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Title: The foreign debt of English literature
Author: T. G. Tucker
Release date: June 10, 2024 [eBook #73805]
Language: English
Original publication: London: George Bell and Sons, 1907
Credits: The Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOREIGN DEBT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE ***
THE FOREIGN DEBT OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS
PORTUGAL ST. LINCOLN’S INN, W.C.
CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON, BELL & CO.
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.
BOMBAY: A. H. WHEELER & CO.
THE FOREIGN DEBT
OF
ENGLISH LITERATURE
BY
T. G. TUCKER, LITT.D.
PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
[Illustration]
LONDON
GEORGE BELL AND SONS
1907
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.
PREFACE
The following unpretentious chapters are intended to offer to the
ordinary student, who has not yet given the matter any particular
thought, a first assistance in realizing the interdependence of
literatures. They aim at clearness, and at as great a measure of accuracy
as is permitted by the compass within which the matter is necessarily
compressed. No pretence whatever is made to completeness. The summaries
of various literatures do not profess to be more than epitomes with a
special object. If, while helping to that end, they are also readable in
themselves, their purpose is served.
It is, perhaps, advisable to state that, while the professional studies
of the writer have been for the most part concerned with the literatures
of Greece and Rome, it has more than once fallen to his lot to promote
academic teaching in the literature of England. It was this experience
which suggested the present attempt at a more general survey. French,
Italian, and German literatures have been approached at first hand,
although the standard works have been duly consulted. With the literature
of Spain contact has been less intimate, but care has been taken to
check impressions formed under these conditions. For the rest the best
authorities have been used and trusted.
Inasmuch as guiding hints and clues are often more helpful than elaborate
treatises, a special acknowledgment is due to various writings of
Professor Churton Collins and Professor W. P. Ker.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
I. GREEK LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 5
II. LATIN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 70
III. LITERARY CURRENTS OF THE DARK AGES 116
IV. FRENCH LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 136
V. ITALIAN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 178
VI. OTHER INFLUENCES SUMMARIZED 216
(_a_) SPANISH LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 216
(_b_) GERMAN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 231
(_c_) CELTIC LITERATURE AND ENGLISH 247
(_d_) HEBREW INFLUENCE 253
INDEX 259
SYNOPTICAL TABLES
1. TABLE OF GREEK LITERATURE.
2. VIEW OF RELATIONS WITH GREEK LITERATURE.
3. TABLE OF LATIN LITERATURE.
4. TABLE OF FRENCH LITERATURE.
5. TABLE OF ITALIAN LITERATURE.
6. TABLE OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
7. TABLE OF GERMAN LITERATURE.
8. SOME POINTS IN THE PEDIGREE OF POETRY.
9. SOME POINTS IN THE PEDIGREE OF EPIC VERSE.
ENGLISH LITERATURE
INTRODUCTORY
A just appreciation of any modern European literature is not to be
derived from the study of that literature alone. Not one has grown up
spontaneously and independently from the soil of the national genius.
Some seeds at least have come from elsewhere. Often whole forms of
writing have been transplanted bodily. We must particularly recognize
these truths when dealing with English literature.
The basis of the English mind is chiefly Teutonic, in some measure
Celtic. If the English genius had been left to itself, to develop its
spiritual and intellectual creations in its own way, English literature
would have been a very different thing in both substance and form. But
in reality English literary history is the story of the Teutonic and
Celtic tendencies “corrected and clarified,” and the Teutonic and Celtic
invention immensely assisted, by influences and ideas flowing in from
other sources. There have been large ingraftings from other stocks,
either partially kindred or altogether alien—from Greeks, Romans,
Italians, French, Spaniards, Germans, as well as from Hebrews and other
Orientals.
All sound study is comparative. We must place other literatures beside
our own, if we desire to appraise rightly our national genius, its
capacities, and its creations. We find our English writers composing
their works in certain forms, and giving expression to a certain range of
ideas. How came they to employ these particular forms of creation? How
did they arrive at these particular ideas? How is it with other nations?
Have they built upon the same lines and with the same materials, or how
is it with them? Have we borrowed from them, or they from us? If there
have been borrowings, when and in what measure did they occur? Looking
back over the changes of spirit and form which our poetry, for example,
has undergone, we shall encourage altogether false notions of the causes
of such changes, unless we see how, every now and then, a shower of new
ideas, a stream of new light, has come in from abroad. Most readers know
in some vague way that Chaucer avows or betrays his debts to France
and Italy; that Shakespeare did not invent his own plots, but borrowed
from Italians, from Plautus, from Plutarch, and others; that Milton
was steeped in the Greek, Latin, and Italian classics. But we want to
know more than this. We want to perceive with some definiteness how far
the whole course of English literature has been enriched by tributary
streams, and what sort of waters they brought. It would be instructive to
draw a diagram of our literary history; to liken it to the course of a
river, and to picture its various fountain-heads and tributaries pouring
in their several quotas at their several times.
In all modern literatures there is a large proportion which is unoriginal
to them. Milton has been mentioned already. Those who read only English
works find Milton full of nobility of thought and imagery. Yet, before
Milton produced his greater poems, he had read, re-read, and deliberately
steeped himself in, the literature of Greece, Rome, modern Italy, and
France. Precisely how much of Milton is made up of Homer, Euripides,
Virgil, Dante, Ariosto, and other predecessors, can only be known to such
as have those authors at their finger-ends. Shelley, again, is commonly
regarded as one of the most daringly original of English writers. Yet
Shelley’s mind was an amalgam of himself, Homer, Euripides, Plato,
Virgil, Dante, Calderon, Goethe; and this, once more, is but another way
of saying that it had incorporated the genius of generations of Greeks,
Romans, Spaniards, Italians, and Germans. We cannot therefore arrive at
the true genius of Milton or of Shelley, or speak understandingly of
their originality, until we have surveyed those other literatures and
their relations with our own.
Let us, indeed, claim with a proper national pride that the influence of
English literature, of our Shakespeare, our Bacon, our Locke, our Byron,
upon foreign writers has been profound. Her debt to modern literature has
been repaid by England, and, at least in the influence of Shakespeare,
more than repaid. But with that question we are not here concerned.
One prefatory remark has yet to be made. It is that there is no discredit
in this literary borrowing. Nations can no more be independent in the art
of literature than in other arts. To be independent, to be unaffected
by others’ genius, inaccessible to others’ ideas, would be to render
our literature as stagnant and as grotesque as the paintings of China
and of old Japan. It is a condition of progress in literature as in
science, that new inspiration must be continually sought, new conceptions
assimilated. One vein is soon worked out; another must be opened. True
art is of all the world, and a nation does best in art when it corrects
its own peculiar faults and expands its own particular ideas, without
meanwhile surrendering itself to a servile imitation of that for which
its genius is naturally unfit. And English writers may glory that they
have seldom been servile imitators.
I
GREEK LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
Of all the literatures which have contributed to that of England,
the Greek is by far the first and most important. The study of Greek
literature is the indispensable introduction to the study of European
literary history. Whether we review the literature of England, of Italy,
of France, or of Germany, it is at Greece that we shall ultimately
arrive. Take our English epic, _Paradise Lost_. It is a commonplace that
it derives much inspiration from Dante’s _Divine Comedy_. But, when we
arrive at the _Divine Comedy_, we are assured that it would never have
taken such shape but for Virgil’s _Aeneid_. And, when we come to Virgil’s
_Aeneid_, it is a fact known to the veriest tiro that the _Aeneid_ is a
copy, and, in a sense, a plagiarism, of Homer’s _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_.
The pedigree is self-evident and undeniable. Practically it is avowed at
every step. Look elsewhere. Pope and Shenstone wrote “pastorals,” after
the fashion introduced into English by Spenser. But Spenser himself had
been led to this form of composition by the Italian Sannazaro and the
Latin Virgil. And, when we reach Virgil, we find that he is a liberal
borrower, in matter and manner alike, sometimes even in the very phrase,
from the Greek of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. It is the same with
literary criticism. Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_, like Roscommon’s _Essay
on Translated Verse_, is derived from Boileau’s French _Art Poétique_.
But Boileau is an echo of the Latin Horace and his _De Arte Poetica_,
while Horace is himself a borrower from Greeks of Alexandria, and
ultimately from Aristotle of Athens. And so it is throughout. Often,
especially in these later days, our stars of English literature shine
with a light reflected directly from Greek constellations. No less often
they shine with a light transmitted through several media, but ultimately
issuing from the suns of Greece.
Pre-eminent by far among the literatures to which we owe a debt stands
this body of eternally great creators, who, by the clear beauty of their
language, their luminous apprehension, and their simple but magnificent
originality, surpass in the aggregate those whom any other nation can
assemble. It is no paradox, but a simple historical fact, that the old
English writers have had less influence in moulding our modern literature
than have Homer and Sophocles, Plato and Demosthenes. “We are all
Greeks,” says Shelley, in the preface to his _Hellas_. Whether we will
or no, our literature and philosophy, our canons of taste, our ideals of
art, are all, in a sense, Greek.
* * * * *
Greek literature, unlike Latin, and unlike those of modern Europe, was
mainly, if not wholly, original. What we have been able to borrow or to
find ready-made seems to have developed itself spontaneously in the
wonderful genius of Greece. Latin literature has been called—and not
without some justice—one vast plagiarism from Greek. But Greek itself
is guiltless of plagiarism. Its thoughts, like its exquisite clearness
and restraint of style, are almost entirely its own. With unlettered
barbarians to north and west of them, with flowery, bombastic, or mystic
orientals on the Asiaward side, the Greeks must be credited with a
marvellous gift of their own, the instinct for sound judgement and sure
taste.
But they possessed more than taste and judgement. They had inventiveness.
We may reflect for a moment upon the various forms and modes of
literature which we possess and practise in verse and prose. Of verse
there are the epic, lyric, elegiac, satiric, dramatic, didactic,
pastoral, epigrammatic, philosophic varieties. In prose there are
history, oratory, philosophy, biography, criticism, fiction. To us all
these forms and species, with their appropriate language, metre and
tone, are taken for granted, as if they were the necessary outcome of
some natural order of things. They are, no doubt, founded in nature.
Nevertheless, we should remember that they must have had a beginning of
their differentiation, that they must have been invented somewhere. And
we discover that each of them is to be found arising in recognizable
shape on the soil of ancient Greece. It is easy nowadays for us to
imitate existing forms, to build with the architecture of the drama
of Shakespeare and the epic of Milton, to copy the lyrical metres of
Gray, Shelley, and Tennyson, to adopt the satirical machinery of Pope
and Dryden. But these differentiations in mode of expression represent
something deeper, some distinction evolved by the human mind between
compositions of one purpose and compositions of another. It was the
Greeks who first convincingly and systematically illustrated that
distinction, and who found for each subject of thought its appropriate
vehicle of expression. More modern times have evolved many modifications
of detail in metre or rhyme, and have essayed many novelties in the way
of narrative. But they have never added an entirely new form of poetry
or prose to the _répertoire_ of the Greeks. Tennyson does not write _In
Memoriam_ in the metre and language of _Paradise Lost_. Shelley’s _Ode
to a Skylark_ does not employ the diction and rhythm of Pope’s _Essay
on Man_. It is recognized that the feeling and its vehicle would be
incongruous. But how does this come to be recognized? A world is quite
conceivable in which there might have been developed but one form of
literature and one ideal of expression. In such a world the incongruity
would not be felt. The early Hellenes made their own literary beginnings
upon almost a clear field, and it is one of their imperishable glories
that they succeeded in realizing the subtle relations between language
and thought or feeling, and in expressing these latter in all the variety
of extant literary forms. For heroic deeds and lofty incident they
developed the epic verse; for the sweets and bitters of love, and for
other passions and ardours, they built the lyric stanza; for the plaints
of mourning they created the elegiac; they did this gradually, no doubt,
and in the main unconsciously, but with all the more perfect result. If
we inherit what Greece has created, we have no right to assume that all
our happy varieties of literary form are things of course, which would
somehow have come to any nation.
* * * * *
The history of Greek literature should be a study of years. Nevertheless
it is not without profit to take the greater names and the more prominent
types, to show their order of succession, to say something of their range
and scope, to note the essentials of their style, and thence to derive
some clearer idea of their influence on what we read to-day in our own
English tongue.
The earliest Greek books which we now possess are Homer’s _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_. But these are much too polished and perfect works to have been
the very first that Greeks ever composed. Indeed we know that before
Homer’s time there were minstrels, who sang the “glories” of heroes, very
much after the manner in which the bards sang in Wales or Scotland, or
the gleemen in Anglo-Saxon England. It must also be assumed that popular
songs of a religious kind were in existence. Yet all these earliest
efforts at literary creation have vanished; we possess no material for
definite information concerning them. For us Greek literature begins
with “Homer.” The question as to who Homer was cannot be answered. Some
critics contend that he is a mere title, and that the compositions which
go by his name are patchworks, made up of a series of narratives sung
by wandering bards called “rhapsodists.” Homêros, they say, is but a
fictitious title under which to string all these separate compositions
together into one so-called epic. Others, going less far, say that there
was indeed a veritable Homer, that he composed a poem on the _Wrath of
Achilles_, and that this poem has been enlarged by other hands, which
turned the whole into the _Iliad_, or poem on the “Siege of Troy”. Even
if this be true, we know nothing of the original Homer, when or where
he lived. To discuss the question at any length is beyond our present
province. Perhaps we may believe, with great masters of poetry like
Goethe and Schiller, that a “Homer” wrote the poem of the _Iliad_, but
that it has since been added to, tampered with, reconstructed. We may
also believe that some one other poet wrote a corresponding portion of
the _Odyssey_. These two original poets were of nearly, though not quite,
the same period. They were inspired with much the same literary ideals,
and were almost equal, though by no means identical, in genius. They
may be supposed to have appeared in a specially fertile epoch, like the
great Elizabethans, or like the Italian poets of the first Renaissance.
Their artistic principles would be much the same; they would live in
much the same environment; they would see the world, the gods, mankind,
through much the same moral temperament. Let us grant that their work
has undergone large interference and contamination. Yet it is hard to
think that a motley crowd of rhapsodists could ever possess such a lofty
average of genius as pervades the whole body of these inimitable poems.
Both works were, beyond reasonable doubt, in complete existence before
800 B.C. Twenty-seven centuries ago the Greek genius had reached thus
high a point.
The _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ are to be read in many a translation. The
_Iliad_ is the poem of Ilium or Troy. It deals with events during the
siege of that town by the confederated Achaeans. It narrates the doings
and sayings of the Grecian heroes, of Agamemnon, Achilles, Ajax, Ulysses,
Diomede, Menelaus, outside Troy, and of the Trojans, King Priam, Hector
or Paris within the city, where is also the traitress Helen. It narrates
the counsels, quarrels, and battles of the gods, as they arise from
partisanship during the siege. The poem is filled with prowess of battle,
till it ends with the death of Hector, champion of Troy. The narrative
is rapid and vigorous, full of valorous and exciting exploits of men
interwoven with the friendly or unfriendly actions of gods. Descriptions
are many, but always brief, and everywhere inimitably fresh and luminous.
The whole purpose of the poem is to tell a story, and to tell it with
clearness and simplicity, yet with fire and force. When it is embellished
with ornaments of simile or other figure, it is because that device best
brings home the picture. There is no idle lavishing of ornament for mere
ornament’s sake.
The _Odyssey_ is the poem of Odysseus, the wandering Ulysses. He, the
king of the little island of Ithaca, after being for ten years absent at
the siege of Troy, starts homeward in his ship to his wife, Penelope. But
on the journey he meets with adventures, strange, terrible, or happy.
He is storm-tossed and delayed by the anger of offended gods. He nearly
meets his death from the one-eyed cannibal monster Polyphemus; he nearly
loses his crew among the Lotus-eaters; he is detained for seven years in
the island of the seductive Calypso; his comrades are turned into swine
by Circe the enchantress; he is wrecked between Scylla and Charybdis.
He at last arrives home, only to find Penelope at the mercy of a rabble
calling themselves her suitors. He slays them, and reveals himself to his
wife—and so a happy ending. In this poem, as in the _Iliad_, composed
nearly three thousand years ago, there is already achieved a perfection
of literary art which we moderns find ourselves for ever aiming at and
for ever missing. For this there is other reason than the natural genius
of the Greek. The poets who wrote these two stories looked out upon the
world with a frank, unclouded gaze, for which, perhaps, we are now too
sophisticated. They therefore tell their tale with such simple directness
that it might seem told by a grown-up child; but meanwhile with such
brilliant clearness, with such firm outline, that it no less appears
the work of a consummate artist. There is, it is true, no psychological
probing in these books. There is no subtle moralizing, no pondering of
any kind of deep question. Nowhere does there obtrude itself a desire to
be clever, rhetorical, dazzling. Yet no one can read the _Iliad_ without
seeing those warriors face to face, as they were, in their physical
strength and simplicity of character; nor can he read the _Odyssey_
without feeling that he is with Ulysses on his raft, sailing through the
deep, blue Mediterranean, that the salt breeze is blowing on his face,
that the world is young and fresh, and that a man’s part is to perform
that which lies nearest to his hand.
What effect the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ have upon the intelligent
reader may be judged by their preeminence among poems of all times and
all places. What an effect they have had on our literature may be judged
by the number of translations, many in prose, and many better known in
verse, from the hands of Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Derby, Morris, Way. It
may be judged by the countless allusions to the “tale of Troy divine”
which are strewn through every book of the last three millennia; by our
everyday familiarity with the names of Hector and Achilles, Helen of Troy
and Paris, Diomede and Ulysses, Circe and Penelope, Polyphemus and the
Lotus-eaters. On reading Chapman’s Homer, Keats felt like an astronomer
“when a new planet swims into his ken.” The same experience has been
felt by all who recognize, as Keats did, “the principle of beauty in all
things.” But little notion of those poems can be gathered at second-hand.
Of its similes we may here quote one, not because it is in any way the
most beautiful, but because it has been translated by a master in the
art, Tennyson. Nothing in English has ever been hit upon to give the
majestic, sonorous roll of the Greek hexameter, but Tennyson has, at
least, preserved the frank simplicity of his original:
As when in heaven the stars about the moon
Look beautiful, when all the winds are laid,
And every height comes out, and jutting peak
And valley, and the immeasurable heavens
Break open to their highest, and all the stars
Shine, and the shepherd gladdens in his heart:
So many a fire between the ships and stream
Of Xanthus blazed before the towers of Troy,
A thousand on the plain; and close by each
Sat fifty in the blaze of burning fire;
And eating hoary grain and pulse the steeds,
Fixed by their cars, waited the golden dawn.
Next to Homer may come, by no means in importance, but in date, the poet
Hesiod. He, too, uses the hexameter line, but with a different tone and
movement, and for quite another purpose. He is our first example of
“didactic” verse—the verse which is intended to instruct. Hesiod, who may
be dated about the year 700 B.C., composed two poems of some dimensions,
the one called the _Theogony_ or _Pedigree of the Gods_, the other known
as the _Works and Days_. The latter is a collection of versified rules
of agriculture mixed with proverbial wisdom. It is, in fact, a sort
of “Farmer’s Annual” of Greece combined with the proverbial wisdom of
“Poor Richard.” Practical farming and practical morals go together. It
would almost certainly have been written in prose, but for the simple
reason that prose literature had not yet been invented. All literary
composition begins with verse. As a poem, there is little to be said for
the _Works and Days_, except that, like all things early Greek, it is
entirely unpretentious and goes straight to the point. Didactic verse
has grown common since Hesiod’s day, although happily it is now seldom
used for agricultural purposes. Tusser’s _Five Hundred Points of Good
Husbandry_ is one of the earliest results of the revival of Greek studies
in England in the Elizabethan time, and, though it cannot count for much
in literature, it is our first example of a species of work which took a
more moralizing shape in Dyer’s _Fleece_ and many later didactics.
Of much more value is the next kind of poetry which arose among the
Greeks, a kind which has been called “personal,” inasmuch as it is
prompted by the writer’s individual feelings and emotions, and has
reference to himself, his hopes, griefs, loves, and other sentiments.
The epic poetry of Homer had been purely objective, dealing with
incidents, things, and men outside the poet. The author makes no
revelation of himself; he does not speak in the first person. But what
is known as “lyric” and “elegiac” poetry is the outcome of a man’s own
inner experience, and is only valuable in proportion as it expresses
powerfully or touchingly a real or imagined passion of the writer,
which the world at large can also recognize for its own. The poetry of
_Lycidas_, _Adonais_, _In Memoriam_, is “elegiac”; the poetry of songs,
such as those of Herrick and Burns, is “lyric.” “Elegiac” properly means
“adapted to mourning,” but the elegy, with its couplet rhythm varied from
the hexameter, yet with a plaintive dignity all its own, was used for
other feelings than those of grief. It was used for praise, exhortation,
reflection, love; for anything “subjective,” or springing from the mood
of the writer. We need not enumerate the Greeks who at various dates
wrote poetry of this personal description. After the year 700 B.C. there
were many and excellent lyrists of the kind. At Lacedaemon the poet
Tyrtaeus composed marching songs, which acted upon the Spartans as the
_Marseillaise_ and _Die Wacht am Rhein_ act upon nations in modern days.
Archilochus of Paros, soured by his own failings and misfortunes, wrote
often in bitterness, like Burns. He is styled an “iambic” writer from a
new form of composition which he employed, and he became the first great
name in satire. In Lesbos, a fertile, luxurious, and cultured island,
we meet with the foremost name in the poetry of passion, the famous
Sappho, the first and greatest of women in literature. It is Sappho who
could paint, better than poet has ever painted since, the agonizing
of love. Nor was she alone. In the same island she had her school of
followers, and, separately from these, the poet Alcaeus poured forth his
fiery thoughts in “words that burn.” But it is Sappho who, like George
Sand, wrote from the “real blood of her heart and the real flame of her
thought” things which have been the despair of imitator or translator.
Unhappily, very little of her work is extant now, even in fragments; but
what there is, is “more golden than gold.” Her metres are as nobly simple
as in one of Herrick’s songs; her words are simple also. Yet, just as
Dante could make a mighty verse out of the noun and verb, by choosing
for his noun and verb the absolutely truest and most home-coming, so the
simplicity of Sappho is only a deceptive covering for the most consummate
art. Often as our lyrists have tried to catch something of her sacred
fire, never has one quite attained to her irresistible pathos. Perhaps
he who has approached nearest is Burns. Sappho is untranslatable. All
absolutely best words in any language must be so. The nearest equivalent
in English may be sought and found for the best word in the Greek, but in
the special quality of its music or its associations it can never be the
same.
The names of Pindar and Simonides are of a later date. Before them comes
another, who sang to the lyre those gemlike songs of love, and joy, and
wine, which the cavalier poets of the English seventeenth century made
their ideal. This was Anacreon of Teos. “Anacreontics” is the name given
to those polished cameo-like little poems which imitators have essayed
upon Anacreon’s themes. Cowley’s translations into English verse are
known to literature, and readers familiar with the works of Thomas Moore
will remember his loose youthful version of a few true and many spurious
lyrics of the Teian bard. It is to Anacreon that we may look for the
prototype of those graceful trifles called _vers de société_, and of
those songs of love or gaiety which Herrick, Suckling, Lovelace, and
Waller have developed in such exquisite examples.
All this personal poetry was meant to be sung to the accompaniment of
lyre or flute. Had it been primarily meant to be read, it might possibly,
even with Greek creators, have been less simple and direct, more
artificial.
There was also another class of poetry which was sung to the same
accompaniment. Early Greece found many occasions for festivities, and
at religious holidays, public rejoicings, and public thanksgivings,
choruses sang while moving in procession or while dancing round the
altars. Hymns were chanted to the gods, triumphal odes were chanted in
honour of men. When literature turned to these—or when these became
literature—there arose in particular two most famous poets, Simonides
and Pindar, to compose such public odes, very much after the manner in
which a modern laureate might compose an ode of installation or national
victory, or a dirge upon a national loss. Compositions written in this
spirit are seldom of the highest rank of literature. They lack the
saving grace of inspiration. Pindar is strong, noble, imaginative. His
odes were, no doubt, splendid compositions for chanting and musical
purposes. To read them is to be conscious of a stateliness and dignity
and an “eagle flight” which powerfully affect the student. But, full as
they are of great imagery and diction, they are beyond doubt apt to be
artificial and perplexed in structure; they are too often obscure, too
often deliberately learned in allusion. To be its best, poetry must be
written from the promptings of the poet’s heart, and Pindar too often
wrote to order, for payment, and not from inward compulsion. No exact,
or very near, parallel to Pindar can be found. He has never been even
tolerably well translated. This has not been for want of admirers. Gray,
who imitated him in the _Progress of Poesy_, has been said by Mason
(erroneously enough) to possess Pindar’s fire: Cowley’s tombstone calls
him, without much justification, the English Pindar, and at all times
down to the present writers have been led to emulate the soaring Pindaric
ode. Whatever his defects, it is certain that over all modern lyric
poets, even over those who could not always follow his meaning, Pindar
has exercised the sway of a master and imperial spirit.
* * * * *
Among the kinds of poetry chiefly affected by the earlier Greeks must
also be included the “gnomic” or “sententious” verse which goes under
the names of Theognis and Phocylides. These writers both lived in the
sixth century B.C., and both composed versified maxims or precepts of
conduct and worldly wisdom. After times came to credit to those great
originals any verses of this character which were current in the elegiac
or the hexameter metre, and such verses played very much the same part
in Greek mouths as is played by the Proverbs of Solomon or by proverbial
philosophy of unknown authorship in the mouths of Englishmen. At a later
date in the iambic metre the comic poet Menander introduced into his
plays a large number of maxims, which gained wide vogue and which caused
many more of the same species to be fathered upon him. Of the various
wise saws thus current in Greece a great number were translated or
adapted by Latin writers, and have so passed into the general possession
of the European world.
* * * * *
Between the years 500 and 400 B.C. there arose in Athens that which is
the special poetic glory of that city—the drama, embracing both the drama
of tragedy, as wrought by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the
drama of comedy, as built by Aristophanes, and later, in a different form
and spirit, by Menander.
The Attic drama arose on Grecian ground. At one time choruses danced
round the altar of the wine-god Dionysus (or Bacchus), and chanted songs
in his honour. The chorus had its leader, the Coryphaeus. In time it
became the fashion for the Coryphaeus to personate the god, or some
character whom story connected with him. He recited a speech, or related
some legend, in which the wine-god was concerned. It naturally followed
that he was next raised upon a low dais, and distinguished from the rest
of the chorus. The dais later became the dramatic stage. Subsequently
another member of the chorus was told off to converse with him in rough
dialogue, the theme being still the history of Bacchus. So far, then, we
have a chorus which dances and sings, and two actors supporting crude
dramatic parts. It was from these simple beginnings that there grew to
perfection in Athens, as suddenly as the Shakespearean perfection arose
from the old miracle-plays and “moralities” in England, noble dramas like
those of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The open sward had become a theatre,
the acting art, the dialogue poetry. Drama had been raised to an art of
the most absolute literary completeness. It must, however, be observed
that the tragedy which grew up in this way was religious in its origin.
Until the end it—theoretically at least—remained so. Its subject-matter
and laws were, therefore, limited. The stage was at the same time a
pulpit for moral and religious teaching. The theatre was, moreover,
national. Here are some important elements of artistic difference. Those
who read Shakespeare and then turn to Athenian tragedies are puzzled.
They do not understand those Attic creations. They think them rather
cold, with somewhat slender plot, containing few surprises. Italians
and Frenchmen can understand them; the average Englishman cannot. The
poetry is often admirable, but the action appears strangely simple, and
for the most part over obvious. The very name “tragedy” seems sometimes
misapplied. But by “tragedy” the Greeks did not necessarily mean a play
which ends in death and disaster. Such an end was, indeed, usual, and
hence the modern meaning of the term. But the _Eumenides_ of Aeschylus
ends happily, as do the _Alcestis_ of Euripides and the _Philoctêtes_
of Sophocles. The Greeks meant rather the working out of some great and
powerful situation affording occasion for sensations of pity and fear.
Here was “the luxury of grief.” The spectators knew that there would
be some climax in the drama; but whether it would issue in good or
evil depended on the poet; they only knew that their feelings would be
powerfully worked upon by great poetry greatly delivered. For the rest,
they required no startling ingenuity of plot or variety of incident.
The three great dramatists in artistic sequence are Aeschylus, Sophocles,
Euripides. These were all alive together, but Aeschylus was old when
Euripides was young. The appearance of all these in one epoch is exactly
paralleled by the cluster of superlative dramatists in the Elizabethan
age or in the France of Louis XIV. Of Sophocles it has been said that he
represented men as they ought to be, and of Euripides that he represented
them as they were. The dictum is hardly true, and, if it were, it must
be noted that, whereas to “hold the mirror up to nature” is as much the
function of Greek tragedy as of English, it is no function of Greek drama
to be a literal copy of literal everyday human experience. In Aeschylus
all is in the grand style of an awe-inspiring simplicity. Take his
_Prometheus Bound_. We have a majestic Titan figure bound to a desolate
rock, there to remain in punishment for an offence against the law of
Zeus. He had bestowed fire and other boons on mortal men. Therefore Zeus
pinioned him on Caucasus for tens of thousands of years. In one way,
and one only, could he gain his freedom—by disclosing to Zeus a certain
secret of fate. But Prometheus would not repent of having exercised his
benevolent freewill against the decree of Heaven. He gloried in his
action; he refused to deliver up the secret. Now during the whole play
the figure of Prometheus does not move: he is fixed fast. There is no
action on his part, nothing but speech. Different gods, demigods, and
a mortal visit him, condole with him, advise him, or threaten him. He
remains firm to the end, the spectacle of an utterly resolute heart
rebelling against fate.
It is not hard to recognize in English literature some of the characters
to which this Prometheus has served as prototype. There is Milton’s
Satan, who is distinctly modelled on the Titan. Byron acknowledges that
all his rebellious spirits, Cain, Manfred, and their like, are echoes
of the same character. Shelley wrote a _Prometheus Unbound_ for sequel.
Keats’s _Hyperion_ shows the same influence. Swinburne’s _Atalanta in
Calydon_ is throughout inspired by the conception of Aeschylus.
Ancient drama has much attracted the modern poet. The _Agamemnon_ of
Aeschylus has been translated by Browning, far more roughly—not to say
grotesquely—in style than it deserves, but with the Greek spirit in no
small measure retained. The same writer has translated the _Alcestis_ of
Euripides in the work known as _Balaustion’s Adventure_.
But to the English stage Greek tragedies are not suited. Our theatre is
not religious, nor national. But in France and Italy Greek plays have
found a more congenial soil. Corneille and Racine in France, Alfieri in
Italy, have sought to mould their dramas upon Greek lines, though, truth
to tell, they much more closely suggest the rhetorical constructions of
the Latins. The only deliberate attempt to compose in English directly
on the Grecian model is Milton’s _Samson Agonistes_, a work in which
admirable poetry does not atone for a certain coldness and formality
intolerable in drama, whether meant for Greece or for England. Yet
inasmuch as the Italian drama was largely instrumental in developing the
English from its crude and vulgar antecedents, and as Italian drama was
in its turn evoked by the dramatic examples of Greece, we can even here,
despite all unlikenesses, distinctly affiliate the main principles of our
own stage-pieces to those of ancient Athens. We cannot, indeed, maintain
that without Athens we should have had no drama; we can only assert
that our greatest drama, as we have it, in its poetical dignity and its
technical architecture, would hardly have been. It might have been a
prose drama, and one of very different conception and ideals. But it is
what it is because it took from Greece that which suited its purpose,
while it left to Greece those elements which belong to so different a
theatre.
It has been described how Greek tragic drama arose from the choruses
singing round the altar of Dionysus. Greek comedy springs from the same
source. There were two sides to a Greek festival, as there are two sides
to Christmas Day. The serious part of the festivity developed serious
poetry and serious action. The light, sportive, and satirical part
developed humorous verse and humorous action. It is easy to see how both
dramatic kinds would originate from these two different aspects of the
feast. From beginnings as rude as those of tragedy was developed the
comedy of Aristophanes or of Menander, which in its turn, begat that of
Plautus and Terence at Rome, and thence of Shakespeare’s predecessors in
England and of Molière in France. Even the comic opera of to-day bears a
wonderfully close resemblance to plays of Aristophanes, with whom occur
almost the same bizarre situations and humours as in Gilbert’s very
modern eccentricities.
Comedy, like tragedy, had its chorus, chanting appropriate odes during
the intervals of acting. And be it noted that the Greek drama, whether
tragic or comic, was literary. It bears to be read as much as to be
acted; it is a work of conscientious art. In tragedy the writing is pure
poetry. In comedy it is humour and wit, biting, sparkling, often coarse
and very personal, but always full of life. There was some defence for
personality. Comedy, like tragedy, served to give various lessons to
the Athenians. Greece possessed no newspapers, and in their place the
comic stage served even more than now to criticize fads, to chastise
political and private misdoings. So long as it was what is called the
“Old Comedy” of Aristophanes it availed itself only too fully of these
licences. But when its attacks on politics or private persons became
intolerable, its wings were clipped by law, and in the “New Comedy” of
Menander we find another tone, the tone of Molière or of Ben Jonson,
the treatment of social types, the comedy of domestic intrigue. Of the
whims of the “Old Comedy” the following may serve as a specimen. In
the _Birds_ of Aristophanes two enterprising Athenians persuade the
birds to build a city in the clouds—“Cloud-cuckoo-town” it is called—by
which the ungrateful gods are to be cut off from men, and so forced to
come to terms. This is the central idea. Twenty-four persons, equipped
as different birds, form the chorus, and give the name to the piece.
The central conception, however, is but a peg on which to hang attacks
upon the follies of the day, and particularly follies in contemporary
politics. Neither parties nor men are spared. Nevertheless the piece is
always comedy; it cultivates “the laughable”; it is never mere diatribe.
* * * * *
One other kind of ancient poetry, and a delightful kind as we see it
in Greece, is the pastoral idyll of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. In
English literature the word “pastoral” at once suggests poor triviality,
the rather mawkish and always artificial eclogues of Pope or the
_Shepheard’s Calender_ of Spenser. But, though the conception of these
works was ultimately borrowed from Greek through the Latin medium of
Virgil, or the Italian medium of Sannazaro, they lack precisely those
elements which make the Greek pastoral idyll a thing of beauty and a
joy for ever. When Theocritus, about 270 B.C., wrote in Alexandria or
elsewhere his “Idylls” or (“little pictures”), he was portraying a life
among Sicilian or Coan shepherds which possessed a large proportion
of truth and naturalness. At least it is of real shepherds that he
writes, idealizing, perhaps, their Arcadian environment of sunshine and
simplicity, but nevertheless presenting a life easily conceivable among
entirely possible rustics. He imaged a rural scene, placed in it a
befitting action or situation, and called his work “a little picture.”
But when Virgil imitated him at Rome, the Corydons and Damoetases whom
he introduces are hardly shepherds of reality. Their talk tends to be
artificial and literary. Shepherds did not pipe and contend in alternate
minstrelsy on the Italian farms as Greek shepherds had done, however
rudely, in Cos or Sicily. Moreover Virgil wrote with an _arrière pensée_.
He was thinking of the society of his time, and more or less representing
that society under the guise of obviously theatrical shepherds. In
Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_ we no longer recognize any pretence at
reality. The idea of merry witty shepherds piping in sylvan scenes of
sunlit Sicily is natural enough; but the notion of the smock-frocked
rustic of rainy Britain vying in song with another smock-frocked rustic
concerning his Amaryllis or his Chloe is not a little ludicrous.
Especially is this so when we know that Colin Clout, Cuddie, Hobbinol,
and the other swains, are talking moral wisdom, and are nothing but
Spenser’s friends or contemporary celebrities with shepherds’ crooks for
poetic “properties.”
Distinguished, however, from pastoral poetry pure and simple, as seen in
Pope and Spenser, there is a more important form of creation by these
Alexandrian poets, which finds its way into English literature. It is
from Theocritus and his school that Milton’s _Lycidas_ is drawn, and it
is from _Lycidas_ that we get Shelley’s _Adonais_ and Matthew Arnold’s
_Thyrsis_. Here are two quite unimportant passages, the comparison
of which will show at once how closely a great English poet may
occasionally copy an ancient. Says Theocritus, as translated by Calverley:
The voice of Thyrsis: Etna’s Thyrsis I.
Where were ye, Nymphs, oh where, while Daphnis pined?
In fair Peneus or in Pindus’ glens?
For great Anapus’ stream was not your haunt,
Nor Etna’s cliff, nor Acis’ sacred rill.
Says Milton:
Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep
Closed o’er the head of your loved Lycidas?
For neither were ye playing on the steep,
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, lie,
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high,
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard stream.
Greek literature is also rich in verse “epigram” in the original sense
of the word. In modern times we have come to associate with the epigram
the notion of a pithy composition containing a neat and witty point, and
particularly a “sting in the tail.” This description seldom suits the
Greek type, especially in its earlier days, but is derived rather from
the custom of the epigrammatists of Rome. An “epigram” was originally
a composition to be inscribed upon a monument, votive offering, or the
like. That it should be brief was an obvious requirement, and it was
natural that it should try to excel mere commonplace. But wit and “point”
of a biting kind were alien to the first conception. A Simonides or
other early poet wrote a couplet or a quatrain which might be pathetic,
eulogistic, or even almost simply descriptive, and this was an “epigram”
if actually intended as, or proposed as fit for, an inscription. In
later times the composition of such pieces was a poetic exercise, the
occasion being imaginary, and the tendency to impart point and wit
naturally increased. Very many charming little cameo-poems of this kind,
touching upon most of the elements of human life, are to be found in
what is known as the _Greek Anthology_, some of the best being of the
Graeco-Roman age and written by Romans as well as Greeks throughout the
Greek world. Our own epigram, whatever may be its change of character,
is derived through French and Latin channels—particularly through
Martial—from the Greek invention. It is probable also that the Italian,
and thence the English, sonnet owes much to the pattern set in the Greek
epigram.
* * * * *
In the regions of prose we can hardly be so definite. In history,
oratory, philosophy, we still return again and again to the Greeks for
inspiration, but the inspiration is chiefly one of spirit, not of outward
form or special thoughts.
Herodotus, who began to flourish about 450 B.C., and who writes
concerning the Persian invasion of Greece, and, by way of preface,
tells of Lydia, Babylon, Egypt, Scythia, is still known as the “Father
of history.” His undying charm is his style, the style of a delightful
story-teller. Clear and direct as all the best Greek writing is, there
is something so fresh, so frank, so suave, about Herodotus, that,
even if he tells falsehoods knowingly—as some critics say, but as we
need not believe—we cannot grow virtuously indignant with him. He is
both uncritical and shrewd—shrewd where the knowledge of his times
guides him, uncritical where they were ignorant. His stronger-minded
contemporary Thucydides is the very pattern of an historian. His function
is to tell the history of the long protracted Peloponnesian war, and
he tells it inimitably. The graphic terseness of his account is only
equalled by his severe impartiality. If he tells you of a battle, he
describes luminously its main features, how it went, who won it, and what
the consequences were. He does not attempt to minimize or explain away
an Athenian defeat or crime because he is an Athenian. If a political
party commits an error, he tells us so, and tells us how. It is scarcely
possible to find out precisely his own political views. If he describes
the terrible plague of Athens or the terrible fall before Syracuse, he
describes it with moving pathos. But he does not overdo his part. The
pathos is in the distinct simplicity of the picture, not worked up by
labour of ambitious words. It is perhaps enough warrant of his excellence
that he grew in the admiration of Macaulay with every year of Macaulay’s
maturing judgement.
In oratory the great name of Demosthenes stands pre-eminent. Volumes of
his speeches are in our hands, political and forensic speeches equally.
The word “Philippics” has become typical for invective. That Demosthenes
is the prince of orators everybody knows. But why? We may imagine the
crude aspirant to oratory reading a speech of Demosthenes in amazement,
and asking “Where are the flashings of rhetoric? Where the dazzling
flights of imagination? Where the magnificent bursts of diction?” The
highest art is to conceal art, and Demosthenes would have been no
perfect artist if he had allowed the novice to perceive exactly wherein
his perfection lay. He is the perfect orator just because he can be
graphic, cogent, pathetic, anything he will, without all those rhetorical
tropes, purple patches, bouquets of flowery diction, which weaker men
are driven to use. His language is like a Greek statue, instinct with a
life diffused through every part, but showing no straining at effect,
accentuating nothing beyond its value as a persuasive or moving force.
His metaphors and similes are few; often his words are even homely;
but there is a directness, a “home-coming,” about his diction and
his periods, a dexterity about his arrangement, a noble fervour and
simplicity.
In philosophy the Greeks have been the teachers of the civilized world.
Two only of their great masters need be considered here. It is said that
every man is born either an Aristotelian or a Platonist. This means
that there are two chief types of mind which really think, and of those
one is akin to the mind of Plato, the other akin to that of Aristotle.
Plato is the suggestive, but inconclusive, imaginative, transcendental
philosopher. Aristotle is the matter-of-fact, logical, analytical. The
style is like the men. The style of Plato is rich with poetical colour,
that of Aristotle is hard and thin, prose of the prose. Between them
these two cover nearly all the ground of speculative thinking, and
modern thought can never emancipate itself from them. For centuries in
the Middle Ages the philosophy of Aristotle was almost a religion of
civilized Europe, and it is the fact that even now students of morals
and politics find themselves constantly returning to Aristotle. The
Stagirite, as he was called because of his birth at Stagira, lived before
the days of experimental science. Yet he virtually anticipated much of
modern scientific results. He was nearly an evolutionist. Plato, on the
other hand, has had his votaries. He, too, was a religion in Renaissance
Italy. Whether we can always follow him or not, he is a stimulating
influence, and he has left his mark in many places where one would hardly
look for it. We should perhaps scarcely light on Wordsworth’s beautiful
_Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_ as an echo of Plato. Yet all its
fancy concerning “a sleep and a forgetting,” and the previous existence
of the soul, is pure Plato. Whether Wordsworth was conscious of it or
not, his mind had been pervaded by the Platonic influence. Nor was it
much otherwise with Shelley. Of direct and appreciable bearing upon
literature since his day, is the fact that Plato is our first model
of the prose dialogue or imaginary conversation. He did not indeed
absolutely invent this form of writing, but the comparatively crude work
which preceded him is lost, and it is Plato who stands to Berkeley or
Landor as their prototype and exemplar. Centuries later Lucian followed
in his steps, though with a somewhat different purpose, combining, as he
declared, the philosophical dialogue with the spirit of Attic comedy.
Plato’s dialogues are always serious in intention, whatever humour or
lightness of touch he may display; Lucian’s are but partially serious,
the humour, which tends to satire, being the predominant element.
A work of Plato to which the world owes much in the way of imitation
is his _Ideal Commonwealth_ or _Republic_, from which are derived in
succession the hints for the _Civitas Dei_ or _City of God_ of St.
Augustine, the _Utopia_ of Sir Thomas More, the _New Atlantis_ of Bacon,
and various minor efforts in the theoretical construction of an ideal
polity.
* * * * *
Here we must cease to speak of Greek literature in classical Greece. The
subject is inexhaustible.
Yet before we come to illustrate in some detail the effect of all this
wealth of original thought and splendid style on English, we must mention
two famous writers in the later or “post-classical” period of Greek
literature. These introduced new forms of prose writing which have had
many imitators in every European country. They are Lucian and Plutarch.
Lucian wrote in Syria and in Athens during the later part of the second
century of our era. He composed what we should call “articles,” in the
form of dialogue and essays, nearly all of them of a satirically humorous
character, but nearly all possessed of sound common sense and practical
purpose. Lucian is the precursor of Swift, Voltaire, and Heine. Of Swift
he is the predecessor in more ways than one. Lucian supplies us with
the first instance of ironical fiction. His _True History_ is composed
in the same ironical vein, and with precisely the same assumption of
seriousness, as Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels_. It is to Lucian that Swift
owes the hint for such a work, and, after all, the hint was in this case
a great part of the genius. The width of Lucian’s range may be recognized
from the fact that both Swift and Sterne have been called the “English
Lucian.”
If Herodotus is the “Father of History,” Plutarch (first century A.D.)
is the father of biography. Strictly speaking neither is the originator
of the form of literature in question; nevertheless each is to be judged
rather by the influence of his example than by absolute invention of a
literary species. Besides the biographies there exists much other work of
Plutarch in the nature of moral essays and “articles” on historical or
antiquarian subjects, and this work was liberally drawn upon by essayists
after the Revival of Learning, in particular by Montaigne and Bacon.
Nevertheless his chief contribution to the development of literature was
in his “Parallel Lives,” a series of biographies and character-studies,
in which a distinguished Greek and a distinguished Roman were studied in
comparison, pair by pair. To Shakespeare the Lives were known through
North’s translation, and, in _Coriolanus_ and the other Roman plays, they
supplied not only his conception of antiquity and ancient character, but
also the great bulk of the matter which he dramatized. The genesis of
modern sketches of the kind represented in Macaulay’s _Chatham_, _Lord
Clive_, or _Warren Hastings_, can be distinctly traced to similar short
studies in the Greek of Plutarch.
* * * * *
A very prolific department of literature, and one which has served as a
rich source of inspiration, imitation, and allusion in all subsequent
times, was that of the fable. In this domain the name of “Aesop” is
supreme. Whether there was ever an historical person bearing precisely
this name has been questioned. The tradition which places him in Rhodes
as a slave in the middle of the sixth century B.C. cannot be implicitly
trusted; but it is difficult to understand how the special name of
“Aesopus” can have come to attach itself to a series of beast-stories,
unless some individual who bore it, or of whom it was a sobriquet, had
been distinguished for his invention, or at least for his promulgation,
of such satirical narratives. It is indeed almost certain that a large
number of “fables of Aesop” originally came from India and the East; yet
it is in Greece that Europe first makes acquaintance with those fables
which are still the best known, and which most constantly appear in the
existing collections or selections. All educated or even sophisticated
Greeks were supposed to know “Aesop.” At a later time (in the third
century A.D.) the Graeco-Roman Babrius versified such fables as were
known to him, and he again was copied into Latin verse by Avianus.
The Indian fables of Pilpay were not circulated in Europe till five
centuries later than Babrius, nor did they ever gain such wide currency.
It was primarily along the Greek channel that there was derived, if
not all the matter, at least the inspiration, for the fables in French
by La Fontaine, and the English fables by Gay, together with all the
collections which have been printed, or which were current before the
days of printing, and which have become part of the _répertoire_ of
childhood and a fund of reference for proverbs and for all classes of
writers.
* * * * *
Of other kinds of writing which appear already in ancient Greece may be
briefly mentioned:
(1) Character-sketches, first produced by Theophrastus (about 320 B.C.),
and imitated by La Bruyère (_Characters_) in France, and in England in
such works as Hall’s _Characterismes of Virtues and Vices_, Overbury’s
_Characters or Witty Descriptions of the Properties of Sundry Persons_,
and best in Earle’s _Microcosmography_.
(2) Essays in rhetoric, literary criticism, and _belles lettres_, such as
the _Rhetoric_ and _Poetics_ of Aristotle, the latter of which exerted
so profound an effect upon the verse, and particularly the dramatic
verse, of the French, and thence upon that of the English so-called
“classical” school; the essays of Dionysius of Halicarnassus (25 B.C.)
upon the style of the Attic orators; and the treatise _On Sublimity_
by Longinus, a writer who cannot be identified, but who wrote in the
flourishing times of the Roman imperial epoch; (3) the works in grammar
and dictionary-making, which range from the textual criticism and comment
of great Alexandrians, like Aristophanes of Byzantium (200 B.C.), to
the school grammar of Dionysius Thrax and the lexicons of the early
centuries A.D.; (4) geographies and descriptive guidebooks, the former
particularly represented by Strabo, about the beginning of the Christian
era, and the latter by Pausanias (in the second century A.D.); (5)
Miscellanies, antiquarian or literary, such as the famous _Pundits at
the Dinner-Table_ of Athenaeus (end of second century A.D.); (6) letters
(_i.e._, fictitious epistles), such as those of Alciphron (second century
A.D.); (7) _romances_, of which the extant examples are mostly much later
than the classical period, those of Longus and Heliodorus dating from
the latter part of the fourth century A.D.
* * * * *
We have now cursorily surveyed the course of Greek literary history.
We have shown that it comprised all the forms of literature now known
to us; that in this respect at least we can claim no originality. We
have incidentally alluded to some of our debts, though that part of the
subject remains to be dealt with more fully. The question which now
arises is—what is there distinctive about this Greek literature as a
whole, to make it possess such a precious and perpetual salt and savour?
We may reply that, to begin with, the Greek writers were
characteristically possessed of one prime literary virtue—lucidity,
whether in their picturing of scenes or in their expression of a thought.
And they expressed clearly because they saw clearly. Besides being lucid,
they were restrained. For the most part they went directly to their
point, and did not suffer themselves to be drawn away from the point by
irrelevant attractions. They knew, as Lowell puts it, how much writing
to leave in the ink-pot. There is so much “not to say.” They shrank
from overdoing. Floweriness, extravagance, bombast, irrelevance, these
were an abomination to classical Greek taste. The Greeks proper did not
fail to recognize fustian when they saw it. They were a critical, and a
self-critical, people. What we see in the purity of their sculpture and
architecture, we may see in their literature. A word or phrase must have
a rational and artistic purpose, or it must not be there.
Again, they were eminently sane men, those Greeks. They looked out on the
world with eyes like those of their Goddess of Wisdom, the imperturbable
eyes of unabashed intelligence. What they saw they saw frankly: they knew
facts from fancies, and recognized facts when they met them. They were
mentally a healthy people, not constitutionally given to moodiness and
mysticisms and impossible aspirations. They took meanwhile a wholesome
delight in living, and in the boons of physical life.
This whole way of looking at things has received a name of its own. It
is styled “Hellenism.” The Greeks called their country “Hellas,” and
themselves “Hellenes.” Hence this name, which means so much. Hellenic
thought means direct and fresh, if not always profound, thought; Hellenic
art means art of consummate simplicity, art of clear principle. Hellenic
style means in literature a perfect directness and lucidity, with just so
much of the figurative as will flash light upon the sense.
This is what is meant by “Classical” Hellenism. True, no scholar would
dare to say that even in the classical age every Greek who has left us a
book or a fragment was always as perfect as Greek principles and ideals
were perfect. Homer sometimes nods. We may find palpable blemishes not
a few. But we must judge a national literature as a whole; and when, as
with the Greek, a literature can show so large a proportion which is
flawless, when it is so obviously informed with one and the same artistic
spirit, so manifestly controlled by the same canons of taste, then we may
use our general terms with more confidence than we can usually feel in
generalizing of whole peoples and their histories.
