ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. FIRST PERIOD. FROM THE EARLIEST TIME TILL THE YEAR 1400. THE first language known to have been spoken in the British Islands, was one which is now totally unknown in England, but still exists, in various slightly altered shapes, in Wales, in the Highlands of Scotland, and in many parts of Ireland. This language is usually called, in reference to England, the British tongue; in reference to Scotland, the Gaelic; and in reference to Ireland, the Irish. It was originally the language of a large body of people called the Celts, who, several centuries before the Christian era, occupied all the western parts of Europe, but are now to be traced only in the Welsh, the Scottish Highlanders, the Irish, and a few tribes scattered along the western shores of France and Spain. A great number of names of places, both in England and in the Lowlands of Scotland, and many of the designations of natural objects, such as hills and rivers, are borrowed from this language, but we do not derive from it many of the words in our common speech. In the fifth century, a people called Saxons, from Lower Germany, landed in the country now named England, and soon drove the original inhabitants into the western and northern parts of the island, where their descendants and language have ever since been found. In the course of time, nearly the whole island south of the Firths of Forth and Solway was overspread by Saxons, whose posterity to this day forms the bulk of the people of that part of our country. From a leading branch of the Saxons, called Angles, the country took the name of England, while the new language was denominated, from them, the Anglo-Saxon. This language was a branch of the Teutonic,-that is, the language of the Teutones, a nation which occupied a large portion of central Europe at the same time that the Celts overspread the west. The Danes, the Dutch, the Germans, and the English, are all considered as nations chiefly of Teutonic origin; and their various languages bear, accordingly, a strong general resemblance. From the sixth till the eleventh century, the AngloSaxon continued with little change to be the language of England. It only received accessions, during that time, from the Latin, which was brought in by Christian missionaries, and from the Danish, a kindred dialect of the Teutonic, which was introduced by the large hosts from Denmark, who endeavoured to effect settlements in England. At this period, literature was not neglected by the AngloSaxons. Their first known writer was Gildas, a historian, who flourished about the year 560. Another called Bede, a priest, who lived in the eighth century, was celebrated over all Europe for his learning and his literary productions. But the majority of the writers of that age thought it necessary to compose their works in Latin, as it was only by that means they could make themselves intelligible to the learned of other countries, who were almost their only readers. The earliest existing specimen of composition in the Saxon tongue is a fragment by Cadmon, a monk of Whitby, who wrote religious poetry in a very sublime strain, in the eighth century, and who, for want of learning, was obliged to employ his own language. King Alfred, in the ninth century, employed himself in translating various works into Saxon, for the use of the people; ANGLO-SAXON AND NORMAN LANGUAGES. 3 and some progress seems soon after to have been made in the art of composing poetry in the common language. Yet these branches of literature were generally held in contempt in those days; and even for purposes of ordinary intercourse, the Anglo-Saxon became in time unfashionable. About the tenth century, the English gentry used to send their children to be educated in France, in order that they might acquire what was thought a more polite kind of speech. In the year 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, (a part of France,) invaded and conquered Saxon England; and as the country was immediately parcelled out amongst the officers of the victorious army, Norman-French thenceforward became the language of the upper ranks, while Saxon remained only as the speech of the peasantry. In the course of time, these two languages melted into each other, and became the basis of the present English language, though it may be remarked that the Saxon is still chiefly employed to express our homelier and more familiar ideas. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while this process was going on, several writers used the popular language in the composition of rhyming chronicles, which, however, did not possess the least merit, either as poems or as histories. About the end of that period, when the French had become nearly identified with the Saxon, there arose a series of poets, who composed long romantic tales, in a manner which had been first practised by the bards of Provence, (the south of France,) who are otherwise known by the appellation of Troubadours; and the singing of these stories, to the melody of the harp, in the presence of persons of rank, became at the same time the employment of a famous set of men called MINSTRELS, some of whom were also poets. But the best part of the intellect of the country, was still employed in learned compositions in Latin.* * In order to convey at least, to the eye of the reader, a notion of the language employed by the people of England The minstrel-poems, though in many respects absurd, were improvements upon the dull chronicles of the preceding age. While they gave a picture of past events scarcely less true, they were more graceful in composition, and possessed something like the spirit of modern poetry. They were generally founded upon the adventures of some real hero, such as Charlemagne or Roland, whose example was held up to imitation as the perfection of human conduct. Nor were the great men of antiquity neglected soon after the Norman conquest, the following extract from a poem of that age may be given, with a translation into modern English : Tha the masse wes isungen, Tha quene, an other halve, Heo hafde of wif-monne That is :—' When the mass was sung, out of the church they thronged. The king, amid his folk, to his meat fared, and many of his nobility: Joy was in the household. The queen on the other side, sought her harbour, (or apartment ;) she had wonderfully many women.' The language which prevailed at the time when the Saxon and French were becoming one, may be exemplified by a verse from a poem on the death of Edward I.; an event which took place in the year 1307: Jerusalem, thou hast ilore * The flour of all chivalerie, He wolde ha rered up ful heyge + Our baners that bueth broht to grounde; Wel longe we mowe clefet and crie, Er we such a kyng hav yfounde! * Lost, Edward had intended to go on a crusade to the Holy Land. + High. + Call, |