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to certain external duties and elevated sentiments. miss entirely the self-denying love of man as man, which Christianity sanctioned by the most characteristic act of its great founder. The Christian love to enemies, the Christian forgiveness of injuries, its sweet and contented submission to adversity, its patience under undeserved wrong, the overcoming evil with good-all being special virtues of the temper, springing from charity as the bond of their perfectness-were not known, we do not say in the practice of the ancients, but they were not honored as elements of their ideal. All this we know from their literature when it is critically studied as a trustworthy representation of the people's inner life. From the literature of the ancients we learn with satisfactory certainty the place which woman held in the house and in society. We know that in the esteem and affections of the best and the purest, she did not hold the place, with the rarest exceptions, which she now holds in the confidence and love of myriads of households and of hearts. The ideal man of the noblest ancient schools, was immeasurably inferior to the ideal man of multitudes of humble and uncultured Christian communities. We learn all this from what is plainly manifest in the literatures of the ancient and modern worlds.

The importance of the critical study of literature as an aid to the interpretation of modern history is equally manifest. It is even more so, because the appliances which literature furnishes for the exposition of many periods of modern history are so much more varied than those which illustrate the best known of any of the ancient generations. The reign of Queen Elizabeth is reflected, as in a magic mirror, in the plays and letters, in the sermons and diaries of her time. The times of the memorable conflict between Puritan and Cavalier can be almost literally reproduced from the direct and indirect sketches which were made of

its various characters and scenes, in the manifold forms of literature which were photographed from the life by unconscious artists. The writings of Swift and his compeers, the plays and songs of the hour, libels and street placards, sermons and letters-all these were materials which enabled Thackeray, with the rarest critical discernment to reconstruct his admirable historical tale of the days of Queen Anne. It was out of the literature of their several periods that Scott was able almost to recreate these periods.

The service of the critical study of literature is as great to the reader of history as it is to the writer. No one can fully appreciate the history of any people or of any period by relying on the descriptions and judgments of others. He must, in a certain sense, construct this history for himself, even when he reads it as constructed by others; at least he must reinforce the assertions, and verify the conclusions of his authorities, by looking for himself, so far as he may, upon the people and events described, and doing this face to face. This he can in no way do so effectually as by studying their literature. But in order to do this with the most eminent success, most readers require the aid of the philosophical critic, to explain the relations of literature to history.

Seventh. The critical study of literature is of service to biography as well as to history. If we can read the times of an author by the pictures of them which he reflects in his writings, much more can we learn the character of the author himself by the sentiments and feelings with which he reproduces his times, as they are seen in the shadings and colors with which he represents them. If a man's private letters are often the best materials out of which to construct his biography, it should be remembered that much of what he publishes as his works are in some sense his public letters, his epistles to the world and to posterity, as these convey, not alone what he professedly aims to produce

many

and record, but often much more of what he unconsciously reveals. Some books from their very nature, reveal very little of their author's feelings and character. But very books communicate much more, at times, than he designs or desires. The sonnets of Shakspeare, the poems of Milton, the playful and serious essays of Cowper, the meditations of Wordsworth, the passionate outbreaks of Byron, the vague aspirations of Shelley, and the prolonged lament of Tennyson, when skillfully interpreted, enable us to penetrate into the secrets of their hearts, and open to us the hidden springs of their character. It is the office of the critic to discriminate between what does and what does not express the man, and thus to interpret the man by many of his works; and the service which he renders to the reader is often of surpassing interest.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE CRITICISM OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.

THE features of modern criticism which have been enumerated, may suffice. We may perhaps more profitably, as well as more practically, proceed to consider our own literature as a field for its exercise. We may aver with confidence, that English literature furnishes the amplest, the most varied, and the most interesting materials for the critic, of any whether ancient or modern. It ought not to surprise us that it should. The compound structure of the language gives an advantage to the writer as well as to the philologist, furnishing often a richer choice of terms, a greater variety of phrases, and a wider range of structure, than is possible for any other modern tongue. That this structure pertains to its form alone is true, but the form in this instance happens to furnish large capacities for the embodiment and expressions of a rich and manifold material. This material is rich and manifold, chiefly, because its people have been free, have been bold in thought, and earnest in feeling. They have been moved and stirred by the largest spirit of adventure in commerce, in war, in colonizing, and in self-government. They have had an intense religious spirit, manifested in a sufficient variety of forms, and inspiring to fervent faith, to martyr-like boldness, and to consistent and heroic self-denial. They have had earnest political struggles for the crown and against the crown -for the liberty of the commons, and the traditional rights of the people, and for the divine right of kings, and the dignity of the royal prerogative. They have had sacred

and happy homes,-fireside enjoyments hallowed by domestic love, and made doubly sacred and dear by ancestral recollections. They have had exhaustless and irrepressible humor—an inborn love of noisy hilarity, an infinitude of original characters to provoke this humor, and inspire the songs of a people ever ready to be excited to uproarious merriment. They have had a free press-a free pulpit, and free newspapers, in spite of occasional censorship, packed juries, and venal judges.

If we trace the history and characteristics of this literature we may well be amazed at its varied riches, and be excited to avail ourselves of its inviting stores by a more earnest as well as a more critical use of its ample resources.

We begin with Chaucer. In the Canterbury Tales we have a worthy counterpart to the Odyssey, giving as they do, a graphic and varied picture of the many-sided life, and the strongly marked characteristics which, even at this very early period, were manifest among the English people. Indeed we could not desire a more satisfactory illustration of the truth and justice of all that we have said of literature as a field for the study of history, than is furnished in these tales of Chaucer. The attentive reader cannot fail to observe how eminently true it is that the times illustrate the author and the author illustrates his times; how, through these tales, we have a direct insight into the manners and the sentiments, the customs and the philosophy of our ancestors, as they were, and as they lived some five hundred years ago. We have only to look through this magic show glass, and we are transported back to the very scenes which were then transacted, and those early times live again before our eyes. It is not a lifeless chronicle which we read, it is not a grave description, not a careful analysis, not a logical generalization, such as the annalist and the historian furnish. It is not even an historical novel in which a writer of a later period has endea