In later times, when Greece was no longer free, when cultured Greeks
had been scattered into Asia Minor, Syria, and to Alexandria, when
literature became mere reading, then Greek art and letters lost their
prime virtue. Oratory declined, as poetry had done. Greek writing became
more oriental, more “Asian” in its artificiality. In classical Greek the
ornamentation was not compassed for its own sake. It grew spontaneously
out of the subject and helped the subject. But when Greek literature
became “unclassical,” when it became artificial, mere imitation and
make-believe, when it was not the outcome of a national spirit, but
was forced in the hotbeds of literary coteries and court-favour,
then ornamentation was first and foremost; poems and speeches were
composed in order to bring in fine things. Rhetoric grew bombastic and
poetry finical; or, as it is commonly expressed, literature became
“Asiatic” instead of “Attic.” This literature in general is sometimes
called “Hellenistic,” rather than “Hellenic”; but that term should be
appropriated to other purposes. Its headquarters being at Alexandria, the
title “Alexandrian” has come to be virtually a term of disparagement in
literature.
* * * * *
When therefore we speak of the influence of Greek literature on English,
we include not merely a fund of classical history and of mythology, not
merely a long list of Greek words and Greek allusions, not even merely
an inheritance of all the great forms of poetry and prose writing, but
also that way of looking at things and that style of putting things which
we call Hellenic. We mean not only so many similes, metaphors and figures
of speech, but a whole scope of thinking and style.
We might, indeed, in some rough way, gauge the influence of Greece by
the mere titles of English books or compositions bearing such Greek
names as _Utopia_, _Arcadia_, _Comus_, _Pindaric Odes_, _Endymion_,
_Hellas_, _Prometheus Unbound_, _Hellenics_, _Life and Death of Jason_,
_The Lotus-Eaters_. We might gauge it in some measure by the allusions
scattered up and down from Chaucer to Tennyson, allusions to Homer and
his Agamemnon, Achilles and Hector, his Circe and all the beings of his
mythology, to Greek history, to Plato and Aristotle. We might gauge
it in a measure by terms like Parnassus, Clio, Helicon, Academe, and
similar references to the literary haunts and divinities of Greece. We
might further take the Greek words which now form part of our English
vocabulary.
But the subject requires more methodical treatment, and perhaps some
little retrospect. Meanwhile we may well assert with Shelley:
But Greece and her foundations are
Built below the tide of war,
Based on the crystalline sea
Of thought and its eternity;
Her citizens, imperial spirits,
Rule the present from the past,
On all this world of men inherits
Their seal is set.
As the same poet says in his preface to _Hellas_, “We are all Greeks.”
* * * * *
It now remains to examine at what times, in what ways, and to what
extent, our own English literature has been influenced by models so rich
and virile. The points of contact have been numerous; the influence which
has been felt has not always been felt in the same respects. At one time
we merely borrowed some of the matter of Greek writing, some of its
stories of mythology and history, some of its figures and similes, some
fragments of its philosophy. At another time we have copied some of its
forms of production, such as the epic form of Homer, the Pindaric Ode,
the idyll of Theocritus. At another time we have borrowed its literary
criticism, and either garbled and misapplied it, like Pope, or rightly
assimilated it, like Matthew Arnold. It is possible also to adopt its
matter, its form, its Hellenic principles of criticism, all together; and
that is what so many of the best writers of to-day are, consciously or
unconsciously, labouring to do.
We have, in fact, grown more and more dependent on Greece with every
generation of our literature since the days of Chaucer. This may appear
a paradox, but it is no more than the truth. Antecedently one might
suppose that, with the progress of what is called civilization, and
with the expansion of knowledge, the literature of the ancient Greeks
must now have been left far behind, as a thing of remarkable interest,
no doubt, but a thing which has performed its practical function, a
nourishment which has been sucked dry. Yet the very contrary is the
case. In verse Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Browning, Swinburne, William
Morris, in prose Newman, Froude, Ruskin, whatever may be their points
of difference, or even of contrast, nevertheless agree in this, that
they have all saturated themselves with Greek and the things of Greece,
with its ideas, phrases, and stories, till their work is in greater or
less measure dominated by what they have thence derived. A Greek scholar
realizes this obvious fact at once, and with gladness. A reader to whom
Greek literature has been a sealed book little thinks how many of the
felicitous expressions which especially captivate him in his poets of the
present age are conscious or unconscious echoes, paraphrases, or mere
translations, of things written more than a score of centuries ago in
pagan Athens or the Isles of Greece.
* * * * *
Let us take a brief preliminary survey.
* * * * *
To Chaucer there filtered through from Greece, by way of writers in Latin
or Italian, crude notions of Greek mythology or Homeric stories. Of the
style and form and historical perspective of Greek literature he had no
manner of conception. To him Agamemnon and Ulysses were knights with
squires; Troy was besieged as Paris might be. His debt to Greece amounts
to little more than a jumble of fables at second hand.
By Spenser’s day our English writers are beginning to realize how rich a
store lies to their hand in the books of that Greek which men of Western
Europe have once more begun to study. They learn some little of the
tongue, and they borrow unsparingly its stories and its similes. But of
the lesson of its style, its restrained art, they have still learned
almost nothing. They are caring for little beyond the solids which it
affords. The _Faerie Queene_ is crammed with classical allusion, and
with similitudes traceable to Homer and other Greeks; but hardly a
vestige appears as yet of the Greek literary spirit of clear simplicity,
self-restraint, severity of taste. The extravagance and tastelessness
which so often tire and irritate the reader of the _Faerie Queene_ are
altogether alien from Hellenic art.
Pass onward for some generations, till we come to the days of Pope and
Addison. The study of Greek is more careful and more widely spread, its
history and mythology have dropped into truer perspective and proportion.
Greek life, Greek thought, are somewhat better comprehended, though still
far from well. Much that the Greeks have written has now become general
property. Better still, criticism is alert. The principles of the Greeks
have passed, in a garbled form, it is true, through Rome to France,
from France to England. The English have awakened to the fact that what
deserves to be said at all deserves to be said concisely and precisely.
So far, so good. Perhaps we do not profoundly admire the spirit of the
literature of the age of Pope and Addison. But we must perforce admire
its great advance in polish of expression. As literature, it may fail
from want of ideas, from thinness of its substance. In that respect it
departs as far from the Greek ideal as it approaches near the Greek
ideal in skill of execution. The aim of Greek literature is to express
thought or feeling perfectly. But there must be a real thought or a real
feeling to express. And this spontaneousness or compelling sincerity the
school of Pope and Addison did not, in the main, possess. Yet it did
invaluable work. It furnished a later generation, which had ideas and was
not ashamed of feelings, with an improved conception of expression. The
“Classical” school these writers have been called, but classical they
distinctly are not, for to be classical is to express matter of sterling
worth in a style for ever fresh. To utter brilliantly a nothing, an
artificiality, or a commonplace, is not classical.
The Queen Anne and early Georgian school, then, so far as Greek
literature is concerned, owe to it sundry healthy principles of style,
not yet properly assimilated; they owe many allusions, better ordered
and digested than in Spenser or Chaucer; but of its higher thoughts and
deeper imaginings they exhibit little influence.
Let that century expire, and come to the generation of Wordsworth,
Shelley, Keats, and Byron. In them we meet with rich ideas in plenty, and
with abundance of exquisite expression. Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron
had studied Greek; Shelley read it all his life. Keats, who knew no Greek
at first hand, but who had innate in him that part of the Greek spirit
which, as he puts it, “loves the principle of beauty in all things,”
had steeped himself in Greek legend; he revelled in Greek mythology; he
assimilated the Greek view of nature and at least the passion of Greek
life. All the literature of this period is shot through and through
with the colour of Greek myths, Greek philosophy in its widest sense,
Greek ideas. It shows an advance upon the age of Pope; for now once
more the matter is made of the first account, although the manner is
duly cultivated to form its fitting embodiment. Expression is fashioned
to great beauty in Shelley, Coleridge, Keats, and often in Wordsworth.
But the matter is of the first moment. A great advance is this upon the
perfectly uttered proprieties of Pope. Yet still the age of Shelley was
less Greek than the following “Victorian” age. The magnificent outbursts
of the “spontaneous” and “romantic” schools of the beginning of last
century too often ended in extravagance of fancy and riot of imagination.
The transcendental rhapsodizings of Shelley and the sensuous revellings
of Keats lack the sanity and self-repression which we associate with
the name of Hellas. But the aim of the last age has been to secure the
perfect union of sane, clear, yet unhackneyed thought with sane, clear,
yet unhackneyed phrase. This was the aim of Tennyson, as of Matthew
Arnold. Even Browning aims at this ideal in his most perfect moments.
Now, if what has been said of the ages of Chaucer, Spenser, Pope,
Shelley, and Tennyson respectively is true, it is anything but a paradox
to assert that, generation after generation since Chaucer’s day, we have
been passing more and more under the domination of Greek thoughts and
Greek literary principles, and that we are groping forward to a literary
ideal which turns out to have been the ideal of ancient Greece.
* * * * *
The full influence of Greece, then, was not felt all at once, nor in the
same way and in the same respects.
Early English literature never came into direct contact with Greek
books. Our old writers knew no Greek, for it is only since what is known
as the “Revival of Learning” that the borrowing, whether of thought or
style, has been at first hand. Nevertheless the debt was there, though
the fathers of our literature were not conscious of it. Even King Alfred
drew from Greek sources, though he knew no more of Greek than of baking
cakes. When there was not a man from one end of England to the other who
could properly read a Greek book, the men of England were nevertheless
deriving, in a mutilated form no doubt, but still deriving, philosophy
and ideas from that ancient Greece which to them was shrouded in the
darkness of distance and of a tongue unknown. We may endeavour to see how
this came to pass.
In the first place, if our earliest writers could not read Greek, they
could read Latin. If they could not read Homer, they could read Virgil;
if not Sappho and Pindar, they could read Horace. The Latin literature
was with them, in a considerable measure. It is true that in the Dark
Ages many of the best works of Latin literature lay concealed, and
that others were deliberately neglected. The taste of readers in those
ages ran rather in favour of the later and inferior Latin authors.
Nevertheless, Latin literature of considerable extent they did study and
assimilate; and what was this Latin literature, speaking generally, but
an avowed imitation or copy of Greek models? The Roman Virgil copies
the Greek Homer, Hesiod, and Theocritus. The Roman Horace copies
Sappho, Pindar, Archilochus, Anacreon. The Roman Plautus and Terence
are practically plagiaries of the Greek Menander and his like. Latin
literature is, in a very large degree, Greek literature borrowed, adapted
to inferior taste, played upon like studies with variations.
When Rome became the mistress of the world, it aspired to greater glory
than mere conquest can ever impart, to the glory of culture and the arts.
It found these perfected in Greece, and it became the pupil and imitator
of that country, just as England has at various times become the pupil of
Italy or France. It would hardly be too much to say of Latin literature,
as of Roman art, that most of what is vital and perennial in it comes
from Greece, while its faults and shortcomings are chiefly its own. Those
who possess Latin literature possess a body of Greek thought and Greek
material, but lacking the sure Greek taste and the soul of spontaneity.
Our English writers down to Chaucer were in this position. Even their
Latin reading was unsatisfactory enough, but, so far as they practised
it, they were drinking of Greek waters rendered turbid by Roman handling
and adulteration.
King Alfred knew Latin enough to translate Boethius. The monks and
scholars, who, till Chaucer’s time, were the only writers, kept alive the
reading of Latin literature. But, so far as the Greek was concerned at
first hand, there was but one poorly equipped scholar here and another
there in all the West of Europe. So little was it known that, even in
Wyclif’s day, it was necessary for that reformer in translating the New
Testament to render from the Latin Vulgate, the Greek original being
veritably “all Greek” to him. Chaucer, again, writes indeed of Greeks
at Thebes and Troy, and refers to Aristotle and Greek authors; but his
acquaintance with these is all at second hand, through Roman poets like
Ovid and Statius, or even at third or fourth hand, through the literature
of Frenchmen or Italians, who themselves derived from writers in Latin
and not from the Greek originals.
This, then, is the first period and manner of Greek influence, an
influence indirect and roundabout, exerted through the medium of Latin
literature, in which the style and spirit of Greece had already been
corrupted or destroyed.
* * * * *
The second manner of influence was still more roundabout. It came through
the Saracens and Moors. When the Saracen power had reached its zenith and
one caliph sat in state at Bagdad and another at Cordova, the Saracens
felt what the Romans had felt, that, after all, it is culture and arts
which give a nation nobility. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries in
particular the Saracen kingdom in Spain flourished mightily in culture
and learning. Early in the ninth century a caliph of Bagdad showed
himself one of the most devoted fosterers of literature that the world
has ever known. His Court was thronged with men of letters and learning;
he lavished honours on them; he collected books from every source, and
especially from Greece. When he dictated terms of peace to the Greek
Emperor Michael he demanded as tribute a collection of Greek authors.
Works of the Greeks on rhetoric and philosophy were particularly prized,
translated, and commented on. But the learning of Bagdad meant also the
learning of the Moors in Spain. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries the
science of the Moors was sought by many western students who were not
Moslems; and thus from Bagdad, round by way of Spain, there percolated
to Italy, France, and England some knowledge of what classical Greece
had thought and written. In particular, Averrhoes, a Saracen, translated
Aristotle into Arabic; from the Arabic a Latin version was made. This
version passed into general use, and the Aristotelean philosophy, which
dominated, not to say tyrannized, over Europe for centuries, owes its
access to Western Europe to the followers of Mohammed.
Thus far, until the Renaissance dawned in Italy, we find in Western
Europe no acquaintance with Greek literature at first hand, but only
so much knowledge of its contents as could be gathered from the Latin
writers, who had recast it or plagiarized it, or from the Saracen
writers, who had translated it in parts.
* * * * *
At last, however, the influence was to become direct. And first on Italy.
As the Turks entered Europe, and gradually overran the empire of Greece,
Greeks of learning made their way westward to Venice, Ravenna, Padua,
Florence, Rome. After the year 1300, or thereabouts, during the great
age of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, we find writers of Italy beginning
to acquire some knowledge of Greek, and some insight into the rich
literary stores which that language contained. Boccaccio learned the
language from a native Greek; Petrarch took lessons from the same. One
Italian here, and another there, essayed translations and imitations of
Greek authors. In 1453 Constantinople, the capital of the Greek empire,
fell into the hands of the Turks, and Greece no longer existed. As a
result, crowds of cultured Greeks streamed into Italy with books and
manuscripts, prepared to teach for love or money, or from mere ardour
and pride of patriotism. The Court of Cosmo de’ Medici at Florence was
readily opened to them, and all Italy was agog to learn whatever they
could bring. The libraries of Rome and Florence were enriched with Greek
manuscripts; and when, soon after, the printing press of Aldus at Venice
was established, Homer or Aeschylus passed in the original into many
hands, while translations of them came into many more. Greek teachers
like Chalcondylas, Argyropoulos, and Lascaris have left their names to
fame in Rome and Padua and Florence. The Revival of Learning had filled
all Italy, and “learning” meant little but the literature of Greece; it
became regular, almost inevitable, that the Italian man of letters should
know Greek, and should steep himself in the writings of the Grecians.
From Italy the study spread to France and England. Grocyn and Linacre at
Oxford, Erasmus and Cheke at Cambridge, worked zealously to establish it
against that opposition which always attends the disturbance of sluggish
methods and musty privilege. The study was opposed by the “Trojans,” and
it was perhaps natural that these should cry out, in an ancient phrase,
“Beware of the Greeks, lest they make you a heretic”; for already it was
recognized that the revival of Greek learning meant the stimulation of
all clear, and therefore progressive, intellectual activities.
By about the year 1550—that is to say, just in time for Spenser,
Shakespeare, Bacon, and their kindred—it had become usual for the
Universities and the better schools in England to teach the elements
of Greek; and there were not wanting ardent students, in those
pre-examination days, to prosecute the study for themselves, and to find
more than ample reward in the rich intellectual resources which lay
revealed before them.
We have now reached the Elizabethan age of English literature. It is
in this age that there came such an outburst of splendid creation in
every form as the world has seen but once or twice. Sidney, Spenser,
Shakespeare, Marlowe, Bacon, Hooker, Raleigh—drama, novel, lyrics,
narrative poetry, essay-writing, philosophy, history—all these made new
and magnificent efforts. And why? Not merely because at this epoch was
born a genius like Shakespeare’s, or a lofty intellect like Bacon’s. The
genius must have his opportunity; the intellect must have its materials.
It was because the world was electrified with a current of new thoughts
and new ideas, pervading and furnishing every mind. The “revival of
learning” was something more than that name alone implies. It was also
a renaissance, a “new birth,” both of intellect and art. The spirit
of Greece had breathed life into the dry bones of the valley of the
West-European mind.
The writers of the Elizabethan age flung themselves about in the gardens
and orchards of Greek literature with all the impatient appetite and
reckless gaiety of schoolboys on holiday. They tore at the plots of Greek
epics, plays, and histories; they plucked the similes and metaphors of
Greece to “stick them in their hats,” so to speak; so great was their joy
in the strange fresh atmosphere of this luxuriant newly-opened paradise.
Their scholarly knowledge of Greek as a language was too slight, their
perspective of Greek life and thought too distorted, for them to catch
the artistic style and spirit while they were catching the matter and
the substance. Amazingly rich as Spenser is in imagery and melody,
exhaustless as Shakespeare is in ideas, boundless as he is in capacity
of seeing and feeling, no one will call either Spenser or Shakespeare
a flawless artist, or say that either is free from extravagance or
unevenness. In short, no one will concede to them the Greek spirit,
which tempers imagination with self-restraint and unfailing sanity. The
wide free range of mind they have; the tactful sense of proportion and
seasonableness they too often lack. The influence of Greece, beneficent
and large as it is, remains yet incomplete.
We must not, however, overstate the case. No one doubts that all this
stupendous outburst obtained its chief stimulus and food from Greece.
Nevertheless, when speaking of these Elizabethan times and of the new
Greek studies which were being fostered by the Universities and the
highest schools, let us not picture to ourselves every considerable
writer of that time assiduously studying Greek books in their originals.
That was far from the case. Their scholarship in that way was mostly but
shallow. Shakespeare, we know, learned “little Latin and less Greek.” We
need not claim that, after his college days, Spenser went directly to his
Greek Homer, any more than that Shakespeare went directly to his Greek
Plutarch. What should be understood is that the matter, though not the
manner, of Greek books was now fairly abundant in those writers’ hands.
The Elizabethan age was the age of translations, not always accurate
translations, but generally translations of spirit. Chapman’s Homer and
North’s Plutarch are household words. And, where there existed no English
translation of a Greek book, there was almost certainly one in French
or in Italian. Homer, for instance, translated by Filelfo, had come
within English ken even before England had begun its own direct studies
in Greek. Now, though a translation can do much, there is one thing it
cannot do. It cannot convey the lesson of perfect art in style, least
of all can it do this when the translator allows himself liberties. And
therefore the Elizabethan writers have not yet gathered from the Hellenic
mind its sober aesthetic principles.
Historically considered, the ancient Greeks too often become transformed,
in the respective free translations, into contemporary Italians, or
Englishmen, or Frenchmen. They present themselves to the mind in an
alien dress, physically and mentally. They are, in fact, anachronisms.
Agamemnon and Ulysses, instead of appearing as simple Achaean chiefs,
become transformed into knights in armour, gallants with rapiers, kings
in purple robes and crowns. They quote philosophy, or speak of sciences
and instruments they never knew.
In brief, in the Elizabethan age we have reached this—that the knowledge
of Greek literature is no longer dependent on the Latin copies and
plagiarisms of it, or on such driblets of philosophy as trickle through
from the Saracens of Spain. It is derived, sometimes at first hand, but
mostly from translations directly made in English, French, or Italian,
from the Greek originals. Nor is this all. For among Englishmen who are
training themselves to be the writers of the next generation there are
growing up many to whom Greek itself, in all its nervous plasticity, is
becoming a familiar tongue, and who will use no modern versions at the
risk of distorting their taste and judgement. With this new generation
will come the critical chastening of style which has hitherto been
lacking.
Those who have never studied language as the classical languages are
studied can scarcely hope to understand how vast is the difference
between two educational results; on the one hand, of a painstaking study
of that indescribable harmony of thought and word which constitutes
style, and, on the other, of that superficial perusal of translations
which supplies but coarse notions of the substance, notions as different
from those of the scholar as the commercial plaster cast is different
from the marble originals of Attic sculpture. Since the Shakespearean
time our writers have become more and more scholars in Greek—witness
Milton, Gray, Cowper, Shelley, among the poets—till, in our own days, it
is difficult to meet with an author eminent either in prose or poetry who
has not received a liberal training in the Greek language itself, and
thence acquired a care of expression such as Greek models cannot fail to
impress.
* * * * *
It may now be well to take for illustration one or two of the departments
of literature—not necessarily of the first consequence—in which our debt
to Greek is on the surface.
A striking form of Greek composition was the Pindaric Ode. Our English
poets from Cowley to Swinburne have shown a marked fondness for this
form. Cowley, Congreve, and Gray deliberately affect even the title
_Pindaric Ode_, acknowledging the source of their inspiration and avowing
the imitativeness of their work. The poet Mason speaks of “a Pindar’s
rapture in the lyre of Gray.” Cowley, as has been mentioned already,
is called on his tombstone the “English Pindar.” Pope’s _Ode on St.
Cecilia’s Day_ is meant to be, even if it does not succeed in being,
Pindaric in both shape and spirit. It is full, too, of allusion to things
Greek, to the ship Argo, to the underworld, with Phlegethon and Sisyphus
and Ixion, to the yellow meads of asphodel, to Orpheus and Eurydice.
Dryden’s _Song for St. Cecilia’s Day_ and his _Alexander’s Feast_ are
imitations of Pindar and Simonides. Gray’s _Progress of Poesy_ is of
the same stamp. When he circulated the poem in manuscript, he called it
an “Ode in the Greek manner.” His _Bard_ belongs to the same category.
Meanwhile the words which open the _Progress of Poesy_
Awake, Aeolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings
profess a debt to Aeolis, the country of the lyric Sappho and Alcaeus.
We must add Collins and Shelley to the list of those over whom Pindar
has exercised his charm. Shelley’s _Ode to Liberty_, with its panegyric
stanzas on Athens, is at least as Pindaric as the avowed Pindarics of
Gray or Cowley.
We have already referred to that rather artificial and not very important
form of composition called the “pastoral,” whether it be the “pastoral
idyll” or the “pastoral elegy”—an idealizing picture of the shepherd’s
life, or an idealistic “shepherd’s lament.” We may here briefly revert to
the subject.
Of this class we have in English literature such works as the
_Shepheard’s Calender_ of Spenser, a manifest and avowed imitation of
Virgil through the Italians. As, however, Virgil is but the pupil of
Theocritus in this kind, it is to the Greek Theocritus that we are in
the end brought back. Spenser’s imitation is, indeed, anything but
good. He mixes up “Fair Elisa, queen of shepherds all” with talk of
Parnassus, Helicon, Pan, Cynthia and the nymphs (whom he calls “ladies
of the lake”). Colin Clout, Cuddie, and Hobbinol are found side by side
with Tityrus and invocations to Calliope. Moreover he justly incurs the
reproach of Sir Philip Sidney by his affectation of an archaic language
for his shepherds, a language which never was on land or sea. Says
Sidney, “that same framing of his style to an old rusticke language I
dare not allow; since neither Theocritus in Greek, Virgil in Latin,
nor Sannazaro in Italian, did affect it.” We have also the youthful
_Pastorals_ of Pope, in which the poet begins by announcing his studied
imitation:
Fair Thames, flow gently from thy sacred spring,
While on thy banks Sicilian Muses sing;
that is to say, the Muses of Theocritus of Sicily. He even appends notes
to show what lines he has especially copied. We meet always the familiar
Greek characters, Daphnis, Strephon, Alexis, Lycidas, and Thyrsis. Like
the pastorals of Spenser, they are purely and confessedly artificial;
they are anachronisms, carelessly mixing modern and antique ideas and
associations. When Theocritus wrote pastorals in ancient and sunny
Sicily he wrote, as we have remarked, of what lay within the range of
conceivable possibility. Pope relegates the pastoral to a fictitious
golden age in a purely fictitious golden land.
No one nowadays is likely to set any high value upon such eclogues as
Pope’s _Pastorals_. Even Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_ is rather
talked of than read. Sidney’s _Arcadia_ has had its day. But it is
otherwise with a nobler species of composition which arose out of
pastorals, to wit, the pastoral elegy. Theocritus and his disciples,
Bion and Moschus, all compose poetic laments for a lost shepherd, either
an imaginary Daphnis or a real friend lately dead. To this original
conception we owe certain English poems which we could not spare. They
include the _Lycidas_ of Milton, on the death of his friend King, the
_Adonais_ of Shelley, on the death of Keats, the _Thyrsis_ of Matthew
Arnold, on the death of Clough. The _Daphnaida_ of Spenser was apparently
the first of such elegiac pastorals. Another is his _Astrophel_, “on the
death of the most noble and valorous knight, Sir Philip Sidney.” Dryden,
too, did not disdain to write a pastoral elegy on the death of a supposed
Amyntas, in which he sings his dirge in the good old style of the
Sicilians. A more refined, more distant and subtle development from the
same original is Tennyson’s _In Memoriam_. Finally we may take leave of
this rural style with brief mention of the fact that Tennyson’s _Œnone_
is in essence a pastoral idyll, inspired by the second of Theocritus.
We may also turn again to literary criticism. It is a significant thing
that, no sooner had Sir John Cheke studied Greek and become its first
regular professor at Cambridge, than he forthwith published maxims on the
avoidance of bombast and pedantry in style. He had been to the fountain
heads of criticism, to the Greek of Aristotle and Longinus. From that
day down to the days of Matthew Arnold, in “essays in criticism” Greek
principles have everywhere been theoretically worshipped, however much
they may have been violated in practice. Following on the revival of
Greek learning came a rage to discuss the _rationale_ of the poetic
art, as well as to exemplify its various forms. In the Elizabethan
age Puttenham wrote on the _Art of English Poesie_; Sidney composed
a _Defence of Poesie_. Later on Dryden put forth a prose treatise Of
_Dramatic Poesie_, and the Earl of Roscommon an _Essay on Translated
Verse_. Dryden expressly declares that true criticism began with the
Greeks in the _Poetics_ of Aristotle. He says:
Such once were critics; such the happy few
Athens and Rome in better ages knew.
The mighty Stagirite first left the shore,
Spread all his sails, and durst the deep explore;
He steered securely, and discovered far,
Led by the light of the Maeonian star.
Pope followed with an _Essay on Criticism_, Shelley contributed a
critical _Defence of Poetry_; and since that date books, essays, articles
have showered upon us, in one and all of which we are assured with
increasing urgency that the true principles of literary art are the
principles of Athens, the principles of Greek literature at its best.
* * * * *
We may now leave types of literary creation and deal with individual
authors. It would require a whole book for each of the greater names,
if we sought to discover how much of matter or form each owes directly
or indirectly to Greece. Mr. Churton Collins has written one such book
on Tennyson. Here our survey must be but very superficial, as befits an
introduction to the study.
Of Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_, _Daphnaida_, and _Astrophel_
something has been said. It remains to observe that his _Faerie Queene_
is but one mass of scenes, events, and images borrowed from sources in
Italy and Greece, and that the hint for the whole design was suggested by
his studies in Aristotle; for he says, “I labour to pourtraict in Arthur
the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve moral vertues,
as Aristotle hath devised.” Of the Greek manner, its proportion and
moderation, Spenser has unhappily learned little or nothing.
Shakespeare was, in one sense, no Grecian. Sundry of his Roman plots,
_Coriolanus_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_ for example, he takes from
North’s translation of the Greek Plutarch; a certain amount of Greek
mythology and history reveals itself incidentally; but he owes less to
Greece and more to his own genius acting upon desultory reading, than
other writers of the time or since. Dryden, indeed, in his adaptation of
_Troilus and Cressida_ makes him say:
Untaught, unpractised, in a barbarous age,
I found not, but created first, the stage;
And if I drained no Greek or Latin store,
’Twas that my own abundance gave me more.
But this is hardly the truth. One immensely important thing Shakespeare
did owe to Greece, through scholars who were his own immediate
predecessors, and that was the general shape and form of the poetic drama.
Milton was an accomplished Greek scholar. It has been already pointed
out that his great epic is descended from Homer, and his _Lycidas_ from
Theocritus. His _Samson Agonistes_ was deliberately built—though not with
complete success—upon the traditional frame-work of Greek tragedies, and
Milton himself leaves it to be judged by those who are “not unacquainted
with Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.” His _Ode on the Morning of
the Nativity_ is intended to be Pindaric. But the most palpable advance
made by Milton on his predecessor Spenser is in the chastening of his
style. The principles of that style Milton derived at first hand from
his Hellenic models. He has learned how to use ancient material, how to
adapt ancient thoughts, ancient expressions, how to sink them and imbed
them in his own, not merely how to overlay or fancifully decorate his
own with them. The texture of Milton’s verse is shot through and through
with colours borrowed from the Greek; it would often be quite possible
to resolve a series of his lines into components which are imitations
and quotations. But he has made them all so much a part of himself
that we may often pass by his loans, as we never can those of Spenser,
unconsciously.
Dryden owns himself an obedient follower of the Greeks. His ode _To the
Memory of Mrs. Anne Killigrew_, like his _St. Cecilia’s Day_ and his
_Alexander’s Feast_, is Pindaric. His admiration for Pindar was indeed
peculiarly ardent. He speaks of him as “the inimitable Pindar, who
stretches on pinions out of sight, and is carried upward, as it were,
into another world.” Of his literary criticism we have spoken; there was
a time when he conceived the idea of translating Homer, and he did in
fact attempt versions of various writings of Greek poets.
Pope was but an indifferent Greek scholar at first hand; he did indeed
freely translate and recast Homer’s _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ by the help
of his little Greek and a translation in French, but he never entered
into the spirit of Greek life or penetrated to the precise secret of
Greek style. Nevertheless, he makes great pretensions to follow in the
footsteps of the Greek masters. One thing he did catch—the vigour and
fire of Homer; and Pope’s _Iliad_ is still the English Homer commonly
read in these days, although Chapman had preceded him, and Cowper, Derby,
and Morris have made their more or less faithful renderings since. And
yet the book is far too much Pope to be Homer. Of the _Pastorals_ and
the _Essay on Criticism_ all has been said above that need be said for
our purpose. We have only to add that his burlesque heroics, the _Rape
of the Lock_ and the _Dunciad_, had their prototype in the heroi-comical
poems of Greece, the _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_ and the _Margites_,
compositions which were once ascribed to Homer, and which Pope professed
to have in mind.
Gray was a scholar of rare attainments in both the language and
the literature of Greece. Hence, in no inconsiderable measure, his
self-critical spirit. His aim, as stated by himself, is at “extreme
conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous and musical.” As a poet
he suffered from constitutional shortcomings. He is without profound
imaginings or ecstatic sensibilities; but his beauties are no less
undeniable, although of the sort which are mainly acquired from training.
No one can fail to admire the perfect technique of his stanzas. It is
doubtful, however, whether any but a Greek scholar can perceive the skill
with which he has combined a mosaic of reminiscences of ancient writers
into stanzas of perfect English. His _Progress of Poesy_ and his _Bard_
are plainly modelled on Pindar, but even his most beautiful individual
expressions are sometimes but translations from the Greek. Said the Greek
Phrynichus: “The purple light of love shines on her flushing cheeks.” To
this Gray owes his
O’er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young desire and purple light of love.
Of his enthusiasm for Greece we may judge from a passage in the _Progress
of Poesy_:
Woods, that wave o’er Delphi’s steep,
Isles, that crown the Egaean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Maeander’s amber waves
In lingering lab’rinths creep;
How do your tuneful echoes languish—
Mute, but to the voice of anguish?
Where each old poetic mountain
Inspiration breath’d around:
Ev’ry shade and hallowed fountain
Murmur’d deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine in Greece’s evil hour,
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Swift’s most popular work, _Gulliver’s Travels_, derives its hint from
Lucian’s _True History_, and all that peculiar vein of humour which
runs through the _Tale of a Tub_ and the _Battle of the Books_, is,
consciously or unconsciously, the parallel of the characteristic irony of
the same Lucian.
Of Shelley’s debts to Greece one can hardly estimate the amount. Says
he himself: “The poetry of ancient Greece and Rome and modern Italy
and our own country has been to me like external nature, a passion and
an enjoyment.” During his travels in Italy “the Greek tragedies,” says
Mrs. Shelley, “were his most familiar companions in his wanderings, and
the sublime majesty of Aeschylus filled him with wonder and delight.”
We find him reading Homer, Hesiod, Theocritus, Thucydides, Aeschylus,
Plutarch, Plato; he even translates portions of these; he steeps himself
to the lips in the literature of Greece. His own soul and genius were by
nature akin to those of Plato, and his training lent to his genius clear
capacity. Among those of his works which most manifestly bear the Greek
impress are the lyrical drama of _Hellas_—which, he says, was suggested
by the _Persae_ of Aeschylus—and the drama of _Prometheus Unbound_,
which is meant for a sequel to the _Prometheus Bound_ of Aeschylus.
Not that his drama of Prometheus is fashioned wholly like the Greek;
its architecture is less simple, its character is more rhetorical, more
ornamented, more metaphysical. But it owes its whole existence to the
fact that Shelley lived so long in a world of Greek literature, a world
very remote from that in which he moved and had his being. His _Adonais_—
I weep for Adonais—he is dead!
O weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost that binds so dear a head!
is an echo of Theocritus, his _Ode to Liberty_ an echo of Pindar, his
_Epipsychidion_ an outcome of Plato. His enthusiasm for Greece may be
gathered from his _Hellas_:
The world’s great age begins anew,
The golden years return;
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn....
A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls its fountains
Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.
Keats never learned the Greek language. But he was read, as perhaps never
Englishman was read before, in Greek legend and mythology. He devoured
Lemprière’s _Dictionary_. His greatest poetry—his chief odes, as well as
his _Hyperion_ and _Endymion_—is based on subjects thence acquired. The
manners and characters of Greek divinities pervade his writings. In heart
and soul, in sensuous enjoyment of life, he was himself a pagan Greek.
The life of the ancient world, idealized, was the world of his choice.
Above all he loves the sounds uttered
In Grecian isles
By bards who died content on pleasant sward,
Leaving great verse unto a little clan.
O give me their old vigour!
“Therefore,” says he,
’Tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being.
Had he studied Greek as language, and Greek as style, he would, we may
believe, have avoided earlier his one great fault, the fault of excess,
extravagance, and riot. What Keats thought of the great Greek writers
whose Greek he could not read, may be gathered from his lines to Homer:
Standing aloof in giant ignorance,
Of thee I hear, and of the Cyclades,
As one who sits ashore and longs perchance
To visit dolphin-coral in deep seas:
and from those _On first looking into Chapman’s Homer_:
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been,
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told,
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold.
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies,
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
The name of Byron is at once associated with enthusiasm for Greece.
True, it was modern Greece, but the only reason for that warm affection
lay in the fervour of his admiration for the Greece of old. That “land
of lost gods and godlike men” was to him a sacred land. Everyone knows
his outburst touching the “isles of Greece.” But not everyone perceives
how profoundly the mind of Byron had been stirred by the ancient
ideals and influences. Not everyone perceives that his _Manfred_ is an
unmistakable echo of Aeschylus’ _Prometheus_, in the tone and pitch
of its composition, in the firmness of the central character, in his
mental suffering, in the tremendous solitude, in the supernatural of the
surroundings. Yet Byron is not one whom we may quote as typifying any
great direct and salutary effect of Greek upon either his style or his
matter. He is too slipshod in the one and too romantic in the other. But
his ardour for the land of great literature is beyond denying:
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece!
Where burning Sappho loved and sung,
Where grew the arts of war and peace,
Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung!
Eternal summer gilds them yet,
But all, except their sun, is set.
The Scian and the Teian muse,
The lover’s harp, the lover’s lute,
Have found the fame your shores refuse:
Their place of birth alone is mute
To sounds which echo further west
Than your sires’ “Islands of the Blest.”
And where are they? and where art thou,
My country? On thy voiceless shore
The heroic lay is tuneless now—
The heroic bosom beats no more!
And must thy lyre, so long divine,
Degenerate into hands like mine?
During the last fifty years the study of Greek literature has been set
on a new basis. A collection of ill-digested matter no longer suffices.
Greek is taught more understandingly and more deeply. First comes
a patient observant study of the language; afterwards, in years of
maturity, are estimated the qualities of the thought and of the style;
these are set in clearer lights, and turned to a direct application.
Landor is the first modern in whom this sort of study reveals its
effects. His Greek devotion to classical associations, to ideal beauty,
his Greek aversion to the mysterious, his love for clearness and
purity of outline, appear cold to many a reader. He is too pellucid,
of too delicate a preciseness, they imagine. But Landor does not
displease through these qualities, which are virtues. His coldness is
constitutional. However that may be, his imaginary dialogues, imitated
from Plato, and the poetry of his _Hellenics_, show the Greek influence
in a fuller form than we have met with hitherto. Since Landor’s day
our literature is pervaded with Greek ideals: it aims at Greek style,
and often it attains fairly to its mark. We need not deal with matter
so voluminous as that of Browning, nor with a style so inconsistent.
But Browning’s love of Greek is matter of fame. Has he not translated
the _Agamemnon_ of Aeschylus, the _Alcestis_ and the _Heracles_ of
Euripides? Nor need we deal with the poetry of Swinburne. It is enough
to point out that the _Atalanta in Calydon_ is in spirit intensely Greek,
and that its most famous speech is a translation from Euripides.
From William Morris we have a translation of the _Odyssey_; he has
written the _Life and Death of Jason_ and the _Earthly Paradise_, and
both of these owe almost everything—their matter and the charm of their
manner—to the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, to Apollonius, and to the Greek
tragedians.
To two of the best and purest poets of our age Greece has supplied
the very breath of literary life. One is Matthew Arnold, the other is
Tennyson. Matthew Arnold as critic, Matthew Arnold as poet, is equally
Hellenic. He has been charged with “an air of aristocratic selectness
and literary exclusiveness.” The art of Pheidias is open to the same
objection. What really marks the style of Matthew Arnold is his reasoned
simplicity of taste, his cultivated appreciation of the delicate aroma
of words and the poetical atmosphere of thought. Like Tennyson, he has
a true eye for beauty, grace, and congruity of effect. He compasses the
“liquid clearness of an Ionian sky.” It may be that he lacks _abandon_.
He may not feel with the poignancy, or soar with the boldness, of the
greatest creators. But, artistically considered, he is as nearly perfect
as it is given to man to be. His poetic style is, indeed, almost too
perfect for the general. When he says
Or where the _echoing_ oars
Of Argo first
Startled the _unknown_ sea.
he is using the only two adjectives which the place required, and which
it truthfully admits. They are exactly the two epithets which a Greek
might put. Yet, no doubt, the untutored mind asks for something more
assertive, something which will cut more sharply or press more heavily
into the unready imagination. Than _Mycerinus_, than _Sohrab and Rustum_,
than _Philomela_, _Thyrsis_, or _The Strayed Reveller_, one can find
nothing more absolutely Greek in point of execution, though one may know
Greek passages which stir profounder emotional depths.
Tennyson’s debts to classical authors have been treated by Mr. Churton
Collins in a monograph. That critic is right in saying that the knowledge
of a scholar is requisite to appreciate Tennyson fully, however much
he may be appreciated by those who are no scholars. No man has ever
been better read in previous poetry than Tennyson, and no man has known
better how to assimilate what he found, or has possessed a surer tact and
taste in using it. With Tennyson the Greek matter is, as with Milton,
imbedded in his own, not overlaid. Greek forms of verse are moulded to
his purpose. The Greek style, describing what is luminously seen in a few
luminous touches, is ever conspicuous. He neither tries to disguise his
borrowings, nor does he obtrude them. When he says, “for now the noonday
quiet holds the hill,” he is translating Callimachus; when “the charm
of married brows,” Theocritus; when “shadowy thoroughfares of thought,”
Sophocles; when “sitting well in order smite the sounding furrows,”
Homer. His device of making the sound answer to the sense, as in
I heard the water lapping on the crag,
And the long-ripple washing in the reeds,
is a common device of the Greeks. In point of form his _Œnone_ is
modelled on Theocritus; his _Ulysses_ and his _Tithonus_ are framed after
the soliloquies in Greek plays. His _Lotus-eaters_ gets its matter from
Homer, Bion, and Moschus. Everywhere we meet hints and reminiscences
of Simonides, or Pindar, or Theocritus, or Anacreon. But these are all
incorporated, amalgamated in a body of work which is wholly in keeping
with them in taste, in tone, in diction—in short, in style.
This age of ours, to put it briefly, has been an age of stylists, of
artists who work on principles derived from their education in Greek,
and their love, which every scholar feels, of that glorious and undying
literature.
BRIEF CONSPECTUS OF GREEK LITERATURE.
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE.
DATE.
CHIEF WORKS.
SOME INFLUENCES ON FOREIGN TRIBUTARIES TO ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH WRITERS.
Epic Verse
HOMER
Ninth century, B.C.?
ILIAD—martial
O´DYSSEY—romantic
Imitated by Virgil (_Aenéid_), and thence affecting Dante,
Tasso, etc.
The _Iliad_ translated by Chapman (Elizabethan), Pope,
Cowper, etc. Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ is ultimately based
on Homer (+ Virgil + Dante). Abundance of characters, similes,
etc., incorporated by all our literature.
Didactic Verse (Epic metre)
HE´SIOD
Eighth century, B.C.
WORKS AND DAYS—agricultural
THEOGONY—pedigree of the Gods
Imitated by Virgil (_Georgics_)
First model for much (mostly unimportant) didactic work,
_e.g._ Tusser’s _Five Hundred Points of Good
Husbandry_ (Elizabethan), and the verses of Dyer,
Green, Darwin, etc. (eighteenth century).
Lyric Verse
SAPPHO (and Lesbian School)
fl. 610 B.C.
ODES of love (mostly lost)
ANA´CREON
fl. 530 B.C.
ODES of love and wine
Imitated by Catullus and Horace, and thence by Italian and
French lyrists.
In English the influence was chiefly through Horace: Keynote
to many of the Elizabethan and Caroline songs, _e.g._, in
Davidson’s _Poetical Rhapsody_, Herrick, Suckling, etc.
Moore translates _Odes of Anacreon_ (many spurious). Modern
_vers de société_.
PINDAR (Simónides, etc.)
fl. 470 B.C.
ODES of victory (OLYMPIAN, ISTHMIAN, etc.)
One of the models of Horace. Deliberately imitated by Italians,
_e.g._, Chiabrera.
Directly imitated by Cowley (_Pindaric Odes_), Dryden (_Song
for St. Cecilia’s Day_, _Alexanders Feast_), Pope (_Ode
on St. Cecilia’s Day_), Gray (_Progress of Poesy_), etc.
Tragic Drama
AE´SCHYLUS
fl. 490-456 B.C.
PLAYS (7 extant, _e.g._ _Agamemnon_, _Prometheus_).
SO´PHOCLES
fl. 465-405 B.C.
PLAYS (7 extant, _e.g._, _Antigone_, _Ajax_).
EURI´PIDES
fl. 450-406 B.C.
PLAYS (17 extant, _e.g._, _Alcéstis_,_Iphigenía_).
Imitated on wrong principles by Latin writers, _e.g._, Seneca,
from whom false notions of “classical” drama came into France
(Corneille and Racine).
Effect on English drama mostly so far as that drama was
affected by Italian or French influence (pre-Shakespearean
and post-Restoration). Attempts at “classical” drama in
Milton’s _Samson Agonistes_, Addison’s _Cato_,
Swinburne’s _Atalanta in Calydon_. Much use of Greek
subject-matter and characters, _e.g._, by Shelley
(_Prometheus Unbound_), Byron (_Manfred_ and _Cain_,
with character of Prometheus). Browning’s _Balaustion’s
Adventure_ (= Euripides’ _Alcestis_).
Comic Drama
ARISTO´PHANES (and _Old_ comedy)
fl. 425-385 B.C.
PLAYS (11 extant, _e.g._, _Birds_, _Clouds_,
_Frogs_), (political and personal).
MENA´NDER (and _New_ comedy)
fl. 310 B.C.
PLAYS of character and manners (fragments extant).
Adapted by Plautus and Terence, and thence borrowed by Molière.
Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_ from Plautus (_Menaechmi_)
from the Greek. Ben Jonson’s comedies of “humours.” English
translations from Molière (Dryden, Fielding, etc. ) can be
affiliated to Greek. Thence English comedy so far as
determined by French, from Goldsmith to modern adaptations.
Pastoral Idylls
THEO´CRITUS (and his school)
fl. 270 B.C.
IDYLLS of country life (and pastoral “laments” by his
disciples Bion, Moschus).
Imitated by Virgil (_Eclogues_), and thence by Sannazaro, etc.
Pastorals proper by Spenser (_Shepheard’s Calender_), Drayton,
Pope, etc. Mixed with ‘romance’ in Sidney’s _Arcadia_. Pastoral
laments in Milton’s _Lycidas_, Shelley’s _Adonais_, Matthew
Arnold’s _Thyrsis_. Idylls in Tennyson (_Œnone_).
History
HERO´DOTUS
lived 484-428 B.C.
HISTORY (conflict of Asia and Europe).
THUCY´DIDES
lived 471-400 B.C.
HISTORY (of Peloponnesian War)
XE´NOPHON
lived 430-355 B.C.
ANA´BASIS, HELLE´NICA, etc.
Models of Latin historians, _e.g._, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus.
Theoretically English historians emulated Thucydides. In
practice they rather follow the Romans. The influence of
the Greek “inventors” of history is everywhere, but does
not admit of brief specification.
Oratory
DEMOS´THENES (and the “Attic canon,” ISOCRATES, etc.)
lived 384-322 B.C.
SPEECHES (public, _e.g._, _Philippics_, and private).
The Roman orators were avowed students of Greek methods. French
oratory follows.
Influence indirect. _See_ “Conspectus of Latin Literature.”
Philosophy
PLATO
lived 429-347 B.C.
DIALOGUES (ethical, politico-ethical, etc.)—_e.g._,
_Republic_, _Symposium_.
Affects all subsequent philosophy.
Platonic thought and terms are an element in all modern
English philosophy. The thoughts markedly present in many
poets, _e.g._, Shelley, Wordsworth (_Intimations of
Immortality_). Plato’s literary method (dialogue) adopted
by Berkeley (_Alciphron_), Landor, etc. Plato’s _Republic_
the starting point for ideal commonwealths, _e.g._, More’s
_Utopia_, Bacon’s _New Atlantis_.
ARISTOTLE
lived 384-322 B.C.
ETHICS, POLITICS, METAPHYSICS, RHETORIC, etc.
Affects all subsequent thought.
Aristotelian philosophy was a kind of religion with mediaeval
scholars. Its influence at present on the increase. Translated
into Arabic (twelfth century) by Averrhoes, thence into Latin.
Dominates the thinking of the Middle Ages (“schoolmen”). His
literary criticism carried on by Horace, garbled by Boileau.
Literary criticism of Aristotle leads to Puttenham’s _Art
of English Poesie_, Sidney’s _Defense of Poesie_, Dryden’s
_Of Dramatic Poesie_, etc. The erroneous “Aristotelian”
doctrines of Boileau, etc., dominate English style of the
“correct” age (Pope, etc.).
Biography and Essays
PLUTARCH
fl. A.D. 80
PARALLEL LIVES
The model for later writers. French translation by Amyot,
favourite reading of Montaigne.
Starting-point for biographies and biographical essays (_e.g._
of Macaulay). North’s translation of Plutarch’s _Lives_
supplied Shakespeare with subjects and characters (Coriolanus,
Julius Caesar, Brutus, Antony).
MORAL ESSAYS
Greatly read after Revival of Learning.
Humorous and Satirical Essays
LUCIAN
fl. A.D. 160
DIALOGUES AND SKETCHES
Affecting Rabelais, Voltaire.
Effect not reducible to a few words. Swift’s _Gulliver’s
Travels_ takes its rise from Lucian’s _True History_.
Sterne is sometimes called “the English Lucian.”
Fable
Aesop
Sixth century B.C.?
FABLES
Passed on from Phaedrus, etc., to all W. Europe.
Source of the majority of our fables since Alfred (in Caxton,
etc.).
Character Sketches
Theophrastus
fl. 320 B.C.
CHARACTERS
Imitated by La Bruyère
“Characters” of Hall, Overbury, Earle, etc.
SYNOPTICAL VIEW OF RELATIONS OF GREEK LITERATURE WITH ENGLISH.
[Illustration]
II
LATIN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
The fashion of treating Latin literature as of all importance to English
is passing away in the better understanding of things. It is true that
the knowledge of Latin has been always more widely spread than the
knowledge of Greek, and that our speech is more deeply tinged with
Latinity. Yet Greek literature is the source and origin of almost all
that is best in Latin, and its influence to-day is far more vital. Let
it be added that, while in point of matter and thought Latin borrowed
unsparingly from Greek, in point of style its principles were less sound
or consistent.
Nevertheless, Latin literature is of immense importance. We may think of
the prodigious historical significance of the pagan Roman Empire, and
then of the prodigious spiritual significance of the Christian Roman
Church. We may think of the impress that has been left on all Western
Europe by these, and remember that the language of each is Latin. The
necessity of not neglecting the mere language is obvious. But we are here
concerned with Latin literature, of which the language is but the vehicle.
* * * * *
Where does Latin literature begin and end?
Writing in Latin has not ended yet. But we shall for the present confine
ourselves to the Latin works of pagan Rome, in the days when Rome can
fairly be called a nation of tolerably homogeneous life and pursuits.
Though the writings of Tertullian, Lactantius, Jerome and Augustine, in
the third and fourth centuries, are undeniably Latin, and literature
also, we can on this principle draw a tolerably clear line against them.
Similarly the later poets, such as Ausonius, Claudian, and Boethius, lie
outside the scope of the present chapter.
From the third century B.C. onwards, the Latin-speaking Romans, beginning
as a mere clan in central Italy, spread their empire gradually over the
peninsula, over France, Spain and Portugal, over Great Britain to the
Grampians, across the Rhine, along the Danube, over modern Turkey and
Greece, over Asia Minor and Syria to the river Euphrates, over most
of Arabia, Egypt, and all the southern coast of the Mediterranean. In
Spain and Portugal, in France, and in Roumania they planted colonies and
settlements, till the languages of those countries actually became Latin;
dialects, no doubt, but Latin. Over all this empire Latin literature
spread with the spreading of control and settlement, and in the first
century of our era it was as natural for a Latin writer to hail from
Spain as from Rome. Persons no less than Seneca, Lucan, Quintilian, and
Martial are Spaniards from towns later known as Cordova, Calahorra and
Bambola. Subsequently Africa (Tunis) and Gaul have their distinguished
representatives.
