and unconsciously strove to meet; and from the fresh nationality which all parties were combining to develop. In the fourteenth century, the uniting, constructive forces, had so far come to prevail, that a new language, open for all uses, and ready for a great career, was the result. Chaucer laid hold of this germinant speech, disclosed its power, helped farther to determine the proportion of elements which should belong to it, and passed it on, accelerated in growth and enriched by his handling. He justified the language to itself and to others by showing what it could do. He strengthened and honored it by great literary works, and thus commended it to public favor. It has been observed, that the English has changed less than other European languages in the years that have intervened between the present and the fourteenth century. For this fact, several reasons may be given. The excellence and eminence of Chaucer served to set up a standard, to establish early an authority in the language. This conservative tendency was greatly strengthened later by the translations of the Bible, intimately connected with each other, generally circulated, and closely united to popular speech. Moreover, our chief literary period, that of Elizabeth, lies relatively well back in our history, and thus early stamped on the language its character. The linguistic fact of most significance in the fourteenth century, is the junction then effected in the elements of our vocabulary. We may represent this union as the flowing of the Norman into the Saxon, receiving from it a new

law and direction, and passing on with it as English. While, however, there was an influx in volume of French words in the fourteenth century, many smaller tributaries from it and the Latin, earlier and later, passed without observation into the new tongue, the great river of English speech.

The fourth and last circle of influence which gathered about our early literature, were the forms it assumed. It was almost exclusively a literature of poetry. The prose works of the time have an archaic and moral interest for us, rather than an artistic one. Poetry, not only comes first in literature proper, it is likely long to remain the almost exclusive feature of literary art, and is sure to retain the first position in all creative periods. Poetry owes so much to form, is so far the best expression of a shaping artistic force, as at once to imply its presence, and to invite its labor. Nor is it strange that we have poetry before we have prose, any more than it is strange that we have cathedrals, while those who build them still live in hovels. The strongest, most universal, most elevating impulse will be the first to command art. This in architecture is religion; and in literature is imaginative sentiment. Not till men have settled down to a faithful, thorough view of life, will they value prose as a vehicle of truth, a thesaurus of facts; and not till art has so diffused itself as to give grace and expression to the familiar, homely things of daily life, will prose become artistic, and pass up into literature.

Moreover, poetry has a definite form, a sensible impression, which allows its oral transfer without change, its rehearsal without shifting, aimless. modifications. While language lives chiefly on the tongue and in the ear, the rhythm of poetry is the first luxury of speech, and takes to its service, the universal, easily aroused love of music, The minstrel blends in his rehearsal two arts, and draws the heart after him with double bonds. The changes also which rhythm calls for are readily made in these flexible periods of speech, and themselves become controlling, formative laws.

Prose, on the other hand, in its typical service, instruction, for it is not till later, it furnishes the novel stealing in part the purposes of poetry,-belongs to written language, and periods of patient thought; and implies, therefore, that the useful is holding even sway with the beautiful, reflection with imagination. Art, in the fourteenth century, rested as yet with poetry. We have, indeed, prose in two most diverse forms, but prose that serves rather to fix a date than to illuminate it.

Sir John Mandeville, in the middle of the century, gives us his gossipy, fugacious travels that stint at no marvels, and grant to myths as easy admittance as if the author were at a fairy tale. There are thus huddled together, fancies for the poet and a few facts for the historian; as first reapers, on the margin of a great field, may gather and bind in one sheaf, grass and flowers and scattered heads of grain. The only other prose author requiring mention is Wicliffe. His was a simple,

sturdy, moral purpose; a translation of the Bible into the vernacular, the English of common life. In this he was aided by others. The simplicity and spirituality of their motive, and the direct, colloquial force of the current language, gave to this version a character like that which still belongs to our English Bible. This translation, appearing in 1480, had a wide circulation, though unaided by printing, and passed from hand to hand with danger.

It wrought secretly in the English mind for a century and a half, waiting for that second and more fortunate initiation of a like work under Tyn1534 dale, which gives the leading date to our present version.

These, then, are the domestic influences, the coarse and conflicting forces which joined hands, and gathered close around the growth of our literary art a religion overlying offensively the surface of society, at war equally with the honest instincts of the human heart, and with the seeds of life hidden under its own corruptions; a social temper, extravagant and absurd in its fanciful virtues, gross in its real vices, fighting the deadliest sins with a poetic, fictitious sentiment; a language gorged with wayward, unorganized material, and waiting for some mastery of mind, some fire of the spirit to lift, consolidate and temper it; and a literature of poetry, that, with careless, uncritical strength, used or abused, as happened, whatever came to hand, that grew and flourished with native vigor, on the elements about it, rank as these sometimes were.

LECTURE III.

Chaucer.--Appearance.-Character.-National Poet, (a) in Direction of Composition, (b) in Language.

Progressive Poet, (a) in Religion, (b) in Politics, (c) in Poetry.— Choice of Themes and Forms. His Dramatic Power.Pathos, Humor.

Relation of Art and Reform.

The Retrogressive Period.-Due, (a) to Rejection of Reform, (b) Civil Wars.-Printing.-Place of the Moral Element.

We have now spoken of both the foreign and domestic influences that gathered about the fourteenth century, the initiative period of English literature. There was but one man of such power that we need to consider him separately; to mark the control of his genius as itself a distinct element of growth. That man was Chaucer. Though the times in a measure circumscribe genius, genius gives to the times the brightest light that is in them. The position and material of the illumination are found in the age; but how far its pointed flame shall ascend is determined by him who feeds it. Without Chaucer, the fourteenth century would flicker and glimmer in our literary history with a light but little greater than that of antecedent years. If the dreary, tedious Gower, for a time at least the friend of Chaucer, remained as the chief representative of early English poetry, few indeed would seek those pale rays, or much value them when found. It was the task of genius to lift the period