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diff --git a/35306.txt b/35306.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..484d497 --- /dev/null +++ b/35306.txt @@ -0,0 +1,18215 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, +Volume 9, Slice 6, by Various + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 6 + "English Language" to "Epsom Salts" + +Author: Various + +Release Date: February 17, 2011 [EBook #35306] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA *** + + + + +Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + +Transcriber's notes: + +(1) Numbers following letters (without space) like C2 were originally + printed in subscript. Letter subscripts are preceded by an + underscore, like C_n. + +(2) Characters following a carat (^) were printed in superscript. + +(3) Side-notes were relocated to function as titles of their respective + paragraphs. + +(4) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below letters were not + inserted. + +(5) Small and capital EZH letters are subtituted with [gh] and [Gh] + respectively. Thorn is subtituted with th or Th, and eth is + subtituted with dh. + +(6) [root] stands for the root symbol; [alpha], [beta], etc. for greek + letters. + +(7) The following typographical errors have been corrected: + + ARTICLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: "The writers of each district wrote in + the dialect familiar to them; and between extreme forms the + difference was so great as to amount to unintelligibility ..." + 'familiar' amended from 'familar'. + + ARTICLE ENGLISH LITERATURE: "Even more portentous in its superhuman + dignity was the style of Edward Gibbon, who combined with the + unspiritual optimism of Hume and Robertson a far more concentrated + devotion to his subject ..." 'combined' amended from 'conbined'. + + ARTICLE ENTERITIS: "The chief symptom is diarrhoea. The term + "enteric fever" has recently come into use instead of "typhoid" for + the latter disease; but see Typhoid Fever." 'symptom' amended from + 'sympton'. + + ARTICLE ENTRE MINHO E DOURO: "The methods and implements of the + farmers are, however, most primitive, and at the beginning of the + 20th century it was not unusual to see a mule, or even a woman, + harnessed with the team of oxen to an old-fashioned wooden plough." + 'it' amended from 'is'. + + ARTICLE ENTRE RIOS: "... a province of the eastern Argentine + Republic, forming the southern part of a region sometimes described + as the Argentine Mesopotamia ..." 'southern' amended from + 'sourthern'. + + ARTICLE EPHRAIM: "... and Ephraim's proud and ambitious character + is indicated in its demands as narrated in Josh. xvii. 14; Judg. + viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. throughout, Ephraim played a distinctive and + prominent part; it probably excelled Manasseh in numerical strength + ..." 'throughout' amended from 'thoughout'. + + ARTICLE EPIC POETRY: "... and Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544), + ridiculed the whole school in an Orlandino of 1526." 'Folengo' + amended from 'Folango'. + + ARTICLE EPIDAURUS: "It was abandoned during the middle ages; its + inhabitants took possession of the promontory of Minoa ..." + 'possession' amended from 'posession'. + + ARTICLE EPILOGUE: "... and then explained to the audience what an + extremely interesting play it had been. In the second case, when + the author was less confident ..." 'extremely' amended from + 'exremely'. + + ARTICLE EPITHELIAL, ENDOTHELIAL: "It will be sufficient here to + give the more general characters possessed by these cells." + 'sufficient' amended from 'sufficent'. + + + + + ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA + + A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE + AND GENERAL INFORMATION + + ELEVENTH EDITION + + + VOLUME IX, SLICE VI + + English Language to Epsom Salts + + + + +ARTICLES IN THIS SLICE: + + + ENGLISH LANGUAGE EPHEBI + ENGLISH LAW EPHEMERIS + ENGLISH LITERATURE EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO THE + ENGLISHRY EPHESUS + ENGRAVING EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF + ENGROSSING EPHOD + ENGYON EPHOR + ENID EPHORUS + ENIGMA EPHRAEM SYRUS + ENKHUIZEN EPHRAIM + ENNEKING, JOHN JOSEPH EPHTHALITES + ENNIS EPI + ENNISCORTHY EPICENE + ENNISKILLEN, WILLIAM COLE EPICHARMUS + ENNISKILLEN EPIC POETRY + ENNIUS, QUINTUS EPICTETUS + ENNODIUS, MAGNUS FELIX EPICURUS + ENNS EPICYCLE + ENOCH EPICYCLOID + ENOCH, BOOK OF EPIDAURUS + ENOMOTO, BUYO EPIDIORITE + ENOS EPIDOSITE + ENRIQUEZ GOMEZ, ANTONIO EPIDOTE + ENSCHEDE EPIGONI + ENSENADA, CENON DE SOMODEVILLA EPIGONION + ENSIGN EPIGRAM + ENSILAGE EPIGRAPHY + ENSTATITE EPILEPSY + ENTABLATURE EPILOGUE + ENTADA EPIMENIDES + ENTAIL EPINAL + ENTASIS EPINAOS + ENTERITIS EPINAY, LOUISE D'ESCLAVELLES D' + ENTHUSIASM EPIPHANIUS, SAINT + ENTHYMEME EPIPHANY, FEAST OF + ENTOMOLOGY EPIRUS + ENTOMOSTRACA EPISCOPACY + ENTRAGUES, CATHERINE DE BALZAC D' EPISCOPIUS, SIMON + ENTRECASTEAUX, BRUNI D' EPISODE + ENTRE MINHO E DOURO EPISTAXIS + ENTREPOT EPISTEMOLOGY + ENTRE RIOS EPISTLE + ENVOY EPISTYLE + ENZIO EPISTYLIS + ENZYME EPITAPH + EOCENE EPITHALAMIUM + EON DE BEAUMONT EPITHELIAL and GLANDULAR TISSUES + EOTVOS, JOZSEF EPITOME + EPAMINONDAS EPOCH + EPARCH EPODE + EPAULETTE EPONA + EPEE, CHARLES-MICHEL EPONYMOUS + EPEE-DE-COMBAT EPPING + EPERJES EPPS + EPERNAY EPREMESNIL, JEAN JACQUES DUVAL D' + EPERNON EPSOM + EPHEBEUM EPSOM SALTS + + + + +ENGLISH LANGUAGE. In its historical sense, the name _English_ is now +conveniently used to comprehend the language of the English people from +their settlement in Britain to the present day, the various stages +through which it has passed being distinguished as Old, Middle, and New +or Modern English. In works yet recent, and even in some still current, +the term is confined to the third, or at most extended to the second and +third of these stages, since the language assumed in the main the +vocabulary and grammatical forms which it now presents, the oldest or +inflected stage being treated as a separate language, under the title of +_Anglo-Saxon_, while the transition period which connects the two has +been called _Semi-Saxon_. This view had the justification that, looked +upon by themselves, either as vehicles of thought or as objects of study +and analysis, Old English or Anglo-Saxon and Modern English are, for all +practical ends, distinct languages,--as much so, for example, as Latin +and Spanish. No amount of familiarity with Modern English, including its +local dialects, would enable the student to read Anglo-Saxon, +three-fourths of the vocabulary of which have perished and been +reconstructed within 900 years;[1] nor would a knowledge even of these +lost words give him the power, since the grammatical system, alike in +accidence and syntax, would be entirely strange to him. Indeed, it is +probable that a modern Englishman would acquire the power of reading and +writing French in less time than it would cost him to attain to the same +proficiency in Old English; so that if the test of distinct languages be +their degree of practical difference from each other, it cannot be +denied that "Anglo-Saxon" is a distinct language from Modern English. +But when we view the subject historically, recognizing the fact that +living speech is subject to continuous change in certain definite +directions, determined by the constitution and circumstances of mankind, +as an evolution or development of which we can trace the steps, and +that, owing to the abundance of written materials, this evolution +appears so gradual in English that we can nowhere draw distinct lines +separating its successive stages, we recognize these stages as merely +temporary phases of an individual whole, and speak of the English +language as used alike by Cynewulf, by Chaucer, by Shakespeare and by +Tennyson.[2] It must not be forgotten, however, that in this wide sense +the English language includes, not only the literary or courtly forms of +speech used at successive periods, but also the popular and, it may be, +altogether unwritten dialects that exist by their side. Only on this +basis, indeed, can we speak of Old, Middle and Modern English as the +same _language_, since in actual fact the precise _dialect_ which is now +the cultivated language, or "Standard English," is not the descendant of +that dialect which was the cultivated language or "Englisc" of Alfred, +but of a sister dialect then sunk in comparative obscurity,--even as the +direct descendant of Alfred's Englisc is now to be found in the +non-literary rustic speech of Wiltshire and Somersetshire. Causes which, +linguistically considered, are external and accidental, have shifted +the political and intellectual centre of England, and along with it +transferred literary and official patronage from one form of English to +another; if the centre of influence had happened to be fixed at York or +on the banks of the Forth, both would probably have been neglected for a +third. + +The English language, thus defined, is not "native" to Britain, that is, +it was not found there at the dawn of history, but was introduced by +foreign immigrants at a date many centuries later. At the Roman Conquest +of the island the languages spoken by the natives belonged all (so far +as is known) to the Celtic branch of the Indo-European or Indo-Germanic +family, modern forms of which still survive in Wales, Ireland, the +Scottish Highlands, Isle of Man and Brittany, while one has at no +distant date become extinct in Cornwall (see CELT: Language). Brythonic +dialects, allied to Welsh and Cornish, were apparently spoken over the +greater part of Britain, as far north as the firths of Forth and Clyde; +beyond these estuaries and in the isles to the west, including Ireland +and Man, Goidelic dialects, akin to Irish and Scottish Gaelic, +prevailed. The long occupation of south Britain by the Romans (A.D. +43-409)--a period, it must not be forgotten, equal to that from the +Reformation to the present day, or nearly as long as the whole duration +of modern English--familiarized the provincial inhabitants with Latin, +which was probably the ordinary speech of the towns. Gildas, writing +nearly a century and a half after the renunciation of Honorius in 410, +addressed the British princes in that language;[3] and the linguistic +history of Britain might have been not different from that of Gaul, +Spain and the other provinces of the Western Empire, in which a local +type of Latin, giving birth to a neo-Latinic language, finally +superseded the native tongue except in remote and mountainous +districts,[4] had not the course of events been entirely changed by the +Teutonic conquests of the 5th and 6th centuries. + +The Angles, Saxons, and their allies came of the Teutonic stock, and +spoke a tongue belonging to the Teutonic or Germanic branch of the +Indo-Germanic (Indo-European) family, the same race and form of speech +being represented in modern times by the people and languages of +Holland, Germany, Denmark, the Scandinavian peninsula and Iceland, as +well as by those of England and her colonies. Of the original home of +the so-called primitive Aryan race (q.v.), whose language was the parent +Indo-European, nothing is certainly known, though the subject has called +forth many conjectures; the present tendency is to seek it in Europe +itself. The tribe can hardly have occupied an extensive area at first, +but its language came by degrees to be diffused over the greater part of +Europe and some portion of Asia. Among those whose Aryan descent is +generally recognized as beyond dispute are the Teutons, to whom the +Angles and Saxons belonged. + +The Teutonic or Germanic people, after dwelling together in a body, +appear to have scattered in various directions, their language gradually +breaking up into three main groups, which can be already clearly +distinguished in the 4th century A.D., North Germanic or Scandinavian, +West Germanic or Low and High German, and East Germanic, of which the +only important representative is Gothic. Gothic, often called +Moeso-Gothic, was the language of a people of the Teutonic stock, who, +passing down the Danube, invaded the borders of the Empire, and obtained +settlements in the province of Moesia, where their language was +committed to writing in the 4th century; its literary remains are of +peculiar value as the oldest specimens, by several centuries, of +Germanic speech. The dialects of the invaders of Britain belonged to the +West Germanic branch, and within this to the Low German group, +represented at the present day by Dutch, Frisian, and the various +"Platt-Deutsch" dialects of North Germany. At the dawn of history the +forefathers of the English appear to have been dwelling between and +about the estuaries and lower courses of the Rhine and the Weser, and +the adjacent coasts and isles; at the present day the most English or +Angli-form dialects of the European continent are held to be those of +the North Frisian islands of Amrum and Sylt, on the west coast of +Schleswig. It is well known that the greater part of the ancient +Friesland has been swept away by the encroachments of the North Sea, and +the _disjecta membra_ of the Frisian race, pressed by the sea in front +and more