Considerations like these should make it clear how vast an influence
Latin literature must have wielded both directly and indirectly. The
modern languages of France, Spain, Portugal, Roumania, and Italy are
various continuations of the Latin; and France, Spain, Portugal, and
Italy, despite all historical changes, have been neither able nor
desirous to shake off the guidance and impulses of Latin literature. This
is one reason why it is the French and Italians who find their chief
study in Virgil and Horace, Cicero and Seneca, whereas the Teutons,
exerting a greater freedom of choice, more distinctly recognize the
superiority of Homer and Sappho, Demosthenes and Aeschylus.
Needless to say that the people which could build and govern such an
empire and hold it so long together must have been a people of strong
innate quality. It need be no surprise that it was hardly an imaginative
or artistic quality. It is, indeed, scarcely open to dispute that the old
Roman and his kindred Italian tribes were marked by a comparative lack of
fine imagination. Not only in war and politics, in legal and political
institutions, but in intellectual culture they were a most practical and
literal-minded race.
We are apt, in looking at the modern Frenchman or Italian, to commit
two large errors. Because they frequently appear excitable in temper
and demonstrative in gesture, we incline to put them down not only as
passionate, but as profound in sentiment, feeling, and imagination. Yet,
in point of fact, still waters run deep, here as elsewhere. The second
error is greater still. We judge the old Latin stock from the so-called
“Neo-Latin” peoples, or those who speak the neo-Latin tongues. Yet in
many cases the “Neo-Latins” have but a comparatively small infusion of
Roman blood still running in their veins. In some cases their forbears
must have had none at all.
We can only judge the old Latin race, as especially embodied in the
Roman, from its literature, its history and its institutions. From these
we gather that it was a stock excellent for great ideals in the way
of conquering and administering, a people of admirable commanders and
engineers and jurists, a practical people, but a people not distinguished
by brilliance of fancy, great delicacy of taste, notable depth of
imagination or poignancy of feeling. Roman literature, left to itself,
would, we may believe, have proved a very solid and rather heavy thing.
The Latin language is like the Roman people. It is a language of great
logical method and strict system of structure. As languages go, it
is unusually free from idioms in the proper sense of the word. It is
distinctly a solid and stately, but distinctly not a flexible, speech.
And yet, despite the innate character of the Latin stock, and the
unyielding nature of the language, Latin literature is not so eminently
practical and massive as we might expect.
For this there are two reasons. The one is that a large number of
the chief writers of Latin literature are not themselves of unmixed
Latin birth; they possess Celtic blood, or Greek blood, or some other
non-Roman strain. Virgil came from Mantua, Catullus from Verona, Horace
from Venusia, and other writers from other northern, southern, or even
Spanish towns. The second reason is that, before Roman literature had
properly earned the name, it had come into contact with the fully
developed art of Greece, both Attic and Alexandrian, and forthwith
became a literature of imitation. Feeling its limitations, the Latin
genius submitted its own tendencies to the correction of a people whom
it instinctively recognized as superior in this domain. But here an
important qualification must be made. It cannot be too much insisted
upon that Latin literature hardly rose at all till Greek literature was
far decayed. Unhappily, when the Roman writers set about imitating their
masters, they exploited, it is true, the matter or substance of anything
Greek, and of any period, but the style and form which they affected were
rather those of the later and inferior Greeks of Alexandria, not those of
the perfect earlier masters of Attica and Ionia. It is in any case easier
to imitate what is affected or “loud” or artificial than what is simply
and naturally strong and beautiful.
Latin literature, in the sense in which we are to treat it, may be
divided into three main periods. The first is that of immature art,
of vigorous but ill-disciplined imitation of Greek models, of growing
mastery over language. It is a period of preparation, the “iron age,”
corresponding roughly to the period of English literature before the
Revival of Learning. The date of this epoch is from 250 to 80 B.C., and
it embraces the best days of the republic. During all this time the
literature, rough and poor as it was, was sincere enough. It was meant
for the people and for a purpose. For us, however, it contains little of
any consequence besides the comedies of Plautus and Terence.
The second period is that of highest excellence in prose and poetry,
the age of Cicero, Lucretius, Catullus, Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Virgil,
Horace, and Ovid. This is the “golden age,” and may be dated from 80
B.C. to A.D. 14, a period during which the republic was passing into an
empire, and when great men played their parts in great historical dramas;
men like Sulla and Pompey, Julius Caesar, Antony, and Augustus. The
latter half of this period, which extends from 30 B.C. to A.D. 14, and
includes the names of Livy, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, coincides with the
rule of Augustus, and is therefore called the “Augustan” age. In other
words, the Augustan age is the second half of the “golden” age. It is
from 80 B.C. to A.D. 14 that Latin literature and the Latin language are
at their highest degree of perfection. But, unhappily, at least during
the second half, it is also a time when writers and readers are coming
more and more to form a special literary class, which stands far aloof
from the great public and its urgent or spontaneous interests.
The third period, the “silver age,” is that of the despotic and often
tyrant emperors, when freedom of speech no longer existed, when the
autocrat, a servile aristocracy, and a vicious populace occupied the
capital. At this date literature is but a forced product without real
motive or inspiration. It is characterized by declamation and rhetoric,
by smart epigram, by cynicism and satire, by clever expression. Such is
the period of Seneca, Lucan, Martial, Tacitus, Pliny, Juvenal. It may be
put down roughly as extending from A.D. 14 to the year 150.
These three epochs are peculiarly well defined; they are universally
recognized, because so conspicuously recognizable.
* * * * *
The first real incentive to literature among the Romans sprang from the
contact into which they came with the Greeks of southern Italy and Sicily
when their conquests reached so far. This was in the third century B.C.
Until the Greek influence was strongly felt, we meet only with a series
of rude records, or of uncouth and clownish verses of a satirical or
farcical sort. From the rude records there began to develop themselves
histories and epics; from the farces and satirical verses were destined
to come the drama of tragedy and comedy and the literary satire; this,
however, did not occur till the communication with Greece was full and
close, and Greek material at hand to be utilized.
The first branch of Latin literature with which we need deal is the drama
of comedy and tragedy. Practically this limits itself to the popular
comedy of Plautus and Terence in the “iron” age, and the artificial and
rhetorical tragedy of Seneca in the “silver” period.
Titus Maccius Plautus, who flourished about the year 210 B.C., and
Publius Terentius, a generation later, are more nearly allied to each
other than are Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. It is only the special
student of literature who need be concerned to elaborate the full
distinction between them. Plautus has the more of broad and boisterous
fun and drollery, Terence has the subtler humour and the more artistic
style and architecture. But both alike borrow plots and even dialogue
wholesale from those Greek comedians of whom Menander is a type. They
both adapt Greek plays, just as English playwrights once adapted Molière,
and recently adapted Sardou. The Latin adaptations, however, were of
quite undisguised closeness, if not of positive servility. Whereas our
playwrights seek to make their adaptations entirely English, Plautus
and Terence did not seek to make theirs entirely Roman. It is true that
their plots were based on real life, but it was a Greek life and not
a Roman life. The scene was always in a Greek city. Imbecile fathers
duped by spendthrift sons, jealous husbands outwitted and stultified,
cunning and unscrupulous slaves playing the part of _dei ex machina_,
armies of cooks, confidantes and nondescripts—these things, which appear
monotonously, are not really Roman. Those who read the earlier plays
of Molière generally grow somewhat weary of the clever _valets_, the
Mascarilles, of the dupes, of the Sganarelles, and of the conventional
tricks upon parents and husbands. The truth is that Molière, at this
stage of his career, in imitating or adapting Plautus and Terence, was
almost as far from the real life of Paris in his own day as Plautus and
Terence were from the real life of Rome. _Les Fourberies de Scapin_ is as
distinct and as unconvincing an adaptation of the _Phormio_ of Terence as
Shakespeare’s early _Comedy of Errors_ is of Plautus’s _Menaechmi_.
Now it is a noteworthy fact, as illustrating how doubly exotic a thing
Latin literature was, that neither Plautus nor Terence was a true-born
Roman. Plautus was a countryman of Umbria, Terence was an African of
Carthage. Yet it was these two who remained the only considerable writers
of Latin comedy, and the whole of their work was adaptation, free
translation, or guileless plagiarism.
To our subject these writers are of no small account, in virtue of the
fact that they were the progenitors of Italian comedy, thence of Molière,
and, from Molière, of our own comic stage of the seventeenth, and the
earlier and greater part of the eighteenth, century, the ages of Congreve
and Farquhar, and of Fielding and Sheridan.
Tragedy, the other and nobler half of drama, took its rise in Latin
literature as early as the year 240 B.C.; but the obscure names of
Andronicus (who, as usual, was not a genuine Roman, but a Greek) and of
Naevius (who likewise was not a genuine Roman, but a Calabrian) need not
here detain us. The one considerable personage in the whole history of
the Latin tragic stage is Seneca, the Spanish-born Roman of the middle
of the first century A.D. Unfortunately, this one important figure is
also the incarnation of the defects of his epoch. He touches no real
chord in the public mind or heart; he borrows his subject-matter from the
Greeks—Greek gods, Greek heroes, Greek plots; there is nothing national,
local, nothing really natural or alive, about his work. The tragedies
are mainly excuses for putting fine declamatory speeches or brilliant
phrases into the mouths of the characters. They are, in short, exercises
in oratory, masquerading in dramatic form. In all probability they were
never intended for the stage. Those who know what Addison’s _Cato_
is like in its coldness and artificiality, those also who know French
literature and can remember the declamation in the least interesting of
the works of Corneille and Racine, can form a very fair notion of the
salient characteristics of the tragedy of Seneca. It was Seneca, the
easily accessible Latin model, whom the Italian and French tragedians
deliberately copied, and who in turn determined the style of Addison’s
_Cato_.
It is perhaps well to remark at this point how thoroughly unreal in every
domain of Latin literature is that part which deals with the gods. The
native Roman religion had no Olympus, no nymphs. It was a cold and formal
worship of gods either far removed or quite artificial abstractions.
To a Roman the Greek gods and heroes who fill Latin poetry are more or
less ornamental make-believe. They are introduced and regarded rather
as poetical properties, virtually meaning little more to the cultivated
Romans than the Roman gods, in their turn, mean to an English writer
of the eighteenth century, when he talks of Venus or Jove. Therefore,
whether it be tragedy or epic or lyric, a dispiriting artificiality
generally—although Virgil is an exception—drops upon Latin literature
immediately that we find ourselves among the gods and their doings. Yet
it cannot be too often repeated that the saving grace of literature is
sincerity. No immortal writing can base itself upon convention and a sham.
Perhaps one of the most deplorable legacies left to us by the influence
of Latin literature has been the introduction of Jupiter, Juno, Venus,
Cupid, Mars, Vulcan, the nymphs, the Graces and the rest into the
_répertoire_ of what is called poetic diction. As the eighteenth century,
more than any other, was dominated by the artificial principles of Roman
literature, both directly and through the French, so in that century
these names became a set of tinsel tokens to take the place and conceal
the lack of honest and genuine ideas and their natural expression.
* * * * *
Leaving Plautus and Terence, we turn to the golden age of Latin
literature, its most classical period. Most classical, because during
that period its works attain to the “class,” the class of the best
in their kind. It is between the year 80 B.C. and A.D. 14 that Latin
literature reaches this best, although the kind itself may be in
frankness considered not of the most sublime. In point of matter and
style Latin literature attains its acme during these last active days of
the republic and under the fostering, but at the same time cramping, care
of the first emperor, the great Augustus, and his favourite and minister,
the munificent Maecenas.
Before this golden period Latin work had been crude, rough, and
inharmonious. It is now perfectly polished and used for polished
purposes. On the other hand, after this period, in the silver age,
there is a loss of purpose, of healthy and genuine subject-matter, and
consequently an indulgence in strained cleverness, far-drawn epigram,
empty declamation. But during this period itself Latin in the hands of
Cicero, Lucretius, Caesar, Catullus, Virgil, Livy, Horace, and Ovid is
for the most part sober and restrained. It may not, in most of these
cases, delve very deep or soar very high, but at least it is both
admirable workmanship and marked by sober and practical sense. In the
poetry of the epic, the lyric, and the elegiac; in the prose of history,
oratory, and philosophy; in all but satire and epigram (which by their
nature flourish best in times of decadence), this golden period far
transcends the age which followed. It is not in this period that neatly
executed nothings, verbal conceits in the absence of true matter,
out-of-the-way learning and allusions, take the place of thinking.
It is true that during this Ciceronian and Augustan age the Roman
literary art was always conscious in its workmanship, always studied and
deliberate, always intentionally aiming at finish or style, at skill and
beauty and harmony of expression. It is true that it was seldom prompted
by instinct like the Greek. It is true that it was nearly all imitative,
unoriginal. But it is also true that it was sensible withal, free from
absolute rodomontade, bathos, or frivolity.
* * * * *
The department of poetry from which Latin literature derives most
nobility, if no other quality, is the epic. The two greatest epics of the
world are indisputably the _Iliad_ of Homer and the _Aeneid_ of Virgil.
The _Jerusalem Delivered_ of the Italian poet Tasso and the _Paradise
Lost_ of the English Milton rank next, but the distance between either
of these works and the Greek and Roman epics is scarcely to be bridged.
Probably an epic in the old-world sense is scarcely possible under our
modern social conditions and philosophic limitations.
The epic is the poem of a great action of a great hero. There may be many
episodes in the shape of other actions performed by other characters,
but, if the art is to be true, all must bear some appreciable relation
to, or centre upon, the said great action of the chief great figure.
Virgil’s _Aeneid_ is an epic left somewhat incomplete; its hero is
Aeneas, and the great action is the founding of the Roman race. In the
poem are described the wanderings of Aeneas from Troy, his adventures by
sea and land, his love of Dido and its calamitous ending, his landing
in Italy, his descent to the nether world and the sights he there
beholds, his wars and victories over the native Italian princes. But the
foundation of the Roman race is never reached, the work, which consists
already of some 10,000 lines, having been left unfinished.
The more serious purpose of this fine and noble work was to give to the
Romans a great national poem, and to supply them, now that they were
masters of the world, with an origin of which to be proud. In this aim
the poet completely succeeded, establishing himself at the same time as
the supreme national poet of the Empire. We may refrain from blaming
him if, meanwhile, he sought to offer poetical incense to the emperor
Augustus, by connecting him in direct descent with the Aeneas of heroic
exploits and half-divine birth. In such conscious purposes Virgil differs
entirely from Homer. Homer composed his verse to be heard or read by all
and sundry for its own sake, as a narrative full of life and interest and
verbal charm. His works have a nearer claim to be called effusions. But
Virgil necessarily writes without a simple strong conviction, with more
conscious toil of art, as a greatly gifted man of letters writing for men
of culture. Spontaneous he assuredly is not. Homer had described battles
and councils in the _Iliad_, and wanderings and marvels in the _Odyssey_.
Virgil borrows the battles or the wanderings, and weaves them with
wonderful art into one poem. He takes the similes and imagery of Homer
and other Greeks; he translates or paraphrases much of their diction;
he “finds his good things wherever he can” and works all into a mosaic,
which is exceedingly dexterous, vigorous and polished, but which cannot
be called original. The chief sphere of his originality is perhaps to be
found in the rhetorical strength and adroitness of many of the speeches
which he puts into the mouths of his characters.
Virgil is essentially a writer for the lover of verbal art. For those who
can read Latin with easy and scholarly apprehension he appears to combine
the splendid harmonies of Milton with the studied grace of Tennyson and
often the polished conciseness of Pope. It is impossible to translate
him so as to convey any adequate idea of these qualities, for it is
exactly these which are untranslatable. Matthew Arnold, in his _Essays in
Criticism_, speaks of individual lines which may serve as touchstones of
poetic virtue. In the mere matter of sound each great writer is apt to be
distinguishable by such isolated lines. Milton, for example, is only one
of many who have written in blank verse. Yet a fragment like
A dungeon horrible on all sides round
As one great furnace flamed
instantly reveals Milton. Virgil answers to the same test of
indescribable and incommunicable quality.
To the ignorant Middle Ages Virgil became a name to conjure with. He
grew, with little apparent reason except his general poetic fame, to be
regarded as the embodiment of all pagan wisdom, and it is for this reason
that Dante puts himself under the guidance of Virgil in his Hell and
Purgatory, though it is the Christian Beatrice, and not the pagan poet,
who accompanies him into Paradise. Dante’s _Inferno_ is the sixth book
of Virgil’s _Aeneid_ expanded and adapted to the strange blend of rapt
mysticism and crude realism which prevailed under mediaeval Catholicism.
It is from Virgil’s sixth book, combined with Dante, that Milton derives
the main hint and many of the particular suggestions for his Hell in
_Paradise Lost_. And it is, in short, to Virgil that all epics have
looked since his _Aeneid_ once appeared.
Virgil is not, indeed, the only epic poet of Rome, although immeasurably
the greatest. Lucan, in the silver age, composed an epic poem of the
“great action” of Julius Caesar in crushing Pompey. Like most of the
productions of that period of the second best, the _Pharsalia_ is full
of epigrammatic sayings, deliberate _tours de force_ and brilliant
rhetoric, together with much unreal sentiment, false taste, and grotesque
or repellent detail. According to Quintilian Lucan is “more fit to be
ranked amongst orators than poets.” Soon afterwards comes Statius with
his _Thebaid_, or epic of Thebes, a work of great pains and little life,
here and there beautified with those rather morbid colours which have
been known to suggest the dying dolphin, but incapable of sustaining any
natural interest. If he was called “Virgil’s ape,” the censure is hardly
too severe. To us, however, the poem is of some account as having formed
a portion of the staple reading in the days of Chaucer, who refers to
“Stace” with avowed admiration. The tale of _Palamon and Arcite_, which
Chaucer so admirably transformed from Boccaccio, owes its origin to this
somewhat insipid epic of the Roman. Meanwhile the world has been content
to forget the partial versions of Statius essayed by Pope or Gray.
In Lyric poetry, apart from the elegiac style, there are two names,
and two only, which stand out upon the chart of Roman history. One is
Catullus, the other Horace, and both are of the golden age, although of
different halves of that epoch. Catullus flourished under the republic
about 60 B.C., Horace under Augustus a generation later. It is curious
to observe how the verdict of taste is reversing the positions once held
in the general estimation by these two exquisite writers. Time was, and
not so long ago, when Horace was more read and quoted than any other poet
of antiquity. He was quoted at dinners, in literature, in parliament. It
was taken for granted that he represented the _ne plus ultra_ of lyric
quality. Catullus, it is true, was praised, but comparatively neglected
withal. But those who love literature as much for its substance as its
form, who seek for inward warmth and for stimulation of the pulses as
well as for pleasure of the palate, and who are attracted by the sterling
rather than by the elaborated—these set Catullus on a plane to which
Horace never reaches. Horace has been called “the poet of the man of the
world,” and the phrase, while fairly true, is manifestly not the highest
commendation. Those who read him without prepossession discover that
under all his gracefulness he is naturally unimaginative; that, feeling
little, he has little power over the heart; and, furthermore, that he
is prone to a peculiar inconsequence. Among his virtues is included the
characteristic Roman virtue of sound practical sense; but lyric poetry
is hardly to be satisfied with that merit. As a man of letters he takes
his rank from the perfection of his expression, from his consummate
skill of putting the fittest word in the fittest place with a singular
terseness and lucidity. To the ancient critic his work was marked by
a _curiosa felicitas_—a “painstaking happiness” of phrase. Meanwhile
Catullus possesses a far higher gift, the gift of experiencing a sincere
emotion and of communicating it by a rare directness and simplicity
of expression, almost after the manner of the Lesbian lyrists or of
Robert Burns. This is not to deny that Catullus was a conscious artist,
but perfect literature consists in this, that art expends itself on
expressing a feeling sincerely felt or a thought sincerely conceived.
Upon English literature the Latin lyrists, and more especially Horace,
have exercised a far-reaching influence, sometimes with the full
consciousness of the English poet, more often indirectly. The “Horatian
Ode”—that is to say, the ode in which there is but one comparative short
form of stanza repeated throughout—explains its own genesis by its name.
In other cases of English lyrics it is not easy, nor is it necessary,
to distinguish precisely between the debt due to the Latin writers and
that due to native-grown song and ballad. English lyrics of feeling would
necessarily have developed themselves in some shape without the aid of
foreign example, but in point of fact, the Elizabethans, and still more
the “cavalier” poets of the seventeenth century, were in the habit of
looking to Horace, and in a less degree to Catullus, for suggestions
of form and expression and occasionally of thought. For one external
indication of this attitude we may look to the practice of the school
of Herrick, Suckling, Lovelace, and Waller, who (following Elizabethan
sonneteers) habitually call their inspiring mistresses by the names of
“Lesbia,” “Delia,” “Chloe,” and the like, for no other reason than that
these are the non-committal names sanctioned by the usage of the Latin
lyrists.
Elegiac poetry, which, though properly a branch of lyric, has acquired
a form and character practically constituting it a class apart, was
cultivated and brought to perfection by a group of poets in the last
third of the last century before Christ. Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid
are the representatives in Latin of a form of art which had flourished
greatly in the lyric age of classical Greece, and had been revived with
much distinction, but with a new tone of sentiment, by Callimachus in
the age of Alexandria. In Latin Catullus had already taken Callimachus
for a model, and transplanted the elegy to Rome. But it was the group
above-named who in turns imparted to such compositions a specially Roman
character in respect of exacting rules of form. The elegy in early
Greece found various themes in martial and social exhortations, moral
sentiments, and advice, or in the expression of personal feelings in
different moods. If at Alexandria its matter consisted most frequently of
the thoughts and moods of the lover, the modification was due to altered
social conditions. It is hard to say what themes might not be treated in
the elegiac form, provided they were of moderate length and scope. The
Latin poets use the fullest liberty in this respect. Thus Ovid not only
writes his _Amores_ or love-poems in the usual sense, his _Tristia_ or
personal sorrows in banishment, and his _Letters of Heroines_, in which
the writers pour out their feelings to their absent or unfaithful lovers
or husbands, but he also puts together stories of Roman history into
a sort of calendar, which is accordingly named the _Fasti_. A modern
poem of reflection, an “occasional” poem, a sonnet, or even Milton’s
_Lycidas_, would alike be fitly converted into Latin elegiac verse.
Of the three elegists, Propertius, though remarkably unequal in quality,
and often rough and obscure (with an obscurity which suggests Browning),
in both expression and allusion, shows the most of native strength and
emotional sincerity. Tibullus is the lucid and graceful exponent of the
pensive commonplace. Ovid, the master of verbal polish and concision, is
to the elegy very much what Horace is to the ode. Facile and prolific, he
touches few subjects which he does not adorn. Unfortunately the subjects
which he touches are too often shallow and morally unworthy. His attitude
is that of a man not only without moral care, but without capacity for
any genuine ardour or emotion. He charms with his variety, and with his
grace and dexterity of treatment, but he strikes none of those full
or poignant chords which are wont to be stirred by elegies in Greek or
English literature.
* * * * *
Other forms of poetical composition among the Romans were the bucolic (or
pastoral eclogue), the philosophic, the didactic, the narrative, and the
poetry of fable.
Of bucolic or pastoral poetry, as written by the Greeks, something
has already been said, as also of the pedigree of this species before
its arrival in the literature of England. In Latin literature it is
represented almost solely by Virgil, his later imitator Calpurnius
being of little account either in himself or his effects. Virgil is
the first to introduce the species into Latin, and the line of descent
from Theocritus through Virgil to the Italians Sannazaro and Mantuan,
and thence to Spenser, is distinct and undisguised. In verse of a
certain subtle charm of movement, tinged occasionally with a deliberate
rusticity, and pervaded with a suggestion of pensive sympathy rare in
Latin writers, Virgil ostensibly tells in dramatic or semi-dramatic
form of the loves, labours, sorrows, and songs of shepherds, goatherds,
and other simple rural folk. Under this cover, however, he is often in
reality touching upon his own personal experiences and those of his
friends, or gently couching some poetical moral, or finding a safe vent
for the mild philosophizings of his meditative youth. Something of
the kind had already been done by the Greek imitators of Theocritus,
but Virgil goes much further than they. He has thus changed the whole
nature of the pastoral, and, artistically considered, for the worse.
The shepherds are no longer real and convincing, and the truth of
nature’s mirror is destroyed. Nevertheless, through a happy trick of
cadence, felicitous touches of natural description, and an indescribable
atmosphere of sympathy, the _Eclogues_ are wont to exert a charm which
defies criticism to do its worst.
Didactic poetry is met with in Virgil’s _Georgics_, or _Rules for
Husbandmen_. In four compositions he deals with corn-crops, fruit-trees,
cattle-breeding, and bee-keeping. The model was supplied, as usual, by
the Alexandrian Greeks, and for these the ancient inventor and the source
was Hesiod. There is no reason to doubt Virgil’s genuine interest in
these practical rustic themes. But, being essentially a poet and not a
farmer, he is not to be satisfied with versifying, however skilfully, a
list of useful precepts. If the work was, as Merivale considers it, the
“glorification of labour,” it served meanwhile as a frame for special
passages of great beauty upon topics more or less naturally associated
with the matter in hand. The poet on occasion finds it no long step to
take from the weather to eclipses, from eclipses to the death of Caesar,
and from Caesar to patriotic reflections. The digressions are not so far
afield, nor so numerous as in Cowper’s _Task_, but that work may perhaps
be cited in partial illustration.
Didactic in another kind is that short _Art of Poetry_, written in deft
verse by Horace, which was copied by Boileau in his _Art Poétique_,
and freely utilized by Pope in his _Essay on Criticism_. Its professed
aim is to inculcate certain principles of poetic composition, and, in
particular, the composition of drama. Inasmuch as Horace was drawing
upon Greek doctrines derived from Aristotle, but not always understood
by their somewhat superficial Roman poetizer; inasmuch also as poetic
drama had no real existence in the days of Horace, there was little
prospect that the _Art of Poetry_ would shed any new illumination upon
the world. To those who have read the seminal work of Aristotle, the
precepts of Horace inevitably appear rather trite and shallow. The
writer here, as elsewhere, is marked by shrewd and humorous good sense
and a gift of terse expression, and it must be admitted that these form
an excellent endowment for the middleman of intellectual traffic. The
essay would doubtless be read by his contemporaries with enjoyment, and
in many cases with edification. The misfortune is that, from the later
seventeenth century onwards, it was the superficial Horace rather than
the fundamental Aristotle who served as dictator of the laws of verse to
both England and France.
Philosophic verse, which is, of course, a species of the didactic,
finds its best representative, not merely for Latin literature, but
for the literature of the world, in Lucretius, who wrote during the
latter days of republican Rome. His poem _On the Nature of Things_ is an
exposition of the philosophy of Epicurus, as developed from the physical
speculations of Democritus. According to this philosophy the original
contents of the universe were minute atoms, the “seeds” or “elements”
of things, moving in a void. By their fortuitous collisions and various
combinations were formed all things as they are or have been. To this
extent had ancient speculation, combining bold imagination with close
reasoning, anticipated modern chemistry and astronomical hypothesis.
From crude and accidental beginnings, says Lucretius, there ensues a
“survival of the fittest,” and thus, though unaided by modern scientific
appliances, and imperfectly directed from the point of view of modern
scientific method, ancient speculation anticipates also the doctrines of
modern evolutionists. In the application of these results to the conduct
of life (which is the practical aim of philosophy) it is evident that
current theology must receive a severe blow. To Lucretius the chief
blessing derived from the true philosophy is that man is emancipated
from superstition, with all its terrors in life and death and all the
mischiefs it has worked. We may conjecture that the soul of the poet
himself, which was brooding and melancholy, would have been eminently
impressible by superstitious dread, if it had not been fortified by this
wisdom of “the master.” His fervent onslaught on _religio_ (in the Latin
sense) and its crushing effects can hardly be otherwise explained. He
does not—nor did Epicurus—absolutely deny the existence of gods; these
are logically as producible as other “things.” What he denies is their
interference with the processes of nature. All this and more he sets
forth in the six books of the _De Rerum Natura_.
In the use of verse as the vehicle of philosophic teaching, Lucretius
is but following the lead of the older Greeks, Empedocles, Xenophanes,
or Parmenides. The task is technically difficult, and in modern times
it would be purposeless. But for Lucretius we must not only grant the
utility of the method in awakening intellectual interest as widely as
possible among a community less prepared for philosophy than for poetry;
we are also compelled to recognize that his effort to make philosophy
talk in Latin verse was technically a triumph. Yet Lucretius is much more
than a translator of Greek philosophy into Latin hexameters. He is a
poet. Doubtless the passages in which he is setting forth bare statement
of theory, or bare argument, are of necessity as dull as many passages
of theologizing in Milton’s _Paradise Lost_ or _Paradise Regained_,
or as many passages in Wordsworth’s _Excursion_. But when the poetic
opportunity arrives, and when he is irresistibly borne away with such
reflections as those upon the life and death of man, he writes in lines
as splendid as those of Milton and Wordsworth at their best. Through
all the work there is a tone of the ardent missionary of intellectual
deliverance, blent with a certain melancholy which recalls Ecclesiastes.
Latin literature is not strong in great intellectual forces, but among
these Lucretius must hold a foremost place.
Narrative poetry, apart from epic, occupies no large space in the
literature of Latin. The _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid practically stand
alone. These, written in a lighter and more fluent hexameter than that
of Virgil’s _Aeneid_, are a series of stories dealing, as the title
shows, with the various transformations undergone by human beings in
mythology or legend. If there is anything in Latin answering to the
“romantic” elements in Ariosto or Spenser it is to be found here. The
author, knowing the stories to be fabulous, employs all his fancy
and inventiveness, his descriptive power and gift of language, in
embellishing them. Men and women are turned into beasts, birds, monsters,
trees, or stones with much poetic gusto of circumstance. The want of
real unity is no drawback to the work; the telling of the legends is
brilliant; the stories themselves are such as at all times appeal to the
lovers of the romantic and the marvellous, and particularly to the young.
From these causes it is not too much to say that the influence of the
_Metamorphoses_ has been immeasurable. The usual mediaeval, renaissance,
and modern _répertoires_ of mythological story have been almost entirely
derived from Ovid. To the better read contemporaries of Chaucer, as
of Shakespeare, Ovid supplied not only the matter, but the spirit of
such narrative. Such a familiar legend as that touching one of Philemon
and Baucis may be Greek in origin, but it is Ovid who has made it the
property of the later western world.
Not inappropriately may be introduced here the mention of a minor writer,
whose work, despite its slender substance and its narrow range of genius,
has been far-reaching in its legacy. This is Phaedrus, the versifier
of fables in the reign of Tiberius. With no special brilliancy or gift
of invention, but with a style of lucid simplicity which is excellent
for such narration, Phaedrus puts into verse the Greek fables—commonly
fathered all alike on “Aesop”—which he could find current in his day.
The collection is probably much the same as that of the Greek Demetrius
Phalereus (300 B.C.). From the point of view of both morals and language
the book served admirably for schoolboys, and it is at least one of the
main sources of the fables which found their way into England, first with
Alfred, and later, in more force, with Caxton’s “Aesop.”
In one branch of verse-writing, which must next be considered, the
Roman writers have every claim to the credit of originality. There has
always been, as there is at the present day, in the Italian mind a
pronounced strain of satire and irony, a tendency to lampoon and epigram,
a disposition to look on the seamy or ridiculous side of things. The
Aretino of later Italy is a true descendant of the Lucilius of ancient
Rome. The Romans themselves claimed as their very own the form of
composition known as _satura_. Satire, as a tone, may appear in Greek
writers of various kinds; it may even approach a special recognition
in certain portions of the Old Comedy of Athens; but there existed no
Greek example of a separate composition with the character implied in
“a satire.” The word itself, however, demands some examination. To us
it primarily implies fault-finding, general or particular, and such the
satire became, particularly in the hands of Juvenal. But originally
_satura_ meant a mixed dish, a medley of observations upon society and
men. These observations naturally took the form of describing habits and
revealing motives. It would follow that, according to the temperament
of the writer, the _satura_ might become either a moral essay or a
satire in the modern sense. Bitterness is not properly essential to such
compositions, and in the _Satires_ of Horace there is comparatively
little of that quality. His _Epistles_, which are practically only
_saturae_ under another name, are still more distinguished by geniality.
Nevertheless, just as “censure” began by meaning “judgement” and has
come to mean unfavourable judgement, so “satire” speedily limited
its implication even among the Romans. A hundred years before Horace
a certain Lucilius (of whom only fragments remain) had practised a
vigorous but rough invective in his _saturae_, but for us it is Horace
who represents the establishment of satire as a species of cultivated
writing. To him these compositions were _sermones_, or “talks,” and
they were permitted to serve as the vehicle for a frank egotism not
unlike that of the _Essais_ of Montaigne. They are “satirical” in that
they from time to time administer more or less caustic chastisement to
contemporary follies or vices. Three-quarters of a century later, in the
silver age, Persius put forth a small book of satires full of promise,
but also full of faults in the way of obscurities and artificialities of
style. Trained as a philosopher, he had studied mankind from books, and
particularly from Horace, rather than from experience, and, as he died at
twenty-eight, it may be presupposed that his insight is far from deep.
Fortunately he was withheld from the savage invective customary with
youth by his philosophic sincerity and the mildness of his nature. It is
early in the next century that satire, in the hands of Juvenal, becomes
the polished and trenchant weapon of offence now commonly understood by
the term. Juvenal became, and has remained, the very prince of those
who condense wit and sarcasm into pungent and rememberable lines of the
most consummate terseness. He possesses a singular power of presenting
moral vices and social foibles and follies in all their contemptibleness,
and there is ample reason to believe that, as he expressed it, it was
indignation which created his lines. It is Juvenal and Horace, though
chiefly the former, who have served as models for Dryden and Pope,
for Hall and Butler, and for Byron in his _English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers_. The less fierce and more descriptive part of Juvenal’s work
also found a notable imitation in Johnson, whose _London_ is copied from
one satire and his _Vanity of Human Wishes_ from another.
Often cognate to satire is epigram, as treated by Martial, a writer of
the generation preceding Juvenal. An epigram is, in fact, apt to be a
stinging satire in little. This is, however, a very distinct departure
from the nature and province of epigram as employed by the Greeks. Of
this something has already been said. It would, nevertheless, be a
mistake to suppose that the narrow sense now usually, if erroneously,
given to “epigram” was equally the sense in which it would have been
understood by the contemporaries of Martial. The “sting in the tail” is
by no means indispensable. That the wit and verbal dexterity of Martial
were so often applied to caustic purposes was no hindrance to the use of
the same qualities in epigrams of compliment, of fancy, of description,
and of mere humour. We cannot, it is true, assign to Martial a place
in “poetry” proper. A man without convictions or much refinement of
feeling, but well acquainted with his world, witty, and a manipulator
of phrase, he poured out more than a thousand of these little pieces,
many excellent, many execrable, many indifferent. But in this species of
literature—be it worth what it may—it is Martial who has determined the
form and matter of the epigram for modern Europe.
* * * * *
In prose, Roman literature is very copious, although not equally
rich in all domains. Its chief strength lies in history, after which
come philosophical works, oratory, and letter-writing. With Roman
jurisprudence and with grammatical (or philological) writing we are
not here concerned. The famous Cato, the Censor (184 B.C.), has left
us a treatise _On Agriculture_, consisting of practical maxims which
are scarcely literature; and a large number of didactic works (many of
which are not preserved, or only preserved in fragments) were produced
at different dates of the republic or the empire by men of distinction.
Thus Varro, a most erudite contemporary of Cicero, wrote voluminously
upon _Antiquities Human and Divine_, upon _The Latin Language_, and upon
_Agriculture_. Seneca the elder, in the reign of Tiberius, collected
educational examples of methods of rhetorical disputation. In the time of
Claudius medicine was treated by Celsus. Columella exhausted the subject
of agriculture. During the Flavian _régime_ Frontinus composed a treatise
on aqueducts and another upon military operations, and the laborious
Pliny the elder put together thirty-seven books on _Natural History_, a
vast cyclopaedia of mixed truth and untruth concerning all departments
of natural science, the arts connected therewith, and the fine arts to
boot. But, whatever merits and demerits of style these works display,
they hardly merit discussion in so general an outline of literary
history as this. It is impossible to say what information or ideas in
our modern possession might be traceable to writers like these, but
they can scarcely rank as appreciable “literary influences.” Doubtless
Pliny’s encyclopaedia is ultimately responsible for much of the confused
natural history of the middle ages, and not only Chaucer, but also the
sixteenth-century Euphuists, with their egregious similitudes, are almost
certainly in his debt. The affiliation of scientific knowledge and error,
however, lies beyond our scope.
In the field of history, Latin literature presents us with various
attitudes and styles. Historical writing in general may be of at least
three salient kinds. The first kind is imaginative, credulous, careless
of accuracy so long as the story is attractive, the narrative being, as
Quintilian would have it, “akin to poetry.” In the second kind, sheer
imagination may play no pronounced part, but there may be a rhetorical
tendency to embellish and expand, and to exaggerate the lights and
shades. The third kind is direct, simple, impartial, shrewdly critical.
In classical Roman history we have (besides the “Lives” of Nepos),
the works of Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus, and Suetonius. We cannot
take all these together and refer them to any one of the above-named
descriptions. So far as there is a characteristic common to any group of
them it is to be found in the fact that Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus all
show in various ways the customary Roman taste for rhetorical effect.
To this extent they are not greater sinners than Macaulay or Carlyle,
who, like them, fall into the second of the divisions described.
Meanwhile the _Commentaries_ (or “Notebooks”) of Caesar offer the best
example that Latin can supply of the third style. His plain narrative
in straightforward Latin is easily distinguished from the rich and
picturesque eloquence of Livy, the conscious stylism and laboured
point of Sallust, and the epigrammatic brilliance of Tacitus. Once
more Suetonius, a naturally inferior writer in a decadent age, is the
precursor, in his _Lives of the Twelve Caesars_, of that less ambitious
history which gossips and “deals in _ana_” concerning great personages
and their surroundings. Among all the Roman writers it is in vain that
we seek the historian who will, like Thucydides, describe the facts with
a lucid and serene impartiality, while clothing them with that style of
supreme art which makes them live before the reader.
These qualifications made, it still remains indisputable that Livy and
Tacitus are two of the very foremost historians in the literature of
the world. The unpretentious work of Caesar has its claim as well as
its intrinsic interest, but it cannot rank with these. Sallust, despite
undeniable merits, is placed in a minor rank by the triteness of his
ideas and the obviousness of his reflections. But Livy, in virtue of his
superb eloquence and unflagging descriptive power, and Tacitus, in virtue
of his shrewd insight and vivid presentation in a style inimitable for
its sparkling condensation—these will remain for ever admirable, as they
were, one or other, admired and followed by Gibbon, Macaulay, or Carlyle.
Of the vast work of Livy, written in the reign of Augustus, and entitled
_The History of Rome from its Foundation_, we possess but a portion,
although that portion is in itself of considerable dimensions. As Latin
prose, the style is magnificent in variety and colour. It may be called
Gibbon, without Gibbon’s sameness or too frequent ponderousness; Gibbon
warmed by patriotic ardour. That it sometimes suggests the poetical
is assuredly no drawback to what, after all, is a narrative intended
primarily to be read. As sober history it suffers from the shortcoming
that Livy hardly concerns himself with the verification and criticism of
authorities. He does not wholly emancipate himself from the first type of
historian. If Tacitus, a hundred years later, cannot be called credulous,
neither can he be called impartial. While we have no right to doubt his
moral earnestness, we have reasons for doubting his authority—or his
use of his authority—for the motives and conduct of the emperors who
reigned before his own time. As with Carlyle, and as with Macaulay, his
temperament and views led him to darken all the shades and whiten the
brightnesses. But, when we have admitted this, it is impossible to rise
from his _Annals_ or _Histories_ of imperial Rome without feeling that
men and women and events have been brought before the mind’s eye with
a wonderful vividness, nor without remembering many a phrase amazingly
packed with meaning. Whatever philosophic criticism may have to say of
Livy and Tacitus as history, they possess the essential literary merit,
that they captivate.
If in the region of philosophy we include, with works of morals and
politics, works on the principles and practice of rhetoric—a department
to which the Romans attached an unusual, but not unaccountable,
importance—we have to deal with three great names. These are Cicero,
Seneca, and Quintilian. The last-mentioned concerns himself with oratory,
the second with moral philosophy, while to Cicero nothing comes amiss.
Here, as generally elsewhere, the Latin genius makes little claim to
originality. When Cicero writes _On the Orator_ he is doubtless fully at
home with his subject; nevertheless he is practically converting into
Latin, with embellishments and enlargements, the system and terminology
of the Greeks. His moral treatises, which are excellent reading in their
kind, are but the expositions of an extremely clever man, who rightly
thought that he was rendering no small service to his own countrymen
by giving them in compact and intelligible form the substance of
Greek philosophy. With a view to imparting lightness to his themes,
and led by the example of Plato, he adopts the device of a pretended
conversation or disputation, but it can scarcely be said that he lends
much verisimilitude to the situation. The style everywhere is lofty, the
thinking is serious and helpful, if not profound or original, and it is
difficult to over-estimate the influence exercised by these books upon
the later thought of Rome, of the Middle Ages, or of the Renaissance.
Seneca the younger, writing under Claudius and Nero, is a philosopher
in the more strict sense of the term. Living in an age which demanded
striking phrase, point, and epigram, he is a master in that style. None
the less he was a deep and earnest thinker. Cicero, in dealing with
stoicism, is the highly intelligent amateur; Seneca is the expert, but
not a pedantic one. His _Moral Epistles_ and his dialogues are essays
touching upon matters of daily ethical concern, and both in their matter
and its presentation they deserve a much wider recognition than they
commonly receive. Some such recognition they did obtain at the Revival of
Learning, when Englishmen read the classics more for what they contained
than for the niceties of philology. It follows that the thoughts of
Seneca, acknowledged or not, have played no small part in modern
literature.
Quintilian, a salaried professor and practitioner of rhetoric under the
Flavian emperors, has left us an exhaustive treatise upon _The Training
of the Orator_, a training which begins at the cradle. The work sets
forth in all their completeness the principles of oratory, but it is
incidentally a discussion of education in a wider sense. The formation
of “a good man skilled in speaking” involves more than the cultivation
of language and the mastery of speech and delivery. It implies great
mental culture, and particularly culture derived from literature. To
subsequent ages Quintilian became an authoritative law-giver in the
domain of rhetoric, criticism, and language. Doubtless it would have
been intellectually better for the later European world to study its
philosophy and culture in the Greek originals, but, these being commonly
inaccessible, all gratitude is due to Cicero, Seneca, and Quintilian for
supplying so excellent a substitute in Latin.
Roman oratory, in the form of written speeches, is fortunately
represented for us by the greatest of Roman orators. It is a trite
observation that oratory can have no existence, except artificially,
under a despotism. Cicero, however, lived in the last days of the
republic, when speech was still free, burning questions numerous, and
the art of public speaking fully developed. Accordingly in his long list
of public speeches he has complete liberty to express himself with such
vigour, passion, pathos or humour as he chooses. The Roman ideal still
demanded from a great public character the quality of _gravitas_, a
moral impressiveness; that quality was in any case congenial to Cicero;
but, with that maintained, his scope was unrestricted. To the modern
reader the oratorical greatness of Cicero lies in the verbal eloquence
rather than in strenuous cogency of thought, or in those powerful flashes
which come from Demosthenes. He is an ingenious special pleader, a
tactful disposer of arguments; but, above all, he is a master of full,
rich, sonorous, impressive, and overwhelming language. As compared with
Demosthenes, he is at times somewhat too copious, and even too florid; he
is evidently speaking to a people less critical and less true in taste;
his humour is apt to be awkward; nevertheless the impression left upon
the reader is that of a man who employed superlative gifts, natural and
acquired, in an art of which he entertained a lofty conception. It is
not too much to say that the highest eloquence of Italy, France, and
England has at all times striven to be Ciceronian. Cicero was the model,
consciously or unconsciously, of Burke, Pitt, Fox, or Gladstone, just as
he was the model of great French preachers like Bossuet. It is perhaps
one mark of his inferiority to Demosthenes that he can be thus imitated.
Demosthenes himself is inimitable. In its later stages Roman oratory was
too much given to hunting the phrase, its decoration became vicious with
efforts of preciosity. But it cannot be said that these productions of
decadence have exercised any appreciable effect upon English speaking or
writing.
Just as in verse the Romans invented one form of literature, the satire,
so in prose they probably invented the epistle or letter. In Greek
literature letters are seldom found; those which are found are of dubious
authenticity, and in any case they are but essays in epistolary form. But
in Latin we meet with two great letter-writers, who, if they had written
nothing else, would have occupied the same positions in literature as
are occupied by Horace Walpole in England and by Madame de Sévigné in
France. The correspondence of Cicero was followed, a century and a half
later, by the correspondence of Pliny the younger, and both are full of
literary and also of historical interest. How far any of the letters
of Cicero were intended for publication is doubtful; very many of them
obviously were not. Those of Pliny, however, were carefully composed with
the distinct object of being given to the world. Apart from the different
characters and environment of the two men, there is consequently an
appreciable dissimilarity in the style. Except when he is writing
formal or courtesy letters to comparative strangers the correspondence
of Cicero carries with it a natural and unstudied air. He is vehement,
jocular, despondent, testy, as he thinks fit. He puns freely, breaks off
a sentence, quotes Greek, or uses colloquial terms. It would have been
well if critics of Cicero’s character had remembered to distinguish
private and not always serious correspondence from public behaviour. With
Pliny the case is otherwise. He was constitutionally a kindly man, with
a genuine love for letters; by training he was a staid man of affairs;
in circumstances he was rich, and his later years were leisured. But
he was withal a man who took himself with some excess of seriousness.
In any case he would not have forgotten what was orthodox for a Roman
gentleman; least of all was he likely to forget it in letters destined
for publication. His epistles are therefore always marked by a certain
reserve and a suggestion that they are intended to rank as literature.
Probably there would have been less unbending still, except for the
warrant of the letters of Cicero, who is plainly his model. Yet, in
spite of these drawbacks, they give an excellent picture of contemporary
Roman life, and afford an insight, otherwise unattainable, into current
Roman sentiment. For us it is important to note that the literary
letter-writing of France and England was, in the first instance, directly
suggested by these patterns of ancient Rome.
* * * * *
Despite the fact that there were three well marked periods in the
history of classical Latin literature, there are, nevertheless, certain
characteristics which appertain to that literature considered as a whole.
To say this is not to maintain that all Latin writers are monotonously
alike. Enough has been said already to demonstrate the contrary. It is
only meant that, taking writer after writer, and department of literature
after department, we can discover certain traits common to the majority
of them, and that these traits give a national character to the total
body of production. In the case of the Greeks the characteristic was the
clear-cut presentation of genuine thought or feeling at first-hand. In
the case of the Latins the case can hardly be stated so simply. Yet the
following observations may assist towards a fair generalization.
In the first place Latin literature is for the most part confessedly
imitative. It sets itself foreign models. Its standard of excellence
does not so much lie in the consciousness of having given a completely
truthful expression to a thought or emotion, as in the supposed success
with which a writer reproduces or transplants some Greek exemplar,
modifying it to what is believed to be unavoidably required by conditions
of the Roman tongue and Roman culture. It is in this spirit that the
comedians, the tragedians, the epic, lyric, and elegiac poets—Plautus,
Terence, Seneca, Virgil, Horace, Ovid—set about their work. It is
in this spirit that historians like Sallust, literary critics like
Horace, philosophic writers like Cicero, set about theirs. They are all
avowedly adapting Greek thoughts, Greek plots, Greek rhythms, and Greek
expressions, so far as the Latin can be made to admit them with elegance.
And in this secondary kind of work they were eminently successful. They
contrived somehow to make the Latin tongue do the work which they asked
of it. Horace and Virgil are consummate masters in this tasteful but
unoriginal labour. Thanks to them the forms and metres of Sappho and
Alcaeus, of Homer and Theocritus, were reproduced with only just so much
difference as the nature of the Latin tongue rendered unavoidable. The
result was verse of perfect polish and ease, and of splendid harmony.
But creators in any large sense they were not. They were magnificent
technical artists, of the kind who can reproduce an original picture as
a perfect etching with modifications, or who can carve and elaborate
artistic decorations if they are supplied with a portfolio of designs.
Possibly in this proceeding they worked some injustice to Latin
capabilities. It is conceivable that a number of Latin writers might have
left us work of much more essential strength if they had allowed their
own creative genius freer play. It was well that they should learn from
the Greeks, but not so well that they should mimic them. It is somewhat
as if the Germans, instead of writing from the full nature of a Goethe,
a Schiller, or their balladists, had followed the example of Frederick
the Great and put themselves into as complete a pupilage to the models
from France. There are instances in which the Latin genius did actually
follow its own course after gathering technical lessons from the Greeks,
and the result is then of such excellence that we cannot help feeling
some regret at the prevalence of deliberate imitation. The most truly
spontaneous, and therefore most creative, writers in Latin are Lucretius
the philosophic poet, Catullus the lyrist, Juvenal the satirist, the
letter-writers Cicero and Pliny, and the historians Caesar, Livy, and
Tacitus. Of these Lucretius, Catullus, and Caesar are frank and genuine
men with corresponding thoughts. They learn what Greece can teach in
the way of form, and then set themselves to deliver their own souls.
In letter-writing and in satire the native genius, strong in those
directions, broke out without assistance.
The first prevailing characteristic of Latin literature, then, is its
deliberate secondariness, which too often goes with lack of serious
purpose.
The second consists in a remarkable zest for polish of expression, a
studied elaboration of elegant diction and pointed phrase, which may
recall in some cases Pope, in others Tennyson. Something of this is
due to a necessarily disproportionate care for words in the absence of
substantial or novel matter; something is also due to the constitutional
Italian genius, which excels in cameo-cutting, whether in the literal
or the metaphorical sense. Doubtless the ideal literature combines the
exquisite expression with the original thought, but, if we must make some
surrender, we should naturally prefer to leave the brilliancy in the
thought. Latin writers, however, on the whole rather agreed with Boileau
and Pope, that the aim of literature was to utter “what oft was thought,
but ne’er so well expressed.” The result with them is that the most
famous of their poets are unsurpassable verbal artists, and that their
silver age writers are in particular exceedingly deft in the command of
terse and pointed phrase. But the result is also that their inferior
writers were apt to become mere tricksters and contortionists in words.
Nevertheless, it is one indefeasible ground of praise of the literature
of Rome that it did thus set itself and us a high ideal in the way of
melodious or compact and rememberable diction.
