pronounced an impossibility. Although receiving accessions of French words so large that its character was materially changed, the English still remained an essentially Teutonic tongue. The change itself has no fixed date; it was a gradual process, and must have advanced with more or less rapidity in different parts of the country. Its progress depended on geographical conditions. In remote or upland districts, where it hardly penetrated, the inhabitants still exhibit in their patois an evident preponderance of the Saxon element, using many old Teutonic words now obsolete in our own language, and retaining Teutonic peculiarities of accent and pronunciation. "Nothing can be more difficult," says Hallam, "than to determine, except by an arbitrary line, the commencement of the English language; not so much, as in those of the Continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather from an opposite reason, the possibility of tracing a very gradual succession of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. ... For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English: 1, by contracting or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2, by omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, and consequently making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3, by the introduction of French derivatives; 4, by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these the second alone, I think, can be considered as sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought about so gradually that we are not relieved from much of our difficulty whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother or the earliest proofs of the daughter's fertility.' The picturesque element so happily employed by Scott in the opening chapter of Ivanhoe, often has been quoted as a Example from "Ivanhoe' transition, good popular exemplification of the mode in which the Saxon and French elements were blended. The common animals which serve as food to man of the lingual retained, under the charge of Saxon serfs and bondmen, their Teutonic name, but, served up at the table of the Norman oppressor, they received a French designation. As instances of this Scott cites the parallel terms ox and beef, swine and pork, sheep and mutton, calf and veal. It is curious to see, on examining the early English grammar and language of our old poets and chroniclers, how often the primitive Saxon forms gradually became effaced before the French orthography and pronunciation of the newly-introduced words had been harmonised with the general character of the new idiom. Take, for example, the following lines of Chaucer : and from Chaucer. "The sleere of him-self yet saugh I ther, In these verses we see the Saxon grammatical forms combined with a large importation of Norman-French words which have not yet lost their original accentuation. We find the Teuton forms moving into and overlapping the newly introduced Gallicisms. Such was the state in which Chaucer found the national idiom at the beginning of the fourteenth century: at its end, his genius may be said to have put the last touch to the consolidation of the English language. Nevertheless, for a considerable period after his time such writings as were addressed to the sympathies of the lower classes continued to retain much of the Saxon character in their orthography, grammatical structure, and versification. The alliterative system of verse left its mark on English literature for a period long subsequent to the reign of Richard II; while, on the other hand, the elaborate compositions addressed to the still purely Norman aristocracy keep much of the French spirit in their diction and imagery. § 9. Although we can assign no exact date to the transition from Anglo-Saxon to English, the chief alterations may be approximately assigned to the following epochs :I. Anglo-Saxon, from A.D. 450 to 1150. Classification II. Semi-Saxon, from A.D. 1150 to 1250 (i.e. from of language into epochs. the reign of Stephen to the middle of the reign of Henry III), so called because it partakes strongly of the characteristics of both Anglo-Saxon and of the subsequent Old English. III. Old English, from A.D. 1250 to 1350 (i.e. from the middle of the reign of Henry III to the middle of the reign of Edward III). IV. Middle English, from A.D. 1350 to about 1550 (ie. from the middle of the reign of Edward III to the reign of Edward VI). V. Modern English, from A.D. 1550 to the present day. The first three periods scarcely belong to a history of English literature, and only a brief account of them is given in the Notes and Illustrations appended to the present chapter. Some writers, disliking the term Anglo-Saxon, have wished to call the Anglo-Saxon First English, the Semi-Saxon Second English, and the remainder of our language (i.e. from A.D. 1250 to the present day) Third English. It is purely with this Third English that we are concerned, and its real literary history begins only in the reign of Edward III, under the creative and brilliant genius of Geoffrey Chaucer. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. A.