Produced by Jonathan Ingram, Marc D'Hooghe and the PG
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With an Introductory Essay,
We propose to introduce our 'Specimens' by a short Essay on the Originand Progress of English Poetry on to the days of Chaucer and of Gower.Having called, in conjunction with many other critics, Chaucer 'theFather of English Poetry,' to seek to go back further may seem likepursuing antenatal researches. But while Chaucer was the sun, a certainglimmering dawn had gone before him, and to reflect that, is the objectof the following pages.
Britain, when the Romans invaded it, was a barbarous country; and althoughsubjugated and long held by that people, they seem to have left it nearlyas uncultivated and illiterate as they found it. 'No magnificent remains,'says Macaulay, 'of Latian porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain.No writer of British birth is to be reckoned among the masters of Latinpoetry and eloquence. It is not probable that the islanders were, at anytime, generally familiar with the tongue of their Italian rulers. Fromthe Atlantic to the vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during manycenturies, been predominant. It drove out the Celtic—it was not drivenout by the Teutonic—and it is at this day the basis of the French,Spanish, and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears neverto have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not stand its groundbefore the German.' It was in the fifth century that that modificationof the German or Teutonic speech called the Anglo-Saxon was introducedinto this country. It soon asserted its superiority over the Britishtongue, which seemed to retreat before it, reluctantly and proudly, likea lion, into the mountain-fastnesses of Wales or to the rocky sea-beachof Cornwall. The triumph was not completed all at once, but from thebeginning it was secure. The bards of Wales continued to sing, but theirstrains resembled the mutterings of thunder among their own hills, onlyhalf heard in the distant valleys, and exciting neither curiosity nor awe.For five centuries, with the exception of some Latin words added by thepreachers of Christianity, the Anglo-Saxon language continued much as itwas when first introduced. Barbarous as the manners of the people were,literature was by no means left without a witness. Its chief cultivatorswere the monks and other religious persons, who spent their leisure inmultiplying books, either by original composition or by transcription,including treatises on theology, historical chronicles, and a greatabundance and variety of poetical productions. These were written at firstexclusively in Latin, but occasionally, in process of time, in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. The theology taught in them was, no doubt, crude andcorrupted, the history was stuffed with fables, and the poetry was roughand bald in the extreme; but still they furnished a food fitted for theawakening mind of the age. When the Christian religion reached GreatBritain, it brought necessarily with it an impulse to intellect as wellas to morality. So startling are the facts it relates, so broad and deepthe principles it lays down, so humane the spirit it inculcates, and soravishing the hopes it awakens, that, however disguised in superstitionand clouded by imperfect representation, it never fails to produce, in allcou