English Literature
constitutes style. Every permanent book has more or less of these two
elements, the objective and the subjective, the universal and the personal,
the deep thought and feeling of the race reflected and colored by the
writer's own life and experience.
THE OBJECT IN STUDYING LITERATURE. Aside from the pleasure of reading, of
entering into a new world and having our imagination quickened, the study
of literature has one definite object, and that is to know men. Now man is
ever a dual creature; he has an outward and an inner nature; he is not only
a doer of deeds, but a dreamer of dreams; and to know him, the man of any
age, we must search deeper than his history. History records his deeds, his
outward acts largely; but every great act springs from an ideal, and to
understand this we must read his literature, where we find his ideals
recorded. When we read a history of the Anglo-Saxons, for instance, we
learn that they were sea rovers, pirates, explorers, great eaters and
drinkers; and we know something of their hovels and habits, and the lands
which they harried and plundered. All that is interesting; but it does not
tell us what most we want to know about these old ancestors of ours,--not
only what they did, but what they thought and felt; how they looked on life
and death; what they loved, what they feared, and what they reverenced in
God and man. Then we turn from history to the literature which they
themselves produced, and instantly we become acquainted. These hardy people
were not simply fighters and freebooters; they were men like ourselves;
their emotions awaken instant response in the souls of their descendants.
At the words of their gleemen we thrill again to their wild love of freedom
and the open sea; we grow tender at their love of home, and patriotic at
their deathless loyalty to their chief, whom they chose for themselves and
hoisted on their shields in symbol of his leadership. Once more we grow
respectful in the presence of pure womanhood, or melancholy before the
sorrows and problems of life, or humbly confident, looking up to the God
whom they dared to call the Allfather. All these and many more intensely
real emotions pass through our souls as we read the few shining fragments
of verses that the jealous ages have left us.
It is so with any age or people. To understand them we must read not simply
their history, which records their deeds, but their literature, which
records the dreams that made their deeds possible. So Aristotle was
profoundly right when he said that "poetry is more serious and
philosophical than history"; and Goethe, when he explained literature as
"the humanization of the whole world."
IMPORTANCE OF LITERATURE. It is a curious and prevalent opinion that
literature, like all art, is a mere play of imagination, pleasing enough,
like a new novel, but without any serious or practical importance. Nothing
could be farther from the truth. Literature preserves the ideals of a
people; and ideals--love, faith, duty, friendship, freedom, reverence--are
the part of human life most worthy of preservation. The Greeks were a
marvelous people; yet of all their mighty works we cherish only a few
ideals,--ideals of beauty in perishable stone, and ideals of truth in
imperishable prose and poetry. It was simply the ideals of the Greeks and
Hebrews and Romans, preserved in their literature, which made them what
they were, and which determined their value to future generations. Our
democracy, the boast of all English-speaking nations, is a dream; not the
doubtful and sometimes disheartening spectacle presented in our legislative
halls, but the lovely and immortal ideal of a free and equal manhood,
preserved as a most precious heritage in every great literature from the
Greeks to the Anglo-Saxons. All our arts, our sciences, even our inventions
are founded squarely upon ideals; for under every invention is still the
dream of _Beowulf_, that man may overcome the forces of nature; and the
foundation of all our sciences and discoveries is the immortal dream that
men "shall be as gods, knowing good and evil."
In a word, our whole civilization, our freedom, our progress, our homes,
our religion, rest solidly upon ideals for their foundation. Nothing but an
ideal ever endures upon earth. It is therefore impossible to overestimate
the practical importance of literature, which preserves these ideals from
fathers to sons, while men, cities, governments, civilizations, vanish from
the face of the earth. It is only when we remember this that we appreciate
the action of the devout Mussulman, who picks up and carefully preserves
every scrap of paper on which words are written, because the scrap may
perchance contain the name of Allah, and the ideal is too enormously
important to be neglected or lost.
SUMMARY OF THE SUBJECT. We are now ready, if not to define, at least to
understand a little more clearly the object of our present study.
Literature is the expression of life in words of truth and beauty; it is
the written record of man's spirit, of his thoughts, emotions, aspirations;
it is the history, and the only history, of the human soul. It is
characterized by its artistic, its suggestive, its permanent qualities. Its
two tests are its universal interest and its personal style. Its object,
aside from the delight it gives us, is to know man, that is, the soul of
man rather than his actions; and since it preserves to the race the ideals
upon which all our civilization is founded, it is one of the most important
and delightful subjects that can occupy the human mind.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. (NOTE. Each chapter in this book includes a special
bibliography of historical and literary works, selections for reading,
chronology, etc.; and a general bibliography of texts, helps, and reference
books will be found at the end. The following books, which are among the
best of their kind, are intended to help the student to a better
appreciation of literature and to a better knowledge of literary
criticism.)
_GENERAL WORKS_. Woodberry's Appreciation of Literature (Baker & Taylor
Co.); Gates's Studies in Appreciation (Macmillan); Bates's Talks on the
Study of Literature (Houghton, Mifflin); Worsfold's On the Exercise of
Judgment in Literature (Dent); Harrison's The Choice of Books (Macmillan);
Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Part I; Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism.