There is a third consideration. Greek literature reached its perfection
in the midst of free and stirring democratic activities; it was therefore
addressed to the mind and heart of the people at large. At Rome, on
the contrary, literature only reached its technical acme when freedom
was practically extinct. The work of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, belongs
already to a period of despotism. It is addressed first to imperial
ears and then to those of an aristocracy more or less idle. It is in a
large measure written by a coterie for a coterie, or by a dependant for
patrons, its object being to entertain elegantly. For that reason it
avoids emotional depths and altitudes, and shuns intellectual audacities.
It seeks to say clever things, displaying culture and knowledge agreeable
to a society which plays with such matters. It adheres to a certain ideal
of “good form,” which, however, does not preclude plenty of such allusion
as will show wide reading and social experience. Ardours for the vital
interests of society, and the frankness of large natures communicating
with their fellow men, are necessarily taboo. Whether these existed
largely in Roman natures is, as has been said already, matter for doubt,
but almost certainly they existed beyond the extent to which expression
was countenanced. It is therefore with more justice than is commonly
perceived that the “Augustan” age of English literature has received that
name.
It seems not unjust to sum up Roman literature—allowing for the
exceptions already made—as a literature largely imitative and secondary,
highly polished and elegant in execution, but limited in its intellectual
and emotional range as in its originality.
* * * * *
The influence, direct and indirect, of Latin literature upon English is
perhaps best realized from the tabulations which appear in this volume.
Nevertheless it may be helpful to make sundry notes upon certain more
obvious debts taken in chronological order.
In and before the age of Chaucer the poems of Ovid upon love and its
cure were much drawn upon by writers of romances and allegories. They
were the direct inspiration of much of the troubadour poetry of Provence
and thence of the mediaeval lyric verse of Europe in general. Ovidian
borrowings are manifest in the _Romance of the Rose_. Chaucer himself was
a student of Ovid, Lucan, Virgil, “Stace,” and also Livy. From Ovid’s
_Metamorphoses_ and love-elegies in particular he took much matter. His
_Knight’s Tale_ is ultimately from the _Thebaid_ of Statius. The reading
of his contemporary Gower, and of his successor Lydgate, was even more
deep in the same authors. At the beginning of the sixteenth century Gawin
Douglas translated the _Aeneid_, and soon afterwards Wyatt and Surrey
show themselves steeped in Seneca and the epigrams of Martial; Surrey
also translated portions of the _Aeneid_. Before Marlowe and Shakespeare
the more scholarly pioneers of drama, such as Sackville, sought for
tragic models in Seneca and for comic models in Plautus. Elizabethan
readers ransacked all available Latin books. Spenser’s _Eclogues_ follow
Virgil’s, and his _Faerie Queene_ is full of borrowings from the _Aeneid_
and from Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_. The effect of Ovid on Shakespeare
himself is manifest in his _Venus and Adonis_. Bacon who, like all
the great prose-writers of his time, could use both English and Latin,
shows in especial the influence of Seneca. Ben Jonson, who translated
portions of Horace and Martial, is an imitator of Horace in the way of
poetical epistles and short lyrics, and of Martial in epigram. In the
school of the “Sons of Ben” and the “Cavalier poets,” we meet with very
distinct manifestations of the combined influence of the lyrists Horace
and Catullus and the epigrammatist Martial. We know these to have been
favourite poetic reading of the period. Simultaneously the general
style of prose-writing, whether as in Milton or as in Jeremy Taylor,
was imagined to be based upon the rounded periodic style of Cicero, and
the language itself is deliberately Latinized to a remarkable degree.
Milton, who wrote Latin poems as well as English, is greatly and openly
indebted in his epics to both the matter and the manner of Virgil. The
post-Restoration comedy derives itself through a French medium from
that of Plautus and Terence. At the same time the second-hand critical
principles of Rome begin to prevail in England. Roscommon translates the
_Ars Poetica_ of Horace; Dryden translates the _Aeneid_ and passages of
Ovid; he also writes powerful satire in direct imitation of Juvenal.
Addison produced his _Campaign_ under the influence of Lucan, and his
_Cato_ under the influence of Seneca. Pope begins with pastorals after
the manner of Virgil and Theocritus, composes _Imitations of Horace_,
and copies the _Ars Poetica_ and Epistles and Satires in his own
poetical essays on criticism and morals. His _Messiah_ is a recasting of
Virgil’s fourth Eclogue and his _Eloisa to Abelard_ is based on Ovid’s
_Heroides_. Samuel Johnson’s _London_ and _Vanity of Human Wishes_
are similar copies of Juvenal, while his prose seeks to model itself
upon the Ciceronian. The great preachers and orators of the eighteenth
century are Latinists in their rhetorical principles. During the same
age the didactic poems, such as Dyer’s _Fleece_ or Akenside’s _Pleasures
of the Imagination_, are the outcome of the study of Lucretius and the
_Georgics_ of Virgil. The letters of Pope or Walpole no less distinctly
take their hint from Cicero and Pliny.
It is unnecessary to elaborate further a bare catalogue of such
obligations. It is, perhaps, more useful to emphasize one consideration
which should bring home the vast, if undefinable, influence necessarily
exercised by Latin thoughts and Latin expression upon English writers.
Before the days of Alfred and the days of Chaucer the chief writers of
prose in England composed in some sort of Latin. They knew Latin, and
read such Latin books as they could get. From the Revival of Learning
Latin came more and more to be studied as modern languages are studied
now, for the sake of actual speech, correspondence, or controversy. The
pens of Englishmen like Sir Thomas More, Bacon, and Milton, were fluent
in Latin. Ben Jonson, Cowley, Addison, and Samuel Johnson were great
Latinists among a society in which Latin knowledge was general. Landor
and De Quincey were no less great. There are few writers in the English
language who have not received at least some tinge of Latin education.
Familiar as all these generations have been with Latin books, practised
in the imitation of Latin diction, filling the language with Latin
terms, it is quite impossible to determine how deeply we are steeped in
the influence which has passed through them. During the last century it
is true that education has not cultivated that fluency in spoken Latin
which marked the two or three centuries preceding. Latin is no longer
necessary as a medium for the interchange of thought, and the increasing
number of arts and sciences restricts the prominence of any one study.
On the other hand it is no less true that almost every considerable
writer and speaker of the century had received that more recent form of
Latin education which consists in an accurate and tasteful study of the
words, styles and thoughts of the best, or most classic, of the Roman
writers—Catullus, Lucretius, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Livy, Ovid—rather
than Lucan or Statius. The influence of Roman literature during that
period has been more wholesome than during the later period of the
seventeenth and the greater part of the eighteenth century, an epoch in
which English writers delivered themselves over to almost as servile
a subjection to Latin (or rather Latin-French) patterns as the Romans
had once, with more reason, assumed towards the Greeks. That era, the
era of Dryden, Pope, Addison, Johnson, is in this sense the most Roman
period of our literary history. To it, unfortunately, we owe all that
personification of abstract qualities by the simple device of a capital
letter; all that use of “nymph” for “woman” and “fire” for “love”; all
that stereotyped phraseology, such as “reddening Phoebus lifts his golden
fire” for the “sun is rising,” from which we were delivered by Burns and
Wordsworth. To the Romans themselves these terms were artificial enough,
to the English they were doubly artificial.
CONSPECTUS OF LATIN LITERATURE
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES. LATIN NAME. | ENGLISH NAME.
DATE.
CHIEF WORKS.
THEIR RELATION TO GREEK LITERATURE.
SOME INFLUENCES ON FOREIGN TRIBUTARIES TO ENGLISH LITERATURE.
SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH WRITERS.
Tragic Drama
Gnaeus NAEVIUS | NAEVIUS
fl. 230 B.C.
Quintus ENNIUS | ENNIUS
fl. 200 B.C.
TRAGEDIES (only fragments extant).
Crudely translated from the Greek, chiefly Euripides.
Lucius Annaeus SENECA | SENECA
ob. A.D. 65
TRAGEDIES, e.g., _Medea_, _Hippolytus_, etc.
Imitating Greek subjects, metres, and treatment (chorus, etc.);
but more rhetorical, epigrammatic, and moralizing.
Served as type for Italian Renaissance drama and for the French
declamatory tragedy of Corneille, Racine, etc.
Little effect on English drama. Addison’s _Cato_ the best
instance of attempt at the Roman “classical.”
Comic Drama
Titus Maccius PLAUTUS | PLAUTUS
fl. 210 B.C.
COMEDIES, _e.g._, _Aulularia_, _Menaechmi_ (20 extant).
From Middle and New comedy, chiefly Menander; almost mere
adaptations, but broader and rougher. The scene is always
in Greek cities.
Type for Italian comedy of Renaissance. Great influence on
Molière, whose _L’Avare_ is from the _Aulularia_, and
his _Amphitryon_ from _Amphitruo_.
Shakespeare’s _Comedy of Errors_ is from Plautus’s
_Menaechmi_. Dryden’s _Amphitryon_ through Molière
from Plautus. So Fielding’s _The Miser_ = _L’Avare_ from
_Aulularia_. French comedy of intrigue (from Plautus and
Terence) reproduced in Congreve, Farquhar, etc.
Publius TERENTIUS AFER | TERENCE
fl. 160 B.C.
COMEDIES, _e.g._, _Phormio_, _Adelphi_, etc. (6 extant).
As with Plautus, but less boisterous.
As with Plautus. Molière’s _École des Maris_ is from the
_Adelphi_, and _Les Fourberies de Scapin_ from the
_Phormio_.
English comedy of intrigue, after the Restoration.
Epic Verse
Quintus ENNIUS | ENNIUS
fl. 200 B.C.
EPIC (on Roman history and legend) called _Annales_.
Copies the Homeric hexameter and borrows the Olympic deities.
Called the “Roman Homer,” but crude and inartistic.
Publius VERGILIUS MARO | VIRGIL
lived 70-19 B.C.
_AENEID_ (epic of Aeneas, legendary founder of Roman people).
Copies _Odyssey_ in first six books (wanderings), and _Iliad_
in last six (battles); borrows images and incidents from all
Greek writers. But more descriptive, philosophical, and
fastidious of expression.
The basis for subsequent epics. Utilized by Dante, Ariosto,
Tasso, etc., in Italy. Model for the French epic, _e.g._,
Voltaire’s _Henriade_.
Translated by Gawain Douglas (1513), Dryden, etc. Very
important for Milton’s _Paradise Lost_, Spenser’s
_Faerie Queene_, and to all modern poets of classical
training. See Tennyson’s poem, “To Virgil.”
Marcus Annaeus LUCANUS | LUCAN
lived A.D. 39-65
_Pharsalia_ (epic of civil wars between Caesar and Pompey).
Departing further from Greek directness. Cleverness in rhetoric,
epigram, description, satire, etc., aimed at. Fondness for
details of horror.
Publius Papinius STATIUS | STATIUS (“Stace” in Chaucer)
fl. A.D. 70
_Thebaid_ (epic of Thebes and its heroes).
Clever and facile verse: elegant simile, etc., of more
importance than the matter.
Two favourite writers in the early middle ages. Statius
affected by Dante and Boccaccio (who founds his _Teseide_
upon him).
Lucan and “Stace” were among the chief Latin reading of
Chaucer’s day. [_The Knight’s Tale_ (of Palamon and
Arcite, modernized by Dryden) is from the _Thebaid_.]
Comparatively little read in modern times. Addison’s
_Campaign_ has clear traces of Lucan; so has Drayton’s
_Barons’ Wars_.
Lyric Verse
Gaius Valerius CATULLUS | CATULLUS
lived 84-54 B.C.
POEMS (odes, epigrams, and occasional pieces—especially
love-poems to “Lesbia”).
Imitates metre and style of Greek lyrists (Sappho, etc.) and
Alexandrian elegists (Callimachus, etc.). Most Greek of all
Romans in his simplicity and spontaneity.
His works lost during Middle Ages, and always less read than
Horace.
Quintus HORATIUS Flaccus | HORACE
lived 65-8 B.C.
_ODES AND EPODES_ (love, politics, _vers de société_,
moralizings).
Avowed imitation of Sappho, Alcaeus, Pindar, Anacreon. Adapts
Greek lyrical metres. Deft but unimpassioned.
The model for lyrists and writers of social verse in France
and Italy.
These combined are the type for all such English odes and
short pieces as are addressed to “Lesbia,” “Delia,” “Celia,”
etc. (Ben Jonson). Horace in particular was imitated by the
seventeenth-century “cavalier” poets (Suckling, Herrick,
etc.), and (unconsciously) guides later writers of
_pièces de circonstance_.
Elegiac Verse
Albius TIBULLUS | TIBULLUS
Sextus Aurelius PROPERTIUS | PROPERTIUS
fl. 20 B.C.
ELEGIES (of affection and sentiment).
Direct imitations of Alexandrian Greek elegists.
Exerted an influence similar to that of Ovid, but in a less
degree.
Publius OVIDIUS Naso | OVID
fl. 43 B.C.-A.D. 17.
VARIOUS POEMS, _e.g._, _Heroides_ (in the form of
letters). _Tristia_, _Amores_, etc.
The Greek models are less epigrammatic. Ovid affects pointed
couplets (compare Pope).
Ovid was a favourite author even in the early Middle Ages. His
love-elegies were particularly affected (as in the _Romance
of the Rose_), and are best represented (in a shorter form)
by the sonnet of the Italians and of the sixteenth-century
English. The Italian painters and poets of the Renaissance
made great use of him, and Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Pope
are much indebted to him. The favourite work, however, was
his _Metamorphoses_, which is not in elegiac, but in
heroic verse, being narrative.
Satiric Verse
Gaius LUCILIUS | Lucilius
fl. 120 B.C.
SATIRES on politics, literature (fragments), etc.
Quintus HORATIUS Flaccus | HORACE
65-8 B.C.
_SATIRES AND EPISTLES_ (genial).
Aulus PERSIUS Flaccus | Persius
fl. A.D. 60
SATIRES (crabbed style)
Decimus Junius JUVENALIS | JUVENAL
fl. A.D. 120
_SATIRES_ (polished, terse, trenchant).
A native Latin growth (Greek satire takes a different form and
medium).
Models for much Italian satire (Aretino, etc.), and French
(Regnier, _Satyre Ménippée_, Boileau, etc.).
In English the best examples out of many are the _Moral
Essays_ and _Imitations of Horace_ by Pope, his
_Dunciad_, and the satires of Dryden (_MacFlecknoe_,
etc.). Compare Byron’s _English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_.
Johnson copies Juvenal in _London_ and _Vanity of Human
Wishes_.
Didactic (and “philosophical”) Verse
Titus LUCRETIUS CARUS | LUCRETIUS
fl. 60 B.C.
_DE RERUM NATURA_ (“the Constitution of Nature”).
In form follows old Greek philosophical poets, and in matter
expounds the philosophy of Epicurus.
Seen directly in the philosophical verse-essay (Pope’s
_Essay on Man_, Akenside’s _Pleasures of the
Imagination_, etc.): but Lucretius has also been the
favourite reading of many poets, _e.g._, Shelley.
Compare Tennyson’s Poem on “Lucretius,” Wordsworth’s
_Excursion_.
Publius VERGILIUS MARO | VIRGIL
lived 70-19 B.C.
_GEORGICS_ (poems on husbandry).
The idea taken from Hesiod.
[See HESIOD in the Greek Table.]
Quintus HORATIUS Flaccus | HORACE
lived 65-8 B.C.
_ARS POETICA_ (an essay in literary criticism).
An ill-digested _rechauffé_ of Aristotle and later Greek critics.
The source of the shallow criticism of Boileau and his school.
And of Pope and his school.
Pastoral Verse
VIRGIL
_BUCOLICS_ (or _ECLOGUES_).
From Theocritus, but moralized and sometimes artificial.
Imitated by Mantuan and Sannazaro in Italy, and Marot in
France.
Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_ etc. [_See_ Greek
Table: PASTORAL.]
Epigram
Marcus Valerius MARTIALIS | MARTIAL
fl. A.D. 90.
_EPIGRAMS_ (various subjects).
The conception of Greek epigram is polish and delicacy. Of Latin
it is chiefly point and sting.
The modern conception of epigram is entirely taken from the
Latin form. Martial is the one model.
History
Gaius Julius CAESAR | CAESAR
lived 100-44 B.C.
_COMMENTARIES_ (on the Gallic and the Civil Wars; simple,
straightforward narrative).
Gaius SALLUSTIUS Crispus | SALLUST
fl. 45 B.C.
_Catilina_ and _Jugurtha_
Attempts to imitate Thucydides. A commonplace moralizer.
Titus LIVIUS Patavinus | LIVY
Ob. A.D. 17
_HISTORY_ (of Rome); (rich style, ample, pathetic).
Adopts the Greek custom of putting _verbatim_ speeches
into the mouths of his characters.
Gaius Cornelius TACITUS | TACITUS
fl. A.D. 100
_HISTORIES_ and _ANNALS_ (of Emperors); (epigrammatic,
terse, satirical).
Aims at the condensation of Thucydides.
It is impossible to estimate the great influence of these
writers on later historians. Livy (with Cicero) is the model
(in point of style) followed by Gibbon. [Compare remark in
Greek Table: HISTORY.]
Oratory
Marcus TULLIUS CICERO | CICERO (and “Tully.”)
lived 106-43 B.C.
SPEECHES (59 extant, _e.g._, _Philippics_,
_Against Verres_, etc.).
Follower of Demosthenes, but in a more rotund and loaded style.
The model of most French oratory and preaching (Bossuet,
etc.) (Otherwise Seneca is followed).
The model of speakers and preachers of seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries (Jeremy Taylor, etc., to Burke, etc.).
The “Johnsonian” style is based on Cicero.
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus | Quintilian
fl. A.D. 100
_The Training of the Orator._
Letter-Writing
CICERO
106-43 B.C.
LETTERS (“To Atticus,” “To Friends”).
Gaius PLINIUS Secundus | PLINY (the Younger.)
fl. A.D. 100
LETTERS (to friends, to Trajan, etc.).
A specially Roman department of literature.
Type followed in France (Madame de Sévigné, etc.).
The model for published letters like those of Horace Walpole
and Pope.
Philosophy
CICERO
_Academica_, _De Officiis_, etc.
A reproducer of Greek systems in popular expositions.
SENECA
A brilliantly epigrammatic moralizer on old lines of thought.
Seneca was favourite reading of moralizers of all European
countries after the Renaissance.
Fable
Phaedrus | PHAEDRUS
fl. A.D. 15
FABLES
Reproducer of Aesop
_See_ “Aesop” in Greek Conspectus.
Encyclopaedic
Gaius Plinius Secundus | PLINY (the Elder.)
fl. A.D. 70
_Natural History_
Storehouse of mediaeval science.
III
LITERARY CURRENTS OF THE DARK AGES
Latin literature, despite its decline after the classical period, is
marked by a number of names which merit eminence in their several
domains. The era succeeding the silver age hardly deserves to be called
leaden. Literature does, indeed, both descend from the Virgilian and
Ciceronian style of language, and also adopt a less classic attitude
in its themes and sentiment, but it is not without a life and value
of its own. Some of the writers are pagan, some are Christian, but
their religious professions are not to be determined by their dates.
Apuleius, the African writer, a professional rhetorician and man of
letters, who wrote his prose _Metamorphoses_ or _Golden Ass_ in the
second century, is, of course, a pagan, and by no means a model one. The
work just mentioned, probably based on current folk-tales, is entirely
fiction, narrating the story of a man turned by sorcery into an ass, and
describing his adventures, scandalous, distressful, or amusing, in the
hands of robbers and other low types of a society which, we may trust,
was not really so bad as it is here painted. Yet into this otherwise not
very edifying work there comes the exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche,
which has been so frequently translated or recast in literature—best
of all by William Morris in the _Earthly Paradise_—and so frequently
utilized as the subject of pictorial or plastic art.
From the beginning of the third century until the fifth, Christian views
find their exponents in Tertullian, Lactantius, Ambrose, Prudentius,
Jerome, and Augustine. To Jerome is due in particular that Latin version
of the Bible of which the present _Vulgate_ represents successive partial
revisions, to Augustine the _City of God_, to Ambrose the initiation of
the Christian hymn, and to Prudentius its development. Christian also is
the Gallo-Roman poet Ausonius, of the later fourth century, but his verse
is by no means dedicated to Christian teaching. In him appears what might
seem to be a modern, if not fully “romantic,” partiality for affectionate
observation of natural scenery, best illustrated by his well-known
description of the stream and banks of the Moselle.
Meanwhile among pagan writers must be reckoned Ammianus, a picturesque
and interesting historian, who undertook to bring the work of Tacitus up
to the year 378; Macrobius, whose _Saturnalia_ discourses in a desultory
fashion on a variety of literary and social topics; and Claudian, the
composer of polished poems on contemporary history, in which extremely
skilful polish of verse is united to brilliant gifts of description.
The religion of Boethius, the last man of letters who can be said to
linger on the border of the classical world, but who in style and thought
stands nearer to it than many an earlier writer, is doubtful. In all
probability he was a pagan, but he concerned himself, not with religion,
but with philosophy as reflected from Plato. His _De Consolatione_, or
_Consolations of Philosophy_, is a prose work interspersed with verses,
and in virtue of this production, which often rises to great excellence,
Boethius stood to the Dark Ages for the exemplar of the philosopher. His
place in mediaeval reading was a very high one, and may be gauged from
the fact that in England Alfred the Great translated his _Consolations_
into Anglo-Saxon, though with insertions and comments of his own. To
Chaucer, as to all the mediaeval world, “Boece” was part of the staple
library.
* * * * *
During the centuries from the decay of the literature of Rome till
the emergence of the modern literatures of western Europe there occur
the great migrations of conquering peoples and the forming of the new
nations. The Gothic conquests of Italy and Spain, the movements of the
Franks, Burgundians, and Lombards, the story of Alaric or Theodoric,
of Pharamond or Clovis, belong to history, as do the settlement of the
Anglo-Saxon and Danish tribes in Britain and the occupation of Normandy
by the men from whom it is named. Against these Teutonic triumphs
and their influence to the north must be set the Moslem triumphs and
influence to the south. Not only did the Moors conquer and hold for
centuries the greater part of the Spanish peninsula, but Sicily also
passed for five generations into the hands of the Saracens. In England
a national history commences with Alfred at the close of the ninth
century, but its development, both from a literary and social point of
view, was deeply modified at the Norman Conquest. In France and Germany
the empire of Charlemagne, the great fact of the eighth century, had
done much towards consolidating culture and reviving learning. At the
end of the eleventh century began the Crusades, which helped to bring
the western nations into closer touch with each other and also into
contact with the Greek world and with legends of the east. Meanwhile, the
Christians of north-west Spain were gradually winning back their country
from the Moors, but, in the process, absorbing no little of their Arabic
culture.
By the twelfth century the modern Romance tongues, Italian, French,
Provençal, and Castilian, are sufficiently formed for literary purposes,
and the speakers of those languages have attained to the position
of steady and settled communities. Though the English language is
temporarily in abeyance for literary uses, the English nation is free
from further disturbance, while nevertheless it is now happily placed
in direct communication with continental tendencies and ideas. In the
meantime it must not be forgotten that Europe had now become Christian,
and that in the west the teaching of one great Church was common to all
the nations.
This long period of disintegration and reconstruction is for the most
part so little studied, and is, in fact, comparatively so studiously
ignored, that we are apt to forget how long it actually was. The
literary productions of nearly seven hundred years are regarded as of so
little moment that we forget there were any at all. Yet for a proper
comprehension of the inter-relations of literature as affecting the
development of our own, it is necessary to form some conception of the
various literary currents of these “Dark Ages.”
* * * * *
As might perhaps be anticipated after a survey of the historical
movements and situations, we have to reckon with:
(1) Such Latin literature, of classical or later date, as survived after
the wreck of the empire and still formed part of, at least, the higher
reading.
(2) Such new productions in Latin as appeared before the new tongues were
formed.
(3) The matter and influence of the literature of the Church, comprising
the Hebrew Scriptures, chiefly in the shape of the Vulgate, commentaries,
moral works, and also religious legends, lives of saints, and the like.
(4) The material and spirit brought in by the Teutons in the shape of
their own old epics and sagas, with the myths which formed their basis.
(5) The Celtic feeling, traditions, and compositions which made their way
into the _répertoire_ of such countries as contained a Celtic population.
(6) The learning, literary matter, and literary art of the Saracens,
whether introduced by way of Spain or by that of Sicily, and whether
derived from Oriental or from Greek sources.
(7) Literary influences from the Greek world, including remnants of
classical and post-classical compositions, mediaeval productions of
Byzantium, and tales of the East which had been rendered into a Greek
form.
It is difficult to disentangle these various threads, which interlace
each other in complex ways, but on the whole the most satisfactory
procedure will be to make a note or two upon each. Such notes will
necessarily be brief to the point of mere hinting.
(1) It was, perhaps, to be expected that, with the decline of Latin
culture, the “fittest” part of Latin literature to survive in the
knowledge of the semi-barbarized west should be that which lacked the
highest artistic qualities. It is only with the dawn of the first
Renaissance, which led up to and was assisted by the great Tuscan trio,
that the true classics began to reappear among the common reading of men
of superior learning. Virgil, indeed, was not wholly forgotten, nor was
Cicero, and in the age of Charlemagne there was promise of a much wider
scope. But, unless with the piously inclined—and often even with them—the
Dark Ages were more interested in scraps of miscellaneous information
containing a spice of the wonderful, derived and garbled from Pliny, in
stories with a similar spice of the marvellous and, by preference, of the
licentious, such as are to be found in the _Satyricon_ of Petronius and
the _Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, or in traditions of the art of love culled
from Ovid and crudely transmitted. For those of a more serious turn there
were the mild philosophizing of Boethius, the history of the Spaniard
Orosius, and the encyclopaedic educational medley of Martianus Capella;
and, for the religious, the hymns of Prudentius served as a model. Yet,
though sparingly met, the reading of literary Latin never quite failed,
and verses, for example, continued to be written as much in the style
of Claudian as writers could command. Latin comedy was not unknown to
the monasteries, since the German nun Hrotswith is found in the tenth
century composing prose imitations of Terence. It is impossible, in the
defect of our material, to tell with any precision the extent to which
Latin reading was directly kept in vogue. Capella and Orosius, at least,
were accepted as standard works, but in respect of the legends, stories,
mythologies, and pseudo-marvels of natural history, such matter as shows
itself at the birth of the new literatures had in a large measure come
back in roundabout ways and through other channels.
(2) It is more easy to name the chief Latin productions of the Dark
Ages themselves. If we regard Boethius as the last figure in Roman
literature proper, the series consists mainly—for the sixth century—of
the voluminous writings of Cassiodorus, historical and educational;
the informal _History of the Franks_ by Gregory of Tours; and the work
of the Goth Jordanes concerning his own people. To the seventh century
belong the Christian and didactic _Moralia_ of Gregory the Great,
and the encyclopaedic _Origines_ of Isidore of Seville. To these we
must add two writers of Great Britain; the one, Gildas, who wrote in
Wales, in the middle of the sixth century, his dolorous account of the
conquest of Britain by the Saxons; the other, the Englishman Bede, whose
_Ecclesiastical History_ and biographical works belong to the eighth.
The age of Charlemagne, with its vigorous encouragement of education,
consolidated all the promiscuous learning of the time, in which style
plays a part altogether subordinate to the multifarious contents. From
a literary point of view the creations above-named are of little moment
to our subject, except in so far as information and misinformation from
this uncritical mass of material found its way into all the work of our
pre-Renaissance writers. Their chief merit is that they kept the channels
of classical influence from being completely blocked. We must, however,
note one important innovation in literary form. This was the introduction
of rhyme into Latin hymns. The exact source of the novelty is unknown,
but it began as early as the fourth century, and, together with Arabic
influence, it helps to account for the use of rhyme which became current
in the neo-Latin countries before their modern languages produced a real
literature.
(3) The Hebraic influence which came through Christianity is as obvious
as it was far-reaching. Every step in the Christianizing of Europe meant
the conveying, not only of new sentiment and new ways of regarding
things, but also of new materials in the way of Biblical history, however
distorted in perspective. From the new doctrines of self-mortification
there grew legends of the saints; from the traditions of their sanctity,
legends of miracles; from the persecutions, legends of the martyrs.
Both the Old and the New Testament already existed in a Latin form even
before the more competent and authoritative version of Jerome (about A.D.
400). It should also be observed that the Bible which was thus rendered
accessible was then read, far more than in later times, as a book
containing matter interesting in itself, and therefore to be utilized and
recast in story, apart from its uses in theology. Meanwhile round the
original Scriptures both the earlier and later “Fathers” built up large
masses of comment. When we remember that in the Dark Ages it was the
churchmen who kept alive literary cultivation and production, and that
the Bible narrative, the legends, martyrologies, and Christian doctrines
were conveyed to every mind by sermons and other agencies, it is manifest
how extensive must have been the effect upon thought and matter before
the newly forming literatures emerged. On actual literary art and style
it is true that there could be but little palpable influence, until, or
unless, the Bible came to exist and to be widely read, as it eventually
did in England, in the vernacular. But of this something more will be
said in a later section of this book.
(4) With the Teutonic invaders of France there came in the spirit of
feudal relationship. For centuries this spirit survived. Combined with
the Celtic exaltation which is so pronounced in the Arthurian legends,
and also with the sentiments of Christianity, it became embellished into
the well-known mediaeval conception of knighthood with its vows of utter
loyalty and self-devotion. The way was thus prepared for the knightly,
or chivalrous, romances which are to be described in the chapter on the
literature of France.
But, besides this feudal spirit shown in the Franks, there had already
existed among the Germanic tribes before their settlement in France or
Britain an orally transmitted literature. Its form was epic, and its
themes the superhuman exploits of heroes among scenes of slaughter and
carousal, in contest with huge monsters, and under the dispensation of
rude pagan deities, Woden, Thor, and the rest of the Teutonic pantheon.
Between the fourth and sixth centuries this heroic poetry of Germany
grows into appreciable form, and both the Franks of the Continent and
the Anglo-Saxons of England bring with them their several portions. In
Germany itself it is much later that the _Nibelungen Lied_ is edited into
a connected shape; but to England there came in the sixth century the
epic legend of _Beowulf_, of which the source is to be found in events
of southern Sweden and the Western Baltic dimly recorded. This poem was
edited in Christian times, and with some Christian additions, during the
literary flourishing of northern England in the early part of the eighth
century. Another poem carried from the mainland by the Englecyn was the
_Song of Widsith_ (the _Far-Traveller_), a wandering gleeman who has much
to say of the deeds and generosity of the Gothic and other German chiefs
among whom he roamed “as his fate willed,” and to whom he “unlocked his
word-hoard.”
In point of matter this Germanic contribution to Dark Age literature is
perhaps of little account. But its vigour of action and strenuous temper
did no little towards determining the virility of the French _chansons
de geste_, which formed so large a portion of English reading in the
pre-Chaucerian period. In point of form it is necessary to note that the
Anglo-Saxon method of versification, based on accent, alliteration and
assonance, is naturally inherited from the German tradition. With very
slight modification the method of Anglo-Saxon poetry is also that of
Langland in his _Piers Plowman_ of the Chaucerian age. Though this was
subsequently abandoned by English poets in favour of the French system
of rhyme and numbered syllables, the use—all the more artistic for being
disguised—of alliteration and accent has survived as one of the chief
formal beauties of all our poetry.
Whereas the Teutonic poetry, when it came in contact with Christianity in
England or France, soon lost its characteristic themes, its mythology,
and much of its savagery, the older matter and spirit still flourished
among the pagan Norsemen, and were re-imported into northern England with
the invasions of the Danes.
(5) More distinguishable and pronounced effects upon the literature
of western Europe were produced by a backward invasion of the Celtic
themes and temperament. There was much Celtic blood in northern Italy
and in Spain, still more in France and the British Islands. When once
the Celtic temperament emerged in literature it was sure of a ready and
wide response. Perhaps no such emergence would have happened if it had
not been that in the Dark Ages the Christian scholars—the only authors
of that epoch—were especially cultured and ardent in Wales and Ireland.
The racial and patriotic feelings of the British Celts were pathetic
and intense, and, whether among those in western Britain, or among the
emigrants to Brittany, the exploits of their race were celebrated in song
marked by a high spirit of pride, as well as by a peculiar mysticism and
a remarkable sentiment of chivalry and romance. The actual contributions
of the Celts to our own literary making are the subject of brief remark
elsewhere.
(6) The influence of the East during the period before the first
Renaissance was of no small importance. The language through which
it came, but not often the language in which it originated, was the
Arabic of the Saracens, whether as invaders of Spain or of Sicily. It
is precisely while the literary state of Europe was at its lowest that
the Saracenic culture was at its height. Into Spain, where the Moors had
established themselves in splendour and opulence, there followed all
the learning of the Semitic East, in philosophy, natural science, and
medicine, together with the literary forms of the Arabs and the music
of their accompaniments. Though the western Saracens were politically
altogether separate from the Caliphate of Bagdad, the literary language
was common to the Moslem world, and men of learning and artistic
gift—whether Arabs or Jews—were equally welcome at either end. In the
reign of Abd-ur-Rahman, in the early part of the tenth century, there
particularly flourished in Moorish Spain the light verse of love and its
gay surroundings. Meanwhile Cordova developed what was practically a
University, to which congregated all manner of Oriental talent, and in
which studies in science and philosophy were prosecuted with zeal. Nor
was the diffusion of all this culture restricted to the Arabs or their
Spanish subjects. Many Christians from other parts of western Europe
sought a knowledge of mathematics or medicine at Cordova, nor were these
severer accomplishments all that the visitor would acquire.
To literature proper the true Arabs would have contributed little. In
their original home their poetry had mostly taken the shape of the
_qasîda_, a loosely connected ode, in which an introduction concerning
the forsaken camping ground was regularly followed by reflections on
the singer’s love affairs, and these by thoughts concerning his desert
wanderings, his steed, and finally his chief. Of most importance to us,
perhaps, is the fact that this Arabic verse was in rhyme, and that short
odes, or _ghazels_, of fourteen lines, appear to anticipate the sonnet, a
form which arose in Sicily in a court frequented by cultured Moslems.
After the establishment of Islam, the new religion at first exercised
a cramping effect, but the same fondness for rhyme (which, indeed, was
associated with notions of sacred or magic power) introduced it even
into the prose of the Koran. When the Saracen conquest had extended
widely and included Persia, the superior culture of the Persians gave
them, from about A.D. 750, a predominating influence at the court of the
Abbasids at Bagdad. Arabic literature, therefore, widened its forms and
themes, and its poetry now embraced lyrics of love and wine, satires and
elegies, largely of Persian origin. Of this poetry in general it may be
said that it is marked by a peculiar predilection for sententious wisdom
in the shape of proverbs and aphorisms, and for fables and allegories
which convey similar maxims. These, we shall find, appear in full force
in Spain, where they are converted into part of the earliest literature
in Spanish. For the collection of such fables the Arabs and Persians
could reach a hand in either direction. From the west they could take
the Greek fables of Aesop and convert them into the Arabic fables of
Loqman; from the east they could gather the Indian fables of Pilpay (or
Bidpai), translated first from the Indian _Pancatantra_ into the Middle
Persian (better called Pehlevi), and thence by Muqaffa into the Arabic
_Kalila and Dimna_. In this collection the actions of the beasts serve
subtly to convey to a prince rules of wise conduct, more moral than the
later principles of Macchiavelli. The Orientals showed an equal passion
for purely romantic stories, provided that they contained wonderful
and magical occurrences, much prowess, and luscious suggestions of
magnificence and pleasure. _The Thousand and One Nights_, better known as
the _Arabian Nights_, form an immense body of such compositions, which
have been perpetually translated and re-translated, and which are still
among the standard books of the world.
But the Saracens were by no means sunk in sententiousness or frivolity.
They were impassioned for philosophy and science, especially the
sciences of mathematics, astronomy, medicine, and chemistry. For their
acquirements in these directions they were indebted to the Greeks, and
chiefly through the Syrians of Mesopotamia. Here Hellenism, introduced
by Alexander, had grown into peculiar strength, nor was the Greek blood
itself inconsiderable. From the Syrians the Arabs derived their knowledge
both of Aristotle and of Plato, although, from their practical turn of
mind, it was the Aristotelian philosophy which they mainly affected, and
which passed into the famous Arabic translation of Averrhoes. Carried
to Cordova, much of this learning, and particularly that derived from
Aristotle, was disseminated through western Europe. The Arabic influence
on thought, reflected from Greece, was therefore great. From a more
purely literary point of view, we must reckon with the introduction of
Oriental apologues and tales, although many of these, as will be seen
immediately, come in also from eastern Europe through a Greek medium.
In point of form it is impossible not to conclude that the minstrelsy
and poetry which prevailed in Moorish Spain contributed liberally to
the fashioning of the troubadour poetry of Provence. The itinerant Arab
minstrel was not welcomed solely by Moors; he played his part among the
true Spaniards, and Spaniards themselves turned minstrels after the
same fashion. The eastern, or Catalonian, part of Spain was in language
virtually identical with the neighbouring south of France, and no border
separated the Catalonian minstrelsy from the Provençal districts. In 1112
the Count of Barcelona became the ruler of Provence, and in his train
followed all the poetry and song which had grown familiar in Catalonia.
It is dangerous to attempt to decide the more and less of direct
borrowing; but the manner of the troubadour, his rhymes, his themes of
the _tenso_, the _planh_, and the morning and evening songs, so closely
recall the machinery and devices of the Saracens, that the affiliation
can hardly be denied.
(7) Direct effect of Greece upon Europe to the West was in abeyance from
the fall of Rome till the Renaissance. Occasionally indeed, but very
seldom, we hear of scholars who read some Greek, and Theodore of Tarsus
actually visited and taught in Anglo-Saxon England in the later seventh
century. But such influence of Greek work as appears during the dark and
mediaeval times comes only in circuitous ways and from inferior writers
of inferior matter. It for the most part appears in stories derived
from the post-classical Greek romances, or from Oriental tales first
translated into Greek and then recast into Latin.
Greek romance itself—beginning as early as the second century, but
mostly produced at uncertain dates from the fourth century onwards—at
once betrays an Oriental atmosphere. Its genesis is not so much in the
Greek mind as in the eastern mind, with which the empire of Alexander
had brought the Greeks into contact. The writers commonly hail from
Asia Minor or Alexandria, and the scenes and adventures are apt to be
Babylonian, Syrian, or Egyptian. Their chief features are much the
same. A number of unlikely and inconsequent adventures, comprising
separations and stratagems of lovers, travels, voyages, dangers, pirates,
magic, murders, descriptions, and dreams, are tediously repeated with
unessential variations. One of the first examples, it is true, deals
with wanderings in the north and west, among Celts and Cimmerians. This
is the _Marvels beyond Thule_ of Antonius Diogenes. But the Babylonica
of Iamblichus and the _Aethiopica_ (or _Theagenes and Chariclea_) of
Heliodorus have their _mise-en-scène_ in the east, with events and
wonders in the Oriental style. The latter work enjoyed a special vogue,
and portions of its contents were not scorned even in comparatively late
times by Italians like Tasso and Guarini, and Frenchmen like Hardy and
Racine. This, together with the _Leucippe and Cleitophon_ of Achilles
Tatius, and the pastoral romance of _Daphnis and Chloe_ by Longus, played
no small part in the conception of the French sentimental romances of the
seventeenth century, beginning with D’Urfé and carried on by Scudéry and
La Calprenède. The work of Longus is on the whole the most important,
since it contains the new element of pastoral setting and description and
some novelty of simple sentiment. In the Dark Ages themselves we cannot
tell how far these productions were known in any direct form in the west,
but at least we know that nothing travels more quickly than stories.
Another romance, with the usual elements of love and adventure, and with
the addition of “recognition of the long-lost,” was the famous story of
_Apollonius of Tyre_, of which we possess only the Latin version, through
which the tale was passed westward. This work was favourite reading in
the age with which we are here concerned. It was translated even into
Anglo-Saxon, and later came in again as an English version of a French
rendering.
Of a different character was the _Barlaam and Josaphat_ of John of
Damascus, an ecclesiastical writer of the eighth century. The story is
derived from Buddhist sources in India. Though magic plays its part,
the whole is naturally of a moral and theological turn. The mediaeval
world found it vastly interesting, for after its conversion into Latin
by Vincent of Beauvais in the thirteenth century, it passed into nearly
every European language which could pretend to a literature.
Meanwhile, through Greek versions, there came in tales of purely
non-Greek construction. Chief among these was the work known to
more modern times as the _Seven Wise Masters_, originally an Indian
production, styled the _Parables of Sandabar_. This was turned into
Persian or Arabic, then into Greek under the name of _Syntipas_, thence,
in the thirteenth century, into Latin as _Dolopathos_, and thence again
versified into French.
All this material appears and reappears in the _fabliaux_ of France, in
the earliest _novelle_ of the Italians, and naturally in Boccaccio.
Other productions popular in the Dark Ages, of special note as the
storehouse upon which the French _trouvères_ in particular drew for
their classical cycles of romances (to be dealt with in the chapter on
French literature), were those attributed to “Dares Phrygius,” “Dictys
Cretensis,” and “Callisthenes.” If we place the two former under the head
of Greek work, it is because of their ascription to Greek writers and
their possible derivation, at least in part, from lost Greek sources.
They deal with the story of Troy, ostensibly from complementary points of
view—a Trojan and a Greek. That there actually was some sort of history
by Dares of Phrygia appears from a passage in Aelian; but the book _On
the Destruction of Troy_, in which mediaeval readers put their simple
trust, is a Latin production of a date probably not earlier than the
sixth century A.D., although it pretends to be a translation of Dares
by the classical writer Nepos. Similarly an actual Greek Dictys of
Crete apparently did write an account of the Trojan war and the Greek
heroes, but the book in actual use was but a fourth-century production
in Latin, asserting itself to be a translation. Portions of these two
compilations were versified, transfused, and invested with an atmosphere
of mediaeval chivalry, by Trouvères, including the Norman-English Benoît
de Sainte-More, whom again Guido Colonna, in the thirteenth century,
exploited for his Latin _History of the Trojan War_, a work which became
the standard reference for “matter of Troy” as it appears in Chaucer,
Lydgate (_Troy Book_), and Gower. It is not from Homer, but from these
pseudo-classical accounts, that we derive such episodes as those of
Troilus and Cressida.
For the cycle of Alexander the same generation of Trouvères and their
English followers were indebted to a late Byzantine writer, who pretended
to be the Greek Callisthenes, contemporary of the great Macedonian. In
point of fact his _History of Alexander_ is an imaginative mixture of
passages culled from history with eastern stories and marvels. It is, of
course, in a Latin version that this farrago became known to the authors
of the _romans_.
We must not forget the vogue during these ages, devoted as they were
to tale and apologue, of the fables of “Aesop.” Of these there were in
mediaeval times various versions and collections, some derived directly
from the Latin Phaedrus, who had versified from the Greek; others from
the later Greek remodelling by Babrius; others again from an Arabic
collection, which combined a compilation of the Greek with a compilation
from the Indian Fables of Bidpai (or Pilpay). One early version, of
uncertain provenance, was that of King Alfred; and it was apparently a
general massing of all this material which, after passing through German
and French hands, became the famous _Esope_ of Caxton.
* * * * *
To all that literary matter which pretended to classical antiquity
the Middle Ages, entirely lacking historical perspective, gave the
comprehensive name of “Roman.” How freely that term was used, and how
miscellaneous had been the sources of legend, is manifested in the
strange medley of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, known as the
_Gesta Romanorum_, in which fragments of classical history, legends of
saints, and Oriental stories, are combined without the least notion
of their relations or contradictions. To the _Gesta_ every writer,
whether in England, beginning with Chaucer, or in Italy, beginning with
Boccaccio, had free recourse for the matter of his poems or his plots.
IV
FRENCH LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
It will be remembered that the influence of the literature of Greece
upon that of England has been exerted in various ways, direct and
indirect, and at various epochs; and that it continues still to operate
upon us rather more than less, affecting both the matter and the form
of what is written in our midst. The literature of Latin, again, has
always exercised an influence on every generation, Latin forms and
thoughts being imbedded in our English writings beyond all enucleation
or analysis. The literature of mediaeval and Renaissance Italy, we shall
find, had indeed much to do with shaping and polishing the literature of
England during the three hundred years from the time of Chaucer to the
time of Milton, but since the last-named period it has played little part
in determining what our authors shall say, or how they shall say it.
Prior in date and influence to that of Italy comes the literature of
France, with the debts in substance or in manner which we are bound to
acknowledge to our neighbours across the Channel. Our purpose does not
require that we should pretend to traverse the whole history of French
literature. If we dwell upon a certain number of salient topics or
famous names, it is because they in particular represent the chief types
in the development of French literary history, and either directly or
indirectly affect the evolution of our own.
France has, during civilized times, been politically and socially, as
well as geographically, so near to us; Englishmen and Englishwomen have
been generally so well acquainted with the French language and French
books, that it is beyond possibility to determine exactly what effect
French models have had and are having upon us, just as on the other hand
it is beyond possibility to analyse exactly the effect which English
models have had and are having upon France. But, without aiming at this
impossible exactitude, we may at least make ourselves aware of such
periods and manners of French influence as yield themselves readily to
the student’s survey.
It will be found that, though the influence of French literature has
been felt in every generation, there are two great periods in particular
during which the creations and the critical principles of Frenchmen
have dominated those of our own authors. The one is the period between
the Conquest and the rise of Chaucer; the second is the period which
began in the seventeenth century with writers of the age of Waller and
Dryden, and continued till towards the end of the eighteenth century,
that is to say, till the time of Cowper and Burns. Approximate dates are,
perhaps, necessary here, and the following may roughly serve. From about
the year 1100 till about the year 1370, and from about the year 1660
till 1780, England took its cue in many departments of literary work
from the matter, the form, and the critical principles of contemporary
France. Doubtless at all times there have been borrowings to and fro,
but these are the periods when the borrowings have been most one-sided
and most palpable. The interval from the maturity of Chaucer till the
earlier part of the seventeenth century was more especially the era of
Italian influence, introducing and supporting that mightier influence
from pagan Greece and pagan Rome which began in what is justly styled
the Renaissance. Again, since the latter part of the eighteenth century,
the time heralded by Cowper and crowned by Burns, the English have
emancipated themselves from direct literary imitation of the French,
although, as is briefly stated at the end of this chapter, there have
been no few currents of French influence upon various classes of our
writers, and, from them, upon the reading public.
Let it then be repeated that two periods especially concern us—the
period of the Norman and Plantagenet kings preceding and reaching up to
Chaucer, and that period which embraces the literature of the reigns of
Charles II, James II, William III, Anne, and the first two Georges; or,
to put the latter period more plainly and more suitably in a literary
connection, the age of Dryden, of the “Social School,” of the comedy of
Wycherley and Congreve, of the essays of Addison and the _Spectator_, of
the verse of Pope, of the prose of David Hume and Samuel Johnson.
The former period corresponds to the era of influence from the Provençal
Troubadours and the Northern French Trouvères, from the epic _chansons
de gestes_, the several kinds and cycles of “romances,” the allegories,
_fabliaux_, and other creations of which we must take some special
account. The second period answers in particular to the names of
Corneille, Racine, Molière, Boileau, Voltaire, and of a number of famous
French novelists, letter-writers, and critics. How and in what manner
these authors came to tyrannize so completely and so long over English
literature will require some terse statement. For the rest, in the period
from the writers of the _romans_ and allegories down to Corneille,
and again in the period from Rousseau to the present, we shall speak
of French authors only as links in the chain of French development in
itself, with a passing reference to any value they may have individually
for the literature of England.
* * * * *
The greater part of the land of Gaul—the modern France—was at an early
date occupied mainly by Celts, akin to, though not precisely identical
with, the present Bretons of the north-west corner of the country. There
were also Germans in the north-east, and Euskarians in the south-west.
Under the Roman empire the land was gradually overrun with Roman
settlers, Roman merchants, and Roman soldiers, and Latin naturally became
the official language, the language of high society, of literature, and
of education.
The mixed people in process of time thus came to speak a provincial
Latin, and to call themselves “Romans.” In reality they were very far
from being true Romans, and their speech almost was as far from being
true Latin. It was both corrupted and also broken up into local dialects.
It was, in fact, a blend of Latin with influences from the various
native peculiarities. Early in the fifth century a body of Franks, a
German people and speaking a German language, invaded the heart of Gaul
and permanently held its northern half. It is from them, the Franks,
that the whole country obtained the name of “France.” These conquerors
brought many a German word—mostly of war and feudalism—into the language
of the conquered, and likewise hastened the corruption of their “Latin”
syntax. The old Latin of culture became more and more widely severed
from everyday speech, and hence “Romance,” the corrupted language of
these modern “Romans” of Gaul, was regularly used as a term in direct
opposition to the old and literary “Latin.” It came, in fact, to mean
the vulgar tongue. It was about the year 800 that, in the northern half
of Gaul, the popular or Romance speech was formally recognized. In the
tenth century, the Northmen descended on much of this region, and became
its masters. Meanwhile the southern half of Gaul, which had been subdued
by other German peoples, the Visigoths and Burgundians, was forming its
own particular corruption of the Latin, and, among the dialects which
arose in that division, the dialect of Provence, in the south-east, took
earliest shape and clearest predominance.
* * * * *
Before entering upon any account of “French” literature, we must remove
from our minds the conception of France and French as they are, and
try to see them as they were in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
North of the Loire are various provinces and a distinctly marked Romance
language, the _langue d’oïl_, or “French.” A Celtic attachment, which has
immigrated from Great Britain, exists in Brittany, much Norman blood in
the north, and a Frankish influence has modified the Gallo-Roman staple.
South of the Loire are other states, and, for the most part, another
Romance language, the _langue d’oc_, or “Provençal,” with leanings rather
to an Italian kindred on one side, and a Catalonian-Spanish on the other.
Strictly speaking, the _langue d’oc_ extended over the country south of a
line drawn from about Charente to the Alps, while Provençal is properly
the language of the south-eastern portion of that area. Corresponding
to the two divisions of Gaul there arose two different forms and two
different spirits of literature, one “French,” one “Provençal.” Later it
was a joining of these two forms and spirits (though with a very distinct
predominance of the northern) which produced modern French literature,
or “French literature” in the ordinary sense; and it was both of them,
though chiefly the northern, which largely controlled England during two
centuries before Chaucer, and so contributed to the making of that poet
and his age.