-ANGLO-SAXON LITERA TURE. A. D. 450-1150. The earliest literature of the AngloSaxons bears the impress of the religious culture under which it was formed. Unlike their brethren, who sang their old heroic lays in the primeval forests, the conquerors of the rich provinces of Britain had descended from action to contemplation, and their literature was artificial. There was but little difference of time in the development of poetry and prose, and the works produced were with very few exceptions the elaborate compositions of educated men, rather than the spontaneous products of genius inspired by a people's ancient legends. The chief subjects were moral, religious, historical, and didactic. Under the tutelage of the Church the most lasting monuments of Anglo-Saxon prose literature were written in Latin, while the vernacular tongue was chiefly employed in translating the learned works of such men as Bede and Alcuin. The value of the vernacular literature is confined to the early poems: the later work lacks form, and is interesting only on account of its matter. I. The VERNACULAR POETRY scarcely retains a trace of that wild epic fire which is seen in the Scandinavian Sagas. 1. We have at least three important specimens of old national songs, written in the spirit of the continental Germans, and probably composed, in part at least, before their migration to England. The authors are heathens; they are the bards or Scops (i.e. shapers) who were attached to the households of pagan chieftains and were treated with singular honour. The origin of these poems is probably to be found in the detached lays sung by these noble minstrels, which were afterwards welded together into a compact form. The chief of them is the lay of Beowulf, which has been described in the text. It seems to have originated at the primitive seat of the Angles in Schleswig, and to have been brought over to England about the end of the fifth century. The other two are Widsith, or the Traveller's Song, which, in the beginning, was due to some wandering bard, and appears from internal evidence to belong to the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century; and The Battle of Finnsburg, a fragment describing the massacre of Hraef the Dane by Finn, King of the North Frisians. The manuscripts of all these works belong to a much later period, principally to the eleventh century, and therefore have suffered a good deal from interpolations. It is only in the tenth century that we again meet with compositions of this class, in the patriotic poem on Athelstan's victory at the battle of Brunanburh (A. D. 937), in the collection of songs on Edgar the Peaceable (959-975). and on the death of Edward the Martyr (979), and in The Battle of Maldon (991). 2. Of religious poetry, the chief specimen is the so-called Metrical Paraphrase of the Scriptures, which, in its original form, was the work of ST. CÆDMON (fl. 660-680), a monk of St. Hilda's monastery at Streoneshalh (Whitby). In ascribing the beginning of these poems-which were continued by Cædmon's followers all through the eighth century -to Cadmon himself, we rely on the sole authority of Bede; and some modern critics have assigned the whole of the collection of scriptural paraphrases to a later period. The treatment of the stories shows how the old heroic notions of pagan society mingled themselves with the new Christianity, and thus would alone point to the early date of part of the poem. Whatever be the date, it is a striking piece of work, and appears to have supplied Milton with some hints. This is particu- | larly true of the part of the poem, probably Cadmon's own, known as the Genesis A to distinguish it from Genesis B, a later version and amplification belonging to the ninth century. But more interesting even than Cadmon is the mysterious CYNEWULF, of whom nothing is known save that he lived between 750 and 790 and was very probably a Northumbrian. It seems almost certain that the Anglo-Saxon Riddles preserved in that museum of Early English literature, the Exeter Book, are, at least in part, the work of Cynewulf. If so, they belong to his early youth, when he was wandering about and singing in noble houses, and his later religious poems follow his conversion. Four poems are known to be his, since he has introduced his name into the text in an acrostic of Runic characters. Mr. Stopford Brooke, judging from the spiritual indications of these fervently religious hymns, places them in this order: (1) the Juliana, which contains the acts of St. Juliana, virgin and martyr; (2) the Christ, a splendid poem in three parts-the Nativity, the Ascension, and the Last Day. Both these poems are in the Exeter Book. The next two are in the book of Anglo-Saxon homilies and poems preserved at Vercelli. These are: (3) The Fates of the Apostles, whose title tells its own tale, and (4) the Elene, which is founded upon the legend of the Invention of the Cross by the Empress Helena. Of the other poems attributed to Cynewulf, the Exeter Book contains The Phenix, which applies the familiar tale of the phoenix, as told in Latin by Lactantius, to the Resurrection, and the St. Guthlac; while, in the Vercelli Book, we find the Andreas, or Acts of St. Andrew, and The Dream of the Rood. The authorship of these last has perplexed critics, but they follow the manner of Cynewulf very closely. Certain continuations of Cædmon's paraphrases probably belong to Cynewulf or to some poet under his influence. The Exeter Book, which we have already mentioned as containing so much of Cynewulf's poetry, contains a number of other poems of all the early periods. For example, the pagan Widsith and a contemporary lay, Deor, or the Singer's Complaint, come from it. It was bequeathed to the cathedral with a number of other books, by Leofric, Bishop from 1046 to 1072, who removed the seat of his see from Crediton to Exeter. The Vercelli Book is an eleventh century manuscript, discovered in the Chapter Library