They took possession of England, not as colonists, like the Anglo-Saxons, but as military masters, like the Romans. The Norman counts and their retainers sat in their castles, keeping down by armed power, and not without many a bloody contest, the large Saxon population that surrounded them. They supdressed the native polity by overwhelming force: they made their Norman-French the fashionable speech of the court and the aristocracy, and imposed it on the tribunals and the legislature; and their romantic literature soon weaned the hearts of educated men from the ancient rudeness of taste. But the mass of the English people, retaining their Teutonic lineage unmixed, clung also, with the twofold obstinacy of Teutons and persecuted men, to their old ancestral tongue. The Anglo-Saxon language, passing through changes which we shall hereafter learn, yet kept its hold in substance till it was evolved into modern English; and the Norman nobles, whose ancestors had volunteered to speak like their French subjects, were at length obliged to learn the dialect which had been preserved among their despised Eng lish vassals. 5. Emerging from the glimmer and gloom which alternate in the Middle Ages, we now cast our eyes along the illuminated vista of Modern History. The eye is dazzled by a multiplicity of striking objects, among which it is not always easy to distinguish those that most actively shaped and colored the literature of the times. How the world of letters has been able, during the last three centuries, to influence the world of action so much more powerfully than ever before; and how its power has gradually widened from age to age, and been exercised in working more and more good, and good to a larger and larger proportion of mankind: these are events whose causes cannot become fully clear to us, until we have gained extensive historical knowledge, and been long accustomed to exercise mature and patient thought. We may, however, understand the facts in part; and our first step in the study of them should be to learn a few of the circumstances, in which we and our countrymen for many generations have had decisively the advantage over our forefathers, who lived amidst the medieval trammels and struggles. We have the art of printing: we have the constant literary use of a cultivated living language. Let us satisfy ourselves as to the importance of these benefits, by looking back to the consequences which followed from the want of them in the Middle Ages, consequences which had been yet more evil in the times that preceded. Books, multiplied only by manuscript copies, were rare, because costly; and the fewness of books was in itself sufficient to cause fewness of readers. Indeed, till the very close of the period, the accomplishment of reading was unusual; and those who possessed it derived a great part of their literary knowledge from oral communication. Information thus impeded could not be generally accessible; the few who attained it learned with difficulty, and, with some signal exceptions, did not learn thoroughly. In several departments of composition we encounter peculiarities for which it is not easy to account, till we recollect that the works were framed with a view to oral delivery, such as the chanting of a ballad or poem by the minstrel. Nor is it unworthy of remark, that, through this mechanical obstacle, in great part, though not unpromoted by the struggle and repulsion which prevailed between the several classes of the community, there arose a disadvantageous splitting of literature into sections. We may say, though somewhat loosely, that the main body of our middle age literature constituted, in a manner, three distinct libraries, designed for three distinct classes of hearers or readers, and none of them known or cared for beyond the class of men to whom especially it belonged. The churchmen had their books, most of which were theological or philosophical; the nobles had theirs, chiefly containing tales of warfare and adventure, out of which grew the chivalrous romances; and for the commons, or those of them at a distance from the nobility, there were historical traditions, popular ballads, and stories comic and satirical. It was always a rare thing, and for a long time was an occurrence quite unheard of, for a book to be written which aimed at interesting more than one of those groups. It was another characteristic fact, that only among the books of the clergy was there to be found any thing like systematic thinking or solid information. The state of the languages has next to be observed. Not only, as has just been noticed, were all the higher kinds of knowledge the patrimony of one profession; but they were generally or always recorded in the Latin tongue. In Italy, France, and Spain, where the language of the Romans was spoken by the people for centuries, and where, as it decayed, it became the foundation of the modern speech, this practice was natural enough, and, for a time, may have been harmless. But its effects were very different in those nations whose native dialects were quite alien to the Latin, our own being one of these. The use of the dead language made the position of such nations, in the earlier ages of Christendom, to be peculiarly unfavourable for all improvement which has to be gained through literature. At first, indeed, the native tongues being in their infancy, the Latin could not but be adopted for almost all literary works. Afterwards, when it had become needless, it was adhered to with such steadiness, that the Latin literature of the middle ages is larger in amount, beyond calculation, than the vernacular. In respect of language, as in respect of easy access to books, every one knows how much wider the opportunities of gaining knowledge have been, from the very beginning of the times we call modern. The liberal sowing has been answered by the plentiful harvest. 