There is a fact too often forgotten by students of English writing and
even of English history. It is that until Chaucer’s time England was
only a portion of the King of England’s dominions; the rest was on the
continent, in France. Under Henry II, King of England in the later
twelfth century, more than half of modern France, namely, Normandy and
other provinces north of the Loire, Poitou, Aquitaine and Gascony south
of it, were part of an English or Franco-English empire. At the peace of
Brétigny in 1360, Poitou, Guienne, and Gascony were still left a portion
of the realms of Edward III. This fact of the oneness of England and much
of France is of very great importance to early English literature. The
court and official tongue, and, in a large degree, the literary language,
of England were in any case French. The intercourse between England and
the _langue d’oïl_, and (though less continued) between England and the
_langue d’oc_, was, moreover, intimate and frequent. The writers and
minstrels were, in a considerable measure, common to England and to both
northern and southern France. No few of the writers belonging to old
literature in French, _e.g._, Walter Map, and Benoît de Ste. More, had
their homes in England; among them was Marie de France. The channels of
communication were constantly open, and the current flowing and ebbing
through.
* * * * *
A concise account must first be given of the two Gallic literatures,
“French” and Provençal. Provençal flourished early, and enjoyed but a
brief life. We may, therefore, trace this branch first, then the northern
French, and afterwards compare and combine the two.
Though northern France had its song of Roland and other _chansons_ at as
early a date as the love lyrics of Provence, yet, if literature implies
conscious art and system, Provençal composition is—with the exception of
Anglo-Saxon—the first real literature of modern Europe; it stimulated
Spain on the one hand, and Italy on the other; but it was in advance
of either. It is earlier than Dante, and, although it is appreciably
indebted to Ovid, and in some degree to Virgil, it is anterior to the
influence of the classical forms or spirit of the first Renaissance.
It began, helped by Moorish or “Arabian” impulses and lessons, in the
eleventh century, enjoyed a brilliant existence for two hundred years,
and died with the dying _langue d’oc_. Though it was never enriched and
made immortal by the work of any one transcendent genius, it can boast
a large number of composers possessed at least of talent and taste.
Provençal verses became models for all neighbouring countries. Frederick
Barbarossa in Germany, Richard Cœur-de-Lion in Anglo-French England,
Alfonso II in Aragon, Frederick II in Sicily, these royal personages
went out of their way to compose in the fashionable style and rhythm
of Provence. They became, in fact, _troubadours_. The terms needs some
explanation. A troubadour is not properly a wandering minstrel carrying
a guitar. That itinerant minstrel is an inferior order of person, the
_jongleur_ (in Provençal _joglar_). He stands to the troubadour as the
Anglo-Saxon “gleeman” to the “maker.” The troubadour was the “finder,”
the poet, generally a noble, a knight, sometimes even a prince. It is
no doubt true that the jongleur, who originally sang the troubadour’s
ditties, was fain, like other inferiors, to assume the higher rank, try
his own hand at composing variations, and call himself a troubadour, and
so the title became degraded. It is true also that the real troubadours
frequently chanted their own songs of love and glory, and so helped
to cause confusion between themselves and the mere jongleur minstrels.
But the troubadour proper was one who travelled sumptuously mounted and
attired, to be the honoured guest of _châtelains_ and princes.
Nearly all this Provençal literature of three centuries of troubadours is
lyric, not epic. It is generally singing, not narrating, and its theme is
chiefly personal feelings. Rhymes, which had, it is true, been sparsely
employed in monkish compositions in Latin, were then novel things in
European literature, although long and universally used by the Saracens.
The Provençal poets cultivated rhymes which grew more and more varied
and complicated; with careful elaboration of soft and harmonious sounds
they sang of two things, and almost only of two, to wit, love and glory,
gallantry and chivalry in both senses and connections. The verses were
love verses or martial verses, celebrating loyalty in love and valour
in arms. As a class they are without pretension to any profoundness
of imagination or to any sublimity. Their excellence is their music,
not any translatable substance of thought. It must be confessed that
the songs and subjects lacked variety; the same tricks of expression
and “conceits,” the same nouns and adjectives, the same situations,
the same “fantastic sentimentality,” would reappear monotonously, and
would inevitably suggest the artificial and unreal. One could hardly be
expected to read extensively in the _cansos_, or love-songs, of those
who called themselves the “gentle troubadours,” without a feeling of
satiety. The serenade (_serena_), the morning greeting (_alba_), the
dispute of lovers (_tenso_ or _joc parti_), the lament (_planh_), which
were recognized species of troubadour effort, inevitably suffered from
exhaustion of material. Nevertheless one cannot but be impressed with
the chivalrous idea of love which many of the Provençal poets professed,
and according to which they nearly always treat that passion, vaunting a
devoted tenderness and a delicate and sentimental worship. The influence
of this idea, as still further refined and ennobled in Tuscany, is
palpable in the attitude of Dante towards Beatrice, and of Petrarch
towards Laura; there are many traces of its influence in Chaucer and
his contemporaries. Through the Petrarchist sonneteers it again reaches
England in the Elizabethan age.
It must be enough merely to mention the names of Bernard de Ventadour,
Bertran de Born, Pierre Vidal, and Arnaud Daniel, among famous
troubadours. But a word may be said of that remarkable institution, the
“Court of Love,” to which a poem of Chaucer (or more probably of some
one with a large share of Chaucer’s mind) owes its conception and its
title. During the later generations of the “gentle troubadours,” the way
to speak and think of love and gallantry was reduced to a system. It was
made a science—called _el gai saber_, “the gay science”—which every poet
was supposed to understand and to have at his finger-ends. One favourite
form of poetry was the _tenso_, a dispute or altercation between
troubadours upon delicate questions and scruples of behaviour and feeling
in affairs of love. It became the fashion for noble ladies in those idle,
rather frivolous, but doubtless not unhappy days to hold mock courts,
in which poets sang one against the other, like opposing advocates;
whereafter the court gave its decision, or _arrêt d’amour_, and awarded
prizes to that troubadour whose arguments and verse were most in keeping
with the code prescribed by the gay science. “Is it a greater grief to
lose a lover by death or by unfaithfulness?” may serve as an example of
the subjects particularly favoured in these poetical courts of the ladies
of Gascony, of the Countess of Champagne, or of Queen Eleanor.
Such, briefly, was the genuine Provençal literature—lyrics of love and
bravery, with here and there a pastoral, and here and there a poem of
censure or satirical criticism. But true epics and romances of adventure,
sustained allegories, witty tales of common life, they had practically
none. For these we must look to northern France, to the land not of
the troubadours, but of the Trouvères. _Trouvère_ is the French form
corresponding to the Provençal _troubadour_, and equally means the
“finder,” who is indeed the “poet.” But in northern France there existed
different social conditions and a different clime; there was also the
sterner stuff which belongs to Franks and Normans, while in Brittany
there was the Celt, with all his melancholy fire and imaginative and
mystical emotion. The lyric literature of the north blossomed, indeed,
somewhat later than that of Provence, and is largely an imitation of it.
The romances of the trouvères are also distinctly infused with the ideas
and style of the lyric south. Nevertheless the great mass of the poetry
of northern France is of its own creation in both matter and spirit. It
is the poetry of the epic, the allegory, and the tale; the poetry of the
romance of heroic adventures, of satirical teaching, and of stories to
amuse; in other words, it produced the _chanson de geste_, the _roman_,
and the _fabliau_. It is in every way stronger than the creations of the
south, in seriousness, in vigour, in variety, in invention. According to
Ten Brink, _prouesse_, the masculine side of chivalry, is more northern,
while _courtoisie_, the feminine side, is more Provençal. But the
difference goes much deeper than any pair of terms can express it.
The old French poems of heroic adventure, blent with more or less of that
other-world imaginative quality known as “romance,” fall into three main
cycles of subjects. They deal with Charlemagne and his Paladins (in which
case they are more truly epic in character, and are called _chansons de
geste_, a term properly thus restricted to incidents in supposed French
history), or with King Arthur and his knights (together with the once
independent legends of Tristram), or with classical heroes, whether of
the Trojan legend or, like Alexander, of actual history. These three
cycles have been named the “Carlovingian” (or “French”), the “Arthurian”
(or “British”), and the “classical” (or “Grecian”). Or we may make four
by subdividing the last into “Trojan” and “Alexandrian.” At the time
of their composition the cycle which dealt with the classical subjects
of antiquity was said to deal with “matter of Rome.” All antiquity was
“Rome,” and all ancient heroes “Romans.” We find, then, songs of Roland
and Oliver, romances of Tristram or Launcelot, romances of Alexander
the Great, and many more. Some _romans_, called _d’aventures_, are
independent of any cycle and make no pretence at all to be history. The
twelfth and thirteenth centuries are rich in the poetical narratives
which tell of heroic feats, or miracles of devotion and loyalty, mixed
with much of the supernatural withal. This was the day of the Crusades,
of conquests of the Saracens, single combats, adventures in distant
lands, where dwarfs and enchanters, dragons and giants, were supposed
to dwell; and nothing pleased the venturous barons more than to be told
such tales to the music of the itinerant jongleurs. A further variety of
these songs of exploit was the _lai_, which is too short and too lyrical
to be an epic or a _roman_, and is rather the song of an epic episode.
The allegorical poems—which they also called _romans_, as being similarly
akin to epic and written in the vulgar tongue—long and tedious as they
are to us, were not disdained by Chaucer, and gave the cue to several
conspicuous works of the Chaucerians down to the sixteenth century. That
most famous of all, the _Roman de la Rose_, was translated by our master
of English undefiled. This poem, begun by Guillaume de Lorris as an “Art
of Love,” after the manner of Ovid (as filtered through Provence), was
continued a generation later by Jean de Meung as a satirical miscellany
of learning and legend. It is all about a lover who sought to pluck a
rose, about his difficulties in reaching it, about the abstract qualities
which help or hinder him, about personified virtues and vices, such as
Dame Idleness, who lets him into the garden, Avarice, Meanness, Hatred,
who stand in his way, Fair-Seeming, who has much to say in the matter,
and numerous others. Thanks to these agencies, it takes that unhappy
youth some 23,000 verses before he attains to plucking the object of his
affections. Yet it was this reading which inspired the earliest efforts
of our Chaucer, and which, in his first stage, he fell to imitating.
It was this literature which the cultivated Norman English delighted
hugely to hear. Allegorical, also, and purely satirical is the prolonged
beast-fable known as the _Roman de Renard_ (“the fox”), which enjoyed an
immense vogue throughout Europe, and provoked countless imitations.
One chief species of composition, and a highly important one, yet
remains. This was the _fabliau_, the amusing tale in verse, the one kind
of writing to let us know that the world was not wholly made of doughty
knights and gentle damosels. The _fabliau_ is a tale of real or possible
adventure in ordinary life, generally of a humorous kind. It is, in fact,
a sort of novelette. Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_ are often _fabliaux_.
From France the _fabliau_ was borrowed by the _Novellieri_ of Italy. It
was taken up and developed by Boccaccio, and both directly from France
and indirectly through Italy it made its way into the general stock of
European narrative material. Had it not been for _fabliaux_, one might
have thought that in those days there was nothing else for men to do but
fight and love. Yet the great ordinary mass of mankind existed all the
time, doing its sober work in towns and country places. And it was time
for this great stratum to find recognition in _bourgeois_ story.
Thus in northern France we have chiefly epics and romances of heroic
adventures, allegories more or less satirical and didactic, and amusing
tales; in southern France we have chiefly lyrics of love and chivalry. As
time goes on, each half moves closer to the other, although during the
whole epoch of the northern romances the Provençal spirit had combined
with the Celtic to pervade them with a peculiar tone of chivalric
sentiment. In 1249 the two geographical divisions became one kingdom.
Before the middle of the fourteenth century the Provençal tongue begins
to die, and its literature to perish. The story of French literature
thenceforward is one and undivided.
* * * * *
While the troubadour and trouvère literatures were thus flourishing
in the two halves of France, the cultivated circles of Norman and
Plantagenet England found those literatures sufficiently adapted to
their needs. The ordinary language of these circles was identical with
that of the trouvères, and at the same time the English possessions in
Languedoc, including the cultured centre Bordeaux (gained by the marriage
of Henry II with Eleanor of Guienne and Poitou), brought the Court
into direct communication with the lyrics of the troubadours. Henry’s
son, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, was himself a troubadour and the friend of
troubadours, in particular of Bertran de Born. But better suited to the
Anglo-Norman temperament, and, of course, completely intelligible to
the French-speaking barons and gentry, were the romances, _lais_ and
_fabliaux_ of the trouvères. The work of the Norman Wace (_Geste des
Bretons_) in 1155 was as much intended for England as for France. So also
was the _Roman de Troie_ (1160) of Benoît de Ste. More, which included
the story of Troilus. The French _Saint Grael_ stories of Walter Map
(1180) and the _lais_ of Marie de France (1210) were produced in our
island, and were the common property of England and Norman France. The
jongleurs wandered from baron’s court to baron’s court, and the stories
of Arthur,
Of Greece and Troy the strongë stryf,
There many a man lost his lyf;
Of Brute that baron bold of hand,
The first conqueroure of Engeland;
Of King Arthur, that was so riche,
Was not in his tyme him liche;
How Kyng Charles and Rowland fought,
With Sarazens nold they be caught;
Of Tristrem and Ysoude the swete,
How they with love first gan mete;
Of King John and of Isumbras,
Of Ydoine and of Amadas;
Stories of diverse thinges,
Of princes, prelates and kinges;
Many songes of divers rhyme,
As Engelish, French and Latyne.
Before French literature could make much further advance, it must pass,
after that of Italy, under pupilage to the Renaissance. As in England
of the fifteenth century, there is first a period of stagnation, and
then one during which France is borrowing and assimilating to its utmost
lessons in thought and style, in form and substance, from the lately
recovered classical masterpieces of Greece and Rome, as well as from the
Italian writers who first enjoyed and exploited these treasures. During
these stagnant and growing stages of French literature it exercises
comparatively little effect upon our own.
The Renaissance naturally reached France before it extended to England,
and the Renaissance meant in France what it had meant in Italy, and
what it afterwards came to mean in England, namely, the widening of the
intellectual and moral horizon, broader knowledge and broader views,
a shaking off of old and dry traditions. And therewith it also meant
greater variety of subjects in literature and the reign of better
models of thought and expression. The effect of the Renaissance on
French literature was to draw the thoughts of authors away from the old
monotonous round of romances and allegories, and at the same time away
from the old monotonous expressions and phrases; to make them attack
all interesting subjects of thought, and meanwhile to adapt and polish
the instrument of language which expressed them. This it was which the
recovery of the Greek and Latin classics accomplished for Italians,
Frenchmen, and Englishmen alike, supplying them with new range and scope,
with new patterns and principles.
But as in England, so in France, this new birth and literary reformation
did not exercise its full effect immediately. In England it gradually
culminated in the Elizabethan age, in France it only attained its full
development in the seventeenth century. That is to say, it was actually
slower of progress in France than in our own literature.
For a time, while the first influences of the Renaissance were being
felt, the effect in France was, as in England, a severance from the old
subjects and methods, without a full adoption of the classical subjects
and principles. The classical influence acts as a solvent before it comes
to act as a crystallizing agent. There is, in fact, a transition period,
during which writing is left free to attempt various forms. If a man
of natural genius arises in such an epoch, he will give us his natural
self, and so may create us prose or verse which, despite a deficiency
in knowledge, will be immortal through its own truth and strength. If
on the other hand at such a transition period men who write are lacking
in native power, they will write much worse when they follow no models
and adhere to no principles. In England, during the transition from the
epoch of Chaucer to the time of Wyatt and Surrey, there appeared no
distinguished poetic genius, and, except among Scottish writers like
Dunbar, little more than tiresome production. In France, on the contrary,
there were two distinguished poets, Villon (fifteenth century) and Marot
(early sixteenth). These were stimulated by the new ideas, but were not
yet dominated by the new classical models. They were freed from the
mediaeval shackles, and not yet fettered in the bonds of misapprehended
and misapplied “classical” principles.
François Villon wrote during the latter half of the fifteenth century,
and is principally known by his ballads, which were something quite new
to French literature, and have, one may venture to say, remained unique
therein. From the old artificial romances and allegories he breaks clean
away. He is as original and independent as our poet Burns, whom, by the
way, he somewhat resembled in personal character. His merit, like that
of the Greeks whom he did not know, lies in his truth, in the candid
expression of his own personal emotions, in his naive confessions, in
his sincere pathos. We all sympathize with emotions and confessions of
this nature, and therefore Villon, like Burns, possesses a permanent and
a universal value. And not only is he true in sentiment, he is clear and
direct in his phrase, and musical in his verse.
Clément Marot opens the sixteenth century. He has been called the father
of modern French poetry. If this means that he wrote with an ease and
sprightliness, and a vein of urbane satire, which are usually associated
with the _esprit gaulois_, but which skim rather along the surface of
things, it is true. But if it means that he is the consummation of
the Renaissance, and that the critical principles of French poetry
were established in his time, it is without truth. For Marot, like
Villon, is a poet and an artist without following the despotic rules
which afterwards came to prevail in France, and he furthermore sought
his themes rather in the old French subjects, the romances and the
_fabliaux_, than in realms of classical antiquity. The Italian influence,
however, touches him and leads him into pastorals, which, we must note,
were known to Spenser.
Villon and Marot are both of the transition period, and not wholly of
the Renaissance. They both fell short in one great respect; they lacked
depth and elevation. This is a vice to which all French verse is prone,
setting, as it does, so special a value on form; but it was the more
discoverable in these two poets, because the rich intellectual nutriment
of antiquity had not yet been assimilated by them, because their minds
laboured under the intellectual poverty of mediaevalism, because, in
other words, they lacked the substance with which the best ancient
literature is crammed. Their poetry has many blossoms, but bears little
fruit. Yet they mark one great step in progress. They are emancipated
from the old mediaeval artificiality.
While Villon and Marot were thus emancipated, there were others during
this transition time who were not by any means so. On the one hand they
allegorized, like the trouvères, to the utmost; their subjects were
obsolete and unreal; on the other, their language was trivial and their
contents uneven. Verse literature seemed to need bracing and correction
in the light of advancing study of the Greek and Latin masterpieces, and
it is to the administering of such correction that we come in what is
known as the _Pléiade_.
The _Pléiade_, or constellation of the seven stars, was the term applied
to seven men of letters, who formed themselves into a coterie or league
about the year 1550, with the professed resolve of reforming the French
language and French literary methods. The conception is very French.
This cool manner of looking at language and literary expression as
subject to definite laws of art, which may be codified by a league or
academy, is contrary to English notions. Not so with the French. They
have no desire for impulsive and perhaps erratic individuality. This
is one of their clearest characteristics. Of the _Pléiade_ the two
greatest names are Ronsard, the poet, and Du Bellay, who was both poet
and manifesto-writer. Their object, as stated by themselves, was to
bring French literature nearer to the classical models of Greece and
Rome, and to create a nobler form and use of the language for literary
purposes. And while Du Bellay was to write his manifesto, Ronsard was
to give a practical illustration of the theory, by himself composing
odes and sonnets in the proper style. The attempt was bold, and it was
successful. For fifty years all French literature “Ronsardized.” Here are
a few sentences of the manifesto concerning the _Défense et Illustration
de la Langue Française_. “Our ancestors have left us our language so
poor and bare, that it stands in need of the ornaments, and, so to
speak, the features of other people.... By what means can we hasten its
development? By the imitation of the ancients.... Translating is not a
sufficient means of elevating our vulgar tongue to an equality with the
most famous. What must we do? Imitate! Imitate the Romans as they did the
Greeks!... We must digest the best authors and convert them into blood
and nutriment.... You that mean to be a poet, read and re-read the Greek
and Latin models. Then leave all those old French _rondeaux_, _ballades_,
_virelais_, _chants royaux_, _chansons_ and other such vulgarities
(_épiceries_), which corrupt the taste of our tongue, and only serve
to testify to our ignorance. Throw yourself on those witty epigrams in
imitation of Martial!... Distil with a flowing style tender elegies after
the manner of Ovid and Tibullus!... Sing me some of those odes as yet
unknown to the French tongue ... and let there be nothing in which does
not appear some trace of rare and ancient learning.”
We need not agree with all this breezy advice. It is impossible to
re-create a language all at once. If there is not inspiration, there
cannot be good poetry, though one may have infinite good models to
follow. Nevertheless the new school was a success for half a century, and
both Ronsard and Du Bellay, though often mechanical and often flat, have
left a few imperishable sonnets and other pieces. Our own Elizabethans
not only read Marot and his contemporary Saint-Gelais (who introduced the
Petrarchan sonnet into France), they also read Du Bellay, who finally
established the sonnet and at the same time served as a pattern for
English writers. One writer of the Ronsardist school, Du Bartas, was
a writer of real religious conviction, and his _Semaine_ or _Week of
Creation_, translated by Sylvester, gained no small currency in England.
What calls for particular notice in this connection is the deliberate
way in which French writers and critics can contemplate and formulate
the principles and methods of good literature. The English, to whom so
much of French verse is cold and mechanical, may perhaps think that it
is this same formulating which has done incalculable harm to poetry,
a thing in its nature as incapable of regulation as are our emotions
and our thoughts. But the French are of another opinion, and it is at
least fair to say that, if writing by rules hampers the flight of genius
and prevents creations of the sublime, it on the other hand checks the
production of that utter doggerel which has been so often inflicted on
readers of English literature. We shall do best to complete at once the
history of this formulation, and then retrace our steps.
Early in the seventeenth century flourished the man to whom first were
due those definite and despotic critical principles which were fully
developed by Boileau and which came to tyrannize in England after the
restoration of Charles II, subsequently reaching their perfection in Pope
and his eighteenth-century school. It is true that Malherbe represents
a movement which was simultaneously proceeding in Italy, and was also
being begun in England by Waller and his follower Denham. But he was
destined to exert a peculiar influence. François Malherbe was by nature
critic, and not creator. He, like the _Pléiade_, offers himself as a
deliberate reformer of literature. His thoughts are fixed on style and
its correctness. His notion of verses is that they should be “beautiful
as prose,” without any of the bold irregularities of a Pindar or the
sentimental vagaries of a Petrarch. He measures words and syllables,
toils laboriously over every line he writes, and prunes down metaphors
and hazardous expressions with the deliberate knife of cold reason. What
he compasses is conciseness and preciseness of phrase, and what he revels
in is the sense, not of a profound thought or keen emotion expressed,
but of a technical difficulty overcome. He is the true parent of all
that verse, in reality but brilliant rhyming prose, which prevailed in
France for two centuries, and which also reigned in England for at least
one. It is he who taught Corneille and Racine how to form a verse, and
Boileau how to criticize one. It was Boileau who passed on the word to
our English Pope, Parnell, Gay, and Johnson. Dryden was doubtless the
intermediate step, but it is to Boileau that Pope expressly resorts. But
for Boileau, Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_ would not have existed.
Nicolas Boileau, who flourished and dictated the principles of criticism
in his _Art Poétique_ during the life of Dryden, in the latter part of
the seventeenth century, was long called in France the “law-giver of
Parnassus.” There is little doubt that the title was justified. His bent
and character were almost identical with those of Pope. He was a keen
satirist, acute critic, and clever reviewer, but he was no true “poet.”
His avowed object was to remove uncertainty of taste and to establish
criticism on a basis of mathematical finality, to set forth a positive
doctrine of literary judgement. And what his doctrine amounts to is that
reason and good sense must decide against all spontaneity of taste.
This means that poetry must attempt no audacious flights of fancy, must
restrain its metaphors, must avoid complexity, and be sheer, plain,
good sense, admirably expressed. And who that has read French poetry
thenceforth until the rise of Victor Hugo, or who that has read English
poetry from Dryden down to Cowper, will not perceive that the result of
this doctrine was disaster to poetry, and that it produced, as Matthew
Arnold expresses it, instead of so many classics of our poetry, just so
many classics of our prose writing in verse? Poetry cannot be judged by
“common sense,” nor written by “common sense.” It is an imaginative art,
and therefore requires uncommon sense.
When, after the Restoration, the second great influence from French
literature came distinctly over England, it came in this shape, one which
was, on the whole, to be regretted.
There is one particular department of French verse of the seventeenth
century which deserves a special note for students of English literature.
In this department there flourished between Malherbe and Boileau sundry
minor poets who had their representatives and pupils in the English
Court of the restored Charles II. These were the poets of amusement and
diversion, the writers of society verses on the one hand, and of drinking
songs on the other. The art of expression elaborated by Malherbe told
on these. Voiture, with his _vers de société_, and St. Amant, with his
Anacreontic poems, compose in a polished style worthy of the literary
reform which Malherbe and Boileau brought to pass. When Charles II came
back from France to England, his court was entertained by “society
verses” and by convivial songs written on the French pattern. Such, among
others, are verses and songs of Dorset, Roscommon, Sedley, and some of
those of Waller.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, in prose, the productions of France were of much greater
intrinsic importance. At the end of the fourteenth century the chatty
chronicler, or historian, Froissart, had combined much of the _naïveté_
and freshness of Herodotus with much of the narrative picturesqueness
of Walter Scott. A century later, under the growing influence of the
new thought, the conception of history has grown almost philosophical,
certainly practical and judicial, in Comines. The full effect of the
Renaissance, however, appears in three sixteenth-century writers of very
different characters and spheres of work.
Amyot, the translator of Plutarch, is not merely famous for unlocking the
treasure-house of that author to the French and thence to the English
world; he also taught how the prose of the language should be written
for biography or essay. Somewhat earlier—contemporary with Sir Thomas
More—appears the learned, satirical, gross, jolly, pathetic priest,
Rabelais, whose mock romance, the _Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel_,
is still a classic to those who know how to discern, beneath all its
terrible coarseness, its grotesque obscurity, and its deliberate
buffoonery, the bold criticism, and wise as bold, of contemporary
society, especially of religion and the church. In the freedom and range
of his thought he embodies the Renaissance, but a Renaissance which
has imparted vigour and freshness without having yet taught the lesson
of literary form and proportion. Rabelais is like no one else, but he
contains elements which recall the broader, comic side of Shakespeare,
and others which anticipate the scathing railleries of Swift. Sterne,
apart from his natural affinities with the earlier ecclesiastic, draws
upon him liberally.
More pleasant reading, both for its sweeter matter and its ease of style,
is the work of the Gascon, Michel de Montaigne—a contemporary of Sir
Philip Sidney—whose _Essays_, while the first example in that domain of
writing, have remained unique in their kind. To the reading of Seneca and
of Amyot’s Plutarch he confessedly owed much, but his conception of the
essay as an easy-going monologue of moralizing self-revelation is his
own. He chooses a theme, begins to discourse in an amiable conversational
way concerning it, rambles from it into side paths, plucking the flowers
of quotation, and returns to it when it so pleases him. Meanwhile, his
real subject is himself. Montaigne the writer is serenely contemplating
Montaigne the man. He is submitting him, his tastes, views, habits, and
feelings, to a friendly inspection, recorded in the easy style of a man
of the world, which charms the reader as he might be charmed by varied
and fruity talk. It charms him all the more because the self depicted by
Montaigne is always in many respects the self of the listener, who feels
all through that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. For
Montaigne is no narrow egotist or pedant. He displays a wide sympathy
or tolerance, and he is no dogmatist. His motto was _Que sçais-je?_ To
Elizabethan England the _Essays_ were well known, either directly or
through the translation of Florio, with which Shakespeare was familiar.
The _Essays_ of Bacon, with all their unlikeness to Montaigne, are
clearly indebted to his example. How far the Frenchman’s influence
has since extended is rendered incalculable by its very breadth and
pervasiveness.
* * * * *
For the sake of easier apprehension we may now briefly review French
poetry proper, noting its characteristics and its effects on the poetry
of England.
Early French poetry, we have said, consisted of romances, of chivalrous
adventures, allegories, and _fabliaux_. The nature of these troubadour
and trouvère compositions has been described. Till after Chaucer’s
day the romances and allegories of France flourished almost as well
on English soil, whether read and sung in the original French or
adapted—like the _Romance of Alexander_ or the _Romance of the Rose_—in
English dress. Chaucer himself translated the _Roman de la Rose_, and
otherwise made free use of the French material, including the _fabliaux_.
His contemporary, Gower, is almost wholly a copier of the French, and,
during all the epoch which is called the Chaucerian, authors known and
nameless used the stock of mediaeval France as freely and as monotonously
as the French themselves.
This was the first period of our debt. It passed away wholly with all
other things mediaeval, with chivalry and feudalism, superstition and
ignorance.
Then came the transition period to the Renaissance, with Villon and
Marot, who are among the truest poets of France just because they wrote
without a deliberate theory. To those two poets we English are, however,
in no special debt. The _Pléiade_ next began a conscious literary reform
with a propaganda of its own, only to be further reformed in turn by
the poet-critic Malherbe, who inaugurated the era of “correctness,” of
prose in poetry, which was consummated and legislated upon by Boileau.
Thenceforth, until the early nineteenth century (the “romantic” period,
when French verse is under the influence of England and Germany), French
poetry is nearly all alike—clear, cleverly, often brilliantly expressed,
graceful, eminently sane, but generally cold, matter-of-fact, colourless,
often satirical, rarely pathetic, never deeply imaginative or informed
with profound emotion. The prime characteristic of French poetry since
Malherbe’s time is that it is beautified prose. The prime characteristic
of the French literary mind is its willingness to be disciplined and
checked, to be rendered uniform by means of rules and precepts.
On English writing in verse this French literature of the “golden
age,” the seventeenth century, had effect in two chief departments—in
determining the school of social verse-writers and convivialists at the
court of the restored Stuarts, and in dominating the poetical ideals from
Dryden down to Cowper, in producing, in fact, the so-called “correct” or
“classical” school of English literature, the school which said with Pope
True wit is nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought, but ne’er so well expressed.
This school aimed at polished, condensed, sparkling expression of
thoughts which should be reasonable and easily understandable. How
defective is such an ideal of poetry needs little demonstration. The true
note of the time is the treatment of mediocre subjects in language which
is the perfection of neatness and point.
* * * * *
Along with the development of classical verse, and of the more happily
directed prose which is the chief glory of French literature, there was
proceeding the development of the classical drama.
Dramatic performances in France began in the manner usual in all Catholic
countries, namely, with representations of religious events, biblical or
legendary, such as the Passion of Christ or the miracles of the saints.
The “Mysteries” drawn from the scriptures, and the “Miracles” drawn from
the lives of the saints, were in turn followed by the “Moralities,” or
representations of the contests of abstract virtues and vices, which
formed a pronounced step in the secularization of the drama and in
the encouragement of original plot. Into all these there was imported
a liberal amount of comedy, frequently of astounding coarseness. The
actors, from being churchmen, came to be the members of the guilds of
trade. Next, a corporation of the law-students of the Palais de Justice,
which had been established and vested with privileges at the beginning
of the fourteenth century under the name of _La Basoche_, took up the
moralities and developed them still more in the direction of comedies
with ingenious plot and literary dialogue. To the Basoche is probably
to be attributed the famous piece (of about the year 1470) called
_Lawyer Patelin_, from which at least one reiterated phrase has secured
immortality in the shape of _Revenons à nos moutons_. From the Basoche
the drama of Paris passed to the “Enfants sans Souci,” whose particular
vein lay in the so-called _Soties_, a bold species of satirical and
farcical modification of the Moralities. So bold, indeed, were these
pieces, that it became necessary for Francis I to suppress them. By this
date (which is near the middle of the sixteenth century) the revived
study of antiquity begins to act directly upon the drama also, and
members of the _Pléiade_ turn first to the translation and then to the
imitation of the drama of Greece. The latter was the course taken by
Jodelle, whose _Cléopâtre_ marks the epoch at which the serious drama
of France definitely bound itself in the chains of the “three unities,”
accepted Seneca for its model of style, and adopted the Alexandrine
couplet for its orthodox vehicle of dialogue. Comedy meanwhile enjoyed
more freedom, though taking its patterns, directly and avowedly from
Italy. Between Jodelle and the great age of the drama of Corneille, the
stage, like so much besides in France, passed under the domination,
partly of Spain, partly of Italy. The chosen models were the Spaniards,
Lope de Vega and Calderon, or the Italian Trissino, of whom something is
said in their proper places. It remained for the literary reformation of
Malherbe to find the consummation for drama also in the work of Corneille.
Pierre Corneille, the author of _Le Cid_, _Horace_, _Cinna_, _Polyeucte_,
and other plays of greater and less note, flourished about the middle
of the seventeenth century (the time of our English Civil Wars and
Commonwealth), and was followed by Racine, the author of _Phèdre_,
_Esther_, and _Athalie_, and the contemporary of our poet Dryden.
When it is said that these two dramatists possess in full the French
characteristics, it is meant that they show all the French virtues of
elegance, good sense, and polish of style, and all the French defects
of servility to rule, coldness, and consequent monotony. There can be
nothing more unlike than the typical drama of Corneille and the typical
drama of Shakespeare. The Frenchman deliberately adopts the so-called
“Aristotelian” and “classical,” but really Senecan and pedantic, rule
of the unities, of time, of place, and of action; that is to say, his
plays contain the development of but one action, which proceeds in the
same place and within a time equal to that of the representation itself.
To these conventions, which can have no natural or divine right to
call themselves “laws,” Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists are
strangers. A Shakespearean play—described as “romantic” in antithesis
to “classical”—carries us from place to place, from year to year, and
embraces, if it so chooses, a number of loosely related actions and
episodes. Its unity is the unity of a whole story, not of a situation
or climax. Corneille, to use his own words, had an aversion to putting
Paris, Rome, and Constantinople on the same stage. The result is that
there is often no background of place or time at all. This was but one
difference. Again, Shakespeare’s tragedies are performed, if he thinks
fit, with all their slayings, suicides, and mutilations full in the face
of the audience. In the French theatre, as in the Greek, these actions
are regularly perpetrated out of sight and are merely reported upon the
stage.
French tragedy is mostly the working out of a moral situation. English
tragedy holds the mirror up to manifold nature. The French tragedy
is “heroic,” it seeks to interest and to elevate the soul by heroic
sentiments dramatically displayed. We meet with heroes who are altogether
noble, and with the opposite characters who are altogether base. They are
“ideal” personages, who do little else but deliver artistic declamatory
speeches in the manner of Seneca. On the other hand, the English tragedy
represents men as they are, with all their complexities, inconsistencies,
and shortcomings. The French do not, or did not, understand the English
drama any better than we understand theirs. They call it irregular and
inartistic. Voltaire at one period declared Shakespeare “a drunken
savage, without the least spark of good taste or the least knowledge
of the rules.” We, on the other hand, grow weary of the continuous and
unrelieved progress of the one and only action, and of the vagueness
of background and lack of individuality in “the ideal action performed
by ideal characters.” The French portray types, not characters. The
great masters accepted a fixed architecture for their plays and fixed
limitations to work under, and their merit is that, despite these
cramping conditions, they produced works of so elevated a literary and
so exalted a moral style. It is not meant that Corneille, Racine, and
the minor dramatists were as much alike as larger and smaller peas. A
manifest difference, for example, which renders the plays of Racine more
generally interesting than those of Corneille, is that Racine chooses
subjects which come nearer home to most human beings. He brings us into
one part, at least, of the practical human world, the world of love. The
fault of French tragic drama is excess of rule and restraint; the fault
of English drama had, by the time of the post-Shakespeareans, come to be
excess of licence and consequent bad taste bordering on absurdity.
In the midst of the French influence upon English literature, which
set in towards the end of the seventeenth century—the only time when
Englishmen as a body have shown a readiness to submit to a prescribed
code of critical principles—it is not unnatural that the English drama
also should copy the French. The imitation, however, was by no means good
as such. The English tragedy of the Restoration aims at being “heroic”
tragedy, turns declamation into rant and bombast, and ideal character
into impossible perfection. Fortunately the copying in this region was of
comparatively brief duration. Of those whom it affected Dryden was the
least guilty. He came to a theatre which had been but newly opened under
Charles II, after the Puritan tyranny, and, as with everything else under
Charles, the theatre endeavoured to take its tone from France. Dryden had
himself been largely influenced by French critical ideas. He did not,
it is true, agree entirely with the French principles; nevertheless,
he found submission necessary. On the one side he had before him the
magnificent “romantic” and “irregular” drama of Shakespeare and the other
Elizabethans, on the other the new heroic and “regular” tragedies of
France. He attempted to combine the better elements of both, and failed
through falling between two stools. That he was conscious of a deliberate
choice is clear from his own words: “Let any man, who understands
English, read diligently the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and I
dare undertake that he will find in every page either some solecism of
speech, or some notorious flaw in sense—many of their plots were made up
of some ridiculous incoherent story.” He mentions in particular _Love’s
Labour’s Lost_, _Winter’s Tale_, and _Measure for Measure_, and he goes
on to quote the classical rules concerning unity of action, with its
“beginning, middle, and end,” and the rest; and thereto he adds as
his authorities the names of French critics of the school of Boileau,
the now unremembered Bossu and Rapin. He does not, indeed, admire the
French coldness and monotony, and his own object, though not that of his
contemporaries, was, as has been already stated, to combine the better
elements of both the French and English style. It is a grief to note
that, in keeping with this view, it was thought no literary sin at this
time to mutilate and adapt the plays of Shakespeare till they more or
less suited the current taste. Dryden’s own dramas, _Tyrannic Love_,
_Secret Love_, _Aurengzebe_, and the _Conquest of Granada_ are largely
indebted to French originals, and have fallen between the two stools.
Whereas Shakespeare and Corneille alike survive, no one now can act, and
very few care to read, the plays of Dryden. Another play which is of
some repute, the _Cato_ of Addison, would certainly either not have been
written, or would have been a less cold and declamatory thing than it is,
if Addison had not lived in an age when France was England’s teacher in
dramatic and other literary rules.
Of French comedy a different story must be told. It is impossible to
mention the name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière, the
contemporary of Corneille and Racine, without feeling that we are naming
the world’s best writer of comedy pure and simple, next to Aristophanes.
What Shakespeare might have done if he had written comedies alone, we
cannot tell. Wherever his mature plays offer us undiluted comedy, it is
superlatively comic. Yet we do not think of him primarily in connection
with Aristophanes and Molière, but rather as the writer of _Hamlet_ or
_King Lear_. If we named an English author whose genius in many respects
recalls Molière, it would perhaps be Sheridan, the writer of the _School
for Scandal_. In Molière there comes out the best side of the peculiar
French genius, the Gallic wit, the trenchant satire without brutality,
the keen entertainment without vulgarity. Molière at his zenith makes
comedy a work of art, and of refined art; a comedy which edifies while
it delights, and which delights without appealing to the lower elements
of our nature. It is a humorous feast of the delighted reason, not a
pandering to a mere taste for “lungs tickle o’ the sere.” His _Précieuses
Ridicules_ is keen and killing criticism of the silly affectations of a
literary coterie; his _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_ slays the ignorant parvenu,
and his _Tartuffe_ the hypocrite.
This comedy, delightful now to read as it was then to see, could not but
seize hold upon Englishmen of the Restoration times and later still.
Molière was copied, adapted, translated by English writers, and that
not merely for reading, but for acting purposes. Dryden translated
_L’Etourdi_ as _Sir Martin Mar-all_; Vanbrugh turned _Le Dépit Amoureux_
into _The Mistake_; Wycherley offered _The Plain Dealer_ as a version of
_Le Misanthrope_; Fielding’s _Mock-Doctor_ is _Le Médecin Malgré Lui_,
his _Miser_ is Molière’s _L’Avare_; Colley Cibber converted _Tartuffe_
into _The Non-Juror_.
So much at least does English literature proper owe to French tragedy
and comedy. Of the constant plagiarism and adaptation of French plays in
modern times nothing need be said, since these things have been for the
most part hardly literature in the proper meaning of the term.
* * * * *
Meanwhile French prose-writing, which had been of such easy simplicity
in Montaigne, passed for a while under the bad influence of the
Spanish _estilo culto_, and of the English Euphuism. This was the day
of the Hôtel de Rambouillet and of the Précieuses, with their finical
refinements and affectations of speech. In the subject-matter of
literature the Spanish influence showed itself first in the _Astrée_ of
D’Urfé (1608), a wearisome and unnatural “pastoral romance,” prompted by
the _Diana_ of the Portuguese-Spaniard Montemayor. To this work are to
be affiliated the “heroic romances” of La Calprenède and Mademoiselle
de Scudéry, who are shortly to be mentioned. As for the prose vehicle
itself, apart from these vagaries of its use, it may be said that, ever
since French literature reached its golden age in the middle of the
seventeenth century, its characteristics have been much the same as those
of French verse, namely, clearness of order, precision of statement, good
sense of thinking, a triumph of reasonable and exact expression.
Our own literature of the later part of the seventeenth century, and of
the earlier half of the eighteenth, which owes so much to France, is
nowhere more manifestly indebted than in respect of that lighter prose
which takes the shape of letters and novels, and of what would now be
called occasional journalism. The French have always been excellent
letter-writers and journalists, as well as admirable novelists.
Even the inferior French work, such as Mademoiselle de Scudéry’s
interminable pseudo-romantic prolixities—the _Grand Cyrus_, or _Clélie_
with its _Carte de Tendre_—and those of La Calprenède (_Cléopâtre_ and
_Cassandre_), was reproduced in England by writers of the calibre of Mrs.
Aphra Behn, as well as exploited by Dryden and other post-Restoration
dramatists. The novel of adventure, which we associate with the names
of Defoe (as in _Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_), Fielding (_Joseph
Andrews_), and Smollett (_Roderick Random_), and which is known as
“picaroon” or “picaresque,” is no doubt ultimately derived from Spain,
but its way into England was made through Paul Scarron, a French
seventeenth-century novelist, and through his followers and literary
heirs, among whom in the early eighteenth century is the renowned Lesage,
the author of _Gil Blas_. On the other hand, that class of fiction which
deals with character and its analysis, and which appears in English with
Richardson, the author of _Clarissa Harlowe_ and _Pamela_, dates from
Madame de la Fayette, who lived a century earlier than he, although it is
perhaps to his contemporary Marivaux that the Englishman is more directly
under obligation. The first great exemplar of modern letter-writing,
who, after Cicero and Pliny, taught Horace Walpole and Chesterfield how
to pen epistles, and who inspired the more or less mock correspondence
of Addison in the _Spectator_, was Madame de Sévigné, a contemporary of
Madame de la Fayette.
The seventeenth century in France is covered with prose-writers of clear
reasoning power, pinnacled in Descartes’ _Discours de la Méthode_ and
Pascal’s _Provincial Letters_, and with writers of essays, memoirs,
novels, letters, criticisms, character-sketches, and “maxims” in all
their various kinds. There is the _essai_, which enlarges on a theme; the
_conversation_, an essay in dialogue, like those of Landor; the _pensée_,
a miniature essay with narrower theme; and the _maxime_, a pithy sentence
forming the cream of a _pensée_. La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld, and
St. Evremond, for example, are familiar names. For our purpose it is
enough that these writers preceded our own Addison, Swift, Steele, and
Johnson, and that English prose of the Queen Anne period and the earlier
eighteenth century was fashioned by France as much as was our verse
itself. And as the excellence of prose is perfect clearness and ease, the
influence of France herein was wholly good, just as the prosaic influence
of its verse had been mainly harmful.
In the same century stands, _sui generis_, La Fontaine, the fertile
author of the famous stories and _Fables_, to whom Dryden, Gay, and Prior
owe, besides the hint of form, no little suggestion.
* * * * *
In the eighteenth century French literature is of an inferior order,
unproductive of things noble in imagination or of great dramatic works.
At its best it is critical, not creative. Until André Chénier at the
end of the century, it has practically no poetry to show, since neither
the occasional verses of Voltaire, nor his epic _Henriade_, nor his
drama _Zaïre_, can properly bear the name. Wit indeed flourished in the
epigrams and comedy of Piron, as it could hardly fail to do in French
work of the lighter kinds; but it was not till the precursors of the
“Romantic movement” of the nineteenth century—for which France was
almost as much indebted to the English Byron and the German Goethe as to
its own Rousseau and Chateaubriand—that creative poetry appears again
with Béranger and Lamartine. The Romantic epoch itself is then embodied
in Victor Hugo. So far as the eighteenth century is productive, it is
in prose, and chiefly the prose of thought and science. The novel is
represented in the picaresque _Diable Boiteux_ and _Gil Blas_ of Lesage
early in the century, in the analytical _Marianne_ of Marivaux, in the
satirically destructive _Candide_ of Voltaire, in the powerful character
study of _Manon Lescaut_ by Prévost, in the sentimental and picturesque
_Nouvelle Héloïse_ of Rousseau and _Paul et Virginie_ of Bernardin de
St. Pierre, and in the social fiction of Madame de Staël. Of the effect
of Lesage upon England we have already spoken. Marivaux appears to have
distinctly influenced Richardson, whose _Pamela_ otherwise bears a
strange similarity to _Marianne_. But most congenial to the English mind,
now on its way to the Romantic revolt, was the work of Rousseau and St.
Pierre, in which the notion of a “return to nature” is the dominant note.
St. Pierre was the disciple; Rousseau is the master, who, whether in
the novel or in his _Confessions_, is the first writer in modern Europe
to expatiate upon inanimate nature in connection with the feelings. How
much of the “nature-worship” of Wordsworth and his age may be due to this
example from France can hardly be estimated, but the name of Rousseau was
a familiar one in England, and by him was sown much of the seed which
our own revivalists watered.
Passing over the letter-writers and minor essayists, we come to the
thinkers, the propagators of freedom of thought, commonly known as the
_philosophes_. In this case the impulse came from the English Locke and
from contact with, and personal observation of, the liberal circumstances
of England, at that time the most advanced in Europe. The crop of French
solvent ideas from these sources soon found its way back to our own
country. In his _Esprit des Lois_, Montesquieu, a writer of remarkable
wisdom, examines the natural basis and evolution of law and custom; the
fertile but superficial Voltaire, in various “Letters” and essays, lends
his powerful wit to the weakening of accepted authority, especially in
religion. Subsequently, in order to crystallize the knowledge which
forms the necessary basis to right criticism and reformation, there
was undertaken the famous, if not very successful, _Encyclopaedia_, or
_Dictionnaire Raisonné_ of sciences and arts, under the direction of
Diderot and D’Alembert. Falling into the revolutionary current, and being
in direct association with the _philosophes_ and Encyclopaedists, the
eloquent and passionate Rousseau produced the _Contrat Social_, with
its doctrines of equality and fraternity and its innovating theories
of education, and the _Confessions_, in which he lays bare his own
pettinesses, but with exquisite literary skill. As his follower must be
reckoned Chateaubriand, who, so far as expression of temperament goes,
passed on his mantle to the English Byron.
If now it is asked on what groups of our English writers French
influence is most pronounced and obvious, we should most safely reply
that in pre-Renaissance times we must name Chaucer and Gower; then,
after a gap of two hundred and fifty years, we may begin once more
with Dryden and his contemporaries, the poetic “roisterers,” Dorset
and Roscommon, and the comedians Congreve, Wycherley, Farquhar, and
Vanbrugh. In Pope and all his school the influence is manifest and
conscious. It is present in Addison and Steele, and in the novelists
Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, different as they are; in the letters
of Walpole and Chesterfield, and, in more or less measure, consciously
and unconsciously, in all the writers of poetry, drama, letters, essays,
journals and novels from about the year 1660 for a whole century.
Since that time the influences have been rather the other way, but those
from France upon England may perhaps be enumerated as (1) the elaboration
of a sentiment for inanimate nature since Rousseau, St. Pierre, and
Chateaubriand; (2) the absorption, and sometimes imitation, of French
novels, such as _Les Misérables_ and _Notre Dame_ of Hugo, the revived
picaroons of Dumas, and the naturalistic work of Zola; (3) the Positivist
philosophy of Comte; (4) imitations or plagiarisms of French comedy,
such as that of Sardou; (5) lessons from the literary criticism of Ste.
Beuve, chiefly derived through Matthew Arnold; (6) stylistic lessons from
writers like Flaubert.
BRIEF CONSPECTUS OF FRENCH LITERATURE.
DEPARTMENTS OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES.
DATES.
TYPICAL WORKS.
SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Epic tales of Chivalry (Chansons de Geste)
Various Trouvères (mostly unknown)
Twelfth and thirteenth centuries
1. Romances of Charlemagne’s Paladins.
2. Romances of ancient heroes, _e.g._, _Roman de Troie_.
3. Romances of Arthur.
Allegorical Epic (Romans)
Mostly anonymous, but _Roman de la Rose_ begun by Guillaume de
Lorris and completed by Jean de Meung
Twelfth and thirteenth centuries
_Roman de Renart_ (_Reynard the Fox_), _Roman de la Rose._
Fabliaux
Generally anonymous
Twelfth and thirteenth centuries
These works and their like were practically as familiar to
the “reading public” of England as of France during the
pre-Chaucerian period, when French was the social, official,
and literary language. Some portions were contributed by
Anglo-Normans, _e.g._, Wace and Benoît de Sainte-More.
Chaucer began by translating and imitating from the French,
_e.g._, in his _Romance of the Rose_. His _Canterbury
Tales_ include a number of _fabliaux_, and also
borrowings from the _romans_. Gower is still more after
the same school. The _Romance of the Rose_ and other
allegories continued in vogue till the Renaissance.
The _Chansons de Geste_ exerted much influence on Italian
writers of romantic heroics (Pulci, Boiardo, Ariosto, etc.),
thence again affected England (through Spenser, etc.). The
_fabliaux_ were utilized by Boccaccio and the Italian
_novellieri_, and thence influenced Elizabethan novel and
drama.
Poetry: (Other than Drama)
Transition to Renaissance.
VILLON
1431-1500
Personal lyrics.
MAROT
1495-1544
Epistles, elegies, eclogues.
Marot and his followers, _e.g._, Saint-Gelais, were an
influence upon Wyatt, Spenser, etc. Spenser copies Marot
in eclogue.
(Till eighteenth century)
Pléiade reformers.
RONSARD
1524-1585
DU BELLAY
_ob._ 1560
Odes, sonnets
Spenser begins his poetical work by paraphrasing Du Bellay. The
school of Ronsard aided the Italian school in bringing the
so-called “classical” forms of verse into England.
Apostle of “correctness.”
MALHERBE
1556-1628
The influence of the doctrine of “correctness” on English
literature begins in the latter part of the seventeenth century,
and extends till late in the eighteenth. _See_ “Boileau” below.
VOITURE
1598-1648
SAINT-AMANT
1594-1660
Occasional verses, _vers de société_, bacchanalian verse.
Models for post-Restoration writers, _e.g._, Dorset, Sedley.
LA FONTAINE
1621-1695
_Fables_ and _Contes_
Influenced Dryden, Gay, Prior in similar compositions.
Legislator in poetic style.
BOILEAU
1636-1711
_L’Art Poétique_, satires, etc.
The authority of Boileau was almost as high in England as in
France. Pope, Addison, and the “correct” school generally follow
him. Pope’s _Essay on Criticism_ echoes Boileau.
Drama:
(_a_) Tragedy
CORNEILLE
1606-1684
_Cinna_, _Le Cid_, _Polyeucte_, etc.
