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again; for, like true friends, they will never fail us.--never cease to instruct,-never cloy."-Joineriana.

"Books are standing counsellors and preachers, always at hand, and always disinterested; having this advantage over oral instructors, that they are ready to repeat their lesson as often as we please."-ANON.

"In England, where there are as many new books puh. lished, as in all the rest of Europe put together, a spirit of freedom and reason reigns among the people; they have been often known to act like fools, they are generally found to think like men. . . . . An author may be considered as a merciful substitute to the legislature. He acts not by punishing crimes, but by preventing them."-GOLDSMITH. "Next to acquiring good friends, the best acquisition is that of good books."-COLTON.

....

via, the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and, being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. As good almost to kill a man, as kill a good book: who kills a man, kills a reasonable creature-God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself-kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."-JOHN MILTON. "Here is the best solitary company in the world, and in this particular, chiefly excelling any other, that in my study I am sure to converse with none but wise men; but abroad it is impossible for me to avoid the society of fools. What an advantage have I, by this good fellowship, that, besides the help which I receive from hence, in reference to my life after this life, I can enjoy the life of so many ages before I lived! That I can be acquainted with the passages of three or four thousand years ago, as if they were the weekly occurrences. Here, without travelling so far as Endor, I can call up the ablest spirits of those times, the "The foundation of knowledge must be laid by reading. learnedest philosophers, the wisest counsellors, the greatest generals, and make them serviceable to me. I can make General principles must be had from books; which, howbold with the best jewels they have in their treasury, with ever, must be brought to the test of real life. In converthe same freedom that the Israelites borrowed of the Egyp-sation, you never get a system. What is said upon a tians, and, without suspicion of felony, make use of them

as mine own."-SIR WILLIAM WALLER: Meditation
the Contentment I have in my Books and Study.
"That place that does

Contain my books, the best companions, is
To me a glorious court, where hourly I
Converse with the old sages and philosophers;
And sometimes for variety, I confer

With kings and emperors, and weigh their counsels,
Calling their victories, if unjustly got,

Unto a strict account; and in my fancy,
Deface their ill-placed statues. Can I then
Part with such constant pleasures, to embrace
Uncertain vanities? No: be it your care
To augment a heap of wealth; it shall be mine
To increase in knowledge."

upon

FLETCHER.

"Books should to one of these four ends conduce, For wisdom, piety, delight, or use." DENHAM. "To divert, at any time, a troublesome fancy, run to thy Books. They presently fix thee to them, and drive the other out of thy thoughts. They always receive thee with the same kindness."-FULLER.

"Young men should not be discouraged from buying books: much may depend upon it. It is said of Whiston, that the accidental purchase of Tacquet's own Euclid at an auction, first occasioned his application to mathematical studies."-Biography of Whiston.

subject, is to be gathered from a hundred people. The parts which a man gets thus, are at such a distance from each other, that he never attains to a full view."-DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

"Books are men of higher stature,
And the only men that speak aloud for future times to hear."
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

"The past but lives in words; a thousand ages
Were blank, if books had not evoked their ghosts.
And kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us
From fleshless lips."
E. L. BULWER.

"It is books that teach us to refine our pleasures when young, and which, having so taught us, enable us to recall them with satisfaction when old."-LEIGH HUNT.

"Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a sourco of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss, and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for readING. Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverso selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best

“It is manifest that all government of action is to be got-society in every period of history,—with the wisest, the ten by knowledge, and knowledge, best, by gathering many knowledges, which is READING."-SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. "Education begins the gentleman, but READING, good company, and reflection, must finish him."-LOCKE.

"Books are part of man's prerogative;
In formal ink they thought and voices hold,
That we to them our solitude may give,
And make time present travel that of old.
Our life, Fame pieceth longer at the end,
And Books it farther backward doth extend."
SIR THOMAS OVERBURY.

wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him!"-SIR JOHN HERSCHEL: Address at the Opening of the Eton Library, 1833.

No

"In the best Books great men talk to us, with us, and give us their most precious thoughts. Books are the voices of the distant and the dead. Books are the true levellers. They give to all who will faithfully use them, the society and the presence of the best and greatest of our race. matter how poor I am; no matter, though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling; if LEARNED MEN AND POETS will enter and take up their abode under my roof-if MILTON will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise; and SHAKSPEARE open to me the worlds of imagination, and the workings of the human "Like friends, we should return to Books again and heart; and FRANKLIN enrich me with his practical wisdom,

"Knowledge of Books in a man of business, is as a torch In the hands of one who is willing and able to show those who are bewildered the way which leads to prosperity and welfare."-Spectator.

-I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man, though excluded from what is called the best uociety in the place where I live. ... I know how hard it is to some men, especially to those who spend much time in manual labour, to fix attention on Books. Let them strive to overcome the difficulty, by choosing subjects of deep interest, or by reading in company with those they love. Nothing can supply the place of Books. They are cheering or soothing compa

nions in solitude, illness, affliction. The wealth of both continents would not compensate for the good they impart. Let every man, if possible, gather some good Books under his roof, and obtain access for himself and family to some ocial Library. Almost any luxury should be sacrificed to this."-WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING: Self-Culture.

