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A HISTORY OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY

E. J. MATHEW, M.A., LL.B.

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION; II. The Old English Times; III. Norman Times;
IV. English after the Norman Conquest; V. The Struggle with the
Norman-French; VI. Chaucer; VII. The Period from Chaucer to
Spenser; VIII. Edmund Spenser; IX. The Early History of the
Drama; X. William Shakspere; XI. Ben Jonson; XII. Shakspere
and Ben Jonson; XIII. The Drama after Shakspere and Ben Jonson ;
XIV. Prose and Poetry between 1590 and 1680; XV. John Milton;
XVI. The Days of Dryden; XVII. The Earlier Work of the Eighteenth
Century; XVIII. Alexander Pope; XIX. The Change in Poetry and
the Development of Prose; XX. The Nineteenth Century; XXI. The
Reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, Empress of India; Index of
Authors; Subject Index.

few things more just or more fine than his analysis of these two poor men.

"With him there was a ploughman, was his brother-...

An honest labourer, and a good was he,

Living in peace and perfect charity.

God loved he best, with all his holè hertè, At any time, though him it pleased or smertè, And then his neighbour rightly as himself. He oft would thresh, and also dyke and delve For Christ His sake for every poor wight, Withouten hire, if it lay in his might. His tithes he ever paid full fair and well, Both of his own labour, and his catèl. In a tabard, he rode upon a mare.' Herte, heart. Smerte, displeased. It lay in his might, if only it was in his power. Catel, cattle; property. Tabard, originally a herald's coat, then a loose blouse worn by ploughmen.

Rode upon a mare, people of quality thought this an undignified thing to do.

The Clerk of Oxford, who had not yet got a living, made a worthy companion to the Parson and the Ploughman. He was as fond of learning, and of teaching others to learn, as the Parson was of looking after his parish. The Parson and the Clerk represent the best and purest aspects of the Church that are to be found at the end of the fourteenth century.

"A Clerk there was of Oxenford also,
That unto logic had gone long ago;
As lenè was his horse as is a rake,
And he was not right fat, I undertake,
But bollow looked, and thereto soberly;
Full threadbare was his upper courtepy,
For he had got him yet no benefice,
Nor was so worldly as to take office.
For he would rather have at his bed's head,
Twenty bookès, clad in black or red,
Of Aristotle and his philosophy,
Than robes, or fiddles, or gay psaltery.
But although that he was a philosopher,
Yet hadde he but little gold in coffer;
But all that he might of his frendès hentè,
On bokes and on lerninge he it spentè
And busily for the souls began to pray
Of them that gave him wherewith to scoleye
Of studie took he most care and most heed,
Not one word spake he more than was need;

Lene, poor, lean.

Thereto soberly, In consequence sad.
Courtepy, a short upper coat or cloak.

Full, quite.

Psaltery, a musical instrument something like a harp.

Hente, get.

Scoleye, study.

The Moral Essays and the Imitations from Horace furnish themes not so liable to discussion. They show Pope at his best as a satirist; but they are wanting in strength of argument, and the first of them, on the Characters of Men, had to be entirely rearranged by Warburton. It is the weakest of the four; still it contains passages which could only have been produced by Pope. The subject of the second essay was badly chosen. In women, with perhaps one exception, Pope hardly saw anything except their faults. There is an objectionable allusion in the essay to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and coarse satire in the portrait of Atossa, the Duchess of Marlborough. Over the third essay, again largely altered by Warburton, Pope took great pains. Among many vigorous passages, the most notorious is the scene of the Duke of Buckingham's deathbed.

The Imitations from Horace, prefaced by an Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, are even more notorious for the vigour of their satire. Some of Pope's most famous dissections of character are to be found in the epistle-the attack upon Addison under the name of Atticus, the description of Lord Hervey as Sporus, and of the Duke of Marlborough as Bestia.

Atticus (Joseph Addison).

"... But were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with ease:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View with him scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, accent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe and a suspicious friend;
Dreading ev'n fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause ;
While wits and Templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise-
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep if Atticus were he?"

Pope was never in any sense a poet of the emotions. He can better be called a poet of the understanding. The one metrical form which he could control was the heroic couplet; his mastery was only over the verse belonging to his age. The

Now Ready. 838 pp. Crown 8vo. Price 8s. 6d.

A SHORT HISTORY OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY

GEORGE SAINTSBURY

PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

PRESS OPINIONS.

Times.-"Appears to us destined to take an important place in the higher educational literature, a place to which the author's immense erudition and clearness of view undoubtedly entitle it.

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Globe." He achieves this task within the limits of 797 pages, into which he has managed to compress a very large amount of fact and comment. That the book is remarkably comprehensive will at once be conceded. The narrative has the attraction of readableness."