therefore for any man to say that he was not for a healthy progress would be tantamount to saying that he was for a sickly retrogression, which few sane men would like to avow. If, indeed, there be such a thing as stagnation in morals, it must be analogous to the same thing in physics-a stagnant pond, for instance, which you know breeds corruption; and I presume we should all prefer that society here in this town should rather resemble the progress of a bounding river, in its youth rushing and leaping on joyously, as it were, until, as it advances in its course and grows older, it becomes broader and deeper-or more thoughtful, if I may be allowed the expression,and its beneficent influence is increased, and it fertilizes more lands, and affords more scope for the civilizing influences of communication and commerce on its surface, until it is lost in the sea, which may be compared to the goal of us all. It is because I think this institution will help us to be something like this living stream, rather than that dead and stagnant pool, that I rejoice in the thought of its keeping up a spirit of progress amongst us. There is yet another advantage arising from the establishment of this institution, which I am disposed to think greater than all the rest. It has drawn men of different opinions together, and cannot fail to promote good and kindly feelings amongst them. Now suppose for a moment that, instead of acting together here for an object about the goodness of which we are all agreed, we had said to each other, 'It is quite true there is no difference of opinion between us on this subject; we all feel alike about its being an undeniably good thing to supply to the inhabitants of this town comfortable reading-rooms, well supplied with newspapers and books, and that it is better for the working man that he should have his pipe and cup of coffee and happy companionship here than beer and brawls at the public-house; but yet we must not act together for this good object, on which there is all this unanimity of agreement amongst us, because there happen to be other subjects on which we cannot all agree,' why, what a monstrous perversion of reason, and common sense, and good feeling, would this have been! nothing less can I call it than a trampling under foot of the very bonds of peace and charity. Happily, it has not been so with the members of this institution, who, with different views on many subjects, have joined together in hearty co-operation for a common good, and have thereby learnt to know and like each other better than they could otherwise have had opportunities of doing. The last advantage to which it is my intention to advert, as likely to spring from this institution, will lead me actually to venture the word 'Government' amongst you; but, as I will promise not to make use of it in any party sense, I may, perhaps, venture to hope that no kind and candid friend out of doors will accuse me of talking politics to you, or you of listening to a political discussion. I will say, then, that we all, whatever our individual opinions may be, must desire good government, because we all must believe that good government has a beneficial effect upon the people governed; and, believe me, it is no less true that the character of the people governed has, in its turn, a beneficial effect upon the Government. A bad Government cannot long exist in the presence of a moral, a free, and an enlightened people, such is the controlling force of a sound public opinion; and hence it is that inasmuch as institutions like ours and others of a kindred kind have for their object to promote morality, and encourage freedom of thought, and diffuse the light of knowledge amongst all classes, the promoters of such institutions may be said to strengthen our guarantees for a continuance of that good government which we in this country in the main enjoy, whether it be what is called the Conservative party, or whether it be what is called the Liberal party, which holds the reins of power." Our Collegiate Course. THE LITERATURE OF ENGLAND; CHRONOLOGICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, AND CRITICAL. PREFATORY NOTICE. THE literature of England is an important topic of study, and any means which can be employed to render the acquisition of its chief facts and main peculiarities easier and simpler can scarcely fail to be useful. The plan intended to be exemplified and illustrated in the present series of literary pages is one which it is thought will conduce much to the ready and beneficial attainment of a knowledge of a good groundwork for all future and more extended acquirements in British literary history. All outlines of the course and nature of English literature hitherto published labour under the objection that the various parts of the subject are not strictly kept clear of each other. The facts of a life, the dates of its chief events, the titles and characteristics of the works of authors, are all fused together into a flowing narrative, in which the elements of the story are combined with more or less art, tact, and taste. The prime qualities which knowledge ought to possess, viz., distinctness and vividness, are thus intentionally enfeebled and disregarded. The history of letters is composed synthetically, and the student is compelled to analyze the statements, and to dispart them, so that he may be enabled to fix his mind on that which, at the time, most interests him, or is most requisite to be known. This process of disembarrassing one's self is always difficult, often impossible, where a sudden