy coloring from the rigor of nature's forces, from the frost giants with whom he battled. The winter twilight fell upon him in his northern home about three o'clock in the afternoon. During the long evenings he would often think how the world had promised him much and given him little, and the gloom of this life would cast its shadow upon the next. Even in summer days, his leaden sky was often obscured with rain clouds driven by the restless winds. In wintry nights the hours would drag wearily as he listened to the hail or heard the half-human moaning of the fir trees. We must remember this cast of the Teutonic mind in order to understand its literature. We find Shakespeare likening life to a fitful fever, and considering the gloomy problem of existence in the person of Hamlet. We listen to Gray, singing that everything we prize "awaits alike the inevitable hour"; to Burns, comparing pleasure to a snowflake falling in the river; to Poe, singing the melancholy song of the Raven; to Tennyson, sighing: "He will not hear the north wind rave, The Anglo-Saxon Language. Our oldest English literature is written in the language spoken by the Angles 1 The Two Voices. |