powerful nationalities behind, are found only in isolated +fragments from the Zuider Zee to the coasts of Denmark. Many Frisians +accompanied the Angles and Saxons to Britain, and Old English was in +many respects more closely connected with Old Frisian than with any +other Low German dialect. Of the Geatas, Eotas or "Jutes," who, +according to Bede, occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight, and formed a +third tribe along with the Angles and Saxons, it is difficult to speak +linguistically. The speech of Kent certainly formed a distinct dialect +in both the Old English and the Middle English periods, but it has +tended to be assimilated more and more to neighbouring southern +dialects, and is at the present day identical with that of Sussex, one +of the old Saxon kingdoms. Whether the speech of the Isle of Wight ever +showed the same characteristic differences as that of Kent cannot now be +ascertained, but its modern dialect differs in no respect from that of +Hampshire, and shows no special connexion with that of Kent. It is at +least entirely doubtful whether Bede's Geatas came from Jutland; on +linguistic grounds we should expect that they occupied a district lying +not to the north of the Angles, but between these and the old Saxons. + +The earliest specimens of the language of the Germanic invaders of +Britain that exist point to three well-marked dialect groups: the +Anglian (in which a further distinction may be made between the +Northumbrian and the Mercian, or South-Humbrian); the Saxon, generally +called West-Saxon from the almost total lack of sources outside the +West-Saxon domain; and the Kentish. The Kentish and West-Saxon are +sometimes, especially in later times, grouped together as southern +dialects as opposed to midland and northern. These three groups were +distinguished from each other by characteristic points of phonology and +inflection. Speaking generally, the Anglian dialects may be +distinguished by the absence of certain normal West-Saxon vowel-changes, +and the presence of others not found in West-Saxon, and also by a strong +tendency to confuse and simplify inflections, in all which points, +moreover, Northumbrian tended to deviate more widely than Mercian. +Kentish, on the other hand, occupied a position intermediate between +Anglian and West-Saxon, early Kentish approaching more nearly to +Mercian, owing perhaps to early historical connexion between the two, +and late Kentish tending to conform to West-Saxon characteristics, while +retaining several points in common with Anglian. Though we cannot be +certain that these dialectal divergences date from a period previous to +the occupation of Britain, such evidence as can be deduced points to the +existence of differences already on the continent, the three dialects +corresponding in all likelihood to Bede's three tribes, the Angles, +Saxons and Geatas. + +As it was amongst the _Engle_ or Angles of Northumbria that literary +culture first appeared, and as an Angle or _Englisc_ dialect was the +first to be used for vernacular literature, _Englisc_ came eventually to +be a general name for all forms of the vernacular as opposed to Latin, +&c.; and even when the West-Saxon of Alfred became in its turn the +literary or classical form of speech, it was still called Englisc or +_English_. The origin of the name _Angul-Seaxan_ (Anglo-Saxons) has been +disputed, some maintaining that it means a union of Angles and Saxons, +others (with better foundation) that it meant _English Saxons_, or +Saxons of England or of the Angel-cynn as distinguished from Saxons of +the Continent (see _New English Dictionary_, s.v.). Its modern use is +mainly due to the little band of scholars who in the 16th and 17th +centuries turned their attention to the long-forgotten language of +Alfred and Aelfric, which, as it differed so greatly from the English of +their own day, they found it convenient to distinguish by a name which +was applied to themselves by those who spoke it.[5] To these scholars +"Anglo-Saxon" and "English" were separated by a gulf which it was +reserved for later scholarship to bridge across, and show the historical +continuity of the English of all ages. + +As already hinted, the English language, in the wide sense, presents +three main stages of development--Old, Middle and Modern--distinguished +by their inflectional characteristics. The latter can be best summarized +in the words of Dr Henry Sweet in his _History of English Sounds_:[6] +"Old English is the period of _full_ inflections (_nama_, _gifan_, +_caru_), Middle English of _levelled_ inflections (_naame_, _given_, +_caare_), and Modern English of _lost_ inflections (_name_, _give_, +_care_ = _nam_, _giv_, _car_). We have besides two periods of +transition, one in which _nama_ and _name_ exist side by side, and +another in which final e [with other endings] is beginning to drop." By +_lost_ inflections it is meant that only very few remain, and those +mostly non-syllabic, as the _-s_ in stones and loves, the _-ed_ in +loved, the _-r_ in their, as contrasted with the Old English stan_-as_, +lufadh, luf_-od-e_ and luf_-od-on_, tha_-ra_. Each of these periods may +also be divided into two or three; but from the want of materials it is +difficult to make any such division for all dialects alike in the first. + +As to the chronology of the successive stages, it is of course +impossible to lay down any exclusive series of dates, since the +linguistic changes were inevitably gradual, and also made themselves +felt in some parts of the country much earlier than in others, the north +being always in advance of the midland, and the south much later in its +changes. It is easy to point to periods at which Old, Middle and Modern +English were fully developed, but much less easy to draw lines +separating these stages; and even if we recognize between each part a +"transition" period or stage, the determination of the beginning and end +of this will to a certain extent be a matter of opinion. But bearing +these considerations in mind, and having special reference to the +midland dialect from which literary English is mainly descended, the +following may be given as approximate dates, which if they do not +demarcate the successive stages, at least include them:-- + + Old English or Anglo-Saxon to 1100 + Transition Old English ("Semi-Saxon") 1100 to 1150 + Early Middle English 1150 to 1250 + (Normal) Middle English 1250 to 1400 + Late and Transition Middle English 1400 to 1485 + Early Modern or Tudor English 1485 to 1611 + Seventeenth century transition 1611 to 1688 + Modern or current English 1689 onward + +Dr Sweet has reckoned Transition Old English (Old Transition) from 1050 +to 1150, Middle English thence to 1450, and Late or Transition Middle +English (Middle Transition) 1450 to 1500. As to the Old Transition see +further below. + +The OLD ENGLISH or Anglo-Saxon tongue, as introduced into Britain, was +highly inflectional, though its inflections at the date when it becomes +known to us were not so full as those of the earlier Gothic, and +considerably less so than those of Greek and Latin during their +classical periods. They corresponded more closely to those of modern +literary German, though both in nouns and verbs the forms were more +numerous and distinct; for example, the German _guten_ answers to +_three_ Old English forms,--_godne_, _godum_, _godan_; _guter_ to +_two_--_godre_, _godra_; _liebten_ to _two_,--_lufodon_ and _lufeden_. +Nouns had four cases. _Nominative_, _Accusative_ (only sometimes +distinct), _Genitive_, _Dative_, the latter used also with prepositions +to express locative, instrumental, and most ablative relations; of a +distinct _instrumental_ case only vestiges occur. There were several +declensions of nouns, the main division being that known in Germanic +languages generally as strong and weak,--a distinction also extending to +adjectives in such wise that every adjective assumed either the strong +or the weak inflection as determined by associated grammatical forms. +The first and second personal pronouns possessed a dual number = _we +two_, _ye two_; the third person had a complete declension of the stem +he, instead of being made up as now of the three stems seen in _he_, +_she_, _they_. The verb distinguished the subjunctive from the +indicative mood, but had only two inflected tenses, present and past +(more accurately, that of incomplete and that of completed or "perfect" +action)--the former also used for the future, the latter for all the +shades of past time. The order of the sentence corresponded generally to +that of German. Thus from King Alfred's additions to his translation of +Orosius: "Donne thy ylcan daege hi hine to thaem ade beran wylladh +thonne todaeladh hi his feoh thaet thaer to lafe bidh aefter thaem +gedrynce and thaem plegan, on fif odhdhe syx, hwilum on ma, swa swa +thaes feos andefn bidh" ("Then on the same day [that] they him to the +pile bear will, then divide they his property that there to remainder +shall be after the drinking and the sports, into five or six, at times +into more, according as the property's value is"). + +The poetry was distinguished by alliteration, and the abundant use of +figurative and metaphorical expressions, of bold compounds and archaic +words never found in prose. Thus in the following lines from Beowulf +(ed. Thorpe, l. 645, Zupitza 320):-- + + Straet waes stan-fah, stig wisode + Gumum aetgaedere. gudh-byrne scan + Heard hond-locen. hring-iren scir + Song in searwum, tha hie to sele furdhum + In hyra gry're geatwum gangan cwomon. + +Trans.:-- + + The street was stone-variegated, the path guided + (The) men together; the war-mailcoat shone, + Hard hand-locked. Ring-iron sheer (bright ring-mail) + Sang in (their) cunning-trappings, as they to hall forth + In their horror-accoutrements going came. + +The Old English was a homogeneous language, having very few foreign +elements in it, and forming its compounds and derivatives entirely from +its own resources. A few Latin appellatives learned from the Romans in +the German wars had been adopted into the common West Germanic tongue, +and are found in English as in the allied dialects. Such were _straete_ +(street, _via strata_), _camp_ (battle), _casere_ (Caesar), _mil_ (mile), +_pin_ (punishment), _mynet_ (money), _pund_ (pound), _win_ (wine); +probably also _cyrice_ (church), _biscop_ (bishop), _laeden_ (Latin +language), _cese_ (cheese), _butor_ (butter), _pipor_ (pepper), _olfend_ +(camel, elephantus), _ynce_ (inch, uncia), and a few others. The +relations of the first invaders to the Britons were to a great extent +those of destroyers; and with the exception of the proper names of +places and prominent natural features, which as is usual were retained +by the new population, few British words found their way into the Old +English. Among these are named _broc_ (a badger), _brec_ (breeches), +_clut_ (clout), _pul_ (pool), and a few words relating to the employment +of field or household menials. Still fewer words seem to have been +adopted from the provincial Latin, almost the only certain ones being +castra, applied to the Roman towns, which appeared in English as +_caestre_, _ceaster_, now found in composition as -_caster_, -_chester_, +-_cester_, and _culina_ (kitchen), which gave _cylen_ (kiln). The +introduction and gradual adoption of Christianity, brought a new series +of Latin words connected with the offices of the church, the +accompaniments of higher civilization, the foreign productions either +actually made known, or mentioned in the Scriptures and devotional +books. Such were _mynster_ (monasterium), _munuc_ (monk), _nunne_ (nun), +_maesse_ (mass), _schol_ (school), _oelmesse_ (eleemosyna), _candel_ +(candela), _turtle_ (turtur), _fic_ (ficus), _cedar_ (cedrus). These +words, whose number increased from the 7th to the 10th century, are +commonly called _Latin of the second period_, the Latin of the first +period including the Latin words brought by the English from the +continent, as well as those picked up in Britain either from the Roman +provincials or the Welsh. The Danish invasions of the 8th and 10th +centuries resulted in the establishment of extensive Danish and +Norwegian populations, about the basin of the Humber and its +tributaries, and above Morecambe Bay. Although these Scandinavian +settlers must have greatly affected the language of their own +localities, but few traces of their influence are to be found in the +literature of the Old English period. As with the greater part of the +words adopted from the Celtic, it was not until after the dominion of +the Norman had overlaid all preceding conquests, and the new English +began to emerge from the ruins of the old, that Danish words in any +number made their appearance in books, as equally "native" with the +Anglo-Saxon. + +The earliest specimens we have of English date to the end of the 7th +century, and belong to the Anglian dialect, and particularly to +Northumbrian, which, under the political eminence of the early +Northumbrian kings from Edwin to Ecgfridh, aided perhaps by the learning +of the scholars of Ireland and Iona, first attained to literary +distinction. Of this literature in its original form mere fragments +exist, one of the most interesting of which consists of the verses +uttered by Bede on his deathbed, and preserved in a nearly contemporary +MS.:-- + + Fore there neid faerae . naenig uuiurthit + thonc snotturra . than him tharf sie, + to ymb-hycggannae . aer his hin-iongae, + huaet his gastae . godaes aeththa yflaes, + aefter deoth-daege . doemid uueorthae. + +Trans.:-- + + Before the inevitable journey becomes not any + Thought more wise than (that) it is needful for him, + To consider, ere his hence-going, + What, to his ghost, of good or ill, + After death-day, doomed may be. + +But our chief acquaintance with Old English is in its West-Saxon form, +the earliest literary remains of which date to the 9th century, when +under the political supremacy of Wessex and the scholarship of King +Alfred it became the literary language of the English nation, the +classical "Anglo-Saxon." If our materials were more extensive, it would +probably be necessary to divide the Old English into several periods; as +it is, considerable differences have been shown to exist between the +"early West-Saxon" of King Alfred and the later language of the 11th +century, the earlier language having numerous phonetic and inflectional +distinctions which are "levelled" in the later, the inflectional changes +showing that the tendency to pass from the synthetical to the analytical +stage existed quite independently of the Norman Conquest. The northern +dialect, whose literary career had been cut short in the 8th century by +the Danish invasions, reappears in the 10th in the form of glosses to +the Latin gospels and a service-book, often called the _Ritual of +Durham_, where we find that, owing to the confusion which had so long +reigned in the north, and to special Northumbrian tendencies, e.g. the +dropping of the inflectional n in both verbs and nouns, this dialect had +advanced in the process of inflection-levelling far beyond the sister +dialects of Mercian and the south, so as already to anticipate the forms +of Early Middle English. + +Among the literary remains of the Old English may be mentioned the epic +poem of Beowulf, the original nucleus of which has been supposed to date +to heathen and even continental times, though we now possess it only in +a later form; the poetical works of Cynewulf; those formerly ascribed to +Caedmon; several works of Alfred, two of which, his translation of +Orosius and of _The Pastoral Care_ of St Gregory, are contemporary +specimens of his language; the Old English or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; the +theological works of Aelfric (including translations of the Pentateuch +and the gospels) and of Wulfstan; and many works both in prose and +verse, of which the authors are unknown. + +The earliest specimens, the inscriptions on the Ruthwell and Bewcastle +crosses, are in a Runic character; but the letters used in the +manuscripts generally are a British variety of the Roman alphabet which +the Anglo-Saxons found in the island, and which was also used by the +Welsh and Irish.[7] Several of the Roman letters had in Britain +developed forms, and retained or acquired values, unlike those used on +the continent, in particular [glyphs] (d f g r s t). The letters _q_ +and _z_ were not used, _q_ being represented by _cw_, and _k_ was a rare +alternative to _c_; _u_ or _v_ was only a vowel, the consonantal power +of _v_ being represented as in Welsh by _f_. The Runes called _thorn_ +and _wen_, having the consonantal values now expressed by _th_ and _w_, +for which the Roman alphabet had no character, were at first expressed +by _th_, dh (a contraction for [g][g] or [g]h), and _v_ or _u_; but at a +later period the characters th and [p] were revived from the old Runic +alphabet. Contrary to Continental usage, the letters _c_ and [g] (_g_) +had originally only their hard or guttural powers, as in the +neighbouring Celtic languages; so that words which, when the Continental +Roman alphabet came to be used for Germanic languages, had to be written +with _k_, were in Old English written with _c_, as _cene_ = keen, +_cynd_ = kind.[8] The key to the values of the letters, and thus to the +pronunciation of Old English, is also to be found in the Celtic tongues +whence the letters were taken. + +The Old English period is usually considered as terminating 1120, with +the death of the generation who saw the Norman Conquest. The Conquest +established in England a foreign court, a foreign aristocracy and a +foreign hierarchy.[9] The French language, in its Norman dialect, became +the only polite medium of intercourse. The native tongue, despised not +only as unknown but as the language of a subject race, was left to the +use of boors and serfs, and except in a few stray cases ceased to be +written at all. The natural results followed.[10] When the educated +generation that saw the arrival of the Norman died out, the language, +ceasing to be read and written, lost all its literary words. The words +of ordinary life whose preservation is independent of books lived on as +vigorously as ever, but the literary terms, those that related to +science, art and higher culture, the bold artistic compounds, the +figurative terms of poetry, were speedily forgotten. The practical +vocabulary shrank to a fraction of its former extent. And when, +generations later, English began to be used for general literature, the +only terms at hand to express ideas above those of every-day life were +to be found in the French of the privileged classes, of whom alone art, +science, law and theology had been for generations the inheritance. +Hence each successive literary effort of the reviving English tongue +showed a larger adoption of French words to supply the place of the +forgotten native ones, till by the days of Chaucer they constituted a +notable part of the vocabulary. Nor was it for the time being only that +the French words affected the English vocabulary. The Norman French +words introduced by the Conquest, as well as the Central or Parisian +French words which followed under the early Plantagenets, were mainly +Latin words which had lived on among the people of Gaul, and, modified +in the mouths of succeeding generations, had reached forms more or less +remote from their originals. In being now adopted as English, they +supplied precedents in accordance with which other Latin words might be +converted into English ones, whenever required; and long before the +Renascence of classical learning, though in much greater numbers after +that epoch, these precedents were freely followed. + +While the eventual though distant result of the Norman Conquest was thus +a large reconstruction of the English vocabulary, the grammar of the +language was not directly affected by it. There was no reason why it +should--we might almost add, no way by which it could. While the English +used their own _words_, they could not forget their own _way_ of using +them, the inflections and constructions by which alone the words +expressed ideas--in other words, their grammar; when one by one French +words were introduced into the sentence they became English by the very +act of admission, and were at once subjected to all the duties and +liabilities of English words in the same position. This is of course +precisely what happens at the present day: _telegraph_ and _telegram_ +make participle _telegraphing_ and plural _telegrams_, and _naive_ the +adverb _naively_, precisely as if they had been in the language for +ages. + +But indirectly the grammar was affected very quickly. In languages in +the inflected or synthetic stage the terminations must be pronounced +with marked distinctness, as these contain the correlation of ideas; it +is all-important to hear whether a word is _bonus_ or _bonis_ or _bonas_ +or _bonos_. This implies a measured and distinct pronunciation, against +which the effort for ease and rapidity of utterance is continually +struggling, while indolence and carelessness continually compromise it. +In the Germanic languages, as a whole, the main stress-accent falls on +the radical syllable, or on the prefix of a nominal compound, and thus +at or near the beginning of the word; and the result of this in English +has been a growing tendency to suffer the concluding syllables to fall +into obscurity. We are familiar with the cockney _winder_, _sofer_, +_holler_, _Sarer_, _Sunder_, _would yer_, for wind_ow_, sof_a_, holl_a_, +Sar_ah_, Sund_ay_, would y_ou_, the various final vowels sinking into an +obscure neutral one now conventionally spelt _er_, but formerly +represented by final _e_. Already before the Conquest, forms originally +_hatu_, _sello_, _tunga_, appeared as _hate_, _selle_, _tunge_, with the +terminations levelled to obscure e; but during the illiterate period of +the language after the Conquest this careless obscuring of terminal +vowels became universal, all unaccented vowels in the final syllable +(except _i_) sinking into e. During the 12th century, while this change +was going on, we see a great confusion of grammatical forms, the full +inflections of Old English standing side by side in the same sentence +with the levelled ones of Middle English. It is to this state of the +language that the names _Transition_ and _Period of Confusion_ (Dr +Abbott's appellation) point; its appearance, as that of Anglo-Saxon +broken down in its endings, had previously given to it the suggestive if +not logical appellation of Semi-Saxon. + +Although the written remains of the transition stage are few, sufficient +exist to enable us to trace the course of linguistic change in some of +the dialects. Within three generations after the Conquest, faithful pens +were at work transliterating the old homilies of Aelfric, and other +lights of the Anglo-Saxon Church, into the current idiom of their +posterity.[11] Twice during the period, in the reigns of Stephen and +Henry II., Aelfric's gospels were similarly modernized so as to be +"understanded of the people."[12] Homilies and other religious works of +the end of the 12th century[13] show us the change still further +advanced, and the language passing into Early Middle English in its +southern form. While these southern remains carry on in unbroken +sequence the history of the Old English of Alfred and Aelfric, the +history of the northern English is an entire blank from the 11th to the +13th century. The stubborn resistance of the north, and the terrible +retaliation inflicted by William, apparently effaced northern English +culture for centuries. If anything was written in the vernacular in the +kingdom of Scotland during the same period, it probably perished during +the calamities to which that country was subjected during the +half-century of struggle for independence. In reality, however, the +northern English had entered upon its transition stage two centuries +earlier; the glosses of the 10th century show that the Danish inroads +had there anticipated the results hastened by the Norman Conquest in the +south. + +Meanwhile a dialect was making its appearance in another quarter of +England, destined to overshadow the old literary dialects of north and +south alike, and become the English of the future. The Mercian kingdom, +which, as its name imports, lay along the _marches_ of the earlier +states, and was really a congeries of the outlying members of many +tribes, must have presented from the beginning a linguistic mixture and +transition; and it is evident that more than one intermediate form of +speech arose within its confines, between Lancashire and the Thames. The +specimens of early Mercian now in existence consist mainly of glosses, +in a mixed Mercian and southern dialect, dating from the 8th century; +but, in a 9th-century gloss, the so-called Vespasian Psalter, +representing what is generally held to be pure Mercian. Towards the +close of the Old English period we find some portions of a gloss to the +Rushworth Gospels, namely St Matthew and a few verses of St John xviii., +to be in Mercian. These glosses, with a few charters and one or two +small fragments, represent a form of Anglian which in many respects +stands midway between Northumbrian and Kentish, approaching the one or +the other more nearly as we have to do with North Mercian or South +Mercian. And soon after the Conquest we find an undoubted midland +dialect in the transition stage from Old to Middle English, in the +eastern part of ancient Mercia, in a district bounded on the south and +south-east by the Saxon Middlesex and Essex, and on the east and north +by the East Anglian Norfolk and Suffolk and the Danish settlements on +the Trent and Humber. In this district, and in the monastery of +Peterborough, one of the copies of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, +transcribed about 1120, was continued by two succeeding hands to the +death of Stephen in 1154. The section from 1122 to 1131, probably +written in the latter year, shows a notable confusion between Old +English forms and those of a Middle English, impatient to rid itself of +the inflectional trammels which were still, though in weakened forms, so +faithfully retained south of the Thames. And in the concluding section, +containing the annals from 1132 to 1154, and written somewhere about the +latter year, we find Middle English fairly started on its career. A +specimen of this new tongue will best show the change that had taken +place: + + 1140 A.D.