ENGLISH LITERATURE. The following discussion of the evolution of English literature is planned to give a compre hensive view, the details as to particular authors and their work being reserved for separate articles. As the precise delimitation of what may narrowly be called "English" literature, i.e., in the English language, is perhaps impossible, the reader is referred to supplementary articles on the literature of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada and the United States, and to such general accounts of particular forms as NOVEL ; ROMANCE ; VERSE, etc.
Though there is no evidence either that the heathen English had adopted the Roman alphabet, or that they had learned to employ their native monumental script (the runes) on materials suitable for continuous writing, it is certain that in the pre-literary period at least one species of poetic art had attained a high degree of development, and that an extensive body of poetry was handed down. This unwritten poetry was the work of minstrels who found their audiences in the halls of kings and nobles. Its themes were the exploits of heroes of Germanic Europe, with which its listeners claimed kinship. Its metre was the alliterative long line, the lax rhythm of which shows that it was intended, not to be sung to regular melodies, but to be recited. Of its beauty and power we may judge from the best passages in Beowulf (q.v.); for there can be little doubt that this poem gained nothing and lost much in the process of literary redaction.
The conversion of the people to Christianity necessarily in volved the decline of the minstrelsy that celebrated the glories of heathen times. Yet the descendants of Woden, even when they were devout Christians, would not easily lose all interest in the achievements of their kindred of former days. Chaucer's knowl edge of "the song of Wade" is one proof among others that even so late as the 14th century the deeds of pagan heroes had not ceased to be recited in minstrel verse. The paucity of the extant remains of Old English heroic poetry is no argument to the con trary. The wonder is that any of it has survived at all. The clergy, to whom we owe the writing and the preservation of the Old English mss., would only in rare instances be keenly inter ested in secular poetry. We possess, in fact, portions of four narrative poems, treating of heroic legend—Beowulf, Widsith, Finnesburh, and Waldere. The second of these has no poetical merit, but great archaeological interest. It is an enumeration of the famous kings known to German tradition, put into the mouth of a minstrel, Widsith (the "far-travelled"), who claims to have been at many of their courts and to have been rewarded by them for his song. The extant fragment of Finnesburh is a battle piece, belonging to a story of which another part is introduced episodi cally in Beowulf. Waldere, of which we have two fragments, is concerned with Frankish and Burgundian traditions based on events of the 5th century ; the hero is the "Waltharius" of Ekke hart's Latin epic. The English poem may possibly be rather a literary composition than a genuine example of minstrel poetry, but the portions that have survived are hardly inferior to the best passages of Beowulf.
It may be assumed that the minstrels who entertained the English kings and nobles with the recital of these heroic traditions would also celebrate the martial deeds of their patrons and an cestors. There may have existed an abundance of poetry com memorative of events in the conquest of Britain and the struggle with the Danes. Two examples only have survived, both belonging to the loth century : the Battle of Brunanburh, and the Battle of Maldon, a work of greater merit but only a fragment.
The rapidity and thoroughness of the adoption of Christian civilization had an immediate effect. Augustine had landed in 597, and 40 years later was born an Englishman, Aldhelm, who in the judgment of contemporary Europe was the most accomplished scholar and the finest Latin writer of his time. In the next gen eration England produced in Bede (Baeda) a man who in solidity and variety of knowledge, and in literary power, had for cen turies no rival. Aldhelm and Bede are known to us only from their Latin writings, though the former is recorded to have writ ten vernacular poetry. The extant Old English literature is almost entirely Christian, for the poems that belong to an earlier period have been expurgated and given a Christian tone. English heathenism perished without leaving a record.
The most original portion of the Old English literary poetry is the group of dramatic monologues—The Banished Wife's Com plaint, The Husband's Message, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Deor and Wulf and Eadwacer. The date of these is uncertain, though it cannot be later than the loth century. That they are all of one period is unlikely, but they are all marked by the same peculiar pathos. It is not improbable that most of these poems relate to incidents of heroic legend, but this can be definitely affirmed only in the case of two short pieces, Deor and Wulf and Eadwacer, which have something of a lyric character, and are the only examples in Old English of strophic structure and the use of the refrain. Wulf and Eadwacer exhibits a further development in the same direction, the monotony of the long line metre being varied by the admission of short lines formed by the suppression of the second hemistich.