RACINE
1639-1699
_Phèdre_, _Esther Attalie_, etc.
Effect of French dramatic principles appears with the re-opening
of theatres under Charles II. It is considered necessary to
recast Shakespeare, and an effort is made after the “unities.”
The “heroic plays” of Dryden’s time are due to a combination of
French tragedy with French romance (_e.g._, _Tyrannic Love_,
_Conquest of Granada_, etc.). Addison’s Cato is a full attempt
at “classical” drama in imitation of the French.
(_b_) Comedy
MOLIÈRE
1622-1673
_Le Misanthrope_, _Tartuffe_, _L’Avare_, etc.
French comedy was imitated, but debased, by Wycherley, Farquhar,
etc. Molière was much utilized by post-Restoration dramatists,
_e.g._, in Wycherley’s _Plain Dealer_ (= _Misanthrope_),
_Country Wife_ (= _L’École des Femmes_ + _L’École des
Maris_), Dryden’s _Sir Martin Mar-all_ (= _L’Elounis_).
Prose Fiction:
(_a_) Allegorical (satirical)
RABELAIS
1483-1553
_Life of Gargantua and Pantagruel._
Appreciably the precursor of Swift and Sterne.
(_b_) Heroic romances (of sentiment)
LA CALPRENÈDE
1602-1663
_Cléopâtre_, etc.
MLLE. DE SCUDÉRY
1607-1701
_Le Grand Cyrus_, etc.
These long and ranting works were translated into English and
were much read. They were imitated by Aphra Behn. Combined with
French “classical” tragedy they produced the English “heroic
plays,” _e.g._, Dryden’s _Secret Love_ (from the _Grand
Cyrus_) and Settle’s _Ibrahim_.
(_c_) Picaroon romances (adventures after Spanish models)
SCARRON
1610-1660
LESAGE
1668-1747
_Gil Blas_, _Le Diable Boiteux_
DUMAS (the elder)
1803-1870
_Three Musketeers_, etc.
This style was taken up in particular by Defoe, Fielding, and
Smollett. Of late there has been a recrudescence of Dumas in
minor English fiction.
(_d_) Character novel
MME. DE LA FAYETTE
1633-1693
_Zaide_, _Princesse de Clèves_
MARIVAUX
1688-1763
_Marianne_
BALZAC
1799-1850
Novels of the _Comédie Humaine_
Followed by Richardson (_Clarissa Harlowe_, etc.), who began
the vogue which has continued till the present.
Essays, moralizings, philosophy
MONTAIGNE
1533-1592
_Essais_
The first model of the “Essay” proper. Well known to
Elizabethans (Bacon, Shakespeare, etc.). Translated by Florio.
PASCAL
1623-1662
_Provincial Letters_, _Pensées_
DESCARTES
1596-1650
_Discours de la Méthode_
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
1613-1680
_Maxims_
LA BRUYÈRE
1639-1696
_Characters_
MONTESQUIEU
1689-1755
_Esprit des Lois_
VOLTAIRE
1694-1778
_Candide_, _Essai sur les Mœurs_, etc.
ROUSSEAU
1712-1778
_Contrat Social_, _Confessions_, etc.
CHATEAUBRIAND
1768-1848
_Génie du Christianisme_
COMTE
1798-1857
_Philosophie Positive._
All this literature was widely read and assimilated in England,
but precise effects can hardly be specified. Rousseau, however,
is the first to evoke the “Nature worship,” or the study of
natural influence upon the feelings, which becomes so prominent
in the English poetry of the early nineteenth century. The same
influence from Chateaubriand is seen in Byron.
Letter-writing
MME. DE SÉVIGNÉ
1627-1696
The model for English letter-writers of the eighteenth century,
Horace Walpole being the great exemplar for our own country.
The mock-correspondence of the _Spectator_ already shows
the vogue.
Literary Criticism
BOILEAU
1636-1711
(_See_ “Poetry”).
STE. BEUVE
1804-1869
_Portraits Littéraires_, _Causeries du Lundi_, etc.
Exponent of criticism based on wide knowledge of literature.
Matthew Arnold was his avowed disciple.
V
ITALIAN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
To Italy there always attaches a singular fascination. Its natural
beauties, its historic associations, its ancient ruins, its mediaeval
buildings, its collections of art—these things scattered thickly and in
endless variety from one end of the peninsula to the other, from Sicily
to Milan, from Genoa to Venice, make Italy the country of countries
for the traveller of culture and sensibility, of enthusiasm for things
splendid and beautiful.
This being so, it might seem a most inconsistent and regrettable fact
that, while there are thousands who go, guidebook in hand, through
the galleries of the Vatican or the palace of the Venetian Doges, or
through that Florentine church of Santa Croce where they read the name
of a Michelangelo or a Machiavelli on illustrious tombs, yet a very few
have thought fit to look into Italian literature, to see if it perhaps
contains things as worthy of regard as Italian edifices or Italian
pictures. Few also realize that it is often impossible to understand
Italian art without understanding contemporary Italian literature.
Time was when education was hardly a complete and liberal education if
it did not include the knowledge of Italian and of the best thoughts of
Italy. Time was when England was the pupil of Italy in letters, as it
has largely continued to be in those other arts which are called “fine.”
At two periods, namely, first in the days of Chaucer, and afterwards for
more than a century, from the time of Wyatt and Surrey to the prime of
Milton, Italian masterpieces and Italian style were chief patterns to
Englishmen, and Italian thoughts and subjects were borrowed without stint.
Doubtless Italy has had her day as our teacher in letters, and we look to
her no more for inspiration or guidance in poetry or prose. Nevertheless
it is a mistake to seek so little direct knowledge of what is meant
by the names of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, of Ariosto and Tasso,
and of others well known to the ear. The study of writers like these
in their own tongue would do much to remove the false impressions we
are so apt to form of foreign peoples and their character. Literature
is the “expression of the soul of a people,” and the only sure way of
getting at a people’s soul is to study the expression of that soul in its
literature. For instance, are the Italians a people of profound feeling,
of much imagination, of high ideals of conduct? It is not travel which
will readily tell us this, but a study of the emotions, imaginings, and
moral conceptions which are revealed in their books.
* * * * *
The Italians are in but a partial degree descendants of the ancient
Romans. The Romans proper never did fill much of Italy. To the south of
Rome and in Sicily lay colonies of Greeks, at Naples, Reggio, Taranto,
Syracuse and Palermo. To the north lay the alien and rather mysterious
Etruscans in modern Tuscany. Still further north lay various Celtic
Gauls along the valleys of Piedmont and Lombardy. And even in central
Italy there were many tribes and many dialects, which were only brought
by force under a common Roman empire and a common literary and official
Latin tongue. The Romans did their best to weld all these diverse
elements into a homogeneous people with a common feeling of nationality,
common ideals and common customs. But at no time did one identical race
or one identical dialect fill the peninsula of Italy.
With the fall of the Roman empire Italy became the prey of Goths and
Lombards in the north, and later of Saracens, Normans, and Spaniards
successively in the south. Modern times have seen these elements also
combining as best they can into one people, with a national sentiment and
a national soul.
The modern Italians are, therefore, descendants of ancient Romans and
their kindred tribes, intermixed in intricate ways with Etruscans,
Ligurians, and Gaulish Celts, with Goths and other Teutons, with Greeks,
Spaniards, and a strain of Saracen. Nevertheless, among all these
constituents, it is the Roman mental attitude which most prevails. Beyond
doubt the literary ideal which possesses modern Italy is an inheritance
from ancient Rome.
The modern Italian speech is the child of Latin, in the sense in which
French and Spanish are the children of Latin; or rather, like French
and Spanish, it is a new shape which Latin has gradually put on after
hundreds of years of use and misuse. Perhaps a word must be said in
order to explain the chasm between Latin literature and the Italian
literature of Dante. At no time, even in the zenith of Roman prosperity,
did all parts of Italy speak the same Latin, even if they spoke Latin
at all. Local peculiarities of grammar and pronunciation were numerous
and marked. Moreover, in the most golden days of Latin speech, that
Latin which we know and learn was the language of a literary and
cultured class; the Latin of the people was different and more free. As
generations went by, and the Roman empire grew, the difference between
the literary and the popular speech became wider and wider still, until
the one was scarcely recognizable in the other. And when Italy in the
Dark Ages was ravaged, unsettled, and dismembered; when little state
sprang up here and little state there; when the literary and cultured
class almost disappeared, the upshot was that the speech of the people
prevailed, just as Saxon-English prevailed over Norman-French. In each
district its own dialect became the law, so that people at Naples, at
Rome, at Florence, at Bologna, at Venice, and at Milan, were speaking in
distinct manners of their own, while recognized Italian language there
was none. Dialects exist in all these places, and in many more, even
to-day; nevertheless there is an orthodox Italian language, the “Tuscan
speech with the Roman utterance,” in which cultivated people endeavour to
speak, and which is the only language recognized for serious literature.
Many still imagine that it was Dante who made that language. On the
contrary, no great literature can exist till the language is shaped.
English had to be formed before Chaucer could come. An Italian tongue was
necessary before Dante could build his masterpiece.
It appears at first a remarkable thing that the first literature which
can pretend to any extensive influence in Italy was called “Sicilian.”
Moreover the ideal language of Dante was one which he called the “courtly
language”—the _lingua aulica cortigiana_—whereas no court existed in
his Tuscan Republics. The two facts have their relation. Until late in
the twelfth century Italy, having no recognized language, had produced
nothing. Meanwhile the southern half of France had been for several
generations ringing with the musical voices of the Provençal troubadours.
Yet Italy, except for some troubadour influence in the north, was
silent. But about the year 1220, Frederick II, of the “two Sicilies,”
had gathered about himself, in his rich and luxurious court at Palermo,
scholars and men of refinement from all parts of Italy and Provence.
At his seat, where cultured Saracens were numerous, and their artistic
tastes in strong evidence, Provençal troubadours were to be found rhyming
their dainty and harmonious songs of love and chivalry. “Sicilians” and
others, gathered from the rest of Italy, took the key from these, and in
Sicily sprang up for the first time in Italy a definite form of poetry
composed in a popular speech instead of Latin. It is a love-poetry,
which, in kind, is copied from Provence, aiming solely at a fine air of
style and harmony of verse, and caring nothing for variety of subject
or for originality of thought. There are the same trite comparisons,
the same threadbare reflections, self-communings, and self-pityings. But
the language employed was the Italian of the court, an eclectic diction,
polished and regulated, and known as the _lingua cortigiana_ or _lingua
aulica_—the “court language.” To the Italians assembled in Frederick’s
dominions this diction became the model for literary speech. Any who
composed in it were “courtly makers” in “Sicilian.”
After the decline of Frederick’s power in the south, it was Florence,
Pisa, Lucca and the Tuscan communes that possessed the chief vitality and
influence in Italy, and it was these that chiefly carried on the literary
tradition. But the Tuscan dialect, like the East Midland English, was
the most central. Its peculiarities were therefore the least pronounced
among the dialects of the peninsula. The Tuscans readily formed from
their own dialect a “courtly language” similar to that of the Sicilian
poetry, and it was to Florence and its neighbourhood that Italians came
to look for the choicest literature, as they looked for the most vigorous
commerce. The custom of turning literary compositions from the local
dialects into Tuscan as the fashionable language—the process called
_Toscaneggiamento_—had begun before Dante wrote. And when Dante had
written in Tuscan that monumental and immortal work, the _Divine Comedy_,
it was inevitable that Tuscan should remain for all time the one and only
language of ambitious Italian composition.
The first promptings to any Italian literature thus came from the
graceful and musical, but often sickly and always artificial, poems
of the troubadours, whether clustered about Frederick or brought by
visitors to the northern courts of Milan, Ferrara, or Verona. The
contribution of Italy itself had so far been the sonnet form, invented
in Sicily and destined to play the most important part among all Italian
lyrics. The ideal erected had been one of polish, not of thought, and
unhappily for the most part this suited the Italian genius only too well.
But fortunately for the literature of the peninsula, there came very
early the man to whom life was real and earnest, and to whom writing
meant the expression of things intensely serious and vital.
Dante Alighieri was born at Florence in 1265, and died in exile at
Ravenna in 1321. The first great writer of Italian is its very greatest—a
name to be written with those of Homer and Shakespeare. It would require
a volume to speak adequately and with illustration of the profound
impression of nobility of character which he leaves upon his readers,
of the vast reach of his imagination, of the startling vividness of
the visions which he creates, of his master-power to make simple words
tell just what he sees. To read the story of his life and times is a
romance in itself. To place oneself in that Florence of six centuries
ago, where Guelfs are conflicting with Ghibellines and “Whites” with
“Blacks,” where the burghers are at one moment filling the streets with
songs and gay processions and pageants, and at another moment with the
shouts of fighting and scenes of murder; to see among these same burghers
the firm-set face of the future poet Dante, as he goes out to battle at
Campaldino; to see him sitting as a magistrate of the city, and then
again driven into exile and wandering, with a price upon his head, to
Verona or Ravenna—it is tempting to dwell upon such visions, but the
temptation is one which we must resist.
Dante is a figure in the literature of the world, not of Italy alone.
Like Shakespeare, he began with the lyric work dominant in his age.
Like Shakespeare, he therein revealed a power beyond his contemporaries
or predecessors. His sonnets and _Canzoni_ are indeed limited by the
prevailing conventions of that style, but from him they gain a pure
nobility of feeling and an intrinsic weight which no Provençal had
displayed, and to which the best Italians had but striven. But to the
world at large he is the author of the _Divine Comedy_. His readers, not
he himself, called it the “Divine,” both because it deals with things
heavenly and mystical beyond all ordinary vision, and also because it
transcends all other works which bore the name of “Comedy”—divine in its
subject, divine in its execution. Dante himself called it _Commedia_. He
knew nothing of the correct distinctions of true drama, for none existed
in his day. To him _commedia_ meant a medley, with a happy ending,
something written in the vulgar tongue, not aspiring to be an epic, like
that of the great master Virgil, but written in the middle style. The
poem, as a fact, is no more a comedy than _Paradise Lost_ is a comedy.
Yet the title is his own and is indefeasible.
The _Divine Comedy_ is a work which stands alone in literature, without a
distinct prototype and without a worthy follower. The fact that Homer had
made Odysseus descend to the shades, and that Virgil had done the same
with Aeneas, accounts for the shape or machinery, but for no more. It is
a work involving the most stupendous materials—no less than an epitome of
contemporary thought, belief, mysticism, aspiration, passion, history—and
handled with stupendous unconsciousness of mastery.
On the face of it, it is a narrative of a journey taken by the poet
through Hell, through Purgatory, and into Paradise. In Easter week of the
year 1300, Dante is led by Virgil (who to the Middle Ages had strangely
enough become the incarnation of this world’s wisdom) down through the
concentric circles of Hell—a funnel-shaped abyss within the centre of
the earth—and descends step after step to greater and greater horrors.
There he sees the gluttons wallowing in fetid mud, and the leaders of
heresies burning in half-opened tombs; he sees the sinners of avarice and
of prodigality suffer together with mutual revilings; he sees the steady
rain of burning flakes of fire; he is amazingly fertile in other agonies
for unrepentant or unshriven sinners. Then, from the _Inferno_, under the
self-same guidance, he mounts to the light and ascends the mountain of
Purgatorio, which rises like a cone, plane after plane, in seven tiers
for the seven deadly sins. Here the souls that are being purified are
suffering penances, which grow less and less awful as we approach the
summit. On the summit itself is the Terrestrial Paradise. Further than
that Virgil, the pagan poet, may not go; but Beatrice, Dante’s lost love
and his emblem of Christian faith, comes down to meet him, and together
they rise in spiral rings of flight, upward and upward through glory
after glory, till they reach the true Paradise, and stand in the presence
of the Beatific Vision.
There is something awe-inspiring in the very contemplation of a subject
so vast: yet Dante combines and handles all these mysteries with such a
vivid realistic power that the last suggestion to rise in the reader’s
mind is any suspicion of grotesque, still less of futile, extravagance.
His pictures are intensely vivid. His creations live. It would be no
wonder if the good people of Verona really pointed him out in awe, and
said, “Yonder is the man who has been in Hell!” A pictorial artist
could scarcely exhaust Dante in subjects for paintings. And, with it
all, his mere language is as simple and direct as was ever used by a
poet’s pen. It is so far Homeric. Almost the mere noun and verb suffice
to say what he has to say, and yet, somehow, that same noun and verb
combine into a sweet and majestic harmony which fit the sublime subject
as the “organ-voice” of Milton fitted his. We must, of course, make all
concession to the ignorance of his day and the unattractive subtleties
of the philosophy. These may often affect our interest, but they take
nothing from the poet’s genius.
Such was the narrative on the face of it. But the narrative is only the
cloak for an allegory. Dante, unlike most other Italian writers, was a
profoundly pious, and not merely a pietistic man. Moreover, his mind
was stored with all the theology, science, and philosophy of the time,
and he meant his work to have another and a deeper interpretation. In
the _Inferno_ and _Purgatorio_ he represents the moral passage of man
through life, learning to see its vices and their punishments, descending
through them, and thence again mounting through self-mortification
and cleansing fires upward to moral purity and wisdom. Virgil is the
embodiment of moral philosophy; and so far moral philosophy can guide us.
But Beatrice is the personification of Divine philosophy, the heavenly
wisdom of theology, and it is this which is required to bring man to the
full beauty and beatitude of perfect holiness. That, on the one hand, so
many should read the narrative as narrative, and be awed and fascinated
by it, while they miss, or are unconcerned with, the allegory beneath;
and that, on the other, the allegorical interpretation should not obtrude
itself, and yet should be so clear and so symmetrical when discovered, is
a superlative token of the poet’s extraordinary genius.
There had been nothing really like this poem before, and there has been
nothing since. We cannot explain away the original genius of Dante.
Before him Italian literature had nothing but the amatory effusions
of the Provençal-Sicilian type, insipid songs, laboured and affected
sonnets, and some crude visions and allegories. From these the _Divine
Comedy_ utterly departs. All that it can be said to owe to the writer’s
times and his nation is the vivid realistic way in which spiritual
conceptions are apprehended. The tendency which had been awakened by St.
Francis of Assisi and St. Dominic had become general in Dante’s day,
a tendency to make material and visible, in symbols, in painting, and
in acting, all the mysterious things hoped and feared in religion—a
tendency to picture the details, the scenes, and the personages in Heaven
and Hell—a tendency in which we do not share, and which sometimes shocks
the weaker brethren when they read the _Divine Comedy_.
There is one other topic to be considered, which must keenly interest
both readers of Dante in particular, and students of literature,
including English, in general. Before his great masterpiece, Dante had
written a work in which stately prose alternates with grave and stately
sonnets. This was the _Vita Nuova_ (or _New Life_), a work full of
a profoundly touching, if quaint, nobility of manner, and one which
places Dante more humanly, so to speak, among the writers of his time.
His sonnets, we have said, are a prelude to greater work. They are the
outcome of his era. The attitude towards love comes from Provence, and
the sonnet from Sicily, while a certain allegorical metaphysics had been
imparted by the Italian Guido Guinicelli, who had combined with the
troubadour spirit the philosophic learning—such as it was—of Bologna.
Dante had contemporaries, Guido Cavalcanti and Cino da Pistoia, who
composed sonnets in a vein closely resembling that of the greater master.
And in all of them the treatment is of one and the same thing—love.
In a previous chapter we have spoken of the conventional theory of that
affection as established in Provence, and have anticipated its connection
with the immortalized Beatrice of Dante and the Laura of Petrarch.
Woman, it will be remembered, had been sublimated into something half
divine, an object of a distant devotion, shrouded in a semi-religious
haze. Following the Provençal fashion, every Tuscan poet—putting, it is
true, into his work a finer and graver spirit than that of his Provençal
models—felt bound to devote himself, or to profess to devote himself, to
some such ennobling object of affection. To that real or imaginary being
he addressed his sonnets, from her he sought inspiration, by the ideal of
her he guided his life. We shall find this phenomenon in its completest
form in Petrarch, from whom it passed to our English sonneteers.
Sometimes the sentiment was absolutely real, as real as the Rosalind of
Spenser’s _Amoretti_. We cannot but believe that in the first instance
it was so with Dante, when he wrote of Beatrice in his _Vita Nuova_,
possibly even when he commemorated her in the _Divine Comedy_. We cannot
but believe that he loved a real Beatrice de’ Portinari, whom he first
saw at nine years of age, with a pure and elevated sentiment, and that
he encouraged the sentiment as the means of uplifting and stimulating
his genius and his soul. And we must believe that he is in earnest when,
after her death, he makes her not only the type of all that is best in
womanhood, but converts her into an abstract emblem of celestial wisdom.
There is the very sound of truth in the words wherein he tells us of
their first meeting. Rossetti translates them thus: “At that moment, I
say most truly, that the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the
secretest chamber of my heart, began to tremble so violently that the
least pulses of my body shook therewith, and in trembling it said these
words: ‘Behold God is stronger than I, and he shall reign over me.’”
And after her death he writes: “It was given unto me to behold a very
wonderful vision; wherein I saw things which determined me that I would
say nothing further of this most blessed one, until such time as I could
discourse more worthily concerning her. And to this end I labour all I
can, as she well knoweth. Wherefore, if it be His pleasure through whom
is the life of all things, that my life continue with me a few years,
it is my hope that I shall yet write concerning her that which hath not
before been written of any woman. After the which, may it seem good unto
Him who is the master of grace, that my spirit should go hence to behold
the glory of its lady; to wit, of that blessed Beatrice, who now gazeth
continually on His countenance, who is blessed for all ages.”
Of Dante it has seemed necessary to speak at this length because he is
so incalculable a proportion of Italian literature. While other writers
of Italy can be placed in general categories, Dante’s _Commedia_ must
remain for ever by itself. So far as he betrays himself Italian, it is
that, like all Italians, he is a vivid realist of pictures, cultivates a
literary style of finished art, and possesses by nature a strong vein of
irony.
* * * * *
Francesco Petrarca is accorded a rank second only to Dante among Italian
poets. Perhaps in our primary object, which considers the influence of
Italian literature upon ourselves, he is of more palpable consequence
than Dante himself. For though Dante did indeed set modern Europe a great
example, a model of sublimity in literature; though he did indeed supply
English writers with many a thought and phrase; though Chaucer made
borrowings and translations from him—as, for instance, in the story of
Ugolino; and though he influenced the early part of Milton’s _Paradise
Lost_ in a degree which we cannot exactly estimate, nevertheless his
influence is comparatively indirect. But Petrarch is the writer to whom
our English “courtly makers” and sonneteers directly and admittedly owe
the conception of their literary form and tone, from Wyatt and Surrey
and Sidney down to Rossetti and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It is to the
existence of Petrarch’s sonnets that Shakespeare’s owe theirs. Vast is
the influence of a man to whose example is due at least the form, and
often more than the hint of the matter, of the sonnets of our poets,
great and small, for five hundred years. Nor was his influence confined
to the sonnets. Chaucer borrowed love-songs from Petrarch, and Spenser
learned his art of writing in translating a Petrarchan _canzone_. The
effect of Petrarch was moreover cumulative, inasmuch as the French
sonneteers, like Saint-Gelais, Ronsard, and Du Bellay, who borrowed
from him, were themselves in turn imitated by Spenser and other English
writers.
Petrarch, who was born in 1304, and lived for seventy years, was both a
poet and a scholar. He cared, in fact, more for his Latin writing in an
epic like _Africa_, and for his collections of Latin MSS. than for those
Italian poems which have made him famous to all Europe. We may render
him hearty thanks for the immense help he gave towards bringing about
the Renaissance; but we are here concerned with him only as the poet
who expresses the Italian mind and expands the literature of England.
Petrarch is the poet of love. He is the heir of the Provençal lyrics of
chivalrous idealizing devotion. But his Laura is set upon a more human
plane than Beatrice. The Laura de Noves, whom Petrarch first saw in the
church at Avignon in the year 1327, and to whom he addressed some three
hundred sonnets, was his inspiration, as Beatrice was Dante’s. “I owe
to Laura all that I am,” he asserts. “She made to bud forth with the
noblest sentiments all the seeds of virtue which nature had sowed in my
heart.” Here we meet explicitly the accepted Italian attitude, as we
met it in Dante, and as it was afterwards adopted—though with a change
due to time and race and circumstances—by our English Surrey, and even
by Shakespeare. Beatrice was a woman seen through all the grave piety
and theology of Dante’s serious soul; Laura was a woman seen through
a Platonic atmosphere which the humanist Petrarch was adopting from
the Greek revival. Yet Laura, though an inspiration, is only a real
woman; she does not become refined away, like Beatrice, into a mere
personification of some abstract motive force. Petrarch’s sonnets are
poems to Laura, so many polished gems, so many keleidoscopic aspects of
a true and pure passion, of the fluctuations of hope, despair, surprise.
He is an artist in words and in verbal music. He uses no artificial
ornamentation, and he scarcely ever falls below himself. If taste,
delicacy, and refinement, combined with ingenious fancy and with a purity
of thought which spurns all vulgarity, can make a poet, Petrarch is a
great poet. And it is no wonder if sonneteers of all nations have made
him their model. Nor is it much wonder that, after the exhaustive manner
in which he treats of the phases of his passion, its vicissitudes, and
its inward and outward experiences, there was little room for novelty on
the part of any but a more than ordinary genius.
After Dante there is one thing we shall never find in Italian poetry,
and we do not find it in Petrarch. We shall find taste, melody, beauty
of expression, descriptive power, but we shall not find deep passion,
uncontrollable rapture, soarings of sublime inspiration. Yet, for what
Petrarch’s sonnets are, they are perfect. His _Canzoniere_ contains works
of graceful thought or of tender feeling, of brilliant and polished
expression, such works as a more fertile Tennyson might have written in
that age; but they have no claims to be more. The impression, however,
must not be left that Petrarch’s poetry was all in sonnets. To this
Sicilian form he joined a series of larger and freer _Canzoni_ after
Provençal example, and also _Trionfi_, or allegorical visions, dealing
more after the fashion of Dante with love, death, chastity, and other
abstracts.
* * * * *
From the _Divine Comedy_, through Petrarch, we come down to the
Human Comedy of Boccaccio. Giovanni Boccaccio, the younger and more
worldly-minded contemporary of Petrarch, the son of a Florentine merchant
and a Paris _grisette_, educated at Naples and domiciled in his maturer
years at Florence, is best known as the author of the first great prose
work of Italy, the _Decameron_. In the year 1348 a terrible plague
befell the city of Florence. Boccaccio, after opening with a powerful
description of this pestilence, represents seven young ladies and three
cavaliers as retiring to a delightful villa outside the walls in order
to escape the contagion and their responsibilities, and to pass the time
in idleness and amusement. Each of the ten persons relates ten stories,
and thus we obtain a hundred short tales (or “novels,” as they then
called them), tales pathetic, sportive, or licentious. We are not greatly
concerned with these stories; they are not original, but are taken from
current recital, from Oriental sources, from French _fabliaux_, and from
scattered productions or collections of insignificant Italian writers,
such as are found in the crude shapes of the _Cento Novelle_. The notion
of a series of stories strung into some sort of connection with each
other is as old as the _Book of Sinbad_ or the _Seven Sages_. Boccaccio’s
chief merit is that he wrought such stories into artistic tales full of
the varied life of his time, and gave them literary shape in language
pure, elegant, and sonorous, if, perhaps, often too diffuse. It is he
who sets the example for his immediate follower Sacchetti and for those
novels of Bandello or Cinthio which were current in English in the
Elizabethan age, and which so often supplied our dramatists, including
Shakespeare, with plots. It particularly interests us that the plan of
Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_, where each pilgrim is to tell the same
number of stories, is directly or indirectly borrowed from Boccaccio, as
indeed are some of the tales themselves, besides hints hard to specify.
Gower’s _Confessio Amantis_ is under the same kinds of obligation.
In this work Boccaccio shows the usual Italian love, and also power, of
depicting in words whatever the eye sees, a love and power which recall
the Italian fondness for realistic painting. There is in the Italian
genius at all times this same quality. In Ariosto or in Tasso, as in
Boccaccio, there appears this affection for word-painting, always skilful
and complete, but often carried to excess and satiety.
Meanwhile, for students of English literature, there is other work of
Boccaccio’s which possesses no small importance. His two heroic poems,
_La Teseide_ and _Filostrato_, were the source of Chaucer’s _Knight’s
Tale_ and his _Troilus and Cressida_, as well as of all the compositions
for which these have served as models. _La Teseide_ is the story of
Palamon and Arcite and their rivalry for the hand of Emilia; and Chaucer,
Fletcher, and Dryden are among the English writers who have handled this
theme. _Filostrato_ is the story of Troilus and Cressida, and to compare
Chaucer with Boccaccio is to see how different is the characteristic
Italian light-hearted and rather cynically objective contemplation of the
struggle of innocence and vice, from the English tendency to the dramatic
and subjective realization of the pathos of love and suffering. For other
copying of Boccaccio it may be enough to refer to Lydgate’s _Falls of
Princes_ and to the _Mirror for Magistrates_ (1559) based on the _De
Casibus Illustrium Virorum_ of the Italian.
* * * * *
Before leaving this great triumvirate of the most potent and golden
period of Italian letters—a triumvirate which represents three steps,
from the sublimity of poetic vision, through the higher experiences of
the poetic real, down to unelevated or vulgar facts of the reality of
prose; from a Beatrice through a Laura to a Fiammetta, who was very much
flesh and blood; we must not forget to note their several vehicles of
verse. Dante wrote in the _terza rima_, or stanza of three lines, linked
in an arrangement which we may represent by _a b a_, _b c b_, _c d c_,
and so on consistently. This is not found before him, though after him
it became appropriated to Italian philosophic and satirical poetry.
Petrarch’s chief vehicle was the sonnet. Boccaccio composed his poems
in the _ottava rima_, which he did not, indeed, invent, but which he
fixed for ever after as the orthodox verse of Italian romance and epic,
whether to be used by Ariosto and Tasso or by lesser men. The Italians
are characteristically imitators of set forms, and the metres of Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio have bound their followers in a degree in which
Englishmen have never been bound by any metres. When English writers
adopted Boccaccio’s _ottava rima_, they modified it. Chaucer dropped a
line; Spenser added one. Yet both the stanza of Chaucer’s _Troilus and
Cressida_ and the stanza of Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_ are none the less
to be reckoned as borrowings from Italy, though both, we may believe,
are improvements upon the original. That Spenser’s, at least, was such
is shown by the unanimity with which Thomson, Byron, Shelley and Keats
accepted it for sustained works of their own.
* * * * *
The first three classics of Italy thus passed away. Boccaccio died in
1375, and the Italian literature of Italy practically stood still.
This was the age of the revival of learning, when the Latin and Greek
classics, and at first particularly the Latin classics, were engaging the
attention of every man who pretended to scholarship and taste, and when
men of letters, instead of perfecting their own tongue and enriching it
with works full of modern manners and modern thoughts, were engaged in
a servile imitation of the ancient writers of Rome, especially Virgil,
Ovid, Cicero, Plautus, and Seneca. It was a time of insatiate erudition
in the things of antiquity, an age of great scholars like Bruno, Poggio
Bracciolini, Filelfo, and Valla, but an age when all their best was
written in Latin and that without originality or the savour of reality.
It was also a great time of literary patronage. The princes themselves
studied more or less earnestly, and affected literary taste, scholarship
and Platonism. Scholars were in the highest repute, not only as teachers
and companions of princes, but as ambassadors and counsellors. Every
little state had its group of learned writers. The Popes at Rome, the
Visconti at Milan, the Gonzaga at Mantua, the Este at Ferrara, the Medici
at Florence, collected together men of letters and bestowed lavish gifts
upon them. Cosmo de’ Medici, the Florentine merchant who had gained the
control of his city, turned his gardens into an academy. His trading
agents collected manuscripts everywhere in Greece and the East. The first
of those academies which afterwards became so numerous, and which bore
such remarkable names as _Della Crusca_, _Intronati_, and the rest, began
to spring up everywhere in Italy. Florence took the lead. The talk was
of letters and literary taste. Much pedantry, no doubt, there was; but
the universal love of letters was none the less genuine. Unfortunately
it took the practical shape of a cultivation of writing in Latin, not
in Italian. The _illuminati_ of the day despised the tongue of Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio. They gathered and absorbed the ideas of pagan
antiquity, but they did not yet seek to embody them in the language which
men actually spoke. They learned the secrets of literary polish, but did
not apply them to composition in Italian. So was it till towards the end
of the fifteenth century, or, roughly speaking, a hundred years after
the death of Boccaccio. These studies were anything but regrettable in
the end: the immediate fault lay in exclusive devotion to them, to the
neglect of the vernacular. When the fruits of classical study began to be
utilized for the purpose of literature in Italian, the results were of
the best. For the enthusiasm of the New Learning itself all Europe has
reason to be grateful to Italy, and no country more so than England, from
which (in 1488) Linacre went to sit at the feet of Poliziano in Florence,
whither also Grocyn and Latimer found their way.
At length, thanks to the efforts of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Poliziano
and Pulci at Florence, and of Boiardo at Ferrara, there was a revival
of Italian letters, a new breath of spontaneity passing over literary
creation. There is no need to speak in detail of the sonnets and
_canzoni_ of Lorenzo de’ Medici, modelled on Petrarch and addressed to
a Lucrezia Donato as the counterpart of Laura, nor of the lyric grace
and descriptive beauty of the learned and tasteful Poliziano. But of
Pulci’s romantic epic of _Morgante Maggiore_ and Boiardo’s _Orlando
Innamorato_ it is necessary to say a word, for the reason that they are
the precursors of Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_, of Tasso’s _Jerusalem
Delivered_, and thence indirectly of Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_. It is
Ariosto and Tasso who rank next to Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and
who consummate that sixteenth century or “Cinque Cento” literature which
constitutes the silver epoch of Italian letters. Pulci’s _Morgante
Maggiore_ and Boiardo’s _Orlando Innamorato_ are both “chivalrous
romances,” written in the _ottava rima_, or Italian equivalent of the
Spenserian stanza. They are not exactly epics, but rather stories of
knightly adventures, full of description and of the marvellous, of the
romance of love and arms, full of knights who slay giants, liberate
ladies, and fall in love with pagan maidens. Pulci’s work, though often
sufficiently earnest and stirring, is also often seasoned with that
mocking humour, that irony, that refusal to take ideals seriously, which
is one of the most constant of Italian characteristics. That of Boiardo
is of a more serious type. These books, as has just been hinted, mark a
revival of the well-known French romances, of the adventures credited to
the Paladins of Charlemagne. Such stories, which have no foundation in
sober history, were early borrowed by the Italians, and everyone knew of
Charlemagne, of Roland and Oliver, of the disaster of Roncesvalles, of
the traitor Gano and the rest. It was for Pulci and Boiardo to take these
legends of romance from the people, give them a literary shape, and so
lead the way for the magnificent work of Ariosto. It may be mentioned
in passing that Boiardo’s Moorish hero Rodamonte, the insolent and
atheistic—a name utilized by Ariosto in the form Rodomonte—has supplied a
term for that species of bombastic romancing which we call “rodomontade.”
That Boiardo was read by Milton is clear from allusion in _Paradise
Regained_.
In the next generation the _Orlando Innamorato_ was recast by Berni into
a mocking and satirical form, which was much more to the taste of the
Italian mind. The language of this _rifacimento_ is marked by greater
ease and polish than the original, but its chief claim to distinction
lies in the peculiar humour of the writer—the “Bernesque”—of interest
to students of English literature, from the fact that Berni largely
determined the character of the great productions of Byron’s Italian
period.
Italian literature has thus been brought back from scholars to the
people, when Lodovico Ariosto begins to write at Ferrara. His works are
various, including comedies and the inevitable sonnet after the manner
of Petrarch; but it is the _Orlando Furioso_, the romance of “Orlando
Mad,” which renders him immortal. That work is of special interest here,
inasmuch as it advanced English literature by inspiring the author of
the _Faerie Queene_ with the desire to “outgo” its power of perfect
description, and its unending chain of marvels and adventures. The poem
is a “romantic epic,” begun in 1505, and finished in eleven years. It
undertakes—following Boiardo on a higher plane of art—to sing of Paladins
at the court of Charlemagne, their loves, and their adventures, during
the fabulous wars of that famous emperor with the Moors. The hero Orlando
became mad through love of Angelica, and this madness, though it is only
an episode in the poem, gives the name to the whole. The entire work
is full of the spirit of prowess, of marvellous adventures of heroes
in rapid succession, their triumphs over the forces of nature and the
spells of magic, and of magnificent descriptions painted by the poet as
vividly as Italian artists painted with the brush—perhaps, it may be,
somewhat too fully, too precisely. The actions are placed in an ideal
world of chivalry, of knightly courtesy and knightly omnipotence, where
there are no stubborn facts and limitations to interfere with the valour
of the heroes. That world Ariosto did not create; he borrowed it from
the French trouvères, and from his predecessor Boiardo, whose work he
simply continues while throwing it into the shade. The magic and sorcery
come largely from Arabian sources; nevertheless Ariosto himself is of
imagination all compact, he invents episodes with wonderful fertility,
and orders them with wonderful distinctness. And the style is of the
most consummate in point of grace, elegance, and sweetness. He, like
other Italians, draws character but faintly; he does not soar to great
poetic heights, or descend to profound poetic depths; but in all the
forty thousand lines of his poem, it is asserted by Italians who should
be judges of their own tongue, that there is not one which is crude,
inharmonious, or feeble. According to himself
Le donne, i cavalier, l’arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l’audaci imprese io canto,
and it is not easy to see how such things could be more perfectly sung.
Ariosto became a rage and a model. During the sixteenth century every
Paladin and every Knight of the Round Table had his poet. Our own
Spenser, deeply read as he was in Italian, had not only read Ariosto, but
in all probability more than one imitator of Ariosto, and it is not for
nothing that so many characters in the _Faerie Queene_, such as Archimago
and Orgoglio, Duessa, and Fidissa, bear Italian names, names that so well
fit the land of romance which the Italians had annexed for their own. In
1591 appeared the well-known translation by Sir John Harington.
Torquato Tasso, who lived during the latter half of the sixteenth century
(1544-1595), and who also wrote at Ferrara, composed the world-famed
epic _Gerusalemme Liberata_, or “Jerusalem Delivered.” It is the epic or
Iliad of the first great Crusade, in which Godfrey of Boulogne, who is
the hero—_Goffredo_ indeed was the earlier name of the epic—took back
the sacred city of Jerusalem from the Saracens. It would be vain to
attempt here to give an idea of this splendid heroic poem, of its vigour,
of the beauty of language in its episodes, of the romantic experiences
of the knightly Tancred and the heroine Clorinda, of the exploits, the
miracles, the magic, and the enchanted forest. That it greatly influenced
Spenser—whose Bower of Acrasia, for instance, is Tasso’s garden of
Armida—that it, along with the _Iliad_, the _Aeneid_, and the _Divine
Comedy_, helped to build up the _Paradise Lost_ of Milton, is one of its
claims upon our special notice here. To Elizabethan readers the work was
made accessible through the famous translation of Fairfax (1600), and
by others of less renown. To Tasso also belongs an unfinished poem on
the Creation, _Il Mondo Creato_, with which Milton was manifestly well
acquainted. Whether or not the English poet was also influenced in his
_Paradise Lost_ by another Italian production, the _Adamo_ of Andreini,
is uncertain.
Before proceeding further, we must take advantage of the mention of
Tasso, and make reference to another form of composition, of which the
Italians were always peculiarly fond, and which much affected the rest of
Europe for nearly two centuries. We have seen how the Greek Theocritus
wrote idylls of country life in Sicily, and how Virgil composed pastoral
eclogues on Italian soil. After the Renaissance—even the earlier wave of
that name—the writers of Italy took up these themes and began to dwell
again on country scenes, and on the delights of an ideal pastoral life,
as far removed as possible from the vicious and troublous realities of
their cities. Boccaccio, Poliziano, Sannazaro, Mantuanus are steps in the
history of such pastoral before Tasso. The poet of _Jerusalem Delivered_
does not disdain this region of poetry. In his pastoral drama _Aminta_ he
places his highly cultivated and courtly shepherds, shepherdesses, and
nymphs on the hills about Sorrento, and lends to their external life as
much pretence at reality as he can command. But he is above all things a
poet, and only secondarily a dramatist, and it is upon the lyrics that
the chief effect is staked. What the great Tasso did, others must do, and
at the end of the sixteenth century there are more than a dozen Italian
verse-writers composing in similar strain. The chief is Guarini, with
his _Pastor Fido_, destined to become well-known in an English shape as
Fletcher’s _Faithful Shepherdess_. But Tasso, as has just been said, was
not the first to revive the pastoral. It was a century since Poliziano
had written a _Favola di Orfeo_, a dramatic eclogue blending idyll and
tragedy. But greatest among such predecessors had been the Neapolitan
Sannazaro, who in 1504 had published the _Arcadia_, a medley of romance
and eclogue, partly in prose, partly in verse, which gave its shape to
our own _Arcadia_, the polished, if long and often tiresome, work of
Sir Philip Sidney. Sannazaro indeed practically invented that mythical
Arcady, or rural Utopia, into which poets and prose-writers have since
made so many journeys in order to find a land where there still lingers
the golden age of innocence and felicity amid bowers of beauty, where
hard facts and bad weather never intrude. Another writer, Battista of
Mantua—commonly called “the Mantuan”—composing in Latin, had also become
a famous model in the pastoral kind for all western Europe. Readers of
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_ need hardly be told that “good old Mantuan” was a
Latin school-book in Shakespeare’s boyhood, and had also been imitated
by Barclay, and translated by Turbervile. From him, partly direct and
partly through the medium of the French Marot, came the cue for Spenser’s
_Shepheard’s Calender_ and its progeny. In the Elizabethan age, pastorals
and pastoral plays were numerous, and among the writers must be reckoned
Lyly, Lodge, Greene, Peele, and Giles Fletcher.
* * * * *
The work of Italy in this century—the “Cinquecento”—was above all things
work of artistic polish. The importance attached to beauty of style and
elegance of words is apt to seem to us disproportionate. We are inclined
to wish that the Italian writers had explored greater heights and depths
of thinking and feeling, and had grappled more closely with matters of
high seriousness. We find them enlarging, elaborating, and polishing
tales of romance and adventure, or scenes of beauty and romantic life. We
find them revelling in descriptions, and yet, all the time, ironically
playing with the very unrealities of that which they describe, often
plainly hinting to us not to take the matter too seriously. Above all
things they are artists in style. And, therefore, it is natural to find
that words are often compassed to the neglect of the matter. This was
not only so in writing, it extended to their more courtly speech. It is
largely from Italy, though partly from Spain, that there came over France
and England that vice of affectation which developed a special shape in
Euphuism. Before the appearance of Lyly’s _Euphues_ in 1578, association
with the gallants and wits of the Italian Courts had worked upon English
pretenders to courtly graces. They deliberately affected forms of speech
which should show both how much they knew, and how ingeniously refined
they could be in novelty of phrase. Early Elizabethan literature is
greatly tainted by Euphuism, with its tricks of language, alliterative,
antithetical, hyperbolical, full of whimsical comparisons, overwrought
descriptions, plays on words, avoiding natural forms of expression in
favour of those which would show off the writer’s cultivation, his wit,
and taste.
Carried to its extreme in Italy, this minute attention to elaborate
expression produced an irritating artificiality in the literature of
the seventeenth century. The _seicentisti_ produced many fine words,
but little important substance. Literature declined into a plaything.
Marini’s affected figures of speech, far-fetched comparisons, and tricks
of verbiage, as illustrated particularly in his romantic _Adone_,
characterized a generation of writers. “Marinism” in Italian literature,
like “Alexandrianism” in the Greek, is now a term of reproach in letters.
We cannot, indeed, in fairness, always attribute a mania of style to
some definite inventor. Nor can we always draw clear distinction between
one class of frigid, and finally exasperating, artifice and another.
Unfortunately each new example is a new temptation, since exaggerations
and tricks are always easier to imitate than the quiet and unaccentuated
perfections of the consummate masters. The strained conceits of Donne
and Crashaw, and in general of the “Fantastic” and “Metaphysical” school
of our early seventeenth century, are one manifestation of the same
spirit which was working in Italy. But Donne follows in the track of
Euphuism, with new developments from his own talents, while others of the
“Fantastics” go directly to the school of Marini. Among these must be
included Crashaw, who both translates and imitates the Italian poet, and
Cowley, whose early poems reproduce many of the Italian conceits.
* * * * *
In the seventeenth century Italian literature fell into its decline,
and by about 1650 its influences on English writers ceased. Milton is
perhaps the last great poet whose debts to Italian models and Italian
culture can be declared measurable. His own knowledge of the Italian
language, his travels in Italy, and his friendships with Italians kept
him in touch with the current literature of the country. The sonnet was
not dead in a land which was still to produce a Filicaia, and Milton
was a sonneteer both in his own language and in Italian. His _Comus_ is
an Italian pastoral masque raised for once to the scope and dignity of
literature, and to two famous poems he is led to attach the Italian names
_L’Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_. What his great epic owes to his reading
of Dante and Tasso is readily perceived, and the student of the two
literatures cannot but feel that the quiet tone of noble sweetness in his
earlier work is largely due, as it is with Spenser, to the fine example
of Italy. We should, perhaps, add at this point that a less considerable
contemporary of Milton, the artificial Cowley, was much under the
influence of the Italian lyrist Chiabrera (1552-1637), whose sumptuous,
courtly, glittering, but very un-Pindaric, “Pindarics” for a time
challenged the lyric supremacy of Petrarch. It is not a little strange
that Wordsworth also was so far attracted by Chiabrera as to translate
certain of his poetical epitaphs. Nor is it to be passed over that Pope’s
heroi-comical _Rape of the Lock_ was suggested—and in such compositions
the suggestion counts for much—by the _Rape of the Bucket_ (_La Secchia
Rapita_) of Tassoni, who died in 1636.
It is hardly part of our subject to dwell upon Italian drama, inasmuch as
it exerted but very little effect upon ours. So far as there was any,
it was in the “masques,” which owe their birth to the age of Poliziano,
played no inconsiderable part in the court festivities of England from
the time of Henry VIII, and came to engage so much of the learning and
ingenuity of Ben Jonson. Yet masques are little more than glorified
tableaux in glorified “private theatricals,” accompanied by some form of
libretto written _ad hoc_, and of almost no permanent value. Milton’s
_Comus_ is no fair specimen of the class. It is, perhaps, scarcely
relevant to literature to record that we owe our Harlequin and Pantaloon
to the stock characters in the Italian semi-improvisations known as
_commedie dell’arte_.
Italians may think otherwise, but, to our foreign conception, Italy
has never possessed a really fine dramatic masterpiece, tragic or
comic. The drama of Italy, like drama elsewhere, had its prelude in
the realistic presentations of religion, commonly known as “mysteries”
and “miracles,” but in Italy styled _sacre rappresentazioni_. But
Italy, unlike France or England, quickly developed the purely secular
drama from a source distinct from the Church. The Italians lay nearer
to the Roman comedy, and it was in Italy that the Latin Renaissance
came earliest. The ordinary Italian ingenuity and love of art and show
produced the “masque,” which was apt to be blent with pastoral, while
the deliberate Latinizing of the cultured classes brought in imitations,
often mere translations, of the comedies of Plautus and Terence, and of
the tragedies of Seneca. In the development of its tragedy Italy became
severely “classical,” in the misused sense of the term. That is to say,
it became Senecan, and obeyed the three unities. The vogue began with
Trissino and his _Sofonisba_ (1515), and was carried on by Rucellai,
Alamanni, and others. Comedy, which also followed in the Roman path,
was in a large degree emancipated by Aretino. To none of the dramatic
forms, tragedy, comedy, _drammi pastorali_, _drammi musicali_ (_opera_,
_tragedia per musica_), do we owe any real growths within our own
literature. Late in the eighteenth century Alfieri did his best, within
the Senecan conventions, to create a tragic stage, and much can be said
in praise of his efforts and his talents; but he was no dramatic genius.
Goldoni’s comedies do not concern us. The one dramatic gift of Italy to
Europe has been opera, which arose from musical pastoral in Rinnucini’s
_Dafne_. This, however, belongs rather to the domain of music. It is, no
doubt, hard to pass by the lyric brilliancy and charm of Metastasio (who
flourished about 1740), but for our subject he cannot fairly be regarded
as of moment.
For prose, besides the _novelle_ and _novellini_, we have in particular
the much read and rightly detested _Prince_ of Machiavelli, and the
_Cortegiano_ of Castiglione (1518), a book which speedily influenced
English courtly ideals, both directly and through various manuals written
in imitation. But there is little else to which conspicuous influence
could be ascribed without exaggeration.
The “Novella” is regularly a short story outlined round a situation which
is intended to be exciting. It is not a novel, but rather the sketch of
one. In this domain Italy was exceedingly prolific. True to the national
instinct for fidelity to patterns, the Italian _novellieri_ are fond
of the old device of Boccaccio, borrowed by Chaucer; they frequently
pretend that their various stories are related by a company of persons
accidentally brought together in a country house, or on a voyage, or the
like, and placed in need of such mutual entertainment. The _Pecorone_
of Ser Giovanni, the _Hecatommithi_ of Cinthio, and the stories of
Straparola, Da Porto, Bandello, and others, enjoyed a wide vogue in
France and England, and formed matter for the exploitation of every class
of our Elizabethan dramatists or writers of fiction.
* * * * *
What English literature owes to that of Italy, except in the case of
Byron’s Bernesque period, it owes before the middle of the seventeenth
century. From Dante to Tasso the obligations were great and manifold. To
Italian stories, Italian sonnets and lyrics, to Italian epic, romance
and pastoral, our writers from Chaucer to Milton are multifariously
indebted. Most indebted of all is the great epoch which culminated
in Shakespeare. Before his day the Tudor Court had much affected the
language and courtesies of Italy. Italian travel was common, and Italians
were relatively numerous in London. Even that sweet stateliness which
characterizes so much of the Elizabethan lyric is a gift of Italy.
To Italian skill and refinement of language, to Italian melodies of
versification, our rough lyric beginnings owe debts more appreciable
than to Italian matter. In other words, Italy taught us the art of
writing, while leaving us to use it upon our own realities of thought
and feeling. Before the poetical innovations of Wyatt and Surrey, English
verse had stood in much need of further moulding of form and polish of
language. It was an outcome of the partiality of the Court of Henry VIII
for Italian art and manners that there arose the new school of poets
whom Puttenham describes as “a new company of courtly makers, of whom
Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two
chieftains, who, having travelled into Italy and there tasted the sweet
and stately measures and style of the Italian poesy, as novices newly
crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly
polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy from that it had
been before, and for that cause may justly be said the first reformers
of our English metre and style.” Both Wyatt and Surrey are best known
as sonneteers. Sometimes they are translating from Petrarch, but they
are by no means mere translators, or even servile imitators. It is well
known that the sonnet, as introduced by them, differs somewhat from the
Italian, and its ending in an epigrammatic couplet is a purely English
novelty. “Sonnet,” indeed, was for a time used loosely for other forms
than the true poem of fourteen lines; but, when it found itself, it
had lost nothing in strength and beauty. Perhaps the chief impulse in
establishing the sonnet in England, when a certain halt had occurred
after Surrey, came from Watson’s _Passionate Century of Love_ (1581),
although in these “sonnets,” Italian enough in spirit, the form is
strangely made to consist of eighteen lines in three sestets.
