however. Genius perceives and shows us new meanings in words, and, by combinations that seem daring and lawless to prosaic minds, gives the sudden flash that we recognize as poetic. But what music is to the deaf, and art to the blind, that is the subtile, intangible, and undefinable quality which we call poetry to minds wanting in the imaginative faculty. In a notice of "The Cathedral," published in a leading review, the writer had gone through the poem guided by the instinct of a dull soul, and having rooted out every poetic blossom, held them up to ridicule as combinations for which there was no precedent, and therefore against the canons of good taste. Such a writer would have in Shakespeare a fine garden to rummage and trample down. Not one of his blooms would be left. One fancies the critic pooh-poohing at the song in Cymbeline. "Hark, the lark at heayen's gate sings." "How can a lark sing at heaven's gate?" he asks. "Springs that lie on chaliced flowers!" "What does he mean? A horse-trough with dandelions around it, perhaps." There is not a page of Shakespeare, nor of any other imaginative poet, that would not furnish such illustrations; and the lesson taught is obvious: that a knowledge of plain good English, though useful and praiseworthy, does not necessarily qualify one to write upon subjects of which he has not a critical knowledge; and that a plodding mind, destitute of an appreciative sympathy that corresponds to the creative power of the poet, should feel himself debarred from sitting in judgment upon works that he cannot comprehend. From what has been seen of the elements of our language it will be inferred when simple facts are to be mentioned we shall naturally use Saxon words; but any generalization of those facts will require the use of words from the Latin and Greek. Thus run, jump, walk, leap, fly are Saxon, but motion, the generic term, is Latin. So the Latin animal is the general name for horse, cow, ox, and sheep, which are Saxon. In the researches of science, whether in physical or in mental phenomena, we are compelled to the use of Latin and Greek words for the exact definitions on which the certainty of knowledge depends. The ideas conveyed in geometrical science cannot be clothed in Saxon words. The notions that we receive from such words as intuitive, evolution, correlation, symmetry, objective, imagination, ideality, are inseparable from their written symbols, and there is no evidence that we can think of them in simpler terms. While, therefore, we delight in the unconscious simplicity of Bunyan and De Foe, we gladly give unlimited liberty of expression to the genius of Shakespeare; we enjoy the learning that breathes like antique perfumes in Milton's verse; we willingly follow the long roll of Burke's majestic sentences; we view with keen pleasure the pictured landscapes of Ruskin, and we study with patience the vocabulary which each metaphysician, naturalist, and philosopher has formed as the necessary vehicle of his thought. There is, then, no absolute standard of style, except that of adaptation to the end in view. BIOGRAPHICAL AND LITERARY SUMMARY. The selections in the present volume begin with Chaucer. The language and literature of the Anglo-Saxons are virtually foreign to us; the writers before the year 1400 are only interesting to antiquarians, and their works do not come within the scope of a work so elementary as this. But even Chaucer had not a homogeneous public to address. The middle and lower classes of Saxon descent could not read at all, and would not understand the foreign words which the poet so freely uses. The higher classes had partly learned the language of the common people, and doubtless enjoyed the Canterbury Tales with a keen relish; but to the multitude they must have appeared as affected and unintelligible as a society novel spiced with plentiful French would be to the same class now. During the period from Chaucer to Spenser many changes took place, although no famous writers flourished. The alliterative style that had so long prevailed was discarded. The old termination of the verb in the imperative mode, eth, was in some way lost. As an instance of its use the reader will please notice this quatrain of the time of sea-compelling Knut (usually spelled Canute), who died in 1035: "Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely, Roweth, cnihtes, nær the land And here we thes muneches sæng." "1 How this old form disappeared it is impossible to say. With it went many old Saxon words and the French accent. To Wycliffe, the translator of the Scriptures, we owe the early formation of our English prose. Since his day the spelling has been greatly altered, but the framework of his sentences remains. A few verses of the Magnificat, according to his version, are appended: And Marye seyde: my soul magnifieth the Lord. "And my spiryt hath gladdid in God myn helth. "For he hath behulden the mekenesse of his handmayden; for lo this alle generatiouns schulen seye that I am blesséd. "For he that is mighti hath done to me grete thingis, and his name is holy. "And his mercy is fro kyndrede to kyndredis to men that dreden him." Sir Thomas More is a prominent figure in English history, and a writer of some force. His chief work, the Utopia, is a labored production; but it is principally remembered from its having supplied us with an adjective, utopian. Two poets of this period are still popular: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. If they had written upon other themes with the skill they have expended upon the frivolous conceits of lovers, some of their verses would have been printed in the body of this book. Surrey's poem written while a prisoner at Windsor is admirable. But the affectations of writers of his age, when treating upon the subject of love, are insufferable. William Dunbar, in the same century, is declared by Sir Walter Scott to be unrivalled by any poet that Scotland has produced; but with our impressions of Burns and of Sir Walter himself, the judgment seems hasty. Hugh Latimer (burned at the stake in 1555) was a powerful writer, full of a grave wit as well as steadfast purpose. 1 Merrily sung the monks within Ely And hear we these monks' song. His story of the "Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple" is unsurpassed in humor. William Tyndale, the second translator of the Bible, deserves mention as an early authority in the correct use of English. He was strangled and burned near Antwerp by order of Henry VIII. His version of the Lord's Prayer is as follows: : "Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth as yt is in heven. Geve vs this daye our dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspasses, even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvill. Amen." The Acts and Monuments of the Church, popularly known as Fox's Book of Martyrs, exercised a powerful influence in forming a fluent and idiomatic style of narration. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the author of "A Mirror for Magistrates," is said by Hallam to furnish the connecting link between Chaucer and Spenser. Arthur Brooke, the author of the "Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet," upon which Shakespeare founded his famous play, and George Gascoigne, author of "The Steele Glas," the first English satire, belong to this period. The affectations of the age culminated in the Euphues of John Lyly, from whose influence not even Spenser appears to have been wholly free. The natural periods or turning-points of our literary history have been too irregular to coincide with the centuries; and there would seem, to Americans at least, to be no propriety in classifying authors, like acts of parliament, by the reigns of more or less unlettered kings. It has been thought expedient, therefore, to divide the list in what seems a natural way. Commencing with Chaucer, the student will find the principal authors that flourished until the birth of Spenser. From this second great poet the period extends to Milton, embracing all the great dramatists and those masculine poets that are mentioned hereafter. The third period extends from Milton to Pope; the fourth from Pope to Wordsworth; the fifth from Wordsworth to Tennyson (1810). The sixth embraces contemporary authors. It will be understood that these tables do not include the authors from whose works specimens have been taken for this Hand-Book. I. FROM ABOUT THE TIME OF CHAUCER TO SPENSER. The period from Spenser to Milton was more prolific in works of imagination than any in English history. Not to dwell with too much emphasis upon Shakespeare, this period gave birth to nearly all our classic dramas, to our weightiest sermons and essays, and to much of our noblest poetry. During this period our language probably attained its highest development, certainly as a vehicle for poetry. The authors whom we term "Elizabethan " seemed to use words with a certain vital meaning. Their images and epithets remind us of the boughs of that tree which when broken off by Dante trickled blood. Their verses are strong and sinewy, -not without grace, but with the unconscious grace of manly dignity. No successful imitations could be made either of the pregnant sentences of Bacon, the learned profusion of Jeremy Taylor, or of the pungent lines of any of the great galaxy of dramatists. And |