Of the works translated by Alfred and the scholars whom he employed, St. Gregory's Pastoral Care and his Dialogues are addressed to the priesthood ; the other translations are all (not excepting the secular History of Orosius) essentially religious in purpose and spirit. In the preface to the Pastoral Care, in the accounts of Northern lands and peoples inserted in the Orosius, and in the free rendering of the Consolation of Boethius and of the Soliloquies of Augustine, Alfred appears as an original writer. Other fruits of his activity are his Laws and the beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Old English prose after Alfred is entirely of clerical authorship. Apart from the Chronicle, the bulk of this literature consists of translations from Latin and of homilies and saints' lives, the substance of which is derived from sources mostly accessible to us in their original form ; it has therefore for us little importance except from the philological point of view. This remark may be applied, in the main, even to the writings of Aelfric, notwithstanding the interest which attaches to his achievement in the development of the capacities of the language for literary expression. The translation of the gospels, though executed in Aelfric's time (c. moo), is by other hands. The sermons of his younger contemporary, Archbishop Wulfstan, are marked by eloquence, and contain passages of historical value.
From the early years of the i 1 th century we possess an en cyclopaedic manual of the science of the time—chronology, astron omy, arithmetic, metre, rhetoric and ethics—by the monk Byrhtferth, a pupil of Abbo of Fleury. The numerous works on medicine, the properties of herbs, and the like, are in the main selections from Latin treatises. Two famous works of fiction, the romance of Apollonius of Tyre and the Letter of Alexander, which in their Latin form had much influence on the later literature of Europe, were Englished in the r rth century. To the same period belongs the curious tract on The Wonders of the East.
This break in the continuity of literary tradition was no less complete in poetry. The verse from the latter part of the Lath century was uninfluenced by the work of Old English poets, whose diction had become unintelligible. There is no ground, however, to suppose that the succession of popular singers and reciters was interrupted. In the north-west the old recitative metre seems to have survived in oral tradition, with little more alteration than was rendered necessary by the changes in the language, until the middle of the r4th century, when it was again adopted by literary versifiers. The influence of native popular poetic tradition is clearly discernible in the earliest Middle English poems; but the authors of these poems were familiar with Latin, and probably spoke French as easily as their mother tongue. The artless verses of the hermit Godric, who died in I1 7o, exhibit in their metre the combined influence of native rhythm and of that of Latin hymnology. The Proverbs of Alfred, written about 1200, is (like the later Proverbs of Hendyng) a gnomic poem of the old Ger manic type, and its rhythm is mainly of native origin. On the other hand, the meditation known as the Moral Ode, somewhat earlier in date, is in a metre derived from contemporary Latin verse. In the Ormulum (see ORM) this metre known as the sep tenarius appears without rhyme, and with a syllabic regularity previously without example in English verse. In the poetry of the 13th century the influence of French models is conspicuous. The many devotional lyrics, such as the Luve Ron of Thomas of Hales, show this influence both in their metrical form and in their mystical tenderness and fervour. The Story of Genesis and Exodus, of small poetic merit, derives its metre chiefly from French. In the sprightly dialogue of the Owl and Nightingale, about 123o, we have a "contention" of the type familiar in French and Provencal literature. The "Gallic" humour may be seen in various other writings of this period, notably in the Land of Cockaigne, a satire on monastic self-indulgence, and in the fabliau of Dame Siriz, a story of Eastern origin, told with almost Chaucerian skill. Predominantly French in metrical structure are the love poems collected in ms. Harl. 2253, written about 13 20 in Herefordshire, some of which find a place in modern antholo gies. It is noteworthy that they are accompanied by French lyrics very similar in style. The same ms. contains, besides some religious poetry, a number of political songs of the time of Ed ward II. Later, the victories of Edward III. down to the taking of Guisnes in 1352 were celebrated by the Yorkshireman Lau rence Minot in alliterative verse with strophic arrangement and rhyme.
Not far from the year 1300 (for the most part probably earlier rather than later) a vast mass of hagiological and homiletic verse was produced. To Gloucester belongs a series of Lives of Saints, metrically and linguistically resembling Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle. A similar collection was written in the north of Eng land, as well as a large body of homilies, abounding in exempla or illustrative stories. The great rhyming chronicle of Scripture his tory entitled Cursor Mundi (q.v.) was written in the north about this time. The remaining homiletic verse of this period is too abundant to be referred to in detail; it will be enough to mention the sermons of William of Shoreham, written in strophic form. To the next generation belongs the Pricke of Conscience by Rich ard Rolle, the influence of which was not less powerful than that of the author's prose writings.
The extent and character of the literature produced during the first half of the i4th century indicate that the literary use of the native tongue was no longer a condescension to the needs of the common people. The rapid disuse of French as the medium of intercourse and the consequent substitution of English for French for school instruction, created a demand for vernacular reading. Though the literature which arose in answer to this demand consisted mainly of translations or adaptations of for eign works, it prepared the way for verse in which the genuine thought and feeling of the nation were to find expression.