ORIGIN AND PROGRESS OF ENGLISH POETRY. It is difficult to define any exact period when the Anglo-Saxon language assumed the form which we term English. A process of disintegration seems to have been slowly proceeding, even before the Norman conquest; and this event perhaps merely precipitated what would have inevitably happened. The Norman became the fashionable and the law language of the country; its influence gradually affected the speech of the middle classes; while the substrata of society clung more doggedly to the forms of their mother tongue. During its era of transition, the English language was in a state totally inapplicable to literary purposes, and accordingly, during the two centuries that succeeded the conquest, the written literature of England was, with few exceptions, either French or Latin. The Saxon Chronicle, begun in the seventh century, ceases with the accession of Henry II. (1154); and in the latter half of the twelfth century, Layamon, a priest of Ernley on Severn, the translator of Wace of Jersey's French poetic chronicle " Brut,"1 has much more of the Saxon form than of what can be termed English. The earliest specimens of decided English have been referred to the conclusion of the thirteenth century,2 or about half a century before the period of Chaucer. In that age, in the reign of 1 Brut, an alleged Trojan hero, Brutus, from whom the genealogy of the Welsh princes is deduced in the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The subject was a favourite one among the Armorican and Anglo-Norman minstrels of the thirteenth century. Many of the western nations were, like the Romans, fond of tracing their descent from Troy. 2 In that period the peculiarities of Saxon inflection and construction had gradually disappeared. Many of the Saxon alphabetic symbols had been abandoned, and English differed nearly as much from its parent speech as it does from the modern German; the labours of philologists have lately established its "kindly osculation" with the latter tongue. See Latham's "English Language," and M'Douall's "Discourse on the Study of Oriental Languages." Edward III., the force of the conquered nation's speech had absorbed that of the conquerors, the qualities of which refined and polished the rudeness, without destroying the strength and picturesqueness of the original structure. The loss of the Anglo-Norman territories in France, and the wars of Edward III. with that country, effectually prevented the future growth of French literature in England. The turbid waters had settled into Chaucer's "well of pure English undefiled." Some obscurity exists in the history of the structure of the Scottish form of the Saxon language. The Saxon conquests extended over the east coast of Scotland, including Berwickshire and the Lothians, and even across the Frith of Forth along the north-eastern counties. A Saxon basis was thus laid for the language of these districts. When the Norman refugees' flocked into Scotland, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, an influence on the language, similar to that described with regard to England, came into operation. From these circumstances, we find in the fourteenth century a closer resemblance between the tongues, than in succeeding periods, when their political relations had more separated the countries in interest and feeling, and when Scottish chiefs were no longer English vassals, to serve according to their interest in the armies of either power. The long alliance between Scotland and France, which traditionally dates as far back as Charlemagne and Achaius, infused during the fifteenth and succeeding centuries3 a large portion of a French element into the Scottish dialect. But the rapidly altering interests of the two countries, and the absence of the influences to which the nearer situation of England to the continent made her more accessible, gradually separated Scotland's Saxon dialect from that of her sister, until the former has come to represent more truly, with the exception of its French admixture, the original language imported by the invading Germans in the fifth century. This dialect, though treasured in a beautiful literature, 1 The western districts, comprehending Lanark and Ayr, seem to have been long in acquiring the Saxon tongue, and their language remained inferior to the purer speech of the East. Dunbar reproaches his western opponent, Kennedy, with the barbarism of his language; and it has been remarked as singular, that the purest writer of the Scottish dialect should have been a native of Ayrshire.-See Lockhart's Life of Burns. 2 We leave out of view the influence of the Danish invaders. 3 The relations of the Jacobites with France perpetuated these French partialities. 4 Witness such words as ashet (assiette), fashous (facheux), jigot, etc. In illustration of the French influence produced by the Jacobite party, see Scott's novels, especially "Waverley," in the character of Bradwardine. OF ENGLISH POETRY. xix is rapidly perishing before the amalgamating influence which the English tongue has exerted since the Union; and as for the Gaelic-the speech of Ossian, and of centuries of departed kings and chiefs-when the British court is recreating on the skirts of Lochnagar, Echo will soon answer "Where," to the question "Where is it?” The history of a country's poetry is in most cases the same as the history of its language, both because it is known that the earliest efforts of infant nations have been made in this direction, and because poetry, more nice in the selection of its expressions than prose, acts as a more powerful agent in refining and conserving the character of a national speech, in cherishing the better parts of the changing structure, and enriching it with importations of words and phraseologies from foreign literature. The Saxon literature preserved to us is scanty; the poetry is in general rude, meagre in fancy and imagery, and inferior to the Northern in depth of feeling. It consisted, according to Mr. Turner's' division, of,-1. Songs and Ballads; 2. Romance-like Narratives; 3. Miscellaneous Lyrics. Its versification, the principles of which are extremely doubtful, is short; the meagreness of idea is indicated by repetitions and periphrasis of epithet, and is ornamented with alliterations, which long afterwards continued a favourite ornament with the poets both of England and Scotland. Inversion of grammatical arrangement, and the omission of particles, may also be mentioned among the ornaments of the Saxon poetry. Its themes are drawn from war and religion, the absorbing subjects of this period; love, in the style of the poetry of succeeding centuries, never occurs. This circumstance may perhaps be deduced from the peculiarities in the relation of the German nations towards their women alluded to by Roman writers.2 The greatest of the Anglo-Saxon poems are Caedmon's Paraphrase (the subject of which is the same as Milton's Paradise Lost) and the hero-poem Beowulph, both which may be reckoned to ascend to the dignity of Epic. The line of Saxon poets reaches from Caedmon in the seventh century, to a period below Alfred, himself a poet, in the tenth. The epic spirit of Caedmon is supposed by Turner to have been trans 1 Hist. Ang.-Saxons, where specimens and translations will be found; consult also D'Israeli's "Amenities of Literature:" and Warton's History of English Poetry. In these will also be found an account of the sources of romance. 2 Though the romantic gallantry of chivalry has by some been deduced from the Germanic tribes, yet our impressions of their feeling towards their more than Doric females are very different from those suggested by the term chivalry. |