HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE.

IN tracing, as it is our purpose to do in the present work, the history of English Literature and of the English Language together, we shall be obliged to look at the language principally, or almost exclusively, as we find it employed in the service of the literature. But in its proper nature language is independent of writing. Writing is only a visible representation of language, which in itself consists, not of strokes drawn by the pen, or marks made in any other way, but of sounds uttered by the voice and the organs of articulation. It addresses itself not to the eye but to the ear. There are many languages that have never been written, or visibly represented in any form. Every language that has come to be written has also existed in an unwritten state. No language has been born a written language, any more than it was ever heard tell of that a boy had been born with breeches on. It has been common to talk of language, which is really thought itself, as the dress of thought; with much more truth might writing be called the dress of language. It is an artificial or non-natural addition which language assumes as it grows up and gets civilized,-something that perhaps would not have been needed or thought of in a state of innocence. As matters stand, this contrivance may be necessary for the perfect training of language, for turning it to its full use and developing all its capabilities; but still it is in some sort what his trappings are to the war-horse- -a sign and seal of its conquest and bondage.

VOL. I.

B

Letters are the fetters of language, even if they are its golden fetters.

It would be convenient if we had distinctive names for lan

guage spoken and language written. In the want of such, perhaps the best thing that could be done in a precisely scientific treatment of the subject would be to understand the common terms language and speech when used absolutely, or without qualification, as meaning always only language proper or spoken language, which is what these words, and the only corresponding ones probably in all languages, do mean etymologicallyand to distinguish written language as language representative. But for ordinary purposes this is not necessary; as in other cases, the context makes the sense clear, notwithstanding the insufficiency of the expression.

What is never to be forgotten, however, is, that, while writing is unquestionably and by universal admission artificial, language proper is essentially a natural product. It is simply to man what neighing is to the horse or lowing to the bullock. A race or community of human beings without a language would be as extraordinary a phenomenon as a race without hands or without heads. Human beings formed as they ordinarily are, there is every reason to believe, could no more grow up, at least in a state of association, without speech than they could without eating or without breathing. It is the natural, the spontaneous, the inevitable result of their organization. Language, that is, not merely the utterance of articulate sounds, but the employment of words for the expression of thought, or what we may call the conversion of thought into words, is probably as much a necessity of the organization, physical and mental, of the human being as it is an impossibility for that of any of the inferior animals.

As for literature, it is not the synonyme even of written language. It is not either coextensive with that, or limited to that. For want of a better term, we call artistic composition in words, or thought artistically so expressed, literature; but, on the one hand, there is abundance of writing, and of printing too, which is not literature in this proper sense, and, on the other, it is not a necessity of artistic composition that it should be in a written form. Literature, therefore, whatever the etymology of the term may seem to indicate, has no essential connexion with letters.

And its connexion even with language, which is essential, is

still no more than such a connexion as is created by the fact that literature consists necessarily of words. It is of thought and emotion transformed into or manifested in language that the fabric of literature is woven. But literature is not, like language, a necessary product of our humanity. Man has been nowhere found without a language: there have been and are many nations and races without a literature. A language is to a people a necessary of existence; a literature is only a luxury. Hence it sometimes happens that the origin of a nation's literature, and the influences which have inspired and moulded it, have been more or less distinct from the sources whence the language has taken its beginning and the inner operating spirit or external circumstances which have modified its shape and character. The literature will generally be acted upon by the language, and the language by the literature; but each may have also had fountains of its own at which the other has not drunk. Thus, for example, it may be affirmed that even those nations of modern Europe which owe their language mostly to the Romans have derived their literature and fine art of every other form, as well as their spirit of philosophical speculation, to a much greater extent from the Greeks. Here too the modern world has inherited from Rome the useful and necessary, from Greece the refined and ornamental;-from the one, language, along with law and government, the art of war offensive and defensive, and the common arts of life; from the other, that which, although not the feeding fruit of the tree or plant, but only its crowning flower, yet alone constitutes true civilization.

THE LANGUAGES OF MODERN EUROPE.

