DEVELOPMENT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. FORMATIVE PERIOD. CHAPTER I. FORMING OF THE PEOPLE. The harvest gathered in the fields of the Past is to be brought home for the use of the Present.-Dr. Arnold. History does not stand outside of nature, but in her very heart, so that the historian only grasps a people's character with true precision when he keeps in full view its geographical position, and the influences which its surroundings have wrought upon it.-Ritter. Geographical. We see, by reference to the map, that England- the land from which our language and many of our institutions are derived is the largest of three countries comprising the island of Great Britain.1 The remaining two are Wales and Scotland. These three, with Ireland, constitute the United Kingdom; and this, with its foreign possessions, the British Empire. England, consisting chiefly of low plains and gentle hills, occupies the central and southern portion of the island; and Wales, mountainous and marshy, the western. Scotland is the northern division, storm-beaten by a hostile ocean; mountainous and sterile in the north, but abounding in fertile plains in the south. Britain is separated from France by the English Channel, from Ireland by the Irish Sea, and from Germany by the North Sea, notorious for its wrecks. 1 Great Britain, because there is another land also called Britain,- the northwestern corner of Gaul; but this last is now commonly called Brittany. The two names, however, are really the same, and both are called in Latin Britannia. Its entire extent is about ninety thousand square miles, or nearly twice the area of the State of New York. It is divided into counties, or shires, of which England has forty, Wales twelve, Scotland thirty-three. Its climate is moist with the vapors that rise forever from the great sea-girdle, and its sky sombre with the clouds that are fed by ceaseless exhalations, - conditions which, however conducive to splendor of verdure, are less nurturing to refined and nimble. thought than to sluggish and melancholy temperament; for man, forced to accommodate himself to circumstances, contracts habits and aptitudes corresponding to them. No European country should have a deeper interest for English or American readers; none is so rich in learning and science, in wise men and useful arts; but nothing in its early existence indicated the greatness it was destined to attain. We are to think of it in those dim old days as, intellectually and physically, an island in a northern sea - the joyless abode of rain and surge, forest and bog, wild beast and sinewy savage, which, as it struggled from chaos into order, from morning into prime, should become the residence of civilized energy and Christian sentiment, of smiling love and sweet poetic dreams. Britons. When we learn that the same grammatical principles, the same laws of structure, dominate throughout the languages of Europe, and that, even when their apparent differences are most obvious, it may yet be proved that there is a complete identity in their main roots, there can be no shadow of doubt that they were once identical, and that the many peoples who use them, once, long before the beginning of recorded annals, dwelt together in the same pastoral tents. Somewhere in the quadrilateral which extends from the Indus to the Euphrates, and from the Oxus to the Persian Gulf, amid scenery 'grandiose yet severe,' lived this mother-race, unknown even to tradition, but revealed by linguistic science, parent of the speculative subtlety of Germany, of the imperial energy of England, of the vivid intelligence of France, of the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. Its most ancient name with which we are acquainted is Aryas, derived from the root ar, to plough, and which therefore implies originally an agricultural as distinguished from a rude and nomadic people. Just when it began to wander away from its cradle-land is un known; but gradually, perhaps by the natural growth of population, perhaps by the restless spirit of enterprise, the old home was abandoned; and it often happened that a wandering band parted asunder into two or more others in the course of its wanderings, who forgot, as they separated, the rock whence they were hewn and the hole of the pit whence they were digged. In most cases they entered upon territory already inhabited by other races, but these were commonly either destroyed or driven from the select parts into out-of-the-way corners. First of all, in quest of new fortunes, came the Celts, pressing their way into Germany, Italy, Spain, Gaul (now France), and thence into Britain. The area over which Celtic names are found diffused shows the original extent of their dominion. These preEnglish Celts, ever waning and dying, survive chiefly in the modern Highlanders, Irish' and Welsh." Their history, as Britons, finds its earliest solid footing in the narrative of a Roman soldier. Early historians, indeed, who could look into the far and shadowy past with an unquestioning confidence, marshalled kings and dynasties in complete chronology and exact succession. They made British antiquity run parallel with 'old hushed Egypt,' with the prophets and judges of Israel. We are gravely told of one British king who flourished in the time of Saul, of another who was contemporary with Solomon; that King Lear had grown old in government when Romulus and Remus were suckled; that the Britons were sprung from Trojan ancestry, and took their name from Brutus, who, an exile and troubled wanderer, was directed by the oracle of Diana to come to Albion,3 "That pale, that white-faced shore, Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides.' Standing before the altar of the goddess, with vessel of wine and blood of white hart, he had repeated nine times,— 'Goddess of woods, tremendous in the chase 1 Meaning 'Men of the West.' 2 Meaning Strangers.' 3 The island, not yet Britain, was ruled over by Albion, a giant, and son of Neptune, who gave it his name. Presuming, says one account, to oppose the progress of Hercules in his western march, he was slain. In deep sleep, in vision of the night, he was answered, Brutus! there lies beyond the Gallic bounds Which time shall ne'er destroy, nor bounds confine." We call these stories legendary; once-as late as the seventeenth century-they were accredited history. Certainly, the faith which received them as such seems to us better than the vicious scepticism which would beggar us of the accumulated inheritance of ages by destroying belief in the evidence. They may, and doubtless do, contain germs of truth-left on the shifting sands as wave after wave of forgotten generations broke on the shores of eternity. Many a mighty empire, it is true, has faded forever out of the memory of man; but much that was once thought irretrievably lost has been reclaimed; and, hereafter, historical science may bring to light from the dark oblivion of these pre-historic Britons more than is now dreamed of in our philosophy. Fables of a line of kings before the Romans, have left one legend that has become to all a wondrous reality-the story of King Lear, transmuted by the alchemy of genius into perhaps the most impressive and awful tragedy in the range of dramatic literature. Roman Conquest.-Meanwhile, our first authentic information in regard to them is given by Julius Caesar, who, fifty-five years before Christ, led his brass-mailed legions into Britain from Gaul. If the attack was fierce, the resistance was heroic, and marks the rising pulse in that flood 'Of British freedom which, to the open sea While the Roman standard-bearer leaped into the waves, and bade his hesitating comrades follow, the Britons dashed into the surf to strike the invader before his foot polluted their soil. The invasion added nothing to the Roman power or pride. At the end of his campaigns, Cæsar had viewed the island rather than possessed it; and when he gave thanks at Rome to the |