--_And_[14] te eorl of Angaeu waerd ded, and his sune Henri + toc to the rice. And te cuen of France to-daelde fra the king, and + scae co_m_ to the iunge eorl Henri. _and_ he toc hire to wiue, _and_ + al Peitou mid hire. tha ferde he mid micel faerd into Engleland _and_ + wan castles--_and_ te king ferde agenes hi_m_ mid micel mare ferd. + thothwaethere fuhtten hi noht. oc ferden the aerceb_iscop and_ te wise + men betwux heo_m_, and makede _that_ sahte _that_ te king sculde ben + lauerd _and_ king wile he liuede. _and_ aeft_er_ his daei ware Henri + king. _and_ he helde hi_m_ for fader, _and_ he hi_m_ for sune, _and_ + sib and saehte sculde ben betwyx heo_m_, and on al Engleland.[15] + +With this may be contrasted a specimen of southern English, from 10 to +20 years later (Hatton Gospels, Luke i. 46[16]): + + Da cwaedh Maria: Min saule mersed drihten, and min gast geblissode on + gode minen haelende. For tham the he geseah his thinene eadmodnysse. + Sodhlice henen-fordh me eadige seggedh alle cneornesse; for tham the + me mychele thing dyde se the mihtyg ys; _and_ his name is halig. _And_ + his mildheortnysse of cneornisse on cneornesse hine ondraedende. He + worhte maegne on hys earme; he to-daelde tha ofermode, on moda heora + heortan. He warp tha rice of setlle, and tha eadmode he up-an-hof. + Hyngriende he mid gode ge-felde, _and_ tha ofermode ydele for-let. He + afeng israel his cniht, and gemynde his mildheortnysse; Swa he spraec + to ure faederen, Abrahame _and_ his saede on a weorlde. + +To a still later date, apparently close upon 1200, belongs the versified +chronicle of Layamon or Laweman, a priest of Ernely on the Severn, who, +using as his basis the French _Brut_ of Wace, expanded it by additions +from other sources to more than twice the extent: his work of 32,250 +lines is a mine of illustration for the language of his time and +locality. The latter was intermediate between midland and southern, and +the language, though forty years later than the specimen from the +Chronicle, is much more archaic in structure, and can scarcely be +considered even as Early Middle English. The following is a specimen +(lines 9064-9079): + + On Kinbelines daeie ... the king wes inne Bruttene, com a thissen + middel aerde ... anes maidenes sune, iboren wes in Bethleem ... of + bezste alre burden. He is ihaten Jesu Crist ... thurh thene halie + gost, alre worulde wunne ... walden englenne; faeder he is on heuenen + ... froure moncunnes; sune he is on eordhen ... of sele thon maeidene, + & thene halie gost ... haldedh mid him seoluen. + +The MIDDLE ENGLISH was pre-eminently the _Dialectal_ period of the +language. It was not till after the middle of the 14th century that +English obtained official recognition. For three centuries, therefore, +there was no standard form of speech which claimed any pre-eminence over +the others. The writers of each district wrote in the dialect familiar +to them; and between extreme forms the difference was so great as to +amount to unintelligibility; works written for southern Englishmen had +to be translated for the benefit of the men of the north:-- + + "In sotherin Inglis was it drawin, + And turnid ic haue it till ur awin + Langage of the northin lede + That can na nothir Inglis rede." + + _Cursor Mundi_, 20,064. + +Three main dialects were distinguished by contemporary writers, as in +the often-quoted passage from Trevisa's translation of Higden's +_Polychronicon_ completed in 1387:-- + + "Also Englysche men ... hadde fram the bygynnynge thre maner speche, + Southeron, Northeron _and_ Myddel speche (in the myddel of the lond) + as hy come of thre maner people of Germania.... Also of the forseyde + Saxon tonge, that ys deled a thre, and ys abyde scarslyche with feaw + uplondysche men _and_ ys gret wondur, for men of the est with men of + the west, as hyt were under the same part of heyvene, acordeth more in + sounynge of stheche than men of the north with men of the south; + therfore hyt ys that Mercii, that buth men of myddel Engelond, as hyt + were parteners of the endes, undurstondeth betre the syde longages + Northeron and Southeron, than Northern _and_ Southern undurstondeth + oyther other." + +The modern study of these Middle English dialects, initiated by the +elder Richard Garnett, scientifically pursued by Dr Richard Morris, and +elaborated by many later scholars, both English and German, has shown +that they were readily distinguished by the conjugation of the present +tense of the verb, which in typical specimens was as follows:--- + + _Southern._ + + Ich singe. We singeth. + Thou singest. [Gh]e singeth. + He singeth. Hy singeth. + + _Midland._ + + Ich, I, singe. We singen. + Thou singest. [Gh]e singen. + He singeth. Hy, thei, singen. + + _Northern._ + + Ic. I, sing(e) (I that singes). We sing(e). We that synges. + Thu singes. [Gh]e sing(e), [Gh]e foules synges. + He singes. Thay sing(e). Men synges. + +Of these the southern is simply the old West-Saxon, with the vowels +levelled to _e_. The northern second person in _-es_ preserves an older +form than the southern and West-Saxon _-est_; but the _-es_ of the third +person and plural is derived from an older _-eth_, the change of _-th_ +into _-s_ being found in progress in the Durham glosses of the 10th +century. In the plural, when accompanied by the pronoun subject, the +verb had already dropped the inflections entirely as in Modern English. +The origin of the _-en_ plural in the midland dialect, unknown to Old +English, is probably an instance of _form-levelling_, the inflection of +the present indicative being assimilated to that of the past, and the +present and past subjunctive, in all of which _-en_ was the plural +termination. In the declension of nouns, adjectives and pronouns, the +northern dialect had attained before the end of the 13th century to the +simplicity of Modern English, while the southern dialect still retained +a large number of inflections, and the midland a considerable number. +The dialects differed also in phonology, for while the northern +generally retained the hard or guttural values of _k_, _g_, _sc_, these +were in the two other dialects palatalized before front vowels into +_ch_, _j_ and _sh_. _Kirk_, _chirche_ or _church_, _bryg_, _bridge_; +_scryke_, _shriek_, are examples. Old English _hw_ was written in the +north _qu_(h), but elsewhere _wh_, often sinking into _w_. The original +long _a_ in _stan_, _mar_, preserved in the northern _stane_, _mare_, +became _o_ elsewhere, as in _stone_, _more_. So that the north presented +a general aspect of conservation of old sounds with the most +thorough-going dissolution of old inflections; the south, a tenacious +retention of the inflections, with an extensive evolution in the sounds. +In one important respect, however, phonetic decay was far ahead in the +north: the final e to which all the old vowels had been levelled during +the transition stage, and which is a distinguishing feature of Middle +English in the midland and southern dialects, became mute, _i.e._, +disappeared, in the northern dialect before that dialect emerged from +its three centuries of obscuration, shortly before 1300. So thoroughly +modern had its form consequently become that we might almost call it +Modern English, and say that the Middle English stage of the northern +dialect is lost. For comparison with the other dialects, however, the +same nomenclature may be used, and we may class as Middle English the +extensive literature which northern England produced during the 14th +century. The earliest specimen is probably the Metrical Psalter in the +Cotton Library,[17] copied during the reign of Edward II. from an +original of the previous century. The gigantic versified paraphrase of +Scripture history called the _Cursor Mundi_,[18] is held also to have +been composed before 1300. The dates of the numerous alliterative +romances in this dialect have not been determined with exactness, as all +survive in later copies, but it is probable that some of them were +written before 1300. In the 14th century appeared the theological and +devotional works of Richard Rolle the anchorite of Hampole, Dan Jon +Gaytrigg, William of Nassington, and other writers whose names are +unknown; and towards the close of the century, specimens of the language +also appear from Scotland both in official documents and in the poetical +works of John Barbour, whose language, barring minute points of +orthography, is identical with that of the contemporary northern English +writers. From 1400 onward, the distinction between northern English and +Lowland Scottish becomes clearly marked. + +In the southern dialect one version of the work called the _Ancren +Riwle_ or "Rule of Nuns," adapted about 1225 for a small sisterhood at +Tarrant-Kaines, in Dorsetshire, exhibits a dialectal characteristic +which had probably long prevailed in the south, though concealed by the +spelling, in the use of _v_ for _f_, as _valle_ fall, _vordonne_ fordo, +_vorto_ for to, _veder_ father, _vrom_ from. Not till later do we find a +recognition of the parallel use of _z_ for _s_. Among the writings which +succeed, _The Owl and the Nightingale_ of Nicholas de Guildford, of +Portesham in Dorsetshire, before 1250, the _Chronicle_ of Robert of +Gloucester, 1298, and Trevisa's translation of Higden, 1387, are of +special importance in illustrating the history of southern English. The +earliest form of Langland's _Piers Ploughman_, 1362, as preserved in the +Vernon MS., appears to be in an intermediate dialect between southern +and midland.[19] The Kentish form of southern English seems to have +retained specially archaic features; five short sermons in it of the +middle of the 13th century were edited by Dr Morris (1866); but the +great work illustrating it is the _Ayenbite of Inwyt_ (Remorse of +Conscience), 1340,[20] a translation from the French by Dan Michel of +Northgate, Kent, who tells us-- + + "Thet this boc is y-write mid engliss of Kent; + This boc is y-mad uor lewede men, + Vor uader, and uor moder, and uor other ken, + Ham uor to ber[gh]e uram alle manyere zen, + Thet ine hare inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen." + +In its use of _v_ (_u_) and _z_ for [s] and _s_, and its grammatical +inflections, it presents an extreme type of southern speech, with +peculiarities specially Kentish; and in comparison with contemporary +Midland English works, it looks like a fossil of two centuries earlier. + +Turning from the dialectal extremes of the Middle English to the midland +speech, which we left at the closing leaves of the Peterborough +_Chronicle_ of 1154, we find a rapid development of this dialect, which +was before long to become the national literary language. In this, the +first great work is the _Ormulum_, or metrical Scripture paraphrase of +Orm or Ormin, written about 1200, somewhere near the northern frontier +of the midland area. The dialect has a decided smack of the north, and +shows for the first time in English literature a large percentage of +Scandinavian words, derived from the Danish settlers, who, in adopting +English, had preserved a vast number of their ancestral forms of speech, +which were in time to pass into the common language, of which they now +constitute some of the most familiar words. _Blunt_, _bull_, _die_, +_dwell_, _ill_, _kid_, _raise_, _same_, _thrive_, _wand_, _wing_, are +words from this source, which appear first in the work of Orm, of which +the following lines may be quoted:-- + + "The Judewisshe folkess boc + hemm se[gh][gh]de, thatt hemm birrde + Twa bukkes samenn to the preost + att kirrke-dure brinngenn; + _And_ te[gh][gh] tha didenn blitheli[gh], + swa summ the boc hemm tahhte, + And brohhtenn twe[gh][gh]enn bukkess thaer + Drihhtin thaerwithth to lakenn. + And att[21] te kirrke-dure toc + the preost ta twe[gh][gh]enn bukkess, + _And_ o thatt an he le[gh][gh]de thaer + all the[gh][gh]re sake _and_ sinne, + _And_ let itt eornenn for thwithth all + ut inntill wilde wesste; + _And_ toc _and_ snath thatt otherr bucc + Drihhtin thaerwithth to lakenn. + All thiss wass don forr here ned, + _and_ ec forr ure nede; + For hemm itt hallp biforenn Godd + to clennssenn hemm of sinne; + _And_ all swa ma[gh][gh] itt hellpenn the + [gh]iff thatt tu willt [itt] foll[gh]henn. + [Gh]iff thatt tu willt full innwarrdli[gh] + withth fulle trowwthe lefenn + All thatt tatt wass bitacnedd taer, + to lefenn _and_ to trowwenn." + + _Ormulum_, ed. White, l. 1324. + +The author of the _Ormulum_ was a phonetist, and employed a special +spelling of his own to represent not only the quality but the +_quantities_ of vowels and consonants--a circumstance which gives his +work a peculiar value to the investigator. He is generally assumed to +have been a native of Lincolnshire or Notts, but the point is a disputed +one, and there is somewhat to be said for the neighbourhood of Ormskirk +in Lancashire. + +It is customary to differentiate between east and west midland, and to +subdivide these again into north and south. As was natural in a tract of +country which stretched from Lancaster to Essex, a very considerable +variety is found in the documents which agree in presenting the leading +midland features, those of Lancashire and Lincolnshire approaching the +northern dialect both in vocabulary, phonetic character and greater +neglect of inflections. But this diversity diminishes as we advance. + +Thirty years after the _Ormulum_, the east midland rhymed _Story of +Genesis and Exodus_[22] shows us the dialect in a more southern form, +with the vowels of modern English, and from about the same date, with +rather more northern characteristics, we have an east midland +_Bestiary_. + +Different tests and different dates have been proposed for subdividing +the Middle English period, but the most important is that of Henry +Nicol, based on the observation that in the early 13th century, as in +Ormin, the Old English short vowels in an open syllable still retained +their short quantity, as _nama_, _over_, _mete_; but by 1250 or 1260 +they had been lengthened to _na-me_, _o-ver_, _me-te_, a change which +has also taken place at a particular period in all the Germanic, and +even the Romanic languages, as in _buo-no_ for _bo-num_, _pa-dre_ for +_pa-trem_, &c. The lengthening of the penult left the final syllable by +contrast shortened or weakened, and paved the way for the disappearance +of final e in the century following, through the stages _na-me_, +_na-me_, _na-m'_, _nam_, the one long syllable in _nam(e)_ being the +quantitative equivalent of the two short syllables in _na-me_; hence the +notion that mute _e_ makes a preceding vowel long, the truth being that +the lengthening of the vowel led to the e becoming mute. + +After 1250 we have the _Lay of Havelok_, and about 1300 the writings of +Robert of Brunne in South Lincolnshire. In the 14th century we find a +number of texts belonging to the western part of the district. +South-west midland is hardly to be distinguished from southern in its +south-western form, and hence texts like _Piers Plowman_ elude any +satisfactory classification, but several metrical romances exhibit what +are generally considered to be west midland characteristics, and a +little group of poems, _Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knighte_, the _Pearl_, +_Cleanness_ and _Patience_, thought to be the work of a north-west +midland writer of the 14th century, bear a striking resemblance to the +modern Lancashire dialect. The end of the century witnessed the prose of +Wycliff and Mandeville, and the poetry of Chaucer, with whom Middle +English may be said to have culminated, and in whose writings its main +characteristics as distinct from Old and Modern English may be studied. +Thus, we find final e in full use representing numerous original vowels +and terminations as + + Him thoughte that his herte wolde breke, + +in Old English-- + + Him thuhte thaet his heorte wolde brecan, + +which may be compared with the modern German-- + + Ihm dauchte dass sein Herze wollte brechen. + +In nouns the -_es_ of the plural and genitive case is still syllabic-- + + Reede as the berstl-es of a sow-es eer-es. + +Several old genitives and plural forms continued to exist, and the +dative or prepositional case has usually a final _e_. Adjectives retain +so much of the old declension as to have -_e_ in the definite form and +in the plural-- + + The tend-re cropp-es and the yong-e sonne. + And smal-e fowl-es maken melodie. + +Numerous old forms of comparison were in use, which have not come down +to Modern English, as _herre_, _ferre_, _lenger_, _hext_ = higher, +farther, longer, highest. In the pronouns, _ich_ lingered alongside of +_I_; _ye_ was only nominative, and _you_ objective; the northern _thei_ +had dispossessed the southern _hy_, but _her_ and _hem_ (the modern +'_em_) stood their ground against _their_ and _them_. The verb is _I +lov-e_, _thou lov-est_, _he lov-eth_; but, in the plural, _lov-en_ is +interchanged with _lov-e_, as rhyme or euphony requires. So in the +plural of the past _we love-den_ or _love-de_. The infinitive also ends +in _en_, often _e_, always syllabic. The present participle, in Old +English -_ende_, passing through -_inde_, has been confounded with the +verbal noun in -_ynge_, -_yng_, as in Modern English. The past +participle largely retains the prefix _y_- or _i_-, representing the Old +English _ge_-, as in _i-ronne_, _y-don_, Old English _zerunnen_, +_zedon_, run, done. Many old verb forms still continued in existence. +The adoption of French words, not only those of Norman introduction, but +those subsequently introduced under the Angevin kings, to supply +obsolete and obsolescent English ones, which had kept pace with the +growth of literature since the beginning of the Middle English period, +had now reached its climax; later times added many more, but they also +dropped some that were in regular use with Chaucer and his +contemporaries. + +Chaucer's great contemporary, William Langland, in his _Vision of +William concerning Piers the Ploughman_, and his imitator the author of +_Pierce the Ploughman's Crede_ (about 1400) used the Old English +alliterative versification for the last time in the south. Rhyme had +made its appearance in the language shortly after the Conquest--if not +already known before; and in the south and midlands it became decidedly +more popular than alliteration; the latter retained its hold much longer +in the north, where it was written even after 1500: many of the northern +romances are either simply alliterative, or have both alliteration and +rhyme. To these characteristics of northern and southern verse +respectively Chaucer alludes in the prologue of the "Persone," who, when +called upon for his tale said:-- + + "But trusteth wel; I am a sotherne man, + I cannot geste _rom_, _ram_, _ruf_, by my letter. + And, God wote, rime hold I but litel better: + And therefore, if you list, I wol not glose, + I wol you tell a litel tale in prose." + +The changes from Old to Middle English may be summed up thus: Loss of a +large part of the native vocabulary, and adoption of French words to +fill their place; not infrequent adoption of French words as synonyms of +existing native ones; modernization of the English words preserved, by +vowel change in a definite direction from back to front, and from open +to close, _[=a,]_ becoming _[=o,]_, original _e_, _o_ tending to _ee_, +_oo_, monophthongization of the old diphthongs _eo_, _ea_, and +development of new diphthongs in connexion with _g_, _h_, and _w_; +adoption of French orthographic symbols, e.g. _ou_ for _u_, _qu_, _v_, +_ch_, and gradual loss of the symbols [j], th, dh, Th; obscuration of +vowels after the accent, and especially of final _a_, _o_, _u_ to _e_; +consequent confusion and loss of old inflections, and their replacement +by prepositions, auxiliary verbs and rules of position; abandonment of +alliteration for rhyme; and great development of dialects, in +consequence of there being no standard or recognized type of English. + +But the recognition came at length. Already in 1258 was issued the +celebrated English proclamation of Henry III., or rather of Simon de +Montfort in his name, which, as the only public recognition of the +native tongue between William the Conqueror and Edward III., has +sometimes been spoken of as the first specimen of English. It runs:-- + + "Henr_i_ thur[gh] godes fultume king on Engleneloande Lhoauerd on + Yrloand_e_. Duk on Norm_andie_ on Aquitaine and eorl on Aniow. Send + igretinge to alle hise holde ilaerde and ileawede on + Huntendoneschir_e_. thaet witen [gh]e wel alle thaet _we_ willen and + vnne_n_ thaet thaet vre raedesmen alle other the moare dael of heom + thaet beoth ichosen thur[gh] us and thur[gh] thaet loandes folk on vre + kuneriche. habbeth idon and schullen don in the worthnesse of gode and + on vre treowthe. for the freme of the loande. thur[gh] the besi[gh]te + of than to-foren-iseide redesmen. beo stedefaest and ilestinde in alle + thinge a buten aende. And we hoaten alle vre treowe in the treowthe + thaet heo vs o[gh]en. thaet heo stedefaestliche healden and swerien to + healden and to werien tho isetnesses thaet ben imakede and beon to + makien thur[gh] than to-foren iseide raedesmen. other thur[gh] the + moare dael of heom alswo alse hit is biforen iseid. And thaet aehc + other helpe thaet for to done bi than ilche othe a[gh]enes alle men. + Ri[gh]t for to done and to foangen. And noan ne nime of loande ne of + e[gh]te. wherthur[gh] this besi[gh]te mu[gh]e beon ilet other iwersed + on onie wise.' And [gh]if oni other onie cumen her on[gh]enes; we + willen and hoaten thaet alle vre treowe heom healden deadliche ifoan. + And for thaet we willen thaet this beo stedefaest and lestinde; we + senden [gh]ew this writ open iseined with vre seel. to halden amanges + [gh]ew ine hord. Witnesse vs seluen aet Lunden_e_. thane E[gh]tetenthe + day. on the Monthe of Octobr_e_ In the Two-and-fowerti[gh]the [gh]eare + of vre cruninge. And this wes idon aetforen vre isworene redesmen.... + + "And al on tho ilche worden is isend in to aeurihce othre shcire ouer + al thaere kuneriche on Engleneloande. and ek in tel Irelonde." + +The dialect of this document is more southern than anything else, with a +slight midland admixture. It is much more archaic inflectionally than +the _Genesis and Exodus_ or _Ormulum_; but it closely resembles the old +Kentish sermons and _Proverbs of Alfred_ in the southern dialect of +1250. It represents no doubt the London speech of the day. London being +in a Saxon county, and contiguous to Kent and Surrey, had certainly at +first a southern dialect; but its position as the capital, as well as +its proximity to the midland district, made its dialect more and more +midland. Contemporary London documents show that Chaucer's language, +which is distinctly more southern than standard English eventually +became, is behind the London dialect of the day in this respect, and is +at once more archaic and consequently more southern. + +During the next hundred years English gained ground steadily, and by the +reign of Edward III. French was so little known in England, even in the +families of the great, that about 1350 "John Cornwal, a maystere of +gramere, chaungede the lore (= teaching) in gramere scole _and_ +construccion of [i.e. _from_] Freynsch into Englysch";[23] and in +1362-1363 English by statute took the place of French in the pleadings +in courts of law. Every reason conspired that this "English" should be +the midland dialect. It was the intermediate dialect, intelligible, as +Trevisa has told us, to both extremes, even when these failed to be +intelligible to each other; in its south-eastern form, it was the +language of London, where the supreme law courts were, the centre of +political and commercial life; it was the language in which the +Wycliffite versions had given the Holy Scriptures to the people; the +language in which Chaucer had raised English poetry to a height of +excellence admired and imitated by contemporaries and followers. And +accordingly after the end of the 14th century, all Englishmen who +thought they had anything to say to their countrymen generally said it +in the midland speech. Trevisa's own work was almost the last literary +effort of the southern dialect; henceforth it was but a rustic patois, +which the dramatist might use to give local colouring to his creations, +as Shakespeare uses it to complete Edgar's peasant disguise in _Lear_, +or which 19th century research might disinter to illustrate obscure +chapters in the history of language. And though the northern English +proved a little more stubborn, it disappeared also from literature in +England; but in Scotland, which had now become politically and socially +estranged from England, it continued its course as the national language +of the country, attaining in the 15th and 16th centuries a distinct +development and high literary culture, for the details of which readers +are referred to the article on SCOTTISH LANGUAGE. + +The 15th century of English history, with its bloody French war abroad +and Wars of the Roses at home, was a barren period in literature, and a +transition one in language, witnessing the decay and disappearance of +the final _e_, and most of the syllabic inflections of Middle English. +Already by 1420, in Chaucer's disciple Hoccleve, final _e_ was quite +uncertain; in Lydgate it was practically gone. In 1450 the writings of +Pecock against the Wycliffites show the verbal inflections in _-en_ in a +state of obsolescence; he has still the southern pronouns _her_ and +_hem_ for the northern _their_, _them_:-- + + "And here-a[gh]ens holi scripture wole that men schulden lacke the + coueryng which wommen schulden haue, & thei schulden so lacke bi that + the heeris of her heedis schulden be schorne, & schulde not growe in + lengthe doun as wommanys heer schulde growe.... + + "Also here-withal into the open si[gh]t of ymagis in open chirchis, + alle peple, men & wommen & children mowe come whanne euere thei wolen + in ech tyme of the day, but so mowe thei not come in-to the vce of + bokis to be delyuered to hem neither to be red bifore hem; & therfore, + as for to soone & ofte come into remembraunce of a long mater bi ech + oon persoon, and also as forto make that the mo persoones come into + remembraunce of a mater, ymagis & picturis serven in a specialer maner + than bokis doon, thou[gh] in an other maner ful substanciali bokis + seruen better into remembrauncing of tho same materis than ymagis & + picturis doon; & therfore, thou[gh] writing is seruen weel into + remembrauncing upon the bifore seid thingis, [gh]it not at the ful: + Forwhi the bokis han not the avail of remembrauncing now seid whiche + ymagis han."