ous races and tribes whose intermixture makes the modern English became substantially one people.

In order to have a great national literature it is necessary to have a great national language. Such a language England did not always possess. The settlement of the island by different races or tribes, each having a different speech or dialect, made England for centuries a land of confusion of tongues. The Norman Conquest (1066) brought for a time another element of confusion by the introduction of French. During the fourteenth century the language spoken in and about London, a form of English largely mixed with French, asserted its supremacy. This English became more and more generally established, and from it the language we speak to-day, however enlarged or modified, is directly derived. The centuries during which England was forming her national speech stand by themselves in the history of her literature. Like a child she struggles with the difficulties of language. Some write in one or another kind of English, some in Latin, some in French. By the end of the fourteenth century this difficulty is conquered; we pass out of the centuries of preparation into those of greater literary expression.

II. THE PERIOD OF ITALIAN INFLUENCE. FROM ABOUT 1400 TO 1660

Toward the end of the fourteenth century the mind of England began to be greatly stimulated and directed by an influence from without. England began to share in the Renaissance, or the awakening of the mind of Europe to a new culture, a fresh

delight in life and in beauty, a new enthusiasm for freedom in thought and action. This great movement first took shape in Italy. Nation after nation kindled with the ardor of the new spirit, and England, like the rest, drew from Italy knowledge and inspiration. Education in England was transformed by men who learned in Florence or Bologna what they taught at Oxford or at Cambridge, until the New Learning and the new spirit found their unrivaled literary expression in the reigns of Elizabeth and James (1558-1625).

III.—THE PERIOD OF FRENCH INFLUENCE. FROM 1660 TO ABOUT 1750

After the new thoughts and mighty passions that came with the Renaissance had spent their force, England seemed for the time to have grown tired of great feelings either in poetry or in religion. She became scientific, intellectual, cold, and inclined to attach undue importance to the style or manner of writing, thinking that great works were produced by study and art rather than by the inspiration of genius. This tendency was encouraged, or perhaps originated, by the example and influence of the French. This was during the brilliant reign of Louis XIV., when such writers as Molière, Racine, Corneille, and Boileau, were making French literature and literary standards fashionable in Europe. Charles II. ascended the throne in 1660, after his youth of exile on the Continent, bringing with him a liking for things French, and for a while some English writers tried to compose according to the prescription laid down.

by Boileau and his followers. France, however, exerted no such profound and lasting influence on English literature and thought as had been exercised by Italy during the period preceding. The germinating power of Italian life and culture reached far beyond the confines of literature; it quickened and liberalized the very soul of the English nation. Innumerable changes in architecture, in dress, in gardening, were but outward demonstrations of the extent to which Italy had swayed England to her mood. Beside such a power, the succeeding influence of France was both superficial and restricted. It dealt chiefly with style, the outward, technical side of the literary art; a side in which the French excel, and which the English genius is prone to neglect.

IV. THE MODERN ENGLISH PERIOD. SINCE ABOUT 1750

During this final period England outgrew her temporary mood of unbelief, criticism, and shallowness, and with it her reliance on the literary style of France. She has again expressed in her literature new and deep feelings, a wider love for mankind and a belief in the brotherhood of all men ; a new power of entering into the life of nature. She has depended little for her inspiration on other nations, although to some extent influenced by Germany and Italy, and has produced literary works second only to those of the Elizabethan masters.

These periods, considered in detail, form respect. ively the subjects of the four parts into which this work is divided.

PART I

PERIOD OF PREPARATION. 670-1400

CHAPTER I

RACE, LANGUAGE, AND LITERATURE BEFORE CHAUCER

WHEN We examine the four periods into which we have divided the history of English literature, we notice that the first, or preparatory, Distinction period is distinguished from the others between the first period in one important particular. Through- and the three out its whole extent, or from about the following. seventh to the fourteenth century, England has no national language; no speech common to all classes of the people and to all sections of the country. Even for the service of literature no one language is established, but many books are written in Latin, some in Norman-French, and others in different dialects of an English which seems to us almost as strange as a foreign tongue.

On the other hand the three remaining periods, while differing from each other in certain special characteristics, have at least one great feature in common-in them all literature has one standard or national language. By the beginning of the first of these three periods, the literary and national suprem

acy of one particular variety of English was assured. That variety has since been the universal English speech; it has remained unchanged, except by the gradual and natural processes of growth, from the time of its first great poet-master, Geoffrey Chaucer, to the time of Alfred Tennyson, its last.

But while this broad distinction between the first and the three following periods of our literature should be grasped, it should not distract of the litera- our attention from the close and vital ture. relations which bind the preparatory

Continuity

centuries to the later time.

The comparative richness of the literature since Chaucer's time, as well as the remoteness and the difficulties of language which beset us before that period, tend to make us lose sight of the living interest and meaning of the earlier era, and its practical bearing on the five succeeding centuries of literary production. To slight this formative period is to begin our biography of the nation's literature at its middle age. Not only had more than half of the entire mental life of England been lived before Chaucer wrote, but for more than seven hundred years that life had been struggling, more or less successfully, to write itself down in literature. There is no break between this literature and that of which Chaucer has often been styled the father, and no development of the language should prevent our recognizing that the continuity of the literature remains unimpaired. However true or convenient our division of the literary history of England into set periods, it is far more important for us to see that,