"If the crowns of all the kingdoms of Europe were laid down at my feet in exchange for my Books and my love of Reading, I would spurn them all."-ARCHBISHOP FENELON. "A taste for Books is the pleasure and glory of my life. I would not exchange it for the glory of the Indies." -EDWARD GIBBON.

And now, gentle reader, having evoked so many of the "mighty and the noble," who, gathering around thee, a "cloud of witnesses," have sought to stimulate thy ambition by pointing to the "ample page of knowledge, rich with the spoils of time," let me hope that a spirit hath been aroused within thee which will induce thee to enter in and possess the wealth of the land a goodly heritage is before thee; and like the chosen people of old, thou shalt be enriched by the labours of thy predecessors, and rejoice in abundance of good.

But if thy heart tells thee that thou hast no taste for these delights, if thou still preferrest sensuous pleasures, if "divine philosophy, though musical as is Apollo's lute," be harsh and crabbed to thy apprehension, and the harp and the viol of earthly banquets allure thee, and thou be of those who "rejoice at the sound of the organ," the ceremonies of bravery and the trappings of courts, "the pomp of heraldry and the boast of power," put by this volume, and go thy way. Thy stolidity is impregnable; array thyself with the cap and bells, and engage thy passage in Barclay's Shyp of Foyls (q. nom.): thy "talk is of bullocks," and of such the Son of Sirach says:

"They shall not be sought for in public council, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judges' Beat, nor understand the sentence of the judgment: they cannot declare justice and judgment; and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. . . . . All their deaire is in the work of their craft."

The History of England, as connected with a review of English Literature, may be divided into six terms. 1. The British Period: from the earliest times to the Roman Invasion, B. C. 55.

2. The Roman Period, B. C. 55, A. D. 449.
8. The Anglo-Saxon Period, A. D. 449, A. D. 1066.
4. The Anglo-Norman Period: from the invasion of
William the Conqueror, A. D. 1066, to the acces-
sion of Henry the Third, A. D. 1216.

In this division we have not adhered to the classifi cation of some preceding writers, but we trust that we have not innovated without sufficient excuse. The death of Stephen de Langton, in 1228, coincides so nearly with the accession of Henry III. in 1216, that the synchronism offers a convenient boundary for the Anglo-Norman period. The reign of Henry III. is likewise historically memorable as that which wit

nessed the shooting forth of that feeble germ (the popular element) which has now become so great a tree, that the Throne and the Altar, which once obstructed its growth, ow repose only in safety under its branches.

The advent of the English doctrinal Reformation cannot well be dated before the accession of Elizabeth, and the literary lustre of that reign affords a strong argument for its being adopted as a boundary between adolescence of the English tongue. the servility of the Latin period, and the vigorous We need hardly

explain that we use these terms respectively, in a chronological and philological acceptation, without any reference to the intellectual calibre of the writers of these epochs.

In the earliest times of which we have any record, we find the Celts, Cymry, Welsh, or Britons, the inhabitants of the British isles. The origin of the early population is involved in obscurity. The theory propounded by the Welsh priest, Tysilio, in the seventh century, and gravely alleged by Edward I., in his let

ter to Boniface, in the fourteenth,-that the inhabit-
ants of the southern part of Britain were descended
from the Trojans,-is now generally discredited by
antiquaries. Of conjectures, of course, there is no
end; and we have Aylett Sammes, contending for
the Phoenician origin of the first colonizers of Bri-
tain and Ireland; Sir William Betham, who insists
upon awarding the priority of occupation to the Picts,
or Cimbri of antiquity, and many other theories as
ingenious as they are incapable of demonstration.
Of the language of this people we know but little :
"Though the Britains or Welch were the first possessors
of this island whose names are recorded, and are therefore
in civil history always considered as the predecessors of
the present inhabitants; yet the deduction of the English
language, from the earliest times of which we have any
knowledge, to its present state, requires no mention of
them: for we have so few words which can, with any pro-
bability, be referred to British roots, that we justly regard
the Saxons and Welch, as nations totally distinct."-DR
SAMUEL JOHNSON.