call is made on the mind for disintegrated knowledge. An attempt has been made in the following tables to show in what manner, under a new rearrangement of the materials of literary history, some of the difficulties arising from that old method of presenting literary facts to the students' mind may be lessened, if not altogether removed. The plan is briefly this :-To separate the several elements of literary history from each other, and to present them to the eye and the mind in this analyzed condition, yet in such a manner that they may be readily reduced to synthesis and unity again. To accomplish this, we arrange the names of the chief authors in each century, carefully classified, alphabetically arranged, and give separately an epitome of the critical opinions passed upon the various authors named in the list. This disentanglement of dates and events from opinions ought to aid the student by giving him the opportunity of gathering together in one the names of all contemporary celebrities; the chief events in their lives, or the characters of the works of which they are the authors, according as he may wish, apart from any other consideration, while yet he may readily recombine the whole three parts into a new unity for himself by reading successively the matter contained in the tables regarding the individual in whom he feels an interest, Thus used, they will form a ready means of preparing for examinations; as well as supply, as we hope, a brief and readily got-at outline of the history of English literature, chronological, biographical, and critical. TABLE I.-IMAGINATIVE WRITERS. Names and Dates. 1. JOHN BARBOUR 1326 ?-1396. 2. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 1328-1400. 3. ADAM DAVIE........... Fl. 1320. 4. JOHN GOWER 1320 ?-1408. 5. RICHARD LANGLANDE, Fl. 1360. 6. LAURENCE MINOT...... -1352. [1300-1400.] Events and Works. Archdeacon of Aberdeen, 1357 till his death; several times received royal passports to travel in England and France; was clerk of audit of household of Robert II., by whom he was pensioned. "The Brute," lost; "The Bruce," extant. "The Father of English Poetry," born in London; studied at Oxford and Cambridge; Member of Inner Temple; served under Edward III. in France; Ambassador to Genoa, &c.; Comptroller of Customs, London, buried in Westminster Abbey. Wrote "The Canterbury Tales;" "The Romaunt of the Rose;"" Troylus and Cryseyde;""The Court of Love," "The Assembly of Fowles ;" "The Book of the Dutchesse;" "Chaucer's Dream ;" The Flower and the Leaf;" "The Legend of Good Women," &c. : first complete edition published 1542. Author of 66 Visions, Legends, Scripture Histories," in verse, &c.; and "The Life of Alisander the Great," a poem. A gentleman of property in Kent, buried in St Mary Overie's, now St. Saviour's, Southwark, Author of "Confessio Amantis," in English; Speculum Meditantis," in French; "Vox Clamantis," in Latin. 66 Resident in west of England, near Malvern Lived and wrote about the middle of the fourteenth century, in the reign of Edward III., on the events of which he wrote poems. Epitome of Critical Opinions. 1. "Barbour seems to have been acquainted with those finer springs of the human heart which elude vulgar observation: he catches the shades of character with a delicate eye, and sometimes presents us with instances of nice discrimination. His work is not a mere narrative of events; it contains specimens of that minute and skilful delineation which marks the hand of a poet."-Dr. Irving. "A work not only remarkable for a copious circumstantial detail of the exploits of that illustrious prince [Bruce] and his brave companions in arms, Randolph (Earl of Moray) and the Lord James Douglas, but also for the beauty of its style, which is not inferior to that of his contemporary, Chaucer."-Dr. Henry. Life, and spirit, and ease, and plain sense, and pictures of real manners and perpetual incident and entertainment."-Pinkerton. "He is a writer of vigour, and even sweetness. His poem, 'The Bruce,' is ranked as authentic history. He executed the work at the request of David II., Bruce's son."-D. Scrymgeour. 66 2. "Chaucer, like Ariosto and Spenser, is essentially a descriptive rather than a dramatic poet. But his descriptive powers are of every kind-satirical, pathetic, picturesque."-J. H. Hippesley. "Chaucer was, for his time, a far more deeply read man than Shakspere was for his. There is something most enlivening in the spectacle of his intellectual activity, hampered as he was by a language in an unsettled condition, and which could furnish him with no literary models, we find him translating long poems in many thousand lines from the French, imitating others from the Provençal, others again from the Italian, besides both translating and imitating the long, and, to modern taste, rather dreary treatise, written by Boethius, on "The Consolation of Philosophy." Such preludings, it seems, were necessary, in order to give him confidence and readiness in the use of that rude literary instrument, his native tongue. When, after all these labours, he came to use it freely in original composition, it was with a success which Homer possibly may have equalled or surpassed, but which no other writer in the dawn of national literature has in any age or country even distantly approached."-Thomas Arnold. "I take immense delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious. How exquisitely tender he is! yet how perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melancholy or morbid drooping !"