The whole Elizabethan world of lyrists “Petrarchized.” The _Amoretti_ of
Spenser made him to Gabriel Harvey “an English Petrarch,” although in
truth Petrarch is but one in a list of Spenser’s models, which includes
also Sannazaro, Ariosto, and Tasso. It would be easy to trace throughout
the English sonneteers, from the appearance of _Tottell’s Miscellany_
in 1557, the effects of many an Italian Petrarchist whose name has not
been given in the foregoing sketch. Nor was the borrowing confined to the
sonnet form or the sonnet spirit. It extended also to the “sonnet series”
or “sonnet sequence.” The notion of such related sonnets was introduced
from Italy by Surrey in his series dedicated to “Geraldine,” and from
him was taken up by Sidney (to Stella), Spenser (to Rosalind), Constable
(_Diana_), Daniel (_Delia_), Drayton (_Idea_), Lodge (_Phillis_), Giles
Fletcher (_Licia_), as well as by Shakespeare, who, in his more noble
way, leaves the object nameless. This development should perhaps serve as
a warning to those who press Shakespeare’s sonnets too rigorously for a
key to his actual experiences.
Our servitude to France followed upon the decline of Italian influence.
So far as we have been affected by Italy during the last century it has
been due rather to the residence of English writers—Byron, Shelley,
Landor, Leigh Hunt, Browning, Ruskin—in the peninsula, than to any new
fountains of inspiration to be found in its productions.
* * * * *
The English genius wisely rejected some portions of the literary
offerings of Italy. Especially was this so in the domain of critical
principle, and particularly as it concerned the drama. Sidney’s _Apologie
for Poetrie_ follows the false doctrine of the dramatic unities as laid
down by Castelvetro (1570), but such pseudo-classical plays as were
attempted met with the fate which had previously attended Sackville’s
sterile effort of _Gorboduc_. The only useful and permanent contribution
from dramatic sources was the blank verse of Trissino, which Surrey first
borrowed for his translation of the _Aeneid_, whence it was passed on
to the stage by Sackville. Taken up by playwrights, it was moulded into
a powerful instrument by Marlowe, and thence grew to all its subsequent
ripe uses. For the rest, when Gascoigne translated Ariosto’s comedy _I
Suppositi_ in _The Supposes_, the Italian model itself proved barren, but
the lesson of style in dialogue left its usual improving result.
In borrowing the Italian _novelle_ and translating them, the English
sixteenth century for a time reproduced their horrors and licentiousness,
much to the disgust of many good citizens, who would scarcely have
recognized themselves if described as Puritans. It became necessary
even to order the burning of many of them for their wantonness. Yet
on the whole the English selection, whether for mere reading (as in
Painter’s _Palace of Pleasure_), or for exploitation by the stage (as
in _Romeo and Juliet_), or by prose fiction (as in the work of Greene),
shows sufficient indication of the superior English sense of decency.
Nevertheless, it was a recommendation to story-books if it could be said
(truly or otherwise) that the tales came “from Italy.” Nor did the
borrowings of them cease till the Puritans closed the playhouses, for
Massinger and Webster seek their situations where Shakespeare sought his,
albeit their choice may be less sure.
* * * * *
The Italians display literary characteristics not difficult to define.
They are the heirs of the Latin tradition. But Latin literature, as
has been stated earlier in this book, was not particularly original
either in thought or style. It was not a highly imaginative or emotional
literature; its verse tends chiefly to polish, and its prose to either
declamation or epigram. It was marked by incessant strivings after
verbal art, but not by any abandonments of passionate ardour, of lofty
endeavours, or of profound meditations. It was a literature given to
narration and satire; but not to exalted feeling. In other words, it
was a literature of culture rather than of spontaneity. It was prone,
therefore, to follow models, and to consider the form before the
substance. In almost all these qualities Italian literature shares.
Except in Dante, it hardly shows in any large measure the great poetic
faculty of experiencing and vividly realizing great passions and
far-reaching thoughts. Nearly all the Italians, after the vernacular
had once been established, cultivate the most fastidious perfection of
workmanship, while their thought and feeling are of but average depth,
dealing with things positive and on the surface. Except in Dante and his
age, Italian literature avoids the visionary and abstract, and deals by
preference with the material and sensuous. It is not marked by potent
and seminal thoughts, which are found almost only in Dante. For that
reason it is Dante whom we generally satisfy ourselves with reading, if,
indeed, we are not rather satisfied with talking of him and reading about
him.
CONSPECTUS OF ITALIAN LITERATURE
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVES.
DATE.
TYPICAL WORKS.
SOME INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Allegorical Poetry (“Visions”)
DANTE ALIGHIERI
1265-1321
(_Divina Commedia_)
The first model of noble style and matter in modern literature.
Afforded much suggestion to Milton (_Paradise Lost_). Chaucer
shows borrowings and translations in _e.g._, _House of Fame_,
_Parliament of Fowles_, and the story of Ugolino in _Monk’s
Tale_. Specific influences are less obvious than the general
fact.
Francesco PETRARCA
1304-1374
_Trionfi_ (“Triumphs”).
Lyrical Poetry:
(_a_) Sonnets and _Canzoni_
(Dante and his circle)
1265-1321
Francesco PETRARCA
1304-1374
Sonnets and _Canzoni_
Petrarch’s sonnets became the model for all later Italians, and
thence for Englishmen. The form (modified) was introduced into
England by Wyatt and Surrey (temp. Henry VIII) and sonnets, or
sonnet sequences, were written by more than a hundred versifiers
in the Elizabethan period. Examples are Spenser (_Amoretti_),
Sidney (_Astrophel and Stella_), Watson (_Teares of Fansie_),
Daniel (_Delia_), Drayton (_Idea_) Constable (_Diana_),
Shakespeare. Milton’s sonnets (five of them in Italian) are of
the same suggestion; and so down to them Rossetti and Mrs.
Browning. The poetical collections of Elizabethans (_Tottell’s
Miscellany_, _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_, etc.) are
markedly Italian in _provenance_.
(Lorenzo de’ Medici, etc.)
1448-1492
Sonnets and _Canzoni_.
Lodovico ARIOSTO
1474-1533
Sonnets.
Torquato TASSO
1544-1595
Sonnets.
Giovanni Battista MARINI
1569-1625
(Various.)
(_b_) Other Lyrics
Gabriello Chiabrera
1551-1637
Pindaric lyrics
Influenced the taste for Pindarics which appeared in Cowley,
Dryden, etc.
Pietro METASTASIO
1698-1782
Operatic lyrics.
Heroic and Epic Verse (chiefly romantic heroics)
Giovanni BOCCACCIO
1313-1375
_La Teseide_ and _Filostrato_
Chief introducer of the octave stanza (_ottava rima_), which
became the type for Italian epic. Adopted in English with one
modification by Chaucer (_Troilus and Cressida_), and with
another by Spenser (_Faerie Queene_). Chaucer’s _Knight’s
Tale_ is from Boccaccio’s _Teseide_, and his _Troilus and
Cressida_ (like Shakespeare’s) from the _Filostrato_. Chaucer
shows many borrowings and paraphrases.
Luigi PULCI
1431-1487
_Morgante Maggiore_ (heroic romance, serious only in part).
Matteo Maria BOIARDO
1430-1494
_Orlando Innamorato_ (mockingly recast by Berni fifty years
later).
Important as leading to Ariosto’s poem. Boiardo was well known
to Milton, and had previously served as material for Elizabethan
story writers. Byron in _Don Juan_ and _Beppo_ adopted
the “Bernesque” style.
Lodovico ARIOSTO
1474-1533
_Orlando Furioso_ (1516)
Favourite reading of Spenser, to whom it suggests the metrical
form and romantic style of _Faerie Queene_. Translated by
Harington (1591) in the same metre.
Torquato TASSO
1544-1595
_Gerusalemme Liberata_ (1581)
Spenser’s _Faerie Queene_ is full of echoes and imitations
of Tasso (the bower of Acrasia is a translation of the garden of
Armida). Milton is similarly indebted, as well as to Tasso’s
_Creation_ (_Il Mondo Creato_). Translated by Fairfax (1600).
Giovanni Battista MARINI
1569-1625
_Adone_ (a romantic epic)
Chiefly memorable for encouragement of the fantastic style known
as Marinism (early seventeenth century in England). Marini was
favourite reading with Crashaw and his like.
Mock Heroic
Alessandro Tassoni
1565-1638
_La Secchia Rapita_ (“Rape of the Bucket”).
Suggested Pope’s _Rape of the Lock_.
Satirical Verse
(Ariosto)
Luigi Alamanni
1495-1556
Utilized by Wyatt.
Pietro Aretino
1492-1557
Much affected by Elizabethan pamphleteers, _e.g._, Nash (“the
English Aretino”).
Drama: Tragedy
Giovanni Giorgio TRISSIMO
1478-1550
_Sofonisba._
Important as the first example of blank verse, which was
borrowed from him by Surrey, used in the first English tragedy
(_Gorboduc_, by Sackville), and thence established by Marlowe
for English drama.
TASSO
_Il Torrismondo._
(The French and English dramatists proper began by following the
Italian example of producing so-called classical plays: but
English drama owes little to Italian, the case being rather
the reverse. So far as Italian effect was pronounced it was in
the direction of horrible detail.)
Scipione MAFFEI
1675-1755
_Merope._
Vittorio ALFIERI
1749-1803
_Saul._
Drama: Comedy
ARIOSTO
1474-1533
_I Suppositi_ and _La Cassaria_, etc.
_I Suppositi_ (_The Supposes_) translated by Gascoigne
(1566) as one of our earliest comedies.
Niccolo MACHIAVELLI
1469-1527
_Mandragola_, etc.
(Pietro Aretino)
(The general influence in England was as slight as that of
Tragedy. It should, however, be remarked that our Harlequin,
Pantaloon, Columbine, and Punch, are derived from the old
Italian _commedie dell’arte_, _i.e._, stock un-literary
comedies: also that the “Masques” (up to Ben Jonson) were a
suggestion from Italy.)
Carlo GOLDONI
1707-1792
Comedies.
Pastoral Drama (See below, “Pastoral Eclogues.”)
Angelo POLIZIANO
fl. 1480
_Orfeo._
TASSO
1544-1595
_Aminta_ (1572)
Watson’s _Amyntas_ (1584).
Battista GUARINI
1537-1612
_Pastor Fido_ (1585)
Many times translated into English, first in 1602. Fletcher’s
_Faithful Shepherdess_.
Musical Drama (Melodrama, Opera.)
Ottavio Rinuccini
fl. 1594
_Dafne_ and _Euridice_.
Apostolo Zeno
1669-1750
Pietro METASTASIO
1698-1782
Twenty-eight grand operas (_La Semiramide_, etc.).
Pastoral Eclogues
Battista Spagnoli (MANTUANUS)
fl. 1502
Latin eclogues
Used by Barclay (1513) and freely by Spenser (_Shepheard’s
Calender_), quoted by Holofernes in Shakespeare.
Giacomo SANNAZARO
1458-1530
_Arcadia_ (1504) (prose and verse).
Original of Sidney’s _Arcadia_. (These revive pastoral poetry
among both the French (Marot) and English.)
(Marini.)
Prose Fiction
Giovanni BOCCACCIO
1313-1375
_Decameron_ (100 tales).
Suggests plan of Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_, and also several
of the tales themselves. In Elizabethan times some of them
appear in Painter’s _Palace of Pleasure_, whence _All’s
Well that Ends Well_ is derived. Well known at all times.
Ser Giovanni
Publ. 1558
_Pecorone_
Giraldi Cinthio
Publ. 1565
_Hecatommithi_
Matteo Bandello, etc.
Publ. 1554-1573
_Novelle_
Much read and used by Elizabethans (Greene, Peel, etc. ). The
storehouse of dramatic plots. Thus, _Romeo and Juliet_,
_Measure for Measure_, _Othello_, etc., are from the Novelle.
Other Prose
Niccolo MACHIAVELLI
1469-1527
_Il Principe_, _History_, _Discourses on Livy_
_The Prince_ widely read. Bacon was well acquainted with
Machiavelli, and takes occasional suggestion from him in the
_Essays_.
VI
OTHER LITERARY INFLUENCES SUMMARIZED
(_a_) SPANISH LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
The direct and avowed influence of Spain upon English literature has
hardly been comparable to that of France or Italy; nevertheless, in its
totality, it has been sufficient to demand some concise review. Meanwhile
that review necessitates, if less inevitably than in the case of Italy
and France, an outline survey of the history of Spanish literature down
to the middle of the seventeenth century. After that date the Peninsula,
apart from its own lack of progress, cannot be said to count in our
literary development.
In the summary of such literary forces as existed in the Dark Ages,
we have already spoken of the Moslem learning of Cordova, and of the
agency of Moors, Arabs, and Jews in spreading science and philosophy.
We must not forget also the influence of Arab lyrics accompanying Arab
music, which not only operated in Spain, but also in Provence after the
Counts of Barcelona had established their court in that region. The
interpenetration of Christian and Moorish thought was, as a matter of
course, continued for many generations during the Christian re-conquest,
but from the eighth to the twelfth century both learning and literary
art lay with the Moslem. When in the thirteenth century the dialect
of Castile had become the most important, though by no means the only
Spanish speech, it embodied but little contribution from the north. Such
as it reveals is an imitation of the Carlovingian _chansons de geste_
of France, in the shape of romantic poems of which the hero is Ruy Diaz
de Bivar, commonly called the “Cid” (a corruption of the Arabic _Seyd_,
“lord”). Side by side with these went the troubadour poetry common to
the Provençal of Southern France and its closely related Catalonian of
Eastern Spain. In the next and following centuries there were destined
to spring from the Cid poems, combined with the Celtic tales of Arthur,
brought through France from Wales, those romances of chivalry—_libros de
caballerias_—of which something will be said in due course.
Meanwhile some noticeable elements in the character of the rising Spanish
literature were being cultivated under Oriental influence. Chief among
these were the love of aphorism and the love of story. The Spanish
mind has at all times been peculiarly sententious, and the proverbial
philosophy of Spain extraordinarily rich. The Spanish taste has also set
strongly in the direction of fiction of no very probable kind, whether
embodying more or less supernatural marvel, impossible sentiment,
chivalric and pastoral, or crowd of incident. These predilections
already showed themselves during the nascent period of the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. The Spanish taste worked with the Oriental
in respect both of proverb and story. The people of the _Arabian
Nights_ naturally passed on their _répertoire_ more readily to their
Spanish neighbours than elsewhere. The Arabic version of the _Fables_
(or _Tales_) _of Pilpay_ was translated under the same title of _Kalila
and Dimna_, and the Arabic version of the _Seven Sages_ (or _Book of
Sindabad_) into the _Stratagems of Women_. With these and other materials
there went a native inventiveness, in which Spanish writers have seldom
been deficient. When they proceed to issue stories in their own names,
though still derived from eastern sources (as in the forty-nine tales of
the _Count Lucanor_ of Don Juan Manuel early in the fourteenth century),
the sententious character common to Moors and Spaniards is in strong
evidence. The same people which was gathering proverbial wisdom into such
collections as _Blooms of Philosophy_ and _Mouthfuls of Gold_, affected
tales with a moral. _Count Lucanor_ consists of stories, told by a
minister to a prince according to the Oriental machinery, which are meant
to do more than amuse. They have the credit of being the first collection
of novels, if we may call them such, in modern Europe. Scattered
_fabliaux_ existed in France, and various tales were current in Italy,
but there was as yet no _Decameron_. The extent to which portions of this
early fiction filtered into England cannot very well be estimated, but
in the neo-Latin countries, with their comparative nearness of language
and traditions, their racial affinities and their common church, the
tales enjoyed a large vogue, which brought them into the hands of the
French composers of _fabliaux_, of Boccaccio’s Italian predecessors, of
Boccaccio himself, and thence of Chaucer. The plot of one of Don Manuel’s
stories is familiar to us through the _Taming of the Shrew_, and on the
Continent some of them reappear in the dramas of Calderon, or the novels
of Lesage. Nor was the circulation of the proverbs confined to Spain. In
Caxton’s _Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_, translated from the
French, there appear aphorisms which correspond to those in the Spanish
Florilegia.
* * * * *
The next step in Spanish literature consists of the prose “Chivalric
Romances,” or _libros de caballerias_, of which the existence is best
known to the ordinary reader through the derision showered upon them by
Cervantes in _Don Quixote_. The only exception which he makes is in the
case of their parent, the original _Amadis of Gaul_ (or _Wales_), as
being the best book in this kind, and deserving of preservation as an
example of a type. This _Amadis_, derived from Welsh sources, appeared
early in the fourteenth century, but enjoyed its greatest popularity
during the fifteenth. Elsewhere in western Europe the age of chivalry
had already passed, but in Spain the spirit lingered. The _Amadis_
romances, with their peculiar blend of Celtic knightly self-devotion
and the semi-Oriental fondness for magical and other marvels, were
entirely to the Spanish taste. About the original _Amadis_ and some of
its imitations, despite their extravagant conception of knightly honour
and knightly prowess, and their lack of all reality of time, place,
and circumstance, there is a certain tone or temper of nobility which
redeems them from entire contempt. Beyond this the sequels to _Amadis of
Gaul_, such as _Palmerin_, _Palmerin of England_, and _Amadis of Greece_,
possess no literary virtues. They are simply more or less ingenious
variations of one another, employing much the same figures and much the
same situations. Their knights-errant are totally unreal, and move with
much prolixity in an unreal world, of which the chief elements appear to
be love and sorcery. Nevertheless, when reinforced by a new development,
of which we are to speak next, their chivalric virtues gave them life
under a new shape in France of the seventeenth century.
This new development was the pastoral romance. Our knights and their
loves are now placed in the Arcady of shepherds and shepherdesses. It
is the same world of chivalric impossibility of sentiment, heroism, and
enchantment; but, during the vogue of the Amadises, Italy had developed
the pastoral, and the increasing contact of Spain with Italy—since
the acquisition of Naples—speedily brought before the Spanish writers
the example of Sannazaro. From the _Arcadia_ of the Italian on the
one hand, and from the _libros de caballerias_ on the other, the
Portuguese-Spaniard Montemayor created his famous _Diana_. This work,
like Sidney’s _Arcadia_, is partly in prose and partly in verse, and, in
such English development as arose from the pastoral, the influence of
the Spaniard must be reckoned with that of the Neapolitan. It appears in
Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_, and incidentally it may be observed
that, before writing his _Two Gentlemen of Verona_, Shakespeare would
seem at least to have been told of the substance of Montemayor. Not
only did this influence come directly from the Spanish work, and from
its translation into English at the end of the sixteenth century; it
came also by way of France in the latter part of the seventeenth. For
in France, early in that century, had appeared the _Astrée_ of D’Urfé,
based upon the Spaniard, and this in turn was the parent of those
tedious creations of sentimental affectation, the heroic romances of La
Calprenède and Scudéry, which have already been mentioned in dealing with
the effect of French literature upon our post-Restoration writers of
drama and fiction.
* * * * *
It would, however, be an error to suppose that, during this period of
romance and pastoral, literature made no approach towards real existence.
When war has come to play a smaller part in the national interest, and
when reading is becoming general, a country which loves stories and
“situations” will begin to find material for them in the facts, or at
least the possibilities, of real life. It was so with Spain. In the
latter part of the fifteenth century appears the first instalment of
non-romantic or non-chivalric literature in the shape of _Calisto and
Meliboea_, better known as _Celestina_, a work of uncertain authorship.
A prose “comedy,” though impracticable for the stage, and written in
twenty-one so-called acts, it sets forth—ostensibly with a dissuasive
moral purpose—a tale of intrigue and vice which might conceivably
belong to the realities of contemporary Spain. “Realistic,” indeed, it
cannot be called, since realism describes things strictly as they are.
The work was translated in all western Europe, including England. The
fact that in the early sixteenth century the productions of Spain found
ready access to our own country will be considered later. Meanwhile it
is most convenient to note the subsequent history of the Spanish novel
of common life. That history was peculiar, but intelligible. Spain was
growing weary of the monotonous pretences of the Amadises, and it was by
the treatment of the most opposite type of humanity that the liveliest
interest could be evoked. From the knight-errant to the rogue-errant was
a grateful change. The country possessed a plenty of _picaros_ or rogues,
who lived by the exercise of their wits, and whose adventures might be
embellished into stories at least as interesting as those of a Palmerin.
The appearance of _The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, his Fortunes and
Adventures_ (1554)—a work of unknown authorship, though commonly
attributed to Mendoza—marks the date at which such stories first take
shape as a distinct branch of the novel, to be known as the “picaroon”
or “picaresque.” From that time, for nearly a century, the “Novelas de
Picaros” are a chief product of Spanish writing. In them the vagabond
of low life is carried by his cunning and his luck through a multitude
of such adventures as the Spanish mind considered humorous, even though
they might not be particularly edifying. Unfortunately the hero and his
history tend to become as stereotyped as those of the chivalric romance;
and unhappily also many of the situations at which contemporary Spain
could evidently laugh, are, to us, rather productive of pity or disgust.
Chief among the progeny of _Lazarillo_ are _Guzman de Alfarache_ (1599),
a sequel to _Lazarillo_ itself by Luna (1620), and _The Life of Buscon_
(otherwise entitled _The Great Knave_) by Quevedo (1626). All these
were quickly translated into English. Upon England the effect of the
picaresque novel first appears in the _Jack Wilton_ of Nash, who was
well acquainted with Spanish, and whose choice of a picaroon higher in
the social scale than Lazarillo is merely a concession to contemporary
English tastes and interests. In France the type passed through the
hands of Scarron and reached those of Lesage, whose _Diable Boiteux_ and
_Gil Blas_ were destined to eclipse the fame of the Spanish originals.
From the example of France this species broke out in England with the
_Moll Flanders_ and _Colonel Jack_ of Defoe, the _Joseph Andrews_ of
Fielding, the _Roderick Random_ and _Peregrine Pickle_ of Smollett. In
the nineteenth century it finds its congeners in the _Three Musketeers_
of Dumas and in the works of several minor English novelists. Mr. Jingle
does not essentially differ from the type.
It is commonly said that it was the ridicule of Miguel Cervantes which
destroyed the vogue of the chivalric romances. In reality he is rather
the embodiment of his epoch, dealing the _coup de grâce_ to that which
was already dying. His immortal _Don Quixote_ appeared first in 1605,
when Amadis and Palmerin had already been losing their hold for a
generation. Cervantes himself began with a pastoral _Galatea_, but it
is not to be wondered at that his characteristic satirical sense of
reality diverted him from this vein to the writing of original novels.
Some twelve of these “Novelas Exemplares,” or moral and instructive
tales, were published in 1613, and, though of uneven quality, they are
the nearest approach which Spain could show to a novel of actuality.
Some of these were soon converted into plots for dramas by the later
Elizabethan playwrights. _La Gitanilla_ becomes the _Spanish Gipsy_
of Middleton, and Fletcher’s _The Fair Maid of the Inn_ is from the
_Illustrious Housemaid_. But the abiding fame of Cervantes rests upon
work of an entirely novel kind, and one which has remained unique,
despite all efforts at imitation. Though full of contemporary Spain,
_Don Quixote_ is one of those immortal books which become the property
of the world rather than of any particular country. Its happy conception
and execution, its humour, its fine suggestion of the true gentleman,
and its admirable style, combine to make Cervantes the one significant
name in Spanish literature. _Don Quixote_, a poor gentleman of La Mancha,
a true type of the Castilian with all his native dignity and ready
acceptance of lofty views of honour and loyalty, has bemused himself—as
so many others had done—with the reading of the _libros de caballerias_.
Accepting the world of the chivalric romances as a real world, where
wrongs and oppressions clamour for heroic knights to redress them, he
saddles his gaunt mare, Rosinante, clothes himself in old armour, with a
barber’s dish for helmet, and sallies forth to seek adventures. To him
Cervantes attaches the necessary squire in the shape of Sancho Panza,
a good-natured, ignorant peasant, endowed with a simple readiness to
believe his betters, but also with a fund of vulgar shrewdness which
forms an excellent contrast to the idealizing monomania of his master.
The story consists of the adventures of this worthy pair. The inns
which the knight takes for castles, and the windmills which he takes
for giants, are now a commonplace, and had become proverbial in England
within a few years of the appearance of the book. The word “Quixotic”
itself tells the story of the vogue which the work secured. But thousands
have been entertained by the book as a novel without realizing its deeper
perfections. _Don Quixote_ is something far greater than a satire upon
the chivalric romances. It is a work of creative art, a perfect mirroring
of two types of character, all the more true to nature for the apparent
contradictions which each embraces. And Cervantes possesses the supreme
gift of creation, in that, like Swift or Defoe, he makes his persons
live. We are apt to feel, not that the Don is an imaginary character in a
book, but that he once actually lived and entertained his noble delusions
in La Mancha. The skill which not only saves him from contempt, but
invests him with pathetic admiration, is in itself the skill of genius.
It should be observed that Cervantes adapts his Spanish to the situations
with the delicate tact of a master, and that more than usual is therefore
inevitably lost in translation. The difficulty of imitating such a work
is manifest. Among the best known must be reckoned the _Hudibras_ of
Samuel Butler (1663), but beyond adopting the notion of an errant knight
and squire, in the persons of Sir Hudibras and Ralpho, he achieves little
that is comparable to his original. Sir Hudibras is a cowardly and
contemptible person of narrow mind, but, even as such, his treatment is
inconsistent, and the verse which Butler employs in place of Cervantes’
prose is but facile doggerel. It would be better indeed to speak of
_Hudibras_ as a vulgar, if often amusing, travesty of _Don Quixote_ than
as an imitation.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the Spanish lyric verse of the _cancioneros_, cultivated with
much assiduity but with little genius, hardly concerns us, whether in
its native form or when reshaped into sonnets and other varieties under
Italian influence by “learned” poets like Boscan and Garcilaso de la
Vega. Of most importance is the fact that poetry of the latter kind was
disfigured by Gongora, a writer of the end of the sixteenth century,
into one of those styles of exaggerated preciosity which always seem to
secure a temporary success by their very absurdity. The _estilo culto_,
otherwise known as Gongorism, was a deliberate invention, of which the
main features were the consistent avoidance of the natural word and,
as far as possible, of the natural order. Such tricks were congenial
to the Spanish taste, which has always been too much inclined, whether
in verse or prose, to verbose and ornate expression. Gongorism is but
a new species of Spanish artificiality in this respect—a national
characteristic recognized and ridiculed by Shakespeare in his Don Armado.
How much of the peculiar style of Lyly’s _Euphues_ may be due to Spanish
as well as Italian influences cannot be determined with any preciseness.
But it should always be borne in mind that, after the marriage of Henry
VIII with Catharine of Aragon, the English Court was frequented by
Spaniards, and that, thanks to this fact, and the general prominence of
Spain in the eyes of contemporary Europe, Spanish manners, whether of
person or expression, were regarded as a proper subject of emulation
by gallants and _beaux esprits_. This imitation extended far into the
reign of Elizabeth. Before Gongora had introduced his new varieties of
expression, this circle of Englishmen had been more or less familiar with
the sententious antitheses and fantastic prolixities of the prose of
Guevara (of the early sixteenth century), whose _Golden Book of Marcus
Aurelius_ and _Golden Letters_ combined the characteristic proverbial
philosophizing, often tediously platitudinarian, of his nation with its
almost equally characteristic straining after uncommonness of phrase.
Indeed it would seem that Elizabethan England caught from the Spaniards a
taste for apophthegmatic wisdom which reached some among even the best of
its writers, including no less a person than Bacon.
* * * * *
It only remains to remark briefly upon that form of literature which,
apart from Cervantes, is the chief boast of Spain. This was the drama,
established by Lope de Vega (1562-1635), and polished by Calderon a
generation later. Spanish plays had begun in the usual manner with the
performance of “Mysteries” and “Miracles,” of which the latter, when
connected with the sacrament, were called _autos_. But from these Spain,
like England, and unlike Italy or France, developed an entirely native
species of drama. As in England, the attempts to impose the Senecan form,
with its unities of place and time and its entire distinction of the
tragic from the comic, entirely failed. But, unlike the drama of England,
that of Lope de Vega and Calderon does not undertake to mirror human
nature and action with all its various sides and complex motives. Its
characters are but types, and, even as such, they are narrowly conceived.
In the “cloak and sword” pieces a lady, a lover, a sober old man, and a
clown, are the stock figures, who are brought into existence chiefly for
the purpose of enacting their parts in certain ingenious and complicated
intrigues with abundance of exciting or amusing situations. If Calderon
shows a more finished style and a finer observation than Lope, his scope
is otherwise the same. The Spanish stage does, indeed, like the French or
Italian, affect frequent displays of rhetoric, but there the resemblance
ends. Of special note among the _comedias_ were those above mentioned as
“cloak and sword” (_de capa y espada_). The title refers to the usual
equipment of a typical Spaniard of the higher middle class, who was the
most natural hero of adventures and intrigues. It is not difficult to
find in Ben Jonson and Fletcher resemblances to these plays of Spain. In
France, where Spanish influence was at its highest in the time of Lope,
comedy was inevitably affected by much that was congenial in the tastes
and lives of the two peoples, and with the Restoration the same influence
reached England in an attenuated form. Perhaps the most amazing thing
in all Spanish literature is the miraculous fecundity of Lope, to whom
are credited nearly two thousand plays, dashed off with a rapidity which
remains a unique phenomenon. In finish they are, of course, to seek;
but the passableness of the verse thus composed, and the ingenuity of
the plots conceived, are beyond denial. To the Spaniards Lope was “the
prodigy of nature,” and “the Spanish phoenix.”
* * * * *
It is needless for our purpose to follow further the story of Spanish
literature, which, since the seventeenth century, has been singularly
barren, and, in any case, has exerted no appreciable effect whatever upon
our own. On the whole it has been justly said that the writing of Spain
has not been quite worthy of the nation. Perhaps its best work, leaving
Cervantes aside, has been in history, from which, however, we have
derived no definite influence which can be classed as literary. Apart
from these its merits are those of inventiveness in plot and of a certain
high conception of dignity—a most consistent trait of the Spaniard. But
it is a literature wordy in expression, lacking in insight, and seldom
concerning itself with the deeper interests of human life.
BRIEF CONSPECTUS OF SPANISH LITERATURE.
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE OR WORK.
DATE.
SOME EFFECTS ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Fiction:
(_a_) Moral Tales
Don Juan MANUEL (_Count Lucanor_)
Early fourteenth century
Passed into stock of _fabliaux_ and _novelle_, and thence
occasionally reappear, _e.g._, in _Taming of the Shrew_.
CERVANTES (_Novelas Exemplares_)
1613
Utilized by later Elizabethan playwrights, _e.g._, Middleton’s
_Spanish Gipsy_, Fletcher’s _Fair Maid of the Inn_.
(_b_) Chivalric Romances (Libros de Caballerias)
_Amadis of Gaul_
Fourteenth century
_Palmerin_, _Palmerin of England_, etc.
Fifteenth century
The chivalric romances, combined with the pastoral, led (through
D’Urfé) to the French “heroic romances” of La Calprenède and
Scudéry. For their effect on English work, _see_ French
Literature.
(_c_) Pastoral Romance (part prose, part verse)
MONTEMAYOR (_Diana_)
1520-1562
CERVANTES (Galatea)
1585
The _Arcadia_ of Sidney and Spenser’s _Shepheard’s Calender_
owe some influence to Montemayor. _Diana_ was Englished at
the end of the sixteenth century.
(_d_) Romance of Common Life
_Celestina_ (_Calisto and Meliboea_)
Fifteenth century
Picaroon Novels (Novelas de Picaros)
_Lazarillo de Tormes_, _Guzman de Alfarache_
1554, 1599
QUEVEDO (_Life of Buscon_)
1626
The original source of the picaroon (or picaresque) novel, first
seen in England in, _e.g._, Nash’s _Jack Wilton_. In
France passed through Scarron to Lesage. Taken up by Defoe
(_Moll Flanders_, etc.), Fielding (_Joseph Andrews_),
Smollett (_Roderick Random_, etc.). Revived by Dumas and his
followers.
(_e_) Satirical
CERVANTES (_Don Quixote_)
1547-1616 (_D.Q._ 1605)
Greatly read and quoted in England at all times. Imitated in
Butler’s _Hudibras_.
Poetry:
(_a_) Early Romance
_Poem of the Cid_
Twelfth and thirteenth centuries
(_b_) Learned Poetry (lyric)
GARCILASO DE LA VEGA
1530-1568
GONGORA
1561-1627
The _estilo culto_ joins with Italian influence to create
artificiality of style.
Ethical Writing
Early Collection of Proverbs
Utilized in Caxton’s _Dictes and Sayings_, _etc._
GUEVARA (_Golden Book_ and _Golden Letters_)
1474-1546
Much effect on Tudor England in encouraging apophthegmatic and
sententious style.
Drama
LOPE DE VEGA
1562-1635
CALDERON
1601-1681
The “cloak and sword” dramas of situation and intrigue influence
plays of Jonson and Fletcher. French comedy sought material in
Lope, and England was thence indirectly affected after the
Restoration.
(_b_) GERMAN LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
For our purpose, which is that of surveying the influence exerted by
other literatures upon both the form and contents of our own, the
writings of Germany are of less prominence than those of the countries
with which we have hitherto dealt. To Latin our debt has been great and
continuous; to Greek it has been less continuous, but essentially much
more important; to Italian it was a debt of considerable dimensions for
some three centuries; to French it has been an extensive obligation
at two different and well marked epochs of some duration and potency.
But to German we owed but an inconsiderable debt until the end of the
eighteenth century or the beginning of the nineteenth, and, even since
that time, the influence has been rather philosophical and scientific
than literary—one affecting general currents of thought and methods of
thinking rather than one affecting range of literary subject or manner of
literary expression.
German “literature” at its best covers some half-century. The years from
about 1770 to about 1820 were its golden period, the age of Lessing,
Schiller, and Goethe. Since the latter date Heine alone stands forth as
one of those names in pure literature which have a cosmopolitan, and not
merely a German, significance. In speaking thus we are not forgetting
minor poets like Uhland, or philosophers like Schopenhauer, or historians
like Mommsen. But, in a literary inquiry of the present scope, we must
not, on the one hand, confound science, even the science of philosophy,
with literature; and, on the other, we must not lose our truth of
perspective by magnifying the relatively small.
* * * * *
It is at first sight one of the most amazing facts in literary history
that Germany should have been so late in arriving at a stage of creative
genius which was reached five centuries earlier in Italy, a hundred and
fifty years earlier in France, and nearly two hundred years earlier in
England; for by so much time does the flourishing of Dante, of Corneille,
and of Shakespeare, respectively precede the flourishing of Goethe. When
we recognize what a capacity the German mind possesses for deep and
sustained reflection, for tender sentiment, for rhythmic expression, we
are struck with wonder that, before the days of Lessing in the latter
half of the eighteenth century, German literature appears like a huge
sand-waste, with here and there a poor oasis yielding for the most part
but stony fruits and almost destitute of verdant beauty, except—and the
exception is considerable—those simple and earnest _Volkslieder_ in which
the Teutonic feeling finds such touching outlet.
The _Lay of the Nibelungen_ is properly an antique. The Minnesänger are
to us little more than a tradition. Of the Meistersänger perhaps Hans
Sachs is the only name which readily recalls itself. Luther we know full
well, but, except for his hymn, _Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_, he is
remembered as a figure of theological controversy and a translator of
the Bible rather than as a man of letters in the proper sense. We are
familiar with the almost omniscient Leibnitz in the realms of science and
philosophy; but it is not till towards the end of the eighteenth century,
just before our own Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, that we meet with a
fully matured and artistic literature, graced with numerous rememberable
names—with Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, and, in a minor rank, Klopstock,
Wieland, Bürger, Jean Paul Richter.
For this long sterility and slow development of German literature various
reasons are assigned. We need not here pretend to estimate how far they
are severally true. We cannot refer all literary outbursts to causes
independent of genius. Nor is it necessary always to demand an extensive
national life as a condition of literary fertility. Looking at the
golden-age literatures of Athens and Florence, we should rather hold that
it is a free-spirited and cultured life pervading a community, small or
great, which stimulates to literary productiveness and excellence. It is,
in fact, the prevailing ideals in a community which determine whether
it shall create a splendid literature or not. In Germany there were
for centuries no communities pervaded with this spirited and cultured
life; the prevailing ideals were not in the direction of any consummate
artistic production. Till 1802 there existed, in name at least, as
many as two hundred and fifty petty princedoms and paltry republics in
Germany, for the most part little better than narrow feudal domains,
struggling, ignoble, and selfish, as such disintegrated political atoms
are wont to be. So long as these were really separate there was no
grandeur of spirit, no high level of culture, in Germany. Nevertheless,
for a generation before the end of the eighteenth century there had been
growing up a wider and more national German sentiment and a considerable
measure of union, political and social. It was not till this generation
that Goethe and Schiller appeared. The wars which devastated Germany
after the Reformation were of most hideous ferocity and unparalleled
continuance, and had necessarily caused a dearth of literature as of
other arts. What literature is to be found in Germany for two hundred
years, from the time of our own Henry VIII down to the time of our George
III—all those generations which include our Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare,
Jonson, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray—is almost entirely a literature of
controversy, religion, hymns, criticism, and learning. Then at length,
with the growing feeling of a general Germanic nationality and a general
Germanic spirit and culture, with religious freedom established and
controversy worn out, with the ideals of learning homogeneously spread,
the time has come when literary genius finds its apt environment, and the
thought and feeling of Germany take shape in dramas, ballads, lyrics,
novels, and all other wonted forms. And then, for a generation, German
literature is the dominant literature of Europe.
* * * * *
With the literary work—if we may call it such—of the monastic period, and
with the religious poems of the learned German monks, we have nothing
to do. German literature at all worthy of the name begins with the
various _Lieder_, or romantic lays and lyrics of the twelfth century.
The impulse to the Romances of Alexander and of the Table Round came
from the trouvères of Northern France; the impulse to the lyrics of
chivalrous minstrelsy came from the troubadours of Languedoc. During
the Crusades the German barons were prominent, and that great motley
pilgrimage of Frenchmen, Germans, Provençals, and Italians to the Holy
Land was the means of spreading the legends and literary manners of the
one to the knowledge and imitation of the rest. It was probably in this
way, it was certainly at this time, that arose the Minne-Gesang and the
army of Minnesänger, who were its poets. Minne means “love,” and love
is the special theme of those who copied the troubadours. The lyrics of
the Minnesänger are primarily love-ditties of the kind which have been
already described as current in Provence. Not that all their _Lieder_
were lyric songs. There were also legends and romances, satires and
fables.
Most famous among all the creations of mediaeval Germany stands forth the
_Nibelungen Lied_, the “Lay of the Nibelungen.” Properly speaking the
title is _The Calamity of the Nibelungen_—_Der Nibelungen Noth_. The work
is an epic, the one epic of Germany. It records how Siegfried, a hero of
the fifth century, was done to treacherous death through the jealousy of
the Amazon Queen Brünhild, and how his murder was ruthlessly avenged by
his wife Kriemhild. The Nibelungen are properly fabulous giants of the
Land of Fog, but when a vast treasure, which Siegfried has taken from
them, comes into the hands of the Burgundians at Worms, these Burgundians
become in turn the Nibelungen. And since it is upon the lords of these
hapless Burgundian Nibelungen that Kriemhild’s vengeance falls, the poem
is rightly styled _Der Nibelungen Noth_. Such is the plot of this “Iliad
of Germany,” of which the collecting or formulation dates from about the
year 1200, and which is full of great exploits and great passions, of
witchcraft and murder and grimness. From a literary point of view the
composition is one of great vigour but of no less great uncouthness.
One other product of the time deserves some mention. It is the beast
story, or satirical fable, of _Reineke Fuchs_—“Reynard the Fox”—wherein
the cunning of the fox is contrasted with the qualities of the other
animals, who each bear a special sobriquet, and wherein human practices
are all the time playfully satirized. That the French borrowed this
beast-epic in their _Roman de Renart_ from the Germans, and not the
Germans from the French, is clear from the names borne by the various
animals, such as the French _renard_, the fox, and _baudet_, the donkey,
which are but the old German nicknames, Reynhart and Baldwin, in slight
disguise.
* * * * *
Following the Minnesänger came the Meister-Gesang and the Meistersänger.
This was the age of trade guilds, when artisans met as in a club, and
when each guild contained its poet or its poetaster. The shoemaker or
weaver had often a fancy to be rhymester for his mates; thereupon were
formed special guilds of poets of this sort, poetic artisans or artisan
poets, and these were called the Schools of Meistersänger. Naturally
enough the verse of men like these concerned itself, not with chivalry
and troubadour lyrics, but with themes of common life, with wedding and
christening songs, with songs of drink, of labour, and of domesticity.
In this age begin those special German _Volkslieder_, or “people’s
songs,” of which some touchingly sweet and musical specimens are
still read and heard to-day. The most prolific and best known of the
Meistersänger is Hans Sachs, “the cobbler bard,” who flourished about the
year 1550.
Of more importance to ourselves, perhaps, at this time was Sebastian
Brandt. He is scarcely one of the Meistersänger, since he was no artisan,
but a lawyer. Though of the same time and style he stands quite apart.
Us he concerns because his work, the _Narrenschiff_, or “Ship of Fools,”
was imitated in the sixteenth century by our English Barclay, and was
the parent of a considerable satirical progeny during that century.
It suggested, for instance, both the conception and the title of such
productions as the _Ship of Drunkards_. The “Ship” was chosen by Brandt
to convey the fools he satirizes—fops, misers, drunkards, and the
like—because no other conveyance was large enough. The captain was a
book-fool, and his name was Sebastian Brandt. About 1550 there was also
translated by Copland, under the name of the _Owl-glass_, the famous
_Eulenspiegel_, a series of amusing trickeries which are reflected in the
English Robin Goodfellow.
The age of the Meistersänger is followed by the age of Luther, the
Reformation, and the Thirty Years’ War. It is an era of the founding of
universities, of the spread of learning, of religious dispute carried on
in pedantic language, an era when the popular speech was disregarded in
favour of Latin or French. To speak broadly, there is no literature worth
the name from the time of Luther, who died in 1546, down to Lessing, who
wrote in 1760. Nor is Luther himself a figure of literature proper. As a
translator of the Bible into the Upper-Saxon dialect, and as having thus
fixed the modern German language, he is of the greatest importance to
Germany itself. To us his value is that of a thinker or moral force.
Yet there is one product of this long period which must count for
something in virtue of its subject. It is the legend of Dr. Faustus,
which was first printed in 1587, was utilized by Marlowe for his most
celebrated play, gave the hint for Green’s _Friar Bacon_, and was revived
by Goethe in his most famous and most influential work, the drama of
_Faust_. It is reported that there actually was a person named Faust in
Swabia in 1560, who rejoiced in a reputation for sorcery, and in the
companionship of the devil.
* * * * *
With a long leap over an irrelevant and wearisome interspace we arrive
at the “Classic Period” of German literature. It seems better to call
this the “classic” than the “classical” period, since the former word
signifies the best and golden age, the age of the classic works, not
the age in which literature followed the rules and canons of classicism
after the manner of the French in the “classical” period of Louis XIV,
or of the English in the “classical” period after the days of Dryden. It
is a superlative merit of the great German writers that they, like our
Elizabethans, and like our poets of the early nineteenth century, for the
most part refused to be fettered by artificial rules.
Now was the time of a splendid crop of genius, a time when Frederick
the Great had made North Germany more compact and peaceful, a time when
princely patronage deigned to take note of literature. It was the time
of a revolt against pedantry, of a reaction in favour of the national
language, and of romantic and spontaneous literary creation.
The period of creation had been preceded in the early eighteenth century
by a period of criticism, in which the German Swiss school of Bodmer,
affecting the literary freedom of England, came into collision with the
Leipzig school of Gottsched, which favoured the regulated literature of
France. The latter faction, however, soon passed away, and Klopstock’s
_Messias_, inspired by Milton, though a work poor in action and
character, showed how Germany was minded to abandon the mundane tone and
interests which had satisfied the school of Voltaire and his Teutonic
followers, and to adopt the cult of feeling and the ideal. For a time,
it is true, the rising poet Wieland set himself in deliberate opposition
to this cult, and proclaimed himself a pupil of the French; but, when
settled at Weimar in 1772, his French predilections did not prevent him
from at least devoting his abilities to the reconstruction of old romance.
The attack on the old formalism and its rules, in favour of free and
untrammelled genius, was deliberate and organized. It consisted on the
one hand of the fresh and searching criticism of Lessing and Herder,
and, on the other, of the efforts of German poetic youth. The name
given to the young spirits of the literary revolt and regeneration, the
clamourers for free play of spontaneity and imagination, was that of
_Stürmer und Dränger_. They were so called from the words _Sturm und
Drang_, often translated “Storm and Stress,” but in reality meaning
“Vigorous Assault,” which formed the title of a drama published by a
certain Klinger in 1774, although their appropriateness is not now easy
to discern. This particular drama supplied, however, in its wild and
extravagant structure, imagery and figures, a kind of manifesto of the
new school. Those who sided with the movement were therefore called the
“Storm-and-Stress men,” just as the “Impressionists” in painting have
been so named from the picture called _Impressions_, in which Monet first
publicly exemplified their methods. Most of the poets who were afterwards
to become famous belonged in their youth to this new school, went through
its extravagances, and came out all the better for it in their maturity.
Goethe with his juvenile drama of _Götz_, Schiller with his of _The
Robbers_, had their “Sturm und Drang” stage, the stage when they allowed
their imaginations and their language to run riot in wild extravagance.
The first great writer of the classic period in point of date is Lessing.
He had nothing to do with the violent ardours of “Sturm und Drang.” None
the less he is a regenerator, a more powerful regenerator, and, in a
sense, the founder of German literature. His dramas, with their central
idea of depicting a hero whose character and conduct point a general
moral, fixed the manner of German drama for Goethe and Schiller, and
therefore for all German literature. His _Minna von Barnhelm_, and his
_Nathan the Wise_, are moral lessons in military duty, or in religious
toleration. They are the precursors and direct progenitors of Goethe’s
_Faust_ and Schiller’s _Wallenstein_. But, perhaps, of all Lessing’s
works that which is best known abroad, and which has been most powerful
and far-reaching in its influence, is his _Laocoon_. Despite its errors
and shortcomings, this famous treatise on the “Boundaries of Poetry and
Painting,” a work of criticism in the philosophy of the beautiful, has
perhaps influenced more minds than any other work on aesthetics ever
written except those of Aristotle and Longinus. To countless others
besides Macaulay it has been their first illumination of the everlasting
principles of beauty.
Side by side with Lessing, younger than he, but more ardent, went the
_Dichterbund_, the “Poets’ League,” of Göttingen, whose object it was
to make the poetry of Germans truly German, by composing natural lyrics
and ballads of that sort in which modern German poetry perhaps abounds
more richly, more musically, than any poetry of any other land. They,
too, greatly influenced Goethe and Schiller, and from them Heine derives
the impulse to his exquisite music and simplicity. Chief among them was
Bürger, the ballad-writer and author of _Lenore_, who, perhaps, deserves
additional mention as the reputed author of the famous adventures
of Baron Münchhausen, perhaps the most perfectly ridiculous set of
impossible lies ever invented.
To speak of Goethe, Schiller, and Heine, would require volumes. Perhaps
nothing more perfect in their kind can be found than the lyrics of these
three superlative artists, superlative in their simplicity of language,
in their music, and in their clear-cut thought. Schiller’s _Song of the
Bell_ is thought converted into, identified with, melody. Goethe’s _Heath
Rose_, his _Serenade_, his songs in _Egmont_; the gems scattered through
Heine’s _Buch der Lieder_; these show every possible virtue of poems in
their kind. For what is the supreme merit of such a poem, unless that
it should give expression to a worthy thought or emotion in exquisite
language, which shall communicate it wholly, clearly, and movingly, by
means of sounds and cadences acting like music on the emotions, and
tuning the mind to a state of perfect receptiveness? This is precisely
what the great German triad did, and, if German were only more closely
regarded on its literary, as opposed to its utilitarian side, a study
of German lyrics, odes, ballads, and songs might serve as the best of
trainings for any who would learn to write them as poets should. Herein,
perhaps, the literary influence of Germany has yet to work with ample
scope and unmixed benefit.
But, though their lyrics alone are more than enough to make Goethe,
Schiller, and Heine immortal, it is not by these that Goethe and Schiller
are best known to the world outside of Germany. It is by dramas like
_Wallenstein_ and _Wilhelm Tell_ that Schiller holds his place, while
Goethe’s fame is mostly identified with _Faust_, with _Iphigenie_, and
with _Egmont_.
For German literature Goethe is the consummate name. He is the apex of
the pyramid, and that in virtue of one sublime quality—originality,
a word which perhaps means, after all, independence of observation
combined with a keen capacity for its exercise. After passing through his
Sturm-und-Drangship, his morbid stage of _The Sorrows of Werther_, and
his intermediate stage of classical proportion, Goethe wrote as one who
saw, and saw clearly. He saw facts, he dissected passions and motives.
He could analyse the complex, and build up the elements again into a
sound complexity. He has no narrowness. He displays a broad Hellenic
tolerance, and a clear Hellenic way of seeing things in their reality.
The influence of such a man must be vast. Byron and Shelley owned it and
showed it. Carlyle, as stern a critic as ever played the pedagogue, is
unmixed in his admiration for the man Goethe, who is to him divine. In
his own country his _Werther_, despite its frequent morbidness and its
_longueurs_, determined the feeling of every sentimentalist. Outside that
country his _Faust_ has become almost a textbook in poetical philosophy.
He is translated, commented on, consulted like an oracle. In the reality
and width of sway which he exercises, he stands next to Shakespeare among
the poets.
