English Literature (A Chapter from a New History), Part I [pp. 137-150]

ENGLISH ZITERA TURE.
tell you so. Is it wrong to give you my love for
comfort in your trouble."
"And do you really love the like o' me?"
"There is no like of you but yourself."
~ * * * * ~
The Institute was sacredly set apart to lectures by men; it was the audience only that knew
no distinction of sex. But other halls were open,
and certainly a generation that had grown up
under all the advantages of hearing lectures
should be capable of producing some who should
be able to give lectures as well.
"Hark to this, Richard," said his wife, one
day. "There is to be a course of lectures on
Shakespeare by Miss Marcia Church. She was
the sonnet lady. It's a wonder to me, honey,
that you never married her instead of this ignorant little woman."
"I suspect she came among the forbidden
relations, Susanna. You know a man may not
marry his grandmother."
" And yet you married a lady of the sixteenth
century."
HORACE E. SCUDDER.
ENGLISH LITERA TURE.
A CHAPTER FROM A NEW HISTORY.*
HE reign of George III. will always be
remarkable for the development of British
industry and British trade. The ability and ingenuity of a few great men placed new resources
at the disposal of the nation, and by substituting
the steam-engine for the hand of man, the road
for the track, and the canal for the road, increased a hundred-fold the resources of the country, and its capacity for industrial enterprise.
It is questionable whether great wealth and great
prosperity are favorable to the cultivation of literature, science, and art. The noblest literature
of Rome was, indeed, produced amid the prosperity and wealth which made the reign of Augustus Caesar memorable. The Tuscan school
flourished under the patronage of the wealthiest
and the wisest of the Medici. But Raphael in
modern history, and Virgil in the ancient world,
owed more to the tone of society and to the tone
of thought of the ages in which they lived than
to the patronage of Augustus or the Medici.
Horace did more to perpetuate the name of Maecenas than Maecenas did to cultivate the genius
of the poet. This country has become much
wealthier since the days of Elizabeth and the
days of Anne. But it has failed to produce a
second Shakespeare or a second Dryden.
The almost unanimous verdict of competent
critics has pronounced the most brilliant era of
English literature to have commenced with the
age of Elizabeth and to have closed with that of
Anne. The century and a half which is embraced in this period produced the three greatest
masters of the English language-Shakespeare,
* A History of England from the Conclusion of the
Great War in I8I5. By Spencer Walpole. London,
1878.
Milton, and Dryden. But other wrters, some of
whom were hardly inferior to these, dignified this
golden period of English literature. Spenser,
Sidney, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Raleigh, Cowley,
Selden, Clarendon, Bunyan, Butler, Defoe, Swift,
Addison, Pope, and Bolingbroke in various ways
illustrated and enriched the noble language of
their common country. A circumstance with
which they had no direct connection themselves
stereotyped the expressions which they used.
The Bible was translated into English at the
very time at which Shakespeare was writing.
The Reformation placed the work in the hands
of every Englishman who could read. The language of the Bible became the language of the
nation; the expressions which its translators
used became for ever part and parcel of English speech. An ordinary person can hardly read
the pre-Reformation writers without a glossary.
No one requires a key to enable him to appreciate the beauties of the Elizabethan dramatist or
to understand Raleigh's" Historiy of the World."
Success in any line of life usually leads to
imitation. Where one man achieves fame, a
hundred others think that they may become
equally famous. Birmingham ware has in every
age been foisted on a credulous public; and
Brummagem has appeared in spurious literature
and art nearly as frequently as in spurious silver
and gold. The scholars of Raphael imitated
with matchless fidelity the finish of their master;
and an uncritical age, enchanted with the beauty
of their pigments, forbore to notice their want
of originality and power. Exactly the same
thing occurred in literature in the eighteenth
century. Few writers, indeed, had the hardihood to imitate the imagery of Shakespeare, the
diction of Milton, or the vigor of Dryden. But
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