[24] + +The change of the language during the second period of Transition, as +well as the extent of dialectal differences, is quaintly expressed a +generation later by Caxton, who in the prologue to one of the last of +his works, his translation of Virgil's _Eneydos_ (1490), speaks of the +difficulty he had in pleasing all readers:-- + + "I doubted that it sholde not please some gentylmen, whiche late + blamed me, sayeng, y^t in my translacyons I had ouer curyous termes, + whiche coud not be vnderstande of comyn peple, and desired me to vse + olde and homely termes in my translacyons. And fayn wolde I satysfy + euery man; and so to doo, toke an olde boke and redde therein; and + certaynly the englysshe was so rude and brood that I coude not wele + vnderstande it. And also my lorde abbot of Westmynster ded do shewe to + me late certayn euydences wryton in olde englysshe for to reduce it in + to our englysshe now vsid. And certaynly it was wreton in suche wyse + that it was more lyke to dutche than englysshe; I coude not reduce ne + brynge it to be vnderstonden. And certaynly, our langage now vsed + varyeth ferre from that whiche was vsed and spoken whan I was borne. + For we englysshemen ben borne vnder the domynacyon of the mone, whiche + is neuer stedfaste, but euer wauerynge, wexynge one season, and waneth + and dycreaseth another season. And that comyn englysshe that is spoken + in one shyre varyeth from a nother. In so much that in my days + happened that certayn marchauntes were in a ship_e_ in tamyse, for to + haue sayled ouer the sea into zelande, and for lacke of wynde thei + taryed atte forlond, and wente to lande for to refreshe them. And one + of theym named sheffelde, a mercer, cam in to an hows and axed for + mete, and specyally he axyd after eggys, And the goode wyf answerde, + that she coude speke no frenshe. And the marchaunt was angry, for he + also coulde speke no frenshe, but wolde haue hadde egges; and she + vnderstode hym not. And thenne at laste a nother sayd that he wolde + haue eyren; then the good wyf sayd that she vnderstod hym wel. Loo! + what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges or eyren? certaynly, + it is harde to playse euery man, by cause of dyuersite & chaunge of + langage. For in these dayes, euery man that is in ony reputacyon in + his countre wyll vtter his comynycacyon and maters in suche maners & + termes that fewe men shall vnderstonde theym. And som honest and grete + clerkes haue ben wyth me, and desired me to wryte the moste curyous + termes that I coude fynde. And thus bytwene playn, rude and curyous, I + stande abasshed; but in my Iudgemente, the comyn termes that be dayli + vsed ben lyghter to be vnderstonde than the olde and auncyent + englysshe." + +In the productions of Caxton's press we see the passage from Middle to +Early Modern English completed. The earlier of these have still an +occasional verbal plural in _-n_, especially in the word _they ben_; the +southern _her_ and _hem_ of Middle English vary with the northern and +Modern English _their_, _them_. In the late works, the older forms have +been practically ousted, and the year 1485, which witnessed the +establishment of the Tudor dynasty, may be conveniently put as that +which closed the Middle English transition, and introduced Modern +English. Both in the completion of this result, and in its comparative +permanence, the printing press had an important share. By its exclusive +patronage of the midland speech, it raised it still higher above the +sister dialects, and secured its abiding victory. As books were +multiplied and found their way into every corner of the land, and the +art of reading became a more common acquirement, the man of +Northumberland or of Somersetshire had forced upon his attention the +book-English in which alone these were printed. This became in turn the +model for his own writings, and by-and-by, if he made any pretensions to +education, of his own speech. The written _form_ of the language also +tended to uniformity. In previous periods the scribe made his own +spelling with a primary aim at expressing his own speech, according to +the particular values attached by himself or his contemporaries to the +letters and combinations of the alphabet, though liable to disturbance +in the most common words and combinations by his ocular recollections of +the spelling of others. But after the introduction of printing, this +ocular recognition of words became ever more and more an aim; the book +addressed the mind directly through the eye, instead of circuitously +through eye and ear; and thus there was a continuous tendency for +written words and parts of words to be reduced to a single form, and +that the most usual, or through some accident the best known, but not +necessarily that which would have been chosen had the _ear_ been called +in as umpire. Modern English spelling, with its rigid uniformity as to +individual results and whimsical caprice as to principles, is the +creation of the printing-office, the victory which, after a century and +a half of struggle, mechanical convenience won over natural habits. +Besides eventually creating a uniformity in writing, the introduction of +printing made or at least ratified some important changes. The British +and Old English form of the Roman alphabet has already been referred to. +This at the Norman Conquest was superseded by an alphabet with the +French forms and values of the letters. Thus _k_ took the place of the +older _c_ before _e_ and _i_; _qu_ replaced _cw_; the Norman _w_ took +the place of the _wen_ (Th), &c.; and hence it has often been said that +Middle English stands nearer to Old English in pronunciation, but to +Modern English in spelling. But there were certain sounds in English for +which Norman writing had no provision; and for these, in writing +English, the native characters were retained. Thus the Old English g +([g]), beside the sound in _go_, had a guttural sound as in German +ta_g_, Irish ma_gh_, and in certain positions a palatalized form of this +approaching _y_ as in _y_ou (if pronounced with aspiration _hy_ou or +_gh_you). These sounds continued to be written with the native form of +the letter as _bur[gh]_, _[gh]our_, while the French form was used for +the sounds in _go_, _age_,--one original letter being thus represented +by two. So for the sounds of _th_, especially the sound in _th_at, the +Old English _thorn_ (th) continued to be used. But as these characters +were not used for French and Latin, their use even in English became +disturbed towards the 15th century, and when printing was introduced, +the founts, cast for continental languages, had no characters for them, +so that they were dropped entirely, being replaced, [gh] by _gh_, _yh_, +_y_, and _th_ by _th_. This was a real loss to the English alphabet. In +the north it is curious that the printers tried to express the _forms_ +rather than the powers of these letters, and consequently [gh] was +represented by _z_, the black letter form of which was confounded with +it, while the th was expressed by _y_, which its MS. form had come to +approach or in some cases simulate. So in early Scotch books we find +_zellow_, _ze_, _yat_, _yem_ = _yellow_, _ye_, _that_, _them_; and in +Modern Scottish, such names as _Menzies_, _Dalziel_, _Cockenzie_, and +the word _gaberlunzie_, in which the _z_ stands for _y_. + +MODERN ENGLISH thus dates from Caxton. The language had at length +reached the all but flectionless state which it now presents. A single +older verbal form, the southern _-eth_ of the third person singular, +continued to be the literary prose form throughout the 16th century, but +the northern form in _-s_ was intermixed with it in poetry (where it +saved a syllable), and must ere long, as we see from Shakespeare, have +taken its place in familiar speech. The fuller _an_, _none_, _mine_, +_thine_, in the early part of the 16th century at least, were used in +positions where their shortened forms _a_, _no_, _my_, _thy_ are now +found (_none other_, _mine own_ = _no other_, _my own_). But with such +minute exceptions, the accidence of the 16th century was the accidence +of the 19th. While, however, the older inflections had disappeared, +there was as yet no general agreement as to the mode of their +replacement. Hence the 16th century shows a syntactic licence and +freedom which distinguishes it strikingly from that of later times. The +language seems to be in a plastic, unformed state, and its writers, as +it were, experiment with it, bending it to constructions which now seem +indefensible. Old distinctions of case and mood have disappeared from +noun and verb, without custom having yet decided what prepositions or +auxiliary verbs shall most fittingly convey their meaning. The laxity of +word-order which was permitted in older states of the language by the +_formal_ expression of relations was often continued though the +inflections which expressed the relations had disappeared. Partial +analogy was followed in allowing forms to be identified in one case, +because, in another, such identification was accidentally produced, as +for instance the past participles of _write_ and _take_ were often made +_wrote_ and _took_, because the contracted participles of _bind_ and +_break_ were _bound_ and _broke_. Finally, because, in dropping +inflections, the former distinctions even between parts of speech had +disappeared, so that _iron_, e.g., was at once noun, adjective and verb, +_clean_, adjective, verb and adverb, it appeared as if any word whatever +might be used in any grammatical relation, where it conveyed the idea of +the speaker. Thus, as has been pointed out by Dr Abbott, "you can +_happy_ your friend, _malice_ or _foot_ your enemy, or _fall_ an axe on +his neck. You can speak and act _easy_, _free_, _excellent_, you can +talk of _fair_ instead of beauty (fairness), and a _pale_ instead of a +_paleness_. A _he_ is used for a man, and a lady is described by a +gentleman as 'the fairest _she_ he has yet beheld.' An adverb can be +used as a verb, as 'they _askance_ their eyes'; as a noun, 'the +_backward_ and abyss of time'; or as an adjective, a '_seldom_ +pleasure.'"[25] For, as he also says, "clearness was preferred to +grammatical correctness, and brevity both to correctness and clearness. +Hence it was common to place words in the order in which they came +uppermost in the mind without much regard to syntax, and the result was +a forcible and perfectly unambiguous but ungrammatical sentence, such as + + The prince that feeds great natures they will slay him. + + _Ben Jonson._ + +or, as instances of brevity, + + Be guilty of my death since of my crime. + + _Shakespeare._ + + It cost more to get than to lose in a day. + + _Ben Jonson._" + +These characteristics, together with the presence of words now obsolete +or archaic, and the use of existing words in senses different from our +own, as general for specific, literal for metaphorical, and vice versa, +which are so apparent to every reader of the 16th-century literature, +make it useful to separate _Early Modern_ or _Tudor_ English from the +subsequent and still existing stage, since the consensus of usage has +declared in favour of individual senses and constructions which are +alone admissible in ordinary language. + +The beginning of the Tudor period was contemporaneous with the +Renaissance in art and literature, and the dawn of modern discoveries in +geography and science. The revival of the study of the classical writers +of Greece and Rome, and the translation of their works into the +vernacular, led to the introduction of an immense number of new words +derived from these languages, either to express new ideas and objects or +to indicate new distinctions in or grouping of old ideas. Often also it +seemed as if scholars were so pervaded with the form as well as the +spirit of the old, that it came more natural to them to express +themselves in words borrowed from the old than in their native tongue, +and thus words of Latin origin were introduced even when English already +possessed perfectly good equivalents. As has already been stated, the +French words of Norman and Angevin introduction, being principally Latin +words in an altered form, when used as English supplied models whereby +other Latin words could be converted into English ones, and it is after +these models that the Latin words introduced during and since the 16th +century have been fashioned. There is nothing in the _form_ of the words +_procession_ and _progression_ to show that the one was used in England +in the 11th, the other not till the 16th century. Moreover, as the +formation of new words from Latin had gone on in French as well as in +English since the Renaissance, we often cannot tell whether such words, +e.g. as _persuade_ and _persuasion_, were borrowed from their French +equivalents or formed from Latin in England independently. With some +words indeed it is impossible to say whether they were formed in England +directly from Latin, borrowed from contemporary late French, or had been +in England since the Norman period, even _photograph_, _geology_ and +_telephone_ have the form that they would have had if they had been +living words in the mouths of Greeks, Latins, French and English from +the beginning, instead of formations of the 19th century.