"The language of Britain differed very little from that
Some of the British tribes seem to have come
of the Gaul.
from Celtic, and others from Belgic, Gaul; but it is proba-
ble, as indeed Strabo distinctly assures us, that the Celts
and the Belgians spoke merely two slightly differing dia-
lects of the same tongue. The evidence of the most ancient
names of localities throughout the whole of South Britain
confirms this account; everywhere these names appear to
belong to one language, and that the same which is still
spoken by the native Irish, and the Scotch Highlanders;
the latter of whom call themselves, to this day, Gaels or

5. From the accession of Henry III., A. D. 1216, to Gauls."-History of England. the accession of Elizabeth, A. D. 1558.

The English language is a branch of the Teutonic,

6 From the accession of Elizabeth, A. D. 1558, to the or Gothic, which is the mother-tongue of many diamiddle of the nineteenth century.

lects now prevailing in several of the countries of

Europe. Dr. Hickes gives the following genealogical taken to task for asserting at the conclusion of tome table:

"What was the form of the Saxon language when, about the year 450, they first entered Britain, cannot now be known. They seem to have been a people without learning, and very probably without an alphabet; their speech, therefore, having been always cursory and extemporaneous, must have been artless and unconnected, without any modes of transition or involution of clauses; which abruptness and inconnection may be observed even in their later writings. This barbarity may be supposed to have continued during their wars with the Britains, which for a time left them no leisure for softer studies; nor is there any reason for supposing it abated till the year 570, when Augustine came from Rome to convert them to Christianity. The Christian religion always implies or produces a certain degree of civility and learning; they then became by degrees acouainted with the Roman language, and so gained, from time to time, som knowledge and elegance, till in three centuries they had formed a language capable of expressing all the sentiments of a civilized people, as appears by King Alfred's paraphrase in imitation of Boethius, and his short preface, which I have selected as the first specimen of ancient English."-DR. SAMUEL JOHNSON.

About 1150, the Saxon began to take the form which was gradually moulded to the proportions of the modern English, though not without a most important admixture of other elements. After the Norman conquest, many Saxon words became obsolete, and Latin and French shoots were from time to time grafted upon the present stock, until in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it began to assume the form of modern English. Yet Gower and Chaucer are more of a task than a pleasure to the ordinary English reader. "Nothing can be more difficult than to determine, except by an arbitrary line, the commencement of the English language; not so much, as in those of the continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather from an

quotations from the Laws of Kings Ethelbert and
Eadgar, that "we observe by these extracts that
rather more than half the Saxon words have been
lost, and now form no part of our language."
The Dr. subsequently remarks:

"Mr. Meidinger of Frankfort, in the Introduction to his Etymological and Comparative Dictionary of the TeutoGothic Languages, notices this observation of mine, respecting the proportion of Saxon words which have been lost, and then states the opinion of Mr. Turner, that more than four-fifths of the words in modern English are of Saxon origin. This difference in the two statements proceeds from a circumstance overlooked. My statement refers only to the actual proportion of Saxon words retained in the vocabulary, which is probably less than half of the whole number of words in the language. Mr. Turner's statement refers to the proportion of Saxon words actually used in our common language, which is, doubtless, as great as he represents it. The words of Saxon origin are the more necessary words; such as are wanted in all the common concerns of life; and therefore in use they compose the body of the language."-Introduction to Webster's English Dictionary.

It will be observed that we do not profess to enter into the learning of philological investigation, or to discuss the many modern dissertations upon this interesting department of study. Such a departure from our plan would be altogether unjustifiable. The reader who desires to pursue this subject will find JOHNSON'S, WEBSTER's, and RICHARDSON's Dictionvaluable guides in the prefaces and introductions to aries, and in the works of LYE, Bosworth, Thorpe, PEGGE, PAYNE, CLARK, WELSFORD, HARRISON, LATHAM, SAVAGE, MACLEAN, MARCET, &c.

Having taken a hasty review of the language, we now proceed to the examination of the literature of

our ancestors.

British and the Roman-afford nothing to arrest our
The first two periods of our classification-the

attention:

"Whatever existed in those remote times deserving the name of learning or scientific knowledge, never having been committed to writing, and having consequently perished with the general subversion of the order of things then established, cannot be regarded as having been even the beginning or rudimental germ of that which we now possess. The present literary civilization of England dates its commencement only from the Saxon period, and not from a very early point in that."

The first name in the catalogue of Anglo-Saxon writers is that of GILDAS, said by William of Malms512, which early date is inconsistent with other statebury and Johannes Glastoniensis, to have died A.D.

opposite reason—the possibility of tracing a very gradual accession of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English-1, by contracting, or otherwise modifying, the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2, by omitting Lonny inflections, especially of the noun, and consequently making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3, by the introduction of French derivations; 4, by using less inver-sented to have been a zealous missionary, the son of sion and ellipsis, especially in poetry. Of these, the second alone, I think, can be considered as sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought about so gradually, that we are not relieved of much of our difficulty, hether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruit of the fertility of the daughter."-HALLAM.

ments in which his name occurs.

Gildas is repre

Cam or Ken, a British king, who reigned in the district of Aleluyd, (Dumbarton.) To this writer, is ascribed, by Bede, a tract (in Latin) on British History under the Romans, and during the Saxon invasion, &c. This work de Excidio Britannica is chiefly compiled from Roman writers. Giraldus Cambrensis mentions the epigrams of Gildas; and Geoffrey That eminent philologer, Dr. WEBSTER, has been of Monmouth, John Brompton, and Bale, ascribe

MINOR WRITERS OF THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.

Hammelinus of Veru

1113. Colman.

Alwin, or Ail win.

MINOR WRITERS OF THE REIGN OF HENRY II