at Vercelli in 1822. II. (a) The LATIN LITERATURE of the Anglo-Saxon period demands notice before the vernacular prose literature, since it formed the groundwork upon which the vernacular writers founded their attempts. It was the product of foreign ecclesiastical influence. The earliest missionaries were imbued with the learning of the Western Church, and great schools were founded, first in Kent, then in Wessex, and afterwards in Northumbria. In 668 THEODORE OF TARSUS became Archbishop of Canterbury, and, with his friend the deacon HADRIAN, taught both Greek and Latin literature. The School of Canterbury, the earliest of the great medieval schools of Latin, was founded in 671, and was encouraged by subsequent archbishops. One can gain some impression of the eagerness with which Latin studies were pursued from the fact that Alcuin, the great master of the York School, complained to Charlemagne, at the end of the eighth century, of the literary poverty of France as compared with England. He also gives an account of the great library at York, from which and from other lists we can see what writers formed the taste of the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries. There was a decided preference for the Greek authors above the Latin. The classical poets were read, but with a pious suspicion, and the works which received most attention were those of the Fathers and the Christian poets, whose faults we find closely imitated in the poetry of the Anglo-Saxon churchmen. This ecclesiastical taste was strengthened and literary treasures increased by the habit of visiting Rome, which became frequent in the eighth century. Many women were celebrated for their learning. (b) The Canterbury School lost its vigour as the metropolitan see grew in importance, and its energies were, for the most part, transferred to Wessex. This was principally due to ST. ALDHELM (circ. 640-709), a pupil of Theodore and Hadrian, and a West Saxon himself. The Irishman Mailduf had already founded a monastic school at Malmesbury, which still bears his name in a corrupted form. Aldhelm had been one of Mailduf's early pupils, and brought back to his old seminary the Latin learning and monastic organisation of Canterbury. He became Abbot of Malmesbury, and the obscure little town on the confines of Wessex and Mercia became the centre of a new intellectual life which extended itself through the length and breadth of Wessex. From 705 to 709, as Bishop of Sherborne, Aldhelm travelled unceasingly through his large diocese, making use of his numerous accomplishments in spreading the life of the Church and the new learning, and continuing to found monastic schools in Wiltshire and Somerset. His missionary energy and his scholarship are, perhaps, more remarkable than his actual writings. His poetry is turgid and full of extravagant conceits. He wrote a poem in hexameters, De laudibus Virginum, which was a versified adaptation of a prose treatise he had previously written on the same theme, a book of Ænigmata, which was certainly studied by Cynewulf before writing his Anglo-Saxon Riddles, and a poem, De octo principibus Vitiis. These, with a few other poems and letters, form his extant works. But he also wrote in the vernacular, and is said to have translated the Book of Psalms into Anglo-Saxon verse. As he went on his missionary expeditions he would sing his Anglo-Saxon hymns in the chief towns, and so attract people to his preaching; and these poems were preserved orally, not only by the minstrels, but as exercises of memory by the monks. great The schools of Wessex monastic houses like Glastonbury and Sherborne-produced no very great writers; their activity lay chiefly on the side of ecclesiastical organisation, and their literature, after St. Aldhelm's time, is confined, speaking generally, to the correspondence of those great missionaries who, to the glory of Wessex, became the evangelists of the Teutonic tribes. The chief of these, ST. BONIFACE, or, to give him his English name, WINIFRID (680-755) of Crediton in Devonshire, has left a collection of valuable letters to friends in England, amounting (with those addressed to him) to one hundred and six. As is well known, he was the apostle of the Frisians and the first Archbishop of Mayence. The Danish invasion of Wessex in 871, although successfully repelled by Ethelred I and Alfred, was fatal to the schools for the time being. Under Alfred, Winchester became the chief centre of learning, and the practice of writing in Latin revived. ASSER, Bishop of Sherborne (d. 910), who wrote the doubtfully authentic life of Alfred, was an importation from St. Davids. The great revival of monastic life and learning in England must be attributed to the renowned ST. DUNSTAN (924-988), a native of Glastonbury, who studied there under Irish teachers and became Abbot of the monastery. Enjoying the favour of Edgar the Peaceable, he passed through the sees of Worcester and London to the throne of Canterbury. He wrote commentaries in Latin on the Benedictine rule, but his thoroughly patriotic spirit led him to encourage the study of English in his monasteries; and in this he was followed by the great ST. ETHELWOLD, Bishop of Winchester. It was a Saxon monk of Winchester, WULFSTAN, who, at the opening of Edward the Confessor's reign, translated Lanferht's Miracula sancti Swithuni into Latin verse. (c) The great centre, however, of Latin writing was in Northumbria, the debatable ground of Celtic and Roman Christianity. The place of honour belongs almost equally to |