[26] While +every writer was thus introducing new words according to his notion of +their being needed, it naturally happened that a large number were not +accepted by contemporaries or posterity; a long list might be formed of +these mintages of the 16th and 17th centuries, which either never became +current coin, or circulated only as it were for a moment. The revived +study of Latin and Greek also led to modifications in the spelling of +some words which had entered Middle English in the French form. So +Middle English _doute_, _dette_, were changed to _doubt_, _debt_, to +show a more immediate connexion with Latin _dubitum_, _debitum_; the +actual derivation from the French being ignored. Similarly, words +containing a Latin and French _t_, which might be traced back to an +original Greek [theta], were remodelled upon the Greek, e.g. _theme_, +_throne_, for Middle English _teme_, _trone_, and, by false association +with Greek, _anthem_, Old English _antefne_, Latin _antiphona_; +_Anthony_, Latin _Antonius_; _Thames_, Latin _Tamesis_, apparently after +_Thomas_. + +The voyages of English navigators in the latter part of the 16th century +introduced a considerable number of Spanish words, and American words in +Spanish forms, of which _negro_, _potato_, _tobacco_, _cargo_, +_armadillo_, _alligator_, _galleon_ may serve as examples. + +The date of 1611, which nearly coincides with the end of Shakespeare's +literary work, and marks the appearance of the Authorized Version of the +Bible (a compilation from the various 16th-century versions), may be +taken as marking the close of Tudor English. The language was +thenceforth Modern in structure, style and expression, although the +spelling did not settle down to present usage till about the revolution +of 1688. The latter date also marks the disappearance from literature of +a large number of words, chiefly of such as were derived from Latin +during the 16th and 17th centuries. Of these nearly all that survived +1688 are still in use; but a long list might be made out of those that +appear for the last time before that date. This sifting of the literary +vocabulary and gradual fixing of the literary spelling, which went on +between 1611, when the language became modern in structure, and 1689, +when it became modern also in form, suggests for this period the name of +Seventeenth-Century Transition. The distinctive features of Modern +English have already been anticipated by way of contrast with preceding +stages of the language. It is only necessary to refer to the fact that +the vocabulary is now much more composite than at any previous period. +The immense development of the physical sciences has called for a +corresponding extension of terminology which has been supplied from +Latin and especially Greek; and although these terms are in the first +instance _technical_, yet, with the spread of education and general +diffusion of the rudiments and appliances of science, the boundary line +between _technical_ and _general_, indefinite at the best, tends more +and more to melt away--this in addition to the fact that words still +technical become general in figurative or metonymic senses. _Ache_, +_diamond_, _stomach_, _comet_, _organ_, _tone_, _ball_, _carte_, are +none the less familiar because once technical words. Commercial, social, +artistic or literary contact has also led to the adoption of numerous +words from modern European languages, especially French, Italian, +Portuguese, Dutch (these two at a less recent period): thus from French +_soiree_, _seance_, _depot_, _debris_, _programme_, _prestige_; from +Italian _bust_, _canto_, _folio_, _cartoon_, _concert_, _regatta_, +_ruffian_; from Portuguese _caste_, _palaver_; from Dutch _yacht_, +_skipper_, _schooner_, _sloop_. Commercial intercourse and colonization +have extended far beyond Europe, and given us words more or fewer from +Hindostani, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Malay, Chinese, and from American, +Australian, Polynesian and African languages.[27] More important even +than these, perhaps, are the dialect words that from time to time obtain +literary recognition, restoring to us obsolete Old English forms, and +not seldom words of Celtic or Danish origin, which have been preserved +in local dialects, and thus at length find their way into the standard +language. + +As to the actual proportion of the various elements of the language, it +is probable that original English words do not now form more than a +fourth or perhaps a fifth of the total entries in a full English +dictionary; and it may seem strange, therefore, that we still identify +the language with that of the 9th century, and class it as a member of +the _Low German_ division. But this explains itself, when we consider +that of the total words in a dictionary only a small portion are used by +any one individual in speaking or even in writing; that this portion +includes the great majority of the Anglo-Saxon words, and but a minority +of the others. The latter are in fact almost all _names_--the vast +majority names of _things_ (nouns), a smaller number names of +_attributes_ and _actions_ (adjectives and verbs), and, from their very +nature, names of the things, attributes and actions which come less +usually or, it may be, very rarely under our notice. Thus in an ordinary +book, a novel or story, the foreign elements will amount to from 10 to +15% of the whole; as the subject becomes more recondite or technical +their number will increase; till in a work on chemistry or abstruse +mathematics the proportion may be 40%. But after all, it is not the +question whence words _may_ have been taken, but _how they are used_ in +a language that settles its character. If new words when adopted conform +themselves to the manner and usage of the adopting language, it makes +absolutely no difference whether they are taken over from some other +language, or invented off at the ground. In either case they are _new_ +words to begin with; in either case also, if they are needed, they will +become as thoroughly native, i.e. familiar from childhood to those who +use them, as those that possess the longest native pedigree. In this +respect English is still the same language it was in the days of Alfred; +and, comparing its history with that of other Low German tongues, there +is no reason to believe that its grammar or structure would have been +very different, however different its vocabulary might have been, if the +Norman Conquest had never taken place. + +A general broad view of the sources of the English vocabulary and of the +dates at which the various foreign elements flowed into the language, as +well as of the great change produced in it by the Norman Conquest, and +consequent influx of French and Latin elements, is given in the +accompanying chart. The transverse lines represent centuries, and it +will be seen how limited a period after all is occupied by modern +English, how long the language had been in the country before the Norman +Conquest, and how much of this is prehistoric and without any literary +remains. Judging by what has happened during the historic period, great +changes may and indeed _must_ have taken place between the first arrival +of the Saxons and the days of King Alfred, when literature practically +begins. The chart also illustrates the continuity of the main stock of +the vocabulary, the body of primary "words of common life," which, +notwithstanding numerous losses and more numerous additions, has +preserved its corporate identity through all the periods. But the +"poetic and rhetorical," as well as the "scientific" terms of Old +English have died out, and a new vocabulary of "abstract and general +terms" has arisen from French, Latin and Greek, while a still newer +"technical, commercial and scientific" vocabulary is composed of words +not only from these, but from every civilized and many uncivilized +languages. + +[Illustration] + +The preceding sketch has had reference mainly to the grammatical changes +which the language has undergone; distinct from, though intimately +connected with these (as where the confusion or loss of inflections was +a consequence of the weakening of final sounds) are the great phonetic +changes which have taken place between the 8th and 19th centuries, and +which result in making modern English words very different from their +Anglo-Saxon originals, even where no element has been lost, as in words +like _stone_, _mine_, _doom_, _day_, _nail_, _child_, _bridge_, _shoot_, +Anglo-Saxon _stan_, _min_, _dom_, _daeg_, _naegel_, _cild_, _brycg_, +_sceot_. The history of English sounds (see PHONETICS) has been treated +at length by Dr A.J. Ellis and Dr Henry Sweet; and it is only necessary +here to indicate the broad facts, which are the following, (1) In an +accented closed syllable, original short vowels have remained nearly +unchanged; thus the words _at_, _men_, _bill_, _God_, _dust_ are +pronounced now nearly as in Old English, though the last two were more +like the Scotch _o_ and North English _u_ respectively, and in most +words the short _a_ had a broader sound like the provincial _a_ in +_man_. (2) Long accented vowels and diphthongs have undergone a regular +sound shift towards closer and more advanced positions, so that the +words _ban_, _haer_, _soece_ or _sece_, _stol_ (_bahn_ or _bawn_, _her_, +_sok_ or _saik_, _stole_) are now _bone_, _hair_, _seek_, _stool_; while +the two high vowels _u_ (= _oo_) and _i_ (_ee_) have become diphthongs, +as _hus_, _scir_, now _house_, _shire_, though the old sound of _u_ +remains in the north (_hoose_), and the original _i_ in the +pronunciation _sheer_, approved by Walker, "as in mach_i_ne, and +sh_i_re, and magaz_i_ne." (3) Short vowels in an open syllable have +usually been lengthened, as in _na-ma_, _co-fa_, now _name_, _cove_; but +to this there are exceptions, especially in the case of _i_ and _u_. (4) +Vowels in terminal unaccented syllables have all sunk into short obscure +_e_, and then, if final, disappeared; so _oxa_, _seo_, _wudu_ became +_ox-e_, _se-e_, _wud-e_, and then _ox_, _see_, _wood_; _oxan_, _lufod_, +now _oxen_, _loved_, _lov'd_; _settan_, _setton_, later _setten_, +_sette_, _sett_, now _set_. (5) The back consonants, _c_, _g_, _sc_, in +connexion with front vowels, have often become palatalized to _ch_, _j_, +_sh_, as _circe_, _rycg_, _fisc_, now _church_, _ridge_, _fish_. A +medial or final _g_ has passed through a guttural or palatal continuant +to _w_ or _y_, forming a diphthong or new vowel, as in _boga_, _laga_, +_daeg_, _heg_, _drig_, now _bow_, _law_, _day_, _hay_, _dry_. _W_ and +_h_ have disappeared before _r_ and _l_, as in _write_, _(w)lisp_, +_(h)ring_; _h_ final (=_gh_) has become _f_, _k_, _w_ or nothing, but +has developed the glides _u_ or _i_ before itself, these combining with +the preceding vowel to form a diphthong, or merging with it into a +simple vowel-sound, as _ruh_, _hoh_, _boh_, _deah_, _heah_, _hleah_, now +_rough_, _hough_, _bough_, _dough_, _high_, _laugh=ruf_, _hok_, _bow_, +_do_, _hi_, _laf_. _R_ after a vowel has practically disappeared in +standard English, or at most become vocalized, or combined with the +vowel, as in _hear_, _bar_, _more_, _her_. These and other changes have +taken place gradually, and in accordance with well-known phonetic laws; +the details as to time and mode may be studied in special works. It may +be mentioned that the total loss of grammatical _gender_ in English, and +the almost complete disappearance of _cases_, are purely phonetic +phenomena. _Gender_ (whatever its remote origin) was practically the use +of adjectives and pronouns with certain distinctive terminations, in +accordance with the _genus_, _genre_, _gender_ or _kind_ of nouns to +which they were attached; when these distinctive terminations were +uniformly levelled to final _e_, or other weak sounds, and thus ceased +to distinguish nouns into kinds, the distinctions into genders or kinds +having no other existence disappeared. Thus when _thaet gode hors_, +_thone godan hund_, _tha godan boc_, became, by phonetic weakening, _the +gode hors_, _the gode hownd_, _the gode boke_, and later still the _good +horse_, the _good hound_, the _good book_, the words _horse_, _hound_, +_book_ were no longer grammatically different kinds of nouns; +grammatical gender had ceased to exist. The concord of adjectives has +entirely disappeared; the concord of the pronouns is now regulated by +_rationality_ and _sex_, instead of grammatical gender, which has no +existence in English. The man _who_ lost _his_ life; the bird _which_ +built _its_ nest. + +Our remarks from the end of the 14th century have been confined to the +standard or literary form of English, for of the other dialects from +that date (with the exception of the northern English in Scotland, +where it became in a social and literary sense a distinct language), we +have little history. We know, however, that they continued to exist as +local and popular forms of speech, as well from occasional specimens and +from the fact that they exist still as from the statements of writers +during the interval. Thus Puttenham in his _Arte of English Poesie_ +(1589) says:-- + + "Our maker [i.e. poet] therfore at these dayes shall not follow Piers + Plowman, nor Gower, nor Lydgate, not yet Chaucer, for their language + is now not of use with us: neither shall he take the termes of + Northern-men, such as they use in dayly talke, whether they be noble + men or gentle men or of their best clarkes, all is a [= one] matter; + nor in effect any speach used beyond the river of Trent, though no man + can deny but that theirs is the purer English Saxon at this day, yet + it is not so Courtly nor so currant as our _Southerne_ English is, no + more is the far Westerne mans speach: ye shall therefore take the + usual speach of the Court, and that of London and the shires lying + about London within lx myles, and not much above. I say not this but + that in every shyre of England there be gentlemen and others that + speake but specially write as good Southerne as we of Middlesex or + Surrey do, but not the common people of every shire, to whom the + gentlemen, and also their learned clarkes do for the most part + condescend, but herein we are already ruled by th' English + Dictionaries and other bookes written by learned men."