-S. T. Coleridge. "After four hundred years have closed over the mirthful features which formed the living originals of the poets' descriptions, his pages impress the fancy with the momentary credence that they are still alive; as if Time had rebuilt his ruins, and were reacting the past scenes of his existence."-Thomas Campbell. "His genius was universal, and adapted to themes of unbounded variety; and his merit was not less in painting familiar manners with humour and propriety, than in moving the passions and representing the beautiful or grand objects of nature with grace and sublimity." -Thomas Warton. 3. "One of the most spirited of our early romances; than poetical lucubrations."-G. L. Craik. ""other much more pious 4. "He is always sensible, polished, perspicuous, and not prosaic in the worst sense of the word."-Hallam. "A miscellaneous collection of physical, metaphysical, and ethical reflections, and of stories culled from the common repertories of the Middle Ages. The language is smooth and easy, and there is not a little that is exceedingly agreeable in description."- William Spalding. 5. Our earliest poetical work of any considerable extent that may still be read with pleasure; but not much of its attraction lies in its poetry. It interests us chiefly as rather a lively picture (which, however, would have been almost as effective in prose) of much in the manner and general condition of the time and of the new spirit of opposition to old things which was then astir; partly, too, by the language and style, and as a monument of a particular species of versification." Perhaps the earliest writer of English verse who deserves the name of a poet. His poems are remarkable, if not for any poetical qualities of a high order, yet for a precision and selectness, as well as force of expression, previously, so far as is known, unexampled in English verse." G. L. Craik. "The Vision of Piers Plowman," i. e., the vision of Christ, was written for the English people by a poet who not only employed a language Saxon to the utmost, as used by the common people round his home by the Welsh border, but in whom we again hear the old music of Cadmon's form of verse." A well-sustained allegory, often of great subtlety, always embodying the purest aspirations."Henry Morley. 6. "The first English versifier who quits the beaten track of translation from chronicle, romance, and theology."-J. H. Hippesley. "Very remarkable in the songs of Minot are the ease and variety of the songmeasures, while he retains something of the old habit of alliteration. Minot's poems are written in a Northumbrian English, which was more archaic than the English of the south."-Henry Morley. Names and Dates. 1. JOHN FORDOUN 1318?-1386. 2. RALPH HIGDEN 1275?-1360. 3. HENRY KNIGHTON -1395. TABLE II.-HISTORIC WRITERS. .... ... 4. SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, 1300?-1372. 5. MATTHEW (of West minster). 6. RICHARD (of Chichester). 7. NICHOLAS TRIVET 1258-1328. [1300-1400.] Events and Works. Father of Scottish history; Canon of Aberdeen ; probably born in Fordun, Kincardineshire ; "ScotiChronicon," written in Latin, in five books. A Benedictine monk of St. Werburgh's, Chester, where he lived sixty-four years; "Polychronicon reputedly the author of " The Chester Mysteries." A canon-regular of Leicester Abbey; "Compilation of the Events of England from the Times of Edward II. to Richard II." Born at St. Albans; studied medicine; travelled thirty-three years; wrote an account of his travels, voyages, &c.; died at Liege. A Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Westminster; "Flowers of History." 66 A Benedictine monk of St. Peter's, Westminster ; History from Hengist to 1348;" Geography of Britain ? Son of Sir T. Trivet, of Norfolk; educated in a Dominican convent, London, at Oxford, and in Paris ; and made head of the convent where he was brought up. "Annales of England" (A.D. 1135-1307). Epitome of Critical Opinions. 1. "Fordoun states that he spent much time in collecting the materials for his bistory, both by inquiry and by travel; and he appears to have made a diligent use of all the sources of information that were accessible to him. Although by no means free from the credulity which belonged to the spirit of his age, he deserves to be considered as, by comparison, both an honest and a sensible writer; the mythology of Scottish history appears in a much simpler shape in his account than it assumes in the hands of his successors."-J. H. Burton. 2. "Higden's Latin Chronicle' remains for the most part yet in MS.-John de Trevisa translated, and Caxton modernized his works-which are 'rather objects of curiosity than standards of an authoritative character.'"-S. A. Allibone. 3. "He confesses to having copied from Ralph Higden. The most valuable part of his work is that relating to contemporary events."-R. Harrison. 4. " His book is written in a very interesting manner, was long exceedingly popular, and was translated into many languages."-"Chambers's Cyclopædia." "A singular repertory of the marvellous legends of the Middle Ages."-G. L. Craik. 5. "He is not guilty of any intentional falsification, and therefore when he relates probable facts, it is fair to conclude that he is equally veracious, although the Saxon original of his ' Chronicle' is not extant."-Quarterly Review, lxvii. 6. "An ignorant novice; sometimes the copier of Huntingdon, but generally the transcriber of Geoffrey (of Monmouth)."- Whittaker. 7. "A clear, painstaking, and exact recorder of events; and he is the original authority for many particulars relating to his own times."-G. L. Craik. |