_ESSAYS_. Emerson's Books, in Society and Solitude; Dowden's The
Interpretation of Literature, in Transcripts and Studies (Kegan Paul &
Co.), and The Teaching of English Literature, in New Studies in Literature
(Houghton, Mifflin); The Study of Literature, Essays by Morley, Nicolls,
and L. Stephen, edited by A.F. Blaisdell (Willard Small).
_CRITICISM_. Gayley and Scott's An Introduction to the Methods and
Materials of Literary Criticism (Ginn and Company); Winchester's Principles
of Literary Criticism (Macmillan); Worsfold's Principles of Criticism
(Longmans); Johnson's Elements of Literary Criticism (American Book
Company); Saintsbury's History of Criticism (Dodd, Mead).
_POETRY_. Gummere's Handbook of Poetics (Ginn and Company); Stedman's The
Nature and Elements of Poetry (Houghton, Mifflin); Johnson's The Forms of
English Poetry (American Book Company); Alden's Specimens of English Verse
(Holt); Gummere's The Beginnings of Poetry (Macmillan); Saintsbury's
History of English Prosody (Macmillan).
_THE DRAMA_. Caffin's Appreciation of the Drama (Baker & Taylor Co.).
_THE NOVEL_. Raleigh's The English Novel (Scribner); Hamilton's The
Materials and Methods of Fiction (Baker & Taylor Co.).
* * * * *
CHAPTER II
THE ANGLO-SAXON OR OLD-ENGLISH PERIOD (450-1050)
I. OUR FIRST POETRY
BEOWULF. Here is the story of Beowulf, the earliest and the greatest epic,
or heroic poem, in our literature. It begins with a prologue, which is not
an essential part of the story, but which we review gladly for the sake of
the splendid poetical conception that produced Scyld, king of the Spear
Danes.[2]
At a time when the Spear Danes were without a king, a ship came sailing
into their harbor. It was filled with treasures and weapons of war; and in
the midst of these warlike things was a baby sleeping. No man sailed the
ship; it came of itself, bringing the child, whose name was Scyld.
Now Scyld grew and became a mighty warrior, and led the Spear Danes for
many years, and was their king. When his son Beowulf[3] had become strong
and wise enough to rule, then Wyrd (Fate), who speaks but once to any man,
came and stood at hand; and it was time for Scyld to go. This is how they
buried him:
Then Scyld departed, at word of Wyrd spoken,
The hero to go to the home of the gods.
Sadly they bore him to brink of the ocean,
Comrades, still heeding his word of command.
There rode in the harbor the prince's ship, ready,
With prow curving proudly and shining sails set.
Shipward they bore him, their hero beloved;
The mighty they laid at the foot of the mast.
Treasures were there from far and near gathered,
Byrnies of battle, armor and swords;
Never a keel sailed out of a harbor
So splendidly tricked with the trappings of war.
They heaped on his bosom a hoard of bright jewels
To fare with him forth on the flood's great breast.
No less gift they gave than the Unknown provided,
When alone, as a child, he came in from the mere.
High o'er his head waved a bright golden standard--
Now let the waves bear their wealth to the holm.
Sad-souled they gave back its gift to the ocean,
Mournful their mood as he sailed out to sea.[4]
"And no man," says the poet, "neither counselor nor hero, can tell who
received that lading."
One of Scyld's descendants was Hrothgar, king of the Danes; and with him
the story of our Beowulf begins. Hrothgar in his old age had built near the
sea a mead hall called Heorot, the most splendid hall in the whole world,
where the king and his thanes gathered nightly to feast and to listen to
the songs of his gleemen. One night, as they were all sleeping, a frightful
monster, Grendel, broke into the hall, killed thirty of the sleeping
warriors, and carried off their bodies to devour them in his lair under the
sea. The appalling visit was speedily repeated, and fear and death reigned
in the great hall. The warriors fought at first; but fled when they
discovered that no weapon could harm the monster. Heorot was left deserted
and silent. For twelve winters Grendel's horrible raids continued, and joy
was changed to mourning among the Spear Danes.
At last the rumor of Grendel crossed over the sea to the land of the Geats,
where a young hero dwelt in the house of his uncle, King Hygelac. Beowulf
was his name, a man of immense strength and courage, and a mighty swimmer
who had developed his powers fighting the "nickers," whales, walruses and
seals, in the icebound northern ocean. When he heard the story, Beowulf was
stirred to go and fight the monster and free the Danes, who were his
father's friends.
With fourteen companions he crosses the sea. There is an excellent bit of
ocean poetry here (ll. 210-224), and we get a vivid idea of the hospitality
of a brave people by following the poet's description of Beowulf's meeting
with King Hrothgar and Queen Wealhtheow, and of the joy and feasting and
story-telling in Heorot. The picture of Wealhtheow passing the mead cup to
the warriors with her own hand is a noble one, and plainly indicates the
reverence paid by these strong men to their wives and mothers. Night comes
on; the fear of Grendel is again upon the Danes, and all withdraw after the
king has warned Beowulf of the frightful danger of sleeping in the hall.
But Beowulf lies down with his warriors, saying proudly that, since weapons