A Literary History of the English People | Page 2

not been there himself, the delight found
in those far-off retreats, sanctuaries beyond the reach of worldly
troubles. In the case of English literature the delight is the greater from
the fact that those silent realms are not the realms of death absolute;
daylight is perceived in the distance; the continuity of life is felt. The

dead of Westminster have left behind them a posterity, youthful in its
turn, and life-giving. Their descendants move around us; under our
eyes the inheritors of what has been prepare what shall be. In this lies
one of the great attractions of this literature and of the French one too.
Like the French it has remote origins; it is ample, beautiful,
measureless; no one will go the round of it; it is impossible to write its
complete history. An attempt has been made in this line for French
literature; the work undertaken two centuries ago by Benedictines,
continued by members of the Institute, is still in progress; it consists at
this day of thirty volumes in quarto, and only the year 1317 has been
reached. And with all that immense past and those far-distant origins,
those two literatures have a splendid present betokening a splendid
future. Both are alive to-day and vigorous; ready to baffle the
predictions of miscreants, they show no sign of decay. They are ever
ready for transformations, not for death. Side by side or face to face, in
peace or war, both literatures like both peoples have been in touch for
centuries, and in spite of hates and jealousies they have more than once
vivified each other. These actions and reactions began long ago, in
Norman times and even before; when Taillefer sang Roland, and when
Alcuin taught Charlemagne.
The duty of the traveller visiting already visited countries is to not limit
himself to general descriptions, but to make with particular care the
kind of observations for which circumstances have fitted him best. If he
has the eye of the painter, he will trace and colour with unfailing
accuracy hues and outlines; if he has the mind of the scientist, he will
study the formation of the ground and classify the flora and fauna. If he
has no other advantage but the fact that circumstances have caused him
to live in the country, at various times, for a number of years, in contact
with the people, in calm days and stormy days, he will perhaps make
himself useful, if, while diminishing somewhat in his book the part
usually allowed to technicalities and æsthetic problems, he increases
the part allotted to the people and to the nation: a most difficult task
assuredly; but, whatever be his too legitimate apprehensions, he must
attempt it, having no other chance, when so much has been done
already, to be of any use. The work in such a case will not be, properly
speaking, a "History of English Literature," but rather a "Literary

History of the English People."
Not only will the part allotted to the nation itself be greater in such a
book than habitually happens, but several manifestations of its genius,
generally passed over in silence, will have to be studied. The ages
during which the national thought expressed itself in languages which
were not the national one, will not be allowed to remain blank, as if, for
complete periods, the inhabitants of the island had ceased to think at all.
The growing into shape of the people's genius will have to be studied
with particular attention. The Chapter House of Westminster will be
entered, and there will be seen how the nation, such as it was then
represented, became conscious, even under the Plantagenets, of its
existence, rights and power. Philosophers and reformers must be
questioned concerning the theories which they spread: and not without
some purely literary advantage. Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke are the
ancestors of many poets who have never read their works, but who
have breathed an air impregnated with their thought. Dreamers will be
followed, singers, tale-tellers, and preachers, wherever it pleases them
to lead us: to the Walhalla of the north, to the green dales of Erin, to the
Saxon church of Bradford-on-Avon, to Blackheath, to the "Tabard" and
the "Mermaid," to the "Globe," to "Will's" coffee house, among ruined
fortresses, to cloud-reaching steeples, or along the furrow sown to good
intent by Piers the honest Plowman.
The work, the first part of which is now published, is meant to be
divided into three volumes; but as "surface as small as possible must be
offered to the shafts of Fortune," each volume will make a complete
whole in itself, the first telling the literary story of the English up to the
Renaissance, the second up to the accession of King Pope, the last up to
our own day. The