* * * * *
“The genius of Germany,” says Lamartine, “is deep and austere.” The
characteristics of German literature bear the impress of that national
genius. The German mind is one which inquires and ponders. The German is,
above all things, a deep and earnest thinker. Philosophy and learning,
investigation in history, language, physical science, these belong to
the Germans more than to any other people. We shall expect, therefore,
to find German literature full of reflection and original thought, more
concerned with the pursuit of the truth of that thought and reflection
than with the form of expression. Heine, indeed, cannot be classed with
the other great writers in this respect. Humour, wit, grace, music,
all these he has in abundance. But he is apt to be reckless in his
brilliancy; he is the incarnation of cleverness, but scarcely of sober
and sincere thought. But Heine, though a German, was not a Teuton. He was
a Jew. He wrote in German words in a German atmosphere, but hardly from a
Teutonic mind.
Truth and earnestness are essentials of German writing. And therefore
it is difficult to find in German literature mere writing for writing’s
sake. Its prose is the prose of discussion, argument, reflection,
criticism, philosophy, analysis: its poetry is poetry of earnest
meditation, real pathos, and real sentiment. Above all things German
poetry is lyrical, and its lyric note rings true.
* * * * *
For German “literary” influence on ourselves we cannot point to much
that is very definite. The influence of German philosophy in Leibnitz,
Kant, Hegel, Schelling, Fichte, Schopenhauer, is one of thought in the
scientific, not in the literary, aspect. We cannot say how great that
philosophic influence has been. Nor are we under any obligation here to
attempt the task. Neither are we concerned with the immense theological
influence—which is also one of philosophy—that came to us from Luther.
We are only concerned with the literary subject matter, the forms, and
the principles which we may owe to Germany. Our conception of how history
should be written owes much to Niebuhr, Ranke, and Mommsen; our aesthetic
criticism to Lessing and Winckelmann; and our literary criticism to
the brothers Schlegel. So long as there is intercommunication between
countries by reading and by travel we necessarily expect ideas to pass in
some shape and measure from one to the other. But it is only when great
writers look abroad for formative influences that we can perceive and
demonstrate a positive literary debt. English literature, and especially
Shakespeare, has, in this respect, exercised much more influence on
Germany than German literature upon ours.
In the sixteenth century we may find German legends like those concerning
Bishop Hatto or the Piper of Hamelin transferred to England; we may
find the story of Dr. Faustus producing Marlowe’s _Dr. Faustus_ and
Greene’s _Friar Bacon_; we may see Brandt’s _Narrenschiff_ translated
as Barclay’s _Ship of Fools_, and producing other satirical “Ships” of
a similar kind. We may trace the thoughts of Pope’s _Essay on Man_ back
through Bolingbroke’s prose to the philosophic writings of Leibnitz. Yet
instances like these are but scattered, and are intrinsically not of
the first importance. A really large and steady influence begins for us
with the end of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth
century, with Lessing and Goethe in Germany, and thence with Coleridge,
Byron, and Shelley in England. Coleridge and De Quincey were much read in
German literature and philosophy; Byron and Goethe were mutual admirers;
Shelley read Goethe along with the ancient classics; Scott practically
commenced writing by translating Goethe’s _Götz_ into _Goetz of the Iron
Hand_. Carlyle admired Goethe with an entirety which he refuses to any
but the greatest; English thinkers and essayists are constantly quoting
him. In our own day, when the knowledge of German is increasing, we all
absorb more or less of the thought of Germany. Yet the influence is one
of thought. It has not yet developed into an influence which can be seen
to determine the form and tone of poetry or prose, as was the case with
French and with Italian. The fact seems to be that German literature is
naturally too much like our own to exert such clear and palpable effect.
BRIEF CONSPECTUS OF GERMAN LITERATURE.
DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE.
CHIEF REPRESENTATIVE OR WORK.
DATES.
SOME REMARKS.
Poetry (other than drama):
(_a_) Satirical (didactic) Tales
_Reineke Fuchs_
_circa_ 1150
Formulation of Germanic Tales already taken up in France (_Roman
de Renart_).
Sebastian Brandt (_Narrenschiff_)
1494
Translated by Barclay (_Ship of Fools_). Other “Ships” followed.
(_b_) Romantic (chivalric) poems
_e.g._, _Rolandslied_
Later twelfth century
The influence was inward from France.
(_c_) Epic
_Nibelungenlied_
Shaped about 1200
Klopstock (_Messias_)
1773
Influence from Milton.
Wieland (_Oberon_)
1780
(_d_) Lyric
The Minnesänger
1150-1300
Influence inward from France.
The Meistersänger (Hans Sachs flor. 1550.)
1300-1550
_Volkslieder_
Fourteenth to sixteenth century
Luther (_Hymns_)
1524
A chief influence on the _Goostly Songs_ of Coverdale.
Göttingen Dichterbund (1772). Bürger (_Lenore_, etc.).
Goethe
1749-1832
Schiller
1759-1805
Heine
1799-1856
Uhland
1787-1862
The influence of German ballads and lyrics becomes clear in Scott
and Coleridge, and has affected all English work in this kind
during the nineteenth century. Translations have been numerous.
Drama
Lessing (_Minna von Barnhelm_, _Nathan der Weise_)
1729-1781
Schiller (_Wallenstein_, _Wilhelm Tell_)
Goethe (_Faust_, _Egmont_)
The influence of Goethe is not calculable. The effect of his
_Faust_ begins most clearly in Byron (_Manfred_).
Legends, Novels, and Tales
_Eulenspiegel_
Printed 1515
Translated by Copland (_Owlglasse_), 1550. References were
frequent in sixteenth century. Cf. the French derivative
_espiègle_.
Stories of _Bishop Hatto_, _Fortunatas_, etc.
Sixteenth century
Familiarized in England in the same century.
Stories of _Doctor Faustus_
1587
Source of Greene’s _Friar Bacon_, and Marlowe’s _Dr. Faustus_.
_Baron Münchhausen_ (partly by Bürger)
Goethe, _Sorrows of Werther_ (1774)
Influenced by Rousseau, but itself the source of “Wertherism.”
” _Wilhelm Meister_
Translated by Carlyle.
Philosophy, Theology, etc.
Luther (Pamphlets, Transl. of Bible, 1534)
1483-1546
Wide reaching effect on Protestant thought in England.
Leibnitz (_Théodicée_, etc.)
1646-1716
Pope’s _Essay on Man_ is derived, through Bolingbroke, from
thoughts of Leibnitz.
Kant (_Critique of Pure Reason_, 1781)
Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer
Nineteenth century
German philosophy has dominated England since the age of Coleridge
(who borrowed from Schelling), De Quincey, etc.
Criticism
Lessing (_Laocoon_, 1776)
Winckelmann (_Hist. of Ancient Art_, 1764)
A. W. Schlegel (_Lectures on Dramatic Art_)
1767-1845
(_c_) CELTIC LITERATURE AND ENGLISH
We are apt to forget how considerable a substratum of the “English”
people is Celtic. The first historical inhabitants of Britain were
mainly Celts. They filled England and Scotland as they now fill Wales;
they still occupy most of Ireland and of the Caledonian Highlands. The
conquering Romans with their settlers and legionaries affected the
population very little. When the Anglo-Saxons and Danes came in their
successive waves, and occupied the southern, eastern, and northern
portions of Great Britain, they did not arrive in numbers so great as
absolutely to sweep away the existing people, that blend of little Roman
with much Celt. They simply laid thicker strata on the ethnological
concretion. The Celtic strain was much thinned, particularly in England,
but it was by no means eliminated. The subsequent Norman invaders count
numerically for little in the mass. If, therefore, we take the whole body
of English literature, and think of the men who have produced it in Great
Britain and Ireland, we cannot but recognize that in those writers there
were probably certain Celtic elements, which must have had some potency
in determining their capacity for thought and feeling. Englishmen may
call themselves Anglo-Saxons, and we may be mostly made of Anglo-Saxon
clay, but we do not know how much of us is, after all, the contribution
of a Celtic strain, with its characteristic tendencies, the melancholy
sentiment and the chivalrous but inconstant ardour which mark the Celtic
race. Nevertheless it is one matter to speak of the Celtic spirit in our
literature, and another to display the influence of Celtic literature
upon our own. Celtic literature properly means the literature of peoples
speaking Celtic, and to that literature some debts are due, at least to
the Cymry of Wales and Brittany.
* * * * *
Already before the Anglo-Saxon invasion there were doubtless floating
among the British Celts legends of mystery and marvel congenial to the
racial taste. After the conflicts with the Saxons a great chieftain,
Arthur, grew into prominence, and around him were destined to gather both
these older legends, and also new stories of adventures with human foes,
with dragons, or with mysterious powers and spells. Christianity, working
upon the natural temperament of the Celt, encouraged that idealizing
self-dedication to the cause of love or piety, which belongs to knights
with a mission to “right the wrong.” It is this spirit which is the most
important Celtic contribution to the literature of the middle ages.
In the sixth century Gildas, called by Gibbon the “British Jeremiah,” who
had at least been educated in Wales, writes in Latin his _Destruction and
Conquest of Britain_, a dirge in the true tone of Celtic remonstrance
against the hardship of ruthless circumstance. In the ninth century
Nennius composes a summary of Welsh traditions, in which we meet with the
story of Brutus as the legendary colonizer of primitive Britain. In 1132
appeared the Latin _History of the Britons_ by Geoffrey of Monmouth,
who pretends to base his interesting but unhistoric compilation upon
materials gathered in Brittany by Walter of Oxford, but who probably
collected at least as many from the neighbouring Celts of Wales. In this
work are to be found not only the legendary Brutus, but also the stories
of Gorboduc and Lear, afterwards to figure in Elizabethan drama. The
cycle of Arthur is as yet incomplete; the Holy Grail is not mentioned nor
the Round Table.
In 1155 the Jersey Norman, Robert Wace, converts and amplifies Geoffrey’s
work into the French romance _Brut d’Engleterre_ or _Geste des Bretons_,
introducing for the first time the Table Round. This again is developed
in English verse by Layamon in his _Brut_ of 1205. From various sources,
and by various hands, the Arthurian legends are increased, first in the
romances in verse, next in the romances in prose. Though the infusion of
Celtic chivalrous sentiment appears in all, there are naturally various
degrees in the mysticism and asceticism which they display. The vogue
of these romances was not confined to France and England. As with other
portions of the epic verse of France, it passed into Italy, and inspired
both the predecessors of Ariosto and also that great poet himself.
Thence, as well as from the sources nearer home, it awoke the interest
of Spenser. To the same subjects Milton also was for awhile strongly
attracted. In his _Epitaphium Damonis_ he shows the hold which the
Arthurian legends had taken upon him, and he explicitly proposes to make
Arthur and the British knights the subject of an epic. In the Sabrina of
the _Comus_, and in various references, the same poet reveals how well
read he was in the matter of Geoffrey.
In Spain “matter of Britain” took a new lease of life. In that country
was produced the series of chivalric romances in prose, which began
soon after the year 1300 with the _Amadis of Gaul_ (_i.e._, _Wales_),
and continued for nearly three centuries, until, from their increasing
extravagance, they fell into disrepute, and were finally slain by
the satire of Cervantes. How these operated together with pastoral,
to produce the sentimental _longueurs_ of La Calprenède and Scudéry
in France of the seventeenth century, and thence affected the novel
and drama of post-Restoration England, is told in the sketch of the
literature of Spain. The affiliation to Celtic origins is in this
case clear enough, but with the circuitous route there goes a gradual
defection in that real Celtic spirit which was possessed by the original
_Amadis_.
* * * * *
When we are asked at what date English literature is most distinctly
affected by the creations of Celtic countries, we may reply that it is
chiefly before the age of Chaucer, when the romantic legends of Arthur
and his Table came through two channels; on the one hand through Breton
sources, on the other through Wales. This is, in point of subject
matter, the largest Celtic contribution on which we can lay our hand. To
it we owe not only the Arthurian cycle of romances as we find them in
Geoffrey, the _trouvères_, Layamon, and later in the compilation of Sir
Thomas Malory (called _Morte D’Arthur_), which was one of the earliest
books that Caxton chose to print; but also much reference in Spenser and
Milton, as well as the whole substance of Tennyson’s _Idylls of the
King_. To a once independent group of legends, afterwards brought into
relation with the Arthurian, we owe the exquisite _Tristram and Iseult_
of Matthew Arnold.
It was in “matter of Britain” that appeared the special vein of tender
chivalry which passed into the romances, first of France, then of Italy
and Spain. Not in Germany, not in Italy, not in Provence, not in Spain,
did these stories of knightly loyalty and uttermost honour and devotion
take their rise. It was in Northern France, where Franks and Normans were
in contact with the large Celtic remnants of the Bretons. In all these
legends there speaks the Celtic voice, rememberable and distinguishable
everywhere by its prevailing melancholy, its devotion to a cause, be that
cause right or wrong, be it strong or weak.
For the rest, we are in no position to fix the first invention of the
Quest of the Holy Grail, or any other legend of the cycle, upon any
definite author. What we allow to Tennyson in his liberties with the
details of the stories and the form they take, we must perforce allow to
the many who had told and retold the same stories scores of times since
the Celt of Britain first passed them on to Brittany.
A very dubious, if not wholly mythical, figure in Celtic literature,
is the once hugely admired Ossian. Macpherson, a contemporary of Dr.
Johnson, came into prominence at the time when the eighteenth century was
growing weary of the “classicism” of the school of Pope, and was ready
to be interested in the simple, frank, romantic world. Macpherson was
a Scotsman, who pretended to have collected from manuscripts, and from
the memory of Highlanders, sundry poems of a certain Ossian, a Gaelic
poet of the third century. These he translated into pompous declamatory
prose, attempting something like the style and imagery of the Hebraic
scriptures, but overstraining both. They were received with immense
enthusiasm in England, France, and Germany, and were Napoleon’s favourite
odes. Unhappily the alleged originals will, for the most part, not bear
the light of criticism. Johnson did not scruple to call Macpherson an
impostor. That there was an Ossian is probable, but the few poems which
can with tolerable safety be assigned to him belong to a much later date
than Macpherson claimed. Nevertheless, though Macpherson’s Ossian may
be as great an imposture as Chatterton’s _Rowley Poems_, he, no doubt,
did gather from the Celtic fragments and the Celtic folklore a mass of
imagery and fire of words, which came in most fitting time to lend some
help in ridding the weary world of the stereotyped coldnesses of the
followers of Pope.
(_d_) HEBREW INFLUENCE
For those who are not Hebrews, Hebrew literature means the Bible, and
especially the old Testament of that Bible. It would be a vain pretence
to attempt to show precisely how far the Bible has influenced the thought
of English writers. It is not our province here to deal with morals and
moral influence, however much we may recognize that, since out of the
fullness of the heart the mouth speaketh, our English literature could
not have been the literature it is, if the moral disposition and attitude
at the back of it had been other than they are. And these have been in
the largest measure determined by the Old Testament of the Hebrews.
Imagine for a moment that the Bible did not exist, that no Englishman had
ever read one line of it, that the religious notions which it inculcates
were without expression in any such established standard. Our way of
looking at life and at things suprasensual, our maxims of conduct, our
ideals of feeling, would obviously be something widely unlike those
which we now entertain. A nation’s literature is the expression of a
nation’s soul. Give us a different soul, and the expression will convey
that difference. We cannot separate literature from moral conceptions
and moral tone, and therefore, in a sense, the Hebrews have determined
our literature more than all other influences combined. And there is
this manifest and vastly important difference between the influence of
the Bible and the influence of any other work. The Biblical thoughts
have become part of our earliest, youngest, and most plastic selves.
We are born into them, and brought up in them, as something natural to
ourselves. The English heart and mind are now partly made of Hebrew
thoughts and ideals. This fact is so obvious that we need not pursue
it further. To other literatures we have looked for models to imitate
and notions to borrow; to the Biblical literature we have looked for a
transfusion of all our thinking.
But there is also a purely literary effect of the Bible, concerning which
a few words must be said. Who can estimate the immense extent to which
Biblical imagery and Biblical phrase—what one may call Biblical style
and Hebrew style—have determined the style of English writers? Remember
that the average English child is brought up on the Bible, that he reads,
marks, learns, and inwardly digests it; that its diction and its figures
of speech persist, however loosely, in his memory. What is the result?
Is it not that, though in a less degree than with the Puritans, there
remains, consciously or unconsciously, a habit of imitating those figures
and further developing them; of imitating that diction, and carrying
it into his higher forms of speech and his writings? Take the great
preachers and religious prose writers from Jeremy Taylor to Cardinal
Newman, and observe how their language unconsciously follows the rhythm,
clothes itself in the dignity, and repeats the very phraseology, of the
authorized version of the scriptures. Take poets like Milton, or mere
verse-writers like Akenside, and see how their language seems to echo the
language of the Testaments, Old and New.
It is true that the language of the “Authorized Version” is English and
not Hebrew. None the less the imagery, the similes and metaphors, the
fiery turns of exhortation and denunciation, the fervent question and
the apostrophe, all these and other elements which make up style, are,
apart from the rhythm, Hebrew and not English. And it is to these things
we refer when we speak of the purely “literary” effect of the Bible on
our writers. Quite apart from the spiritual effect which is sought for
without reference to the qualities of the style, there are, all the time,
powerful qualities in the Hebraic style itself, qualities often reaching
to the poetical sublime. Take, for instance, the passage, “Whither shall
I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy Presence?
If I climb up into heaven, Thou art there: if I go down to hell, Thou
art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the
uttermost parts of the sea, even there also shall Thy hand lead me, and
Thy right hand shall hold me. If I say ‘Peradventure the darkness shall
cover me,’ then shall my night be turned to day. Yea, the darkness is
no darkness with Thee: but the night is clear as the day: the darkness
and the light to Thee are both alike.” And once again: “Ye mountains
of Gilboa, let there be no dew, neither rain upon you, nor fields of
offerings: for there the shield of the mighty is vilely cast away, the
shield of Saul, as though not anointed with oil. From the blood of
the slain, from the fat of the mighty, the bow of Jonathan turned not
back, and the sword of Saul returned not empty. Saul and Jonathan were
lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their deaths they were not
divided. They were swifter than eagles, they were stronger than lions.
Ye daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you in scarlet, with
other delights; who put on ornaments of gold on your apparel. How are the
mighty fallen in the midst of the battle!”
What we are here concerned with is the way in which the diction of every
English writer has been dominated from his youth up by echoes of words
like these, which he received into his plastic mind in childhood, and
which mix themselves with his thoughts as he shapes the words and the
images of his English prose or verse.
If, indeed, we were to take our greater authors and read them through,
pencil in hand; if we were to mark those words and images and turns of
expression which we feel to be derived consciously or unconsciously from
the English version of the Hebrew Bible, we should be amazed to find how
much of purely literary strength and dignity that one book has added to
our tongue.
And this Hebrew influence has existed ever since we were a nation, nay,
even before. There was, indeed, no translated English Bible till the
days of Wyclif, the contemporary of Chaucer; nevertheless the images and
thoughts of the Latin Vulgate had become part of every good ecclesiastic,
and in all preaching and exhortation the Biblical phrases were heard
in English, perhaps rougher and less rhythmical than those of our own
version, but still with their essential quality retained. Remember again
that, still in these days, in all Christian churches, the language
employed is deliberately Biblical, that the prayers are Biblical in
expression, and that the language is considered the more apt and more
effective in proportion as it more distinctly bears the Hebraic impress.
Put all these considerations together, and it will be recognized without
need of further words than on literary style, as well as on moral
sentiment, the influence of the one Hebrew book has been unparalleled.
Meanwhile the writings in English verse and prose which have taken their
titles, their subject matter, their suggestions, or their inspiration,
from the Bible, would form an interminable list.
SOME POINTS IN THE PEDIGREE OF POETRY.
[Illustration]
SOME POINTS IN THE PEDIGREE OF EPIC VERSE.
[Illustration]
INDEX OF AUTHORS AND WORKS
Achilles Tatius; _Leucippe and Cleitophon_, 132.
Addison, Joseph, 42, 43, 113, 114, 174, 177;
_The Campaign_, 112;
_Cato_, 79, 112, 170;
the _Spectator_, 138, 173.
Aelian, 133.
Aeschylus, 19, 21, 49, 59, 62, 72;
_Agamemnon_, 22, 66;
_Eumenides_, 20;
_Persae_, 62;
_Prometheus Bound_, 21, 62, 65.
Aesop, 33, 34, 94, 95, 129, 134.
Akenside, Mark, 254;
_Pleasures of the Imagination_, 113.
Alamanni, Luigi, 210.
Alcaeus, 16, 54, 107.
Alciphron, 35.
Alembert, Jean d’, 176.
Alfieri, Count, 210.
Alfred, King, 95, 113;
translation of Boethius, 118;
translation of Aesop, 135.
_Amadis of Gaul_, 220, 250.
_Amadis of Greece_, 220.
Ambrose, St., 117.
Ammianus, 117.
Amyot, Jacques, translation of Plutarch, 161.
Anacreon, 17, 46, 69.
Andreini, Giovanni Battista; _Adamo_, 204.
Andronicus, 78.
Apollonius, 67.
_Apollonius of Tyre_, 132.
Apuleius; _The Golden Ass_, 116, 121.
_Arabian Nights, the_, 129, 219.
Archilochus of Paros, 15, 46.
Aretino, Pietro, 95, 210.
Ariosto, Lodovico, 93, 179, 196, 197, 212, 213, 249;
_I Suppositi_, 214;
_Orlando Furioso_, 200-203.
Aristophanes, 24, 170;
_Birds_, 24, 25.
Aristophanes of Byzantium, 35.
Aristotle, 30, 31, 39, 47, 48, 57, 58, 91, 129, 130, 166, 241;
_Poetics_, 35, 57;
_Rhetoric_, 35.
Arnold, Matthew, 40, 41, 44, 57, 159, 177;
_Essays in Criticism_, 83;
_Thyrsis_, 26, 56, 68;
_Tristram and Iseult_, 251;
Works showing Greek influence, 67, 68.
Arouet, François Marie. _See_ Voltaire.
Athenaeus; _Deipnosophists_, 35.
Augustine, Saint, 71;
_City of God_, 32, 117.
Ausonius, 71, 117.
Averrhoes; translation of Aristotle into Arabic, 48, 130.
Avianus, 34.
Babrius, 34, 134.
Bacon, Lord, 33, 50, 111, 113, 162;
_Essays_, 234;
_New Atlantis_, 32.
Bandello, Matteo, 195, 211.
Barclay, Alexander; _Ship of Fools_, 237, 245.
Barclay, John, 205.
_Baron Münchhausen_, 241.
Bartas, Guillaume de Salluste du; _Semaine_, 157.
“Basoche, La,” 165.
Battista of Mantua, 89, 204, 205.
_Battle of the Frogs and Mice_, 60.
Bede; _Ecclesiastical History_, 122.
Behn, Mrs. Aphra, 173.
Bellay, Joachim du, 156, 157, 192.
Benoît de Sainte-More, 134, 142;
_Roman de Troie_, 150.
_Beowulf_, 125.
Béranger, Pierre Jean de, 175.
Berkeley, George, 31.
Berni, Francesco, 201.
_Bible, the_, 117, 123, 124, 253-257.
Bidpai. _See_ Pilpay.
Bion, 6, 25, 56, 69.
_Blooms of Philosophy_, 219.
Boccaccio, 48, 49, 85, 133, 135, 149, 179, 199;
_Decameron_, 194-197, 211, 219;
other works, 196.
Bodmer, Johann Jakob, 239.
Boethius, 71, 117, 121, 122;
_De Consolatione_, 118.
Boiardo, Matteo, 199;
_Orlando Innamorato_, 200, 201, 202.
Boileau-Despréaux, Nicholas, 109, 139, 158, 159, 160, 163, 170;
_Art Poétique_, 6, 90, 159.
Bolingbroke, Viscount, 245.
_Book of Sinbad, the_, 195.
Boscan, Almogaver, 227.
Bossu, René Le, 170.
Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 104.
Bracciolini, Poggio, 198.
Brandt, Sebastian; _Narrenschiff_, 237, 245.
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 192.
Browning, Robert, 41, 44, 88, 213;
translations from the Greek, 22, 66.
Bruno, Giordano, 198.
Bürger, Gottfried August, 233, 241;
_Lenore_, 241.
Burke, Edmund, 104.
Burns, Robert, 15, 16, 86, 115, 137, 138, 154.
Butler, Samuel, 97;
_Hudibras_, 226, 227.
Byron, Lord, 22, 43, 65, 175, 176, 197, 211, 213, 233, 243, 245, 246;
_English Bards and Scotch Reviewers_, 97;
_Manfred_, 65.
Caesar, 75, 80, 90, 99, 108;
_Commentaries_, 100.
Calderon de la Barca, Pedro, 166, 220, 228, 229.
_Calisto and Meleboia_, or _Celestina_, 222.
Callimachus, 68, 87.
Callisthenes, 133, 134.
Calpurnius, 89.
Calverley, C. S.; translation of Theocritus, 27.
Capella, Martianus, 121, 122.
Carlyle, Thomas, 99, 100, 101, 243.
Cassiodorus, 122.
Castelvetro, 214.
Castiglione; _Cortegiano_, 210.
Cato; _On Agriculture_, 98.
Catullus, 73, 75, 80, 85, 86, 87, 108, 112, 114.
Cavalcanti, Guido, 189.
Caxton, 250;
_Esope_, 135;
_Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers_, 220.
Celsus, 98.
_Cento Novelle_, the, 195.
Cervantes, Miguel de, 224-227, 228, 230;
_Don Quixote_, 220, 224-227;
_Galatea_, 224;
_Novelas Exemplares_, 224, 225.
Chapman, George; translation of Homer, 13, 52, 60, 64.
Chateaubriand, Vicomte de, 175, 176, 177.
Chatterton, Thomas; _Rowley Poems_, 252.
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 46, 47, 94, 99, 113, 118, 134,
135, 136, 137, 138, 141, 148, 153, 177, 179, 182, 192, 197,
211, 219, 256;
_Canterbury Tales_, 85, 111, 149, 195, 196;
_Court of Love_, 145;
_Romaunt of the Rose_, 163.
Cheke, Sir John, 49, 57.
Chénier, André, 174.
Chesterfield, Earl of, 173, 177.
Chiabrera, Gabriello, 208.
Cibber, Colley; _The Non-Juror_, 171.
Cicero, 72, 75, 80, 102-106, 107, 112, 114, 116, 121, 198;
_De Oratore_, 102;
moral treatises, 102;
orations, 104;
letters, 105, 106, 108, 113, 173.
Cino da Pistoia, 189.
Cinthio; _Hecatommithi_, 195, 211.
Claudian, 71, 117, 122.
Coleridge, S. T., 44, 245.
Collins, William, 54.
Colonna, Guido; _History of the Trojan War_, 134.
Columella, 98.
Comines, Philippe de, 161.
Comte, Isidore, 177.
Congreve, William, 54, 78, 138, 177.
Constable, Henry; _Diana_, 213.
Copland; the _Owl-glass_, 237.
Corneille, Pierre, 22, 79, 139, 158, 166, 167, 168, 170, 232.
Cowley, Abraham, 113, 207, 208;
translations of Anacreon, 17;
_Pindaric Odes_, 18, 54, 55.
Cowper, William, 53, 137, 138, 159, 164;
translation of Homer, 13, 60;
_The Task_, 90.
Crashaw, Richard, 207.
Daniel, Samuel; _Delia_, 213.
Dante, 16, 48, 143, 145, 179, 181-191, 193, 194, 197, 199, 208, 211,
212, 215, 216, 232;
_Canzoni_, 185;
_Divine Comedy_, 5, 84, 183, 185-191;
_Vita Nuova_, 189, 190.
Da Porto, 211.
Dares Phrygius, 133.
Defoe, Daniel, 226;
_Colonel Jack_, 173, 224;
_Moll Flanders_, 173, 224.
Demetrius Phalereus, 94.
Democritus, 91.
Demosthenes, 6, 29, 30, 72, 104.
Denham, Sir John, 158.
De Quincey, Thomas, 113, 245.
Derby, Earl of;
translation of Homer, 13, 60.
Descartes, René; _Discours de la Méthode_, 173.
_Destruction of Troy, On the_, 133.
_Dictionnaire Raisonné_, the, 176.
Dictys Cretensis, 133, 134.
Diderot, Denis; the _Encyclopaedia_, 176.
Diogenes, Antonius; _Marvels beyond Thule_, 131.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 35.
Dionysius Thrax, 35.
_Dolopathos_, 133.
Donne, John, 207.
Dorset, Earl of. _See_ Sackville.
Douglas, Gawin; translation of the _Aeneid_, 111.
Drayton, Michael; _Idea_, 213.
Dryden, John, 7, 56, 60, 97, 112, 114, 137, 138, 159, 164, 166, 169,
170, 171, 173, 174, 177, 196, 234, 238;
Pindaric Odes, 54, 60;
_Of Dramatic Poesie_, 57;
_Troilus and Cressida_, 59;
translations from Latin, 112;
Dramas, 170, 171.
Dumas, Alexandre, 177;
_The Three Musketeers_, 224.
Dunbar, William, 153.
D’Urfé, Honoré, 132;
_Astrée_, 172, 222.
Dyer, John; _The Fleece_, 14, 113.
Earle, John; _Microcosmography_, 35.
Empedocles, 92.
“Enfants sans Souci,” 165.
Epicurus, 91, 92.
Erasmus, 49.
_Eulenspiegel_, 237.
Euripides, 19, 21, 59, 67;
_Alcestis_, 21, 22, 66;
_Heracles_, 66.
Fairfax, Edward; translation of Tasso, 203.
Farquhar, George, 78, 177.
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 244.
Filicaia, Vincenzo da, 208.
Fielding, Henry, 78, 177;
_Joseph Andrews_, 173, 224;
_Mock-Doctor_, 171.
Filelfo, 198;
translation of Homer, 52.
Flaubert, Gustave, 177.
Fletcher, Giles, 205;
_Licia_, 213.
Fletcher, John, 169, 196, 229;
_Fair Maid of the Inn_, 225;
_Faithful Shepherdess_, 205.
Florio, John; translation of Montaigne, 162.
Fox, Charles James, 104.
Froissart, 160.
Frontinus, 98.
Froude, J. A., 41.
Gascoigne, George; translation of Ariosto’s _I Suppositi_, 214.
Gay, John, 159;
_Fables_, 34, 174.
Geoffrey of Monmouth; _History of the Britons_, 249, 250.
George Sand, 16.
_Gesta Romanorum_, 135.
Gibbon, Edward, 100, 101, 248.
Gildas; _Destruction and Conquest of Britain_, 122, 248.
Giraldi, Giovanni Battista, surnamed Cinthio, 195, 211.
Gladstone, W. E., 104.
Goethe, 10, 108, 175, 231, 232, 233, 241-243, 245;
_Faust_, 238, 242, 243;
_Götz von Berlichingen_, 240, 241, 246;
_Lyrics_, 242;
_Werther_, 243.
Goldoni, Carlo, 210.
Gongora, Luis de, 227, 228.
Gottsched, Johann Christoph, 239.
Gower, John, 111, 134, 163, 177;
_Confessio Amantis_, 195.
Gray, Thomas, 7, 39, 53, 55, 61, 234;
_The Bard_, 61;
_Progress of Poesy_, 18, 54, 61;
translations from Statius, 85.
_Greek Anthology_, the, 28.
Greene, Richard, 205, 214;
_Friar Bacon_, 238, 245.
Gregory of Tours; _History of the Franks_, 122.
Gregory the Great; _Moralia_, 122.
Grocyn, William, 49, 199.
Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 132;
_Pastor Fido_, 205.
Guevara, Antonio de; _Golden Book of Marcus Aurelius_, 228;
_Golden Letters_, 228.
Guinicelli, Guido, 189.
_Guzman de Alfarache_, 223.
Hall, Edward; _Characterismes of Virtues and Vices_, 35, 97.
Hardy, Alexandre, 132.
Harington, Sir John, 203.
Harvey, Gabriel, 213.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 244.
Heine, Heinrich, 32, 231, 241, 244;
_Buch der Lieder_, 242.
Heliodorus, 36;
_Aethiopica_, 131.
Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 239.
Herodotus, 28, 33, 160.
Herrick, Robert, 15, 16, 17, 87.
Hesiod, 14, 46, 62, 90;
_Theogony_, 14;
_Works and Days_, 14.
_History of Alexander_, 134.
Homer; _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, 5, 9-13, 15, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, 49,
59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 68, 69, 72, 81, 82, 83, 107, 134, 184, 185;
translations, 13, 49, 52, 60, 64.
Hooker, Richard, 50.
Horace, 45, 46, 72, 73, 75, 80, 85-87, 107, 110, 112, 114;
_De Arte Poetica_, 6, 90, 91, 112;
_Epistles_, 95, 112;
_Odes_, 86, 87, 88;
_Satires_, 95, 96, 97, 112.
Hrotswith, 122.
Hugo, Victor, 159, 175;
_Les Misérables_, 177;
_Notre Dame_, 177.
Hume, David, 138.
Hunt, Leigh, 213.
Iamblichus; _Babylonica_, 131.
Isidore of Seville; _Origines_, 122.
Jerome, St., 71, 117;
translation of _The Bible_, 117, 123.
Jodelle, Etienne; _Cléopâtre_, 165, 166.
John of Damascus; _Barlaam and Josaphat_, 132.
Jonson, Ben, 24, 76, 112, 113, 209, 229, 234.
Johnson, Samuel, 113, 114, 138, 159, 174, 251, 252;
_London_, 97, 113;
_Vanity of Human Wishes_, 97, 113.
Jordanes, 122.
Juvenal, 76, 95-97, 108, 112, 113.
_Kalila and Dimna_, 129, 219.
Kant, Immanuel, 244.
Keats, John, 43, 44, 63, 64, 197;
_Endymion_, 39, 63;
_Hyperion_, 22, 63;
_On first looking into Chapman’s Homer_, 13, 64.
Klinger, Friedrich Maximilian von; _Sturm und Drang_, 240.
Klopstock, Friedrich Gottlieb, 233;
_Messias_, 239.
_Koran, the_, 128.
La Bruyère, Jean de; _Characters_, 35, 174.
La Calprenède, Gautier de, 132, 172, 222, 250;
_Cléopâtre_, 173;
_Cassandre_, 173.
Lactantius, 71, 117.
La Fayette, Madame de, 173.
La Fontaine, Jean de; _Fables_, 34, 174.
Lamartine, Alphonse, 175, 243.
Landor, W. S., 31, 113, 213;
_Hellenics_, 39, 66;
_Imaginary Conversations_, 174.
Langland, William; _Piers Plowman_, 126.
La Rochefoucauld, Duc de, 174.
_Lawyer Patelin_, 165.
Layamon; _Brut_, 249, 250.
_Lazarillo de Tormes, Life of_, 223.
Leibnitz, Baron von, 233, 244, 245.
Lesage, Alain René, 173, 220;
_Diable Boiteux_, 175, 224;
_Gil Blas_, 173, 175, 224.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 231, 233, 238, 239, 240, 241, 245;
_Laocoon_, 241;
_Minna von Barnhelm_, 241;
_Nathan the Wise_, 241.
Linacre, Thomas, 49, 199.
Livy; _History of Rome_, 75, 80, 99-101, 108, 111, 114.
Locke, John, 176.
Lodge, Thomas, 205;
_Phillis_, 213.
Longinus; _On Sublimity_, 35, 57, 241.
Longus; _Daphnis and Chloe_, 35, 132.
Lope de Vega, 166, 228, 229.
Loqman; _Fables_, 129.
Lorris, Guillaume de; _Roman de la Rose_, 148.
Lovelace, Richard, 17, 87.
Lucan, 71, 75, 111, 112, 114;
_Pharsalia_, 84.
Lucian, 31;
_True History_, 32, 62.
Lucilius, 95, 96.
Lucretius, 75, 80, 91-93, 108, 113, 114;
_De Rerum Natura_, 91, 92.
Luna, Alvaro de, 223.
Luther, Martin, 237, 243;
“_Ein feste Burg_,” 232;
translation of _The Bible_, 238.
Lydgate John, 111;
_Falls of Princes_, 196;
_Troy Book_, 134.
Lyly, John, 205;
_Euphues_, 206, 227.
Macaulay, Lord, 29, 99, 100, 101, 241;
_Lives of Chatham_, _Clive_, and _Hastings_, 33.
Machiavelli, 129;
_Il Principe_, 210.
Macrobius; _Saturnalia_, 117.
Macpherson, James; _Ossian_, 251, 252.
Malherbe, François, 158, 160, 163, 164, 166.
Malory, Sir Thomas; _Morte D’Arthur_, 250.
Map, Walter, 142, 151.
_Margites_, 61.
Marie de France, 142, 151.
Marini, Giovanni Battista, 207.
Marivaux, Pierre, 173;
_Marianne_, 175.
Marlowe, Christopher, 50, 111, 214;
_Dr. Faustus_, 238, 245.
Manuel, Juan; _Count Lucanor_, 219.
Marot, Clément, 153-155, 157, 163, 205.
_Marseillaise, La_, 15.
Martial, 28, 71, 97, 98, 111, 112, 156.
Mason, William, 18, 54.
Massinger, Philip, 215.
Menander, 19, 24, 46, 77.
Mendoza, Diego de; _Lazarillo de Tormes_, 223.
Metastasio, 210.
Meung, Jean de, 148.
Middleton, Thomas; _Spanish Gipsy_, 225.
Milton, John, 7, 53, 68, 83, 112, 113, 136, 179, 187, 208, 211, 234,
239, 250, 254;
_Comus_, 39, 208, 209, 249;
_Epitaphium Damonis_, 249;
_Il Penseroso_, 208;
_L’Allegro_, 208;
_Lycidas_, 15, 26, 27, 56, 59, 88;
_Nativity Ode_, 59;
_Paradise Lost_, 5, 8, 22, 81, 84, 93, 185, 192, 203, 204;
_Paradise Regained_, 93, 201;
_Samson Agonistes_, 23, 59;
_Sonnets_, 208.
_Mirror for Magistrates_, the, 196.
Molière, 24, 77, 78, 139, 170, 171;
_Les Fourberies de Scapin_, 77;
other plays, 171.
Mommsen, Theodor, 231, 245.
Montaigne, Michel de; _Essais_, 33, 96, 161, 162, 172.
Montemayor, Jorge de; _Diana_, 172, 221.
Montesquieu, Baron de; _Esprit des Lois_, 176.
Moore, Thomas, 17.
More, Sir Thomas, 113, 161;
_Utopia_, 32, 39.
Morris, William, 41, 67;
_Earthly Paradise_, 67, 117;
_Jason_, 39, 67;
_translation of Homer_, 13, 60, 67.
Moschus, 6, 25, 56, 69.
_Mouthfuls of Gold_, 219.
Muqaffa, 129.
Naevius, 78.
Nash, Thomas; Jack Wilton, 224.
Nennius, 248.
Nepos, Cornelius, 99, 134.
Newman, Cardinal, 41, 254.
_Nibelungen Lied_, the, 125, 232, 235, 236.
Niebuhr, Bartholet George, 245.
North, Sir Thomas; translation of Plutarch, 33, 52, 58.
Orosius, 121, 122.
Ossian, 251, 252.
Overbury, Sir Thomas; _Characters_, 35.
Ovid, 47, 75, 80, 87, 107, 110, 114, 121, 143, 148, 156, 198;
_Amores_, 88;
_Fasti_, 88;
_Heroides_, 88, 112;
_Metamorphoses_, 93, 94, 111;
_Tristia_, 88.
Painter, William; _Palace of Pleasure_, 214.
_Palmerin, Romance of_, 220.
_Pancatantra, the_, 129.
_Parables of Sandabar, the_, 133.
Parmenides, 92.
Pascal, Blaise; _Provincial Letters_, 173.
Pausanias, 35.
Peele, George, 205.
Persius, 96.
Petrarch, 48, 49, 145, 158, 179, 189, 190, 191-194, 199, 208, 212,
213;
_Africa_, 192;
_Canzoniere_, 194;
_Sonnets_, 193, 194, 197;
_Trionfi_, 194.
Petronius; _Satyricon_, 121.
Phaedrus, 94, 134.
Phocylides, 18.
Phrynichus, 61.
Pilpay, 34, 129, 135, 219.
Pindar, 16, 17, 18, 45, 46, 54, 55, 60, 61, 69, 158.
Piron, Alexis, 174.
Pitt, William, 104.
Plato, 6, 30, 31, 39, 62, 66, 102, 118, 129;
_Ideal Commonwealth_, 31.
Plautus, 24, 46, 75, 76-78, 80, 107, 111, 112, 198, 209;
_Menaechmi_, 77.
“Pléiade, the,” 155, 163, 165.
Pliny the Elder; _Natural History_, 98, 99, 121.
Pliny the Younger, 79, 105, 106, 108, 113, 173.
Plutarch, 32, 33, 62;
_Lives_, 33, 52, 58;
Amyot’s translation of, 161;
North’s translation of, 33, 52, 58.
Poliziano, Angelo, 199, 209;
_Favola di Orfeo_, 205.
Pope, Alexander, 40, 42, 43, 44, 83, 97, 109, 113, 114, 138, 158,
164, 177, 234, 251, 252;
_Dunciad_, 60;
_Essay on Criticism_, 6, 58, 60, 90, 159;
_Essay on Man_, 8, 245;
_Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day_, 54;
Pastorals, 5, 25, 26, 55, 56, 60, 112;
_Rape of the Lock_, 60, 208;
translation of Homer, 60;
other imitations of the classics, 85, 112.
Poquelin, Jean Baptiste. _See_ Molière.
Prévost d’Exiles, Abbé; _Manon Lescaut_, 175.
Prior, Matthew, 174.
Propertius, 87, 88.
_Proverbs of Solomon, the_, 19.
Prudentius, 117, 121.
Pulci, Luigi, 199;
_Morgante Maggiore_, 200.
Puttenham, George, 212;
_Art of English Poesy_, 57.
Quevedo, Francisco de; _Life of Buscon_, 223.
Quintilian, 71, 84, 99, 102;
_Training of the Orator_, 103.
Rabelais, François; _Gargantua and Pantagruel_, 161.
Racine, Jean Baptiste, 22, 79, 132, 139, 158, 166, 168, 170.
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 50.
Ranke, Leopold von, 245.
Rapin, 170.
_Reineke Fuchs_, 236.
Richardson, Samuel, 173, 175, 177;
_Clarissa Harlowe_, 173;
_Pamela_, 173, 175.
Richter, Jean Paul, 233.
Rinnucini; _Dafne_, 210.
_Roland, the Song of_, 142.
_Roman de Renard, the_, 149, 236.
_Romance of Alexander, the_, 163.
_Romance of the Rose, the_, 111, 148, 163.
Ronsard, 156, 157, 192.
Roscommon, Earl of, 160, 177;
_Essay on Translated Verse_, 6, 57;
translation of Horace’s _Ars Poetica_, 112.
Rossetti, D. G., 190, 192.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 139, 177;
_Confessions_, 175, 176;
_Contrat Social_, 176.
Rucellai, Giovanni, 210.
Ruskin, John, 41, 213.
Sacchetti, 195.
Sachs, Hans, 232, 237.
Sackville, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, 111, 160, 177, 214.
St. Amant, 160.
Saint-Evremond, 174.
Saint-Gelais, 157, 192.
St. Pierre, Bernadin de; _Paul et Virginie_, 175, 177.
Ste. Beuve, Charles Augustin, 177.
Sallust, 75, 99, 100, 107.
Sannazaro, 5, 25, 55, 89, 204, 205, 213;
_Arcadia_, 205, 221.
Sappho, 16, 45, 46, 54, 72, 107.
Sardou, Victorien, 77, 177.
Scarron, Paul, 173, 224.
Schelling, Friedrich von, 244.
Schiller, Friedrich, 10, 108, 231, 233, 240-242;
_Robbers_, 240;
_Song of the Bell_, 242;
_Wallenstein_, 241, 242;
_Wilhelm Tell_, 242.
Schlegel, A. W. and Friedrich von, 245.
Schopenhauer, Arthur, 231, 244.
Scott, Sir Walter, 160;
translation of Goethe’s _Götz_, 246.
Scudéry, Mademoiselle de, 132, 172, 222, 250;
_Clélie_, 173;
_Grand Cyrus_, 173.
Sedley, Sir Charles, 160.
Seneca the Elder, 98.
Seneca the Younger, 71, 72, 75, 76, 78, 79, 102, 103, 107, 111, 112,
161, 166, 198, 209;
_Moral Epistles_, 103.
Ser Giovanni; _Pecorone_, 211.
_Seven Sages, the_, 195.
_Seven Wise Masters, the_, 133.
Sévigné, Madame de, 105, 173.
Shakespeare, William, 7, 20, 24, 50, 51, 52, 59, 76, 161, 166-170,
184, 185, 193, 211, 215, 220, 227, 232, 234, 243, 245;
_Antony and Cleopatra_, 58;
_Comedy of Errors_, 77;
_Coriolanus_, 33, 58;
_Hamlet_, 171;
_King Lear_, 171;
_Love’s Labour’s Lost_, 169, 205;
_Measure for Measure_, 169;
_Romeo and Juliet_, 214;
_Sonnets_, 192, 213;
_Taming of the Shrew_, 220;
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, 221;
_Venus and Adonis_, 111;
_Winter’s Tale_, 169;
plots taken from the Classics, 33, 52, 58, 77, 94, 111;
from the Italians, 195, 205, 214, 219, 221;
familiar with Florio’s Montaigne, 162.
Shelley, P. B., 7, 197, 213, 233, 243;
_Adonais_, 15, 26, 56, 63;
_Defence of Poetry_, 58;
_Epipsychidion_, 63;
_Hellas_, 6, 62, 63;
_Ode to a Skylark_, 8;
_Ode to Liberty_, 55, 63;
_Prometheus Unbound_, 22, 39, 62.
Shenstone, William, 5.
Sheridan, Richard, 78;
_School for Scandal_, 171.
_Ship of Drunkards, the_, 237.
Sidney, Sir Philip, 50, 55, 161, 192, 213, 214;
_Arcadia_, 39, 56, 205, 221;
_Defence of Poesie_, 57, 214;
Sonnets, 213.
Simonides, 16, 17, 27, 54, 69.
Smollett, Tobias, 177;
_Peregrine Pickle_, 224;
_Roderick Random_, 173, 224.
_Song of Widsith, the_, 125.
Sophocles, 6, 19, 20, 59, 68;
_Philoctêtes_, 21.
_Spectator, the_, 138, 173.
Spenser, Edmund, 5, 41, 43, 44, 50, 51, 52, 56, 59, 60, 89, 93, 154,
192, 208, 234, 249, 250;
_Amoretti_, 190, 213;
_Astrophel_, 56, 58;
_Daphnaida_, 56, 58;
_Eclogues_, 111;
_Faerie Queene_, 42, 58, 111, 197, 200, 201, 203;
_Shepheard’s Calender_, 25, 26, 55, 56, 58, 221;
_Sonnets_, 213.
Staël, Madame de, 175.
Statius, 47, 84, 85, 111, 114;
_Thebaid_, 84, 111.
Steele, Sir Richard, 174, 177.
Sterne, Laurence, 32, 161.
Strabo, 35.
Straparola, Giovanni Francesco, 211.
_Stratagems of Women, the_, 219.
Suckling, Sir John, 17, 87.
Suetonius, 99, 100;
_Lives of the Twelve Caesars_, 100.
Surrey, Earl of, 111, 153, 179, 192, 193, 212;
Sonnets, 212, 213;
translation of Virgil, 111, 214.
Swift, Jonathan, 161, 174, 226;
_Battle of the Books_, 62;
_Gulliver’s Travels_, 32, 62;
_Tale of a Tub_, 62.
Swinburne, A. C., 41, 54;
_Atalanta in Calydon_, 22, 67.
Sylvester, J.; _Week of Creation_, 157.
_Syntipas_, 133.
Tacitus, 76, 100, 101, 108, 117.
Tasso, Torquato, 132, 179, 196, 197, 203, 204, 208, 211, 213;
_Aminta_, 204;
_Gerusalemme Liberata_, 81, 200, 203;
_Il Mondo Creato_, 204.
Tassoni Alessandro; _La Secchia Rapita_, 208.
Taylor, Jeremy, 112, 254.
Tennyson, Lord, 7, 41, 44, 58, 67-69, 83, 109;
_Idylls of the King_, 251;
_In Memoriam_, 8, 15, 57;
_Lotus-Eaters_, 39, 69;
_Œnone_, 57, 69;
Tithonus, 69;
translations from Homer, 13;
_Ulysses_, 69.
Terence, 24, 46, 75, 76-78, 80, 107, 112, 122, 209;
_Phormio_, 77.
Tertullian, 71, 117.
Theocritus; _Idylls_, 6, 25, 26, 27, 40, 46, 55, 56, 59, 62, 63, 68,
69, 89, 107, 112, 204;
translation of, 27.
Theodore of Tarsus, 131.
Theognis, 18.
Thomson, James, 197.
Thucydides, 29, 62.
Tibullus, 87, 156.
_Tottell’s Miscellany_, 213.
Trapassi, Pietro, called Metastasio, 210.
Trissino, Gian Giorgio, 166, 214;
_Sofonisba_, 210.
Turbervile, George, 205.
Tusser, Thomas; _Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry_, 14.
Tyrtaeus, 15.
Uhland, Ludwig, 231.
Valla, Lorenzo, 198.
Vanbrugh, Sir John, 177;
_The Mistake_, 171.
Varro, 98.
Vega, Garcilaso de la, 227.
Villon, François, 153-155, 163.
Vincent of Beauvais, 133.
Virgil, 45, 72, 73, 75, 79, 80, 85, 107, 110, 111, 114, 116, 121,
143, 188, 198;
_Aeneid_, 5, 81-84, 93, 111, 112, 185, 186, 203, 214;
_Eclogues_, 25, 26, 55, 89, 90, 111, 112, 204;
_Georgics_, 90, 113.
Voiture, Vincent, 160.
Voltaire, 32, 139, 168, 176, 239;
_Candide_, 175;
_Henriade_, 174;
_Zaïre_, 174.
_Vulgate, the_, 47, 117, 120.
Wace, Robert; _Geste des Bretons_, 150, 249.
_Wacht am Rhein, Die_, 15.
Waller, Edmund, 17, 87, 137, 158, 160.
Walpole, Horace; _Letters_, 105, 113, 173, 177.
Walter of Oxford, 249.
Watson; _Passionate Century of Love_, 212.
Way, A. S.; translation of Homer, 13.
Webster, John, 215.
Wieland, Christoph Martin, 233, 239.
Winckelmann, 245.
Wordsworth, William, 43, 44, 115, 175, 233;
_Excursion_, 93;
_Ode on the Intimations of Immortality_, 31;
translations from Chiabrera, 208.
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 111, 153, 179, 192, 212.
Wycherley, William, 138, 177;
_The Plain Dealer_, 171.
Wyclif, John; translation of _The Bible_, 46, 47, 256.
Xenophanes, 92.
Zola, Emile, 177.
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