There have in every age been some populations which, for one reason or another, have deemed it necessary or expedient to have each more than one language. Both in ancient and in modern times this has been usual with the inhabitants of border districts. Herodotus mentions some northern races of his day who were all familiar with Greek as well as with their own barbaric speech. In some countries, in addition to the common tongue, there has been another known only to the priesthood: in some the men have had a language of their own, which the women were not

permitted to speak or to learn. It is perhaps to be regretted that the use of two languages has not been universal in civilized countries; it might probably be almost as easily acquired as the ordinary power of speaking one language. Possibly this may be one of the educational, or rather social, reforms of another

era.

Some of the existing European nations or races are distributed under several governments: there are still several political communities, for instance, both of Germans and of Italians, and that although Germany and Italy form each geographically only one region. But in other cases a community occupying only one country, and living under one and the same government, consists of several races each having a language of its own. In this way it happens that, without including what are called dialects, the number of distinct languages in Europe, though it falls short of the number of political communities, exceeds the number of what we can properly call nations. Some languages, again, such as the Welsh, the Irish, and the Basque, are no longer national forms of speech.

The existing European languages may be nearly all comprehended under five divisions. First, there are the Celtic tongues of Ireland and Wales, and their subordinate varieties. Secondly, there are the tongues founded upon the Latin spoken by the old Romans, and thence called the Romance or the Neo-Latin, that is, the New Latin, tongues; of these the principal are the Italian, the Spanish, and the French. Thirdly, there are what have been variously designated the Germanic, Teutonic, or Gothic tongues, being those which were originally spoken by the various barbarian races by whom the Roman empire of the West was overthrown and overwhelmed (or at the least subjugated, revolutionized, and broken up) in the fifth and sixth centuries. Fourthly, there are the Slavonic tongues, of which the Russian and the Polish are the most distinguished. Fifthly, there are the Tschudic tongues, as they have been denominated, or those spoken by the Finnic and Laponnic races. Almost the only language which this enumeration leaves out is that still preserved by the French and Spanish Biscayans, and known as the Basque, or among those who speak it as the Euskarian, which seems to stand alone among the tongues not only of Europe but of the world. It is supposed to be a remnant of the ancient Iberian or original language of Spain.

The order in which the five sets or classes of languages have been named may be regarded as that of their probable introduction into Europe from Asia or the East, or at any rate of their establishment in the localities of which they are now severally in possession. First, apparently, came the Celtic, now driven on to the farthest west;—after which followed in succession the Latin, the Gothic, the Slavonic, and the Tschudic, pressing upon and urging forward one another like so many waves.

Their present geographical position may also be set forth in few words. Those of the Celtic type are found, as just mentioned, in the West, the Latin generally in the South, the Slavonic in the East, the Tschudic in the North, and the Gothic over the whole of the central region. The chief exception is, that one Tschudic language, the Madgyar, is spoken in Hungary, at the south-eastern extremity of Europe.

The English is essentially or fundamentally a Gothic tongue. That is to say, it is to be classed among those which were spoken by the main division of the barbaric invaders and conquerors of the Roman empire, and which are now spread over the whole of the central portion of the European continent, or what we may call the body of Europe as distinguished from its head and limbs. These Gothic tongues have been subdivided into the High-Germanic, the Low-Germanic, and the Scandinavian; and each of these subordinate groups or clusters has a certain character of its own in addition to the common character by which they are all allied and discriminated from those belonging to quite other stocks. They may be said to present different shades of the same colour. And even in their geographical distribution they lie as it were in so many successive ridges ;-the High-Germanic languages farthest south; next to them, the LowGermanic, in the middle; and then, farthest north, the Scandinavian. The High-Germanic may be considered to be principally represented by the modern classic German; the Low-Germanic by the language of the people of Holland, or what we call the Low Dutch, or simply the Dutch; the Scandinavian, by the Swedish, Danish, or Icelandic.

It may be remarked, too, that the gradation of character among the three sets of languages corresponds to their geographical position. That is to say, their resemblance is in proportion to their proximity. Thus, the High-Germanic and the Scandinavian groups are both nearer in character, as well as in