6. We have, it is true, marked only some of the most obvious of the circumstances which have encouraged the modern literature of our country. A little reflection on the course of our national history would suggest many others. When we see our forefathers vindicating man's inalienable prerogative of free thought, and asserting, most strongly of all, his right to think on things sacred, with no responsibility but to the Omniscient Searcher of consciences; when we see them gaining, undismayed by many a defeat, victory after victory in the cause of constitutional freedom, and establishing, in regard to all points, a power for every man to speak and write as he would; it cannot but occur to us, that these are facts not more important in their bearing on the social and religious interests of the community, than on the progress of literary culture. Yet freedom, and the press, and the command of a language strong and copious, and understood by all, are only opportunities which allow literary excellence to exhibit itself; they are not causes to which it owes its birth. There is an intimate connection between literature and all the elements of society; although the binding links are often but dimly perceptible. The literature of a country grows up like the trees in its woods, which vegetate quickly and profusely in genial seasons, and again, chilled by biting frosts, cease to put forth leaf or shoot. But poetry, and eloquence, and philosophy itself, are unlike the oak and pine in this: that their summers and winters alternate irregularly, and that we do not understand either all the causes which foster their luxuriance, or all those by which it is checked. We do know, however, that men of letters, while they are in some sort the guides and teachers of their fellows, are also, especially in those sections of the art that are nourished by imagination and passion, swayed and prompted by the spirit of their age, by its tone of feeling, by its prevalent opinions, by the cast of social life. We know, likewise, that periods of great literary activity have always been periods in which intellect was most active in regard to objects not lying directly within the province of letters. If we bear in mind such reflections as these, and if we qualify ourselves for applying them in particular instances by an exact acquaintance with the events of our national history, the study of English literature, in the order of its successive periods, will become for us a pursuit as widely instructive as it is purely delightful. Beautiful and interesting in themselves, the phenomena will gain redoubled radiance from the light which is thrown on them from the world without. Then, for instance, if we begin to contemplate the history of Modern Times, the blaze of intellectual glory which genius diffused around the throne of Elizabeth when her sun was near its setting, will be tinged with romantic hues like those of chivalry, by our remembrance of the manly adventurousness which reigned in her time. Yet a shadow of solemn thought will fall on the magnificent scene, when, scanning the aspect of society more closely, and detecting features of social and moral evil, and symptoms as well as causes of discontent and resistance, we perceive, already gathering in the horizon that seemed so clear, the little cloud which was soon to cover the whole sky, and convulse the land with one universal storm. When, again, we pass on to our own agitated century, its literary monuments, which, amidst all their shortcomings, are so original and energetic, so interesting and valuable, will be for us lessons of wisdom as well as sources of delight, if we learn to think of them as facts in the history of the last two generations. We shall perceive, in the unquiet restlessness and the extraordinary variety which distinguish them, a reflex of the questioning temper, the bold speculation, the thirst for action, by which society is ruled. But we shall not overlook the many features, both in the topics of literature and in the spirit that animates it, which are, equally with so much in our social and religious progress, the presaging tokens of a love of mankind more expansive and generous than any which has ever yet pervaded society. Especially shall we be filled with humble thankfulness, when we remember that the new ideas, and wishes, and aspirations, which have resounded through Europe like the blast of a trumpet summoning all men to battle, have among us been so guided, by higher power than ours, as to seek their development by no force but that of honest conviction, through no agency but that of unfettered writing and speech. We and our fathers, gazing with eagerness, have gazed also in safety on that wild conflict of opinions which elsewhere has overthrown, again and again, thrones, and liberty, and faith. The long tempest has, as we may venture to think, cleared away some dangerous elements from the air we breathe; and the bolt which was charged with its terrors has fallen on other homes than ours. 7. Earnestly and unceasingly, above all things, ought we to be impressed by this momentous truth. Literature has been endowed, by Him who rules the life and thoughts of all His intelligent creatures, with capacities which make it necessarily a moral power, a power modifying the character of mankind, and aiding in the determination of their position both now and hereafter. There is a philosophical falsity, as well as a heavy moral error, in any view of the progress of knowledge, which either, in contemplating the gift, takes no note of Him who gave it, or, in tracing its consequences, overlooks the highest and most sacred of all the ends which it is designed to serve. It is, indeed, an interesting thought, that, when the history of the world is contemplated as a whole, the progress of literary culture is found to keep pace with the progress of the nations of the earth towards that mighty renovation of man's spiritual nature, which Christianity has been divinely appointed to create. The teaching of religion itself has always received from letters much of direct aid, in respect both of the materials which compose its lessons, and of the means which are used for their communication. But those intellectual pursuits, which do not ultimately aim at this highest of all purposes, have ministered indirectly towards its attainment. There has never, perhaps, been any age that has not borne some literary fruit wholesome for man; although, on the contrary, there is certainly not any that has not ripened many moral poisons. It would be unreasonable to demand that there should be no books, unless such as are serious and solemn. Our life is a mingled and many-coloured web; and Literature, the image of life, held up for living beings to contemplate, may be allowed to reflect in its mirror all the threads which do not offend or hurt the organs of moral vision. Nor are such representations, if ethically correct, devoid of higher uses than those which they are immediately designed to serve. A gracious spirit o'er the earth presides, Who care not, know not, think not, what they do. |