The thanks of W. & R. Chambers are due to the following publishers for kindly permitting the use of extracts from copyright works: Messrs Longmans & Co. (extract from Macaulay); Messrs Smith, Elder, & Co. (extract from Helps); Messrs Chapman & Hall (extract from Carlyle); Messrs King & Co. (extract from Tennyson); Messrs Blackwood (extract from 'George Eliot'); and Messrs Chatto & Windus (extract from Swinburne).

INTRODUCTION.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY.

THE following historical sketch will enable the student to see the relation of the selected passages to the whole body of literature of which they are given as specimens.

BEFORE THE NORMAN CONQUEST (449–1066).

The English people, when we first hear of them, were settled in the parts that now form Denmark and the north-western seaboard of modern Germany, their central seat being the district yet bearing the name Angeln, in Schleswig-Holstein, between Flensborg fiord and the river Eider. From this quarter, successive swarms of invaders, beginning about the middle of the fifth century of our era, crossed the sea to Britain and there settled; gradually extending their sway, until, at the beginning of the seventh century, nearly the whole island, as far north as the Firth of Forth, and as far west as the Severn, was subdued. The original inhabitants, a Celtic people called the Britons, were mostly exterminated, those that escaped being driven westward into the mountains of Wales. The invaders who thus took

possession of Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries formed the basis of the present English nation, and the language they brought with them the basis of the present English tongue. The admixtures subsequently made did not essentially change the character of either.

The conquerors of Britain belonged to the great group of peoples allied to one another by blood and language, which is known as the Teutonic family or stock, and whose descendants yet people Germany and Scandinavia. The various dialects or languages of this stock fall into two divisions: (1) the Scandinavian, consisting of Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, and Icelandic; and (2) the Germanic, spoken over the German Fatherland (including the Netherlands). The new language imported into Britain belonged to the Germanic branch of the Teutonic stock; and to this day the language of England finds its nearest kindred in the Low German dialects of the north of Germany and the Netherlands.

Three Teutonic tribes are spoken of as taking part in the conquest of Britain-the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. The accounts we have of their doings are very meagre. Although it became customary to speak of the amalgamated people and their language as AngloSaxon, they themselves seldom used that term: they always wrote of their common country as England (Englaland); they spoke of themselves all but uniformly as English (Engle, Angelcyn); and they always designated their language as English (Englisc). The Angles or English were the leading tribe, and their name was accepted as the common designation.

The English tongue of that day, however, had a very different aspect from modern English; we must learn it like a foreign language. But we must not allow this circumstance, nor yet the practice of calling it by the distinct name of Anglo-Saxon, to mislead us into the

notion that there was any break of continuity in the language of the English people. A living language is always changing; and the later stage of our language grew out of the earlier form by a natural process of transformation and development. Anglo-Saxon (so called) and modern English are only the upper and lower courses of one and the same stream of speech.

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The Teutonic settlers in Britain were heathens, and illiterate; but they had versified legends handed down. by memory; and one of these we possess nearly complete. It reflects the pagan life of our ancestors in their earlier seats on the continent, modified by the Christianity of the sixth century. The hero of the legend is a mythical personage of the name of Beowulf. The next surviving specimen of early English (or AngloSaxon) literature is a metrical paraphrase of portions of Scripture by Cadmon, a monk of Whitby (about 670). In many passages, as in the account of the creation and of the character of Satan, there is a striking resemblance to Milton's Paradise Lost. Our oldest poetry, instead of rhyme, is marked by alliteration—that is, the frequent recurrence of the same letter, usually in the beginning of words.

Our earliest prose is by King Alfred (880-93, and 897-901), who translated various Latin works for the benefit of his people. In his reign, perhaps, was begun the English (or Saxon) Chronicle, which was afterwards continued to the year 1154. Elfric, an ecclesiastic of the eleventh century, wrote homilies and other treatises in a simple style. Of the Venerable Bede (Bæda) and other writers in Latin we need not speak.

FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST TO CHAUCER (1066-1400).

By the Norman Conquest in 1066, a marked change, already begun, was confirmed and developed in the