--_Arber's + Reprint_, p. 157. + +In comparatively modern times there has been a revival of interest in +these forms of English, several of which following in the wake of the +revival of Lowland Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries, have produced a +considerable literature in the form of local poems, tales and +"folk-lore." In these respects Cumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Devon, +Somerset and Dorset, the "far north" and "far west" of Puttenham, where +the dialect was felt to be so independent of literary English as not to +be branded as a mere vulgar corruption of it, stand prominent. More +recently the dialects have been investigated philologically, a +department in which, as in other departments of English philology, the +elder Richard Garnett must be named as a pioneer. The work was carried +out zealously by Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte and Dr A.J. Ellis, and +more recently by the English Dialect Society, founded by the Rev. +Professor Skeat, for the investigation of this branch of philology. The +efforts of this society resulted in the compilation and publication of +glossaries or word-books, more or less complete and trustworthy, of most +of the local dialects, and in the production of grammars dealing with +the phonology and grammatical features of a few of these, among which +that of the Windhill dialect in Yorkshire, by Professor Joseph Wright, +and that of West Somerset, by the late F.T. Elworthy, deserve special +mention. From the whole of the glossaries of the Dialect Society, and +from all the earlier dialect works of the 18th and 19th centuries, +amplified and illustrated by the contributions of local collaborators in +nearly every part of the British Isles, Professor Joseph Wright has +constructed his _English Dialect Dictionary_, recording the local words +and senses, with indication of their geographical range, their +pronunciation, and in most cases with illustrative quotations or +phrases. To this he has added an _English Dialect Grammar_, dealing very +fully with the phonology of the dialects, showing the various sounds +which now represent each Old English sound, and endeavouring to define +the area over which each modern form extends; the accidence is treated +more summarily, without going minutely into that of each dialect-group, +for which special dialect grammars must be consulted. The work has also +a very full and valuable index of every word and form treated. + +The researches of Prince L.L. Bonaparte and Dr Ellis were directed +specially to the classification and mapping of the existing +dialects,[28] and the relation of these to the dialects of Old and +Middle English. They recognized a _Northern_ dialect lying north of a +line drawn from Morecambe Bay to the Humber, which, with the kindred +Scottish dialects (already investigated and classed),[29] is the direct +descendant of early northern English, and a _South-western_ dialect +occupying Somerset, Wilts, Dorset, Gloucester and western Hampshire, +which, with the _Devonian_ dialect beyond it, are the descendants of +early southern English and the still older West-Saxon of Alfred. This +dialect must in the 14th Century have been spoken everywhere south of +Thames; but the influence of London caused its extinction in Surrey, +Sussex and Kent, so that already in Puttenham it had become "far +western." An _East Midland_ dialect, extending from south Lincolnshire +to London, occupies the cradle-land of the standard English speech, and +still shows least variation from it. Between and around these typical +dialects are ten others, representing the old Midland proper, or +dialects between it and the others already mentioned. Thus "north of +Trent" the _North-western_ dialect of south Lancashire, Cheshire, Derby +and Stafford, with that of Shropshire, represents the early West Midland +English, of which several specimens remain; while the _North-eastern_ of +Nottingham and north Lincolnshire represents the dialect of the _Lay of +Havelok_. With the _North Midland_ dialect of south-west Yorkshire, +these represent forms of speech which to the modern Londoner, as to +Puttenham, are still decidedly northern, though actually intermediate +between northern proper and midland, and preserving interesting traces +of the midland pronouns and verbal inflections. There is an _Eastern_ +dialect in the East Anglian counties; a _Midland_ in Leicester and +Warwick shires; a _Western_ in Hereford, Worcester and north +Gloucestershire, intermediate between south-western and north-western, +and representing the dialect of _Piers Plowman_. Finally, between the +east midland and south-western, in the counties of Buckingham, Oxford, +Berks, Hants, Surrey and Sussex, there is a dialect which must have once +been south-western, but of which the most salient characters have been +rubbed off by proximity to London and the East Midland speech. In east +Sussex and Kent this _South-eastern_ dialect attains to a more +distinctive character. The _Kentish_ form of early Southern English +evidently maintained its existence more toughly than that of the +counties immediately south of London. It was very distinct in the days +of Sir Thomas More; and even, as we see from the dialect attributed to +Edgar in _Lear_, was still strongly marked in the days of Shakespeare. +In the south-eastern corner of Ireland, in the baronies of Forth and +Bargy, in county Wexford, a very archaic form of English, of which +specimens have been preserved,[30] was still spoken in the 18th century. +In all probability it dated from the first English invasion. In many +parts of Ulster forms of Lowland Scotch dating to the settlement under +James I. are still spoken; but the English of Ireland generally seems to +represent 16th and 17th century English, as in the pronunciation of +_tea_, _wheat_ (_tay_, _whait_), largely affected, of course, by the +native Celtic. The subsequent work of the English Dialect Society, and +the facts set forth in the _English Dialect Dictionary_, confirm in a +general way the classification of Bonaparte and Ellis; but they bring +out strongly the fact that only in a few cases can the boundary between +dialects now be determined by precise lines. For every dialect there is +a central region, larger or smaller, in which its characteristics are at +a maximum; but towards the edges of the area these become mixed and +blended with the features of the contiguous dialects, so that it is +often impossible to define the point at which the one dialect ends and +the other begins. The fact is that the various features of a dialect, +whether its distinctive words, characteristic pronunciations or special +grammatical features, though they may have the same centre, have not all +the same circumference. Some of them extend to a certain distance round +the centre; others to a much greater distance. The only approximately +accurate way to map the area of any dialect, whether in England, France, +Germany or elsewhere, is to take a well-chosen set of its characteristic +features--words, senses, sounds or grammatical peculiarities, and draw a +line round the area over which each of these extends; between the +innermost and outermost of these there will often be a large border +district. If the same process be followed with the contiguous dialects, +it will be found that some of the lines of each intersect some of the +lines of the other, and that the passing of one dialect into another is +not effected by the formation of intermediate or blended forms of any +one characteristic, but by the overlapping or intersecting of more or +fewer of the features of each. Thus a definite border village or +district may use 10 of the 20 features of dialect A and 10 of those of +B, while a village on the one side has 12 of those of A with 8 of those +of B, and one on the other side has 7 of those of A with 13 of those of +B. Hence a dialect boundary line can at best indicate the line within +which the dialect has, on the whole, more of the features of A than of B +or C; and usually no single line can be drawn as a dialect boundary, but +that without it there are some features of the same dialect, and within +it some features of the contiguous dialects. + + + CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE PERIODS AND DIALECTS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE + + CHRONOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE. + + Divisions. Subdivisions. Dates + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + OLD ENGLISH + (Full Inflections.) EARLY OLD ENGLISH. 500-850 + + TYPICAL OLD ENGLISH, 850-1000 + or ANGLO-SAXON. + + LATE OLD ENGLISH 1000-1150 + and OLD ENGLISH + TRANSITION. + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + MIDDLE ENGLISH. + (Levelled Inflections.) + + EARLY MIDDLE ENGLISH. 1150-1250 + + MIDDLE ENGLISH (typical). 1250-1400 + + LATE MIDDLE ENGLISH + and MIDDLE ENGLISH + TRANSITION. 1400-1485 + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + MODERN ENGLISH. + (Lost Inflections.) + EARLY MODERN ENGLISH + (Tudor English). 1450-1611 + + TRANSITIONAL MODERN or + 17TH CENTURY ENGLISH. 1611-1689 + + CURRENT ENGLISH. 1689- + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + + + LITERARY DEVELOPMENT OF THE LEADING DIALECTS. + + Northern English. Midland English. Southern English. + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + Anglian. Anglian. Saxon. Kentish. + ------- ------- ----- ------- + Caedmon, 660. (Charter Glosses), 736-800. (Charter Glosses), 692-780. (Charter Glosses), 679-770. + Beda, 734. Beowulf(?) (Laws of Ine, 700) Charters_, 805-840. + Leiden Riddle_. Mercian. Literary West-Saxon Lorica Prayer. + Cynewulf, c. 750. ------- or Anglo-Saxon. Psalm 50, c. 860. + Old Northumbrian. (Charter Glosses), 805--. Charter, 847. + ---------------- Vespasian Ps., c. 825. Alfred, 885. + Durham Glosses, 950-975. Charters, 836-840. Judith, 900-910. + Lindisfarne Gospel Gloss. Lorica Glosses. Poems in O.E. Chron., 937-979. + Rushworth Gloss, St. Battle of Maldon, 993. + Matthew, ? 975-1000. Aelfric, 1000. + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + Peterborough Chronicle Wulfstan, 1016. + 1123-31. O.E. Chron., Parker MS. + ends, 1070. + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + Early Northern English Early Midland. Early Southern and Middle Kentish. + and Early Scotch. ------------- S.W. English -------------- + ---------------------- Chronicle, 1154. ------------------ Hatton Gospels, 1170. + Ormulum, 1200. Cotton Homilies, 1160. Kentish Sermons, 1250. + Genesis & Exodus, c. 1250. Layamon, 1203. + Middle English. Ancren Riwle, 1220. + -------------- -------------------------- + Cursor Mundi (?). Harrowing of Hell, 1280. Shoreham, 1320. + Hampole, 1350. Robt. of Brunne, 1303-30. Procl. of Henry III., 1258. Ayenbite, 1340. + Barbour, 1375. Pearl, Sir Gawayne. Robt. Gloucester, 1300. + Mandeville (Northern Wycliffe. Trevisa, 1387. + version) Wyntoun, 1420. Chaucer, Gower. + Townley Mysteries. Lydgate. + Henryson, 1470. Caxton, 1477-90. + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + Middle Sccotch. Tudor English. South-Western Dialect. Kentish Dialect. + -------------- ------------- --------------------- --------------- + Dunbar, 1500--. Tyndal, 1525. Cornishman in A. Boorde, (in Sir. T. More.) + Lyndesay. Homilies, 1547-63. 1547. (Edgar in Lear, 1605.) + Archbp. Hamilton, 1552. Shakspere, 1590-1613. Gammer Gurton, 1575. (in Ben Jonson.) + James VI., 1590. King James's Bible, 1611. Somersetsh. Man's Complaynt, Kentish Wooing Song, 1611 + Montgomery, c. 1600. Milton, 1626-71. c. 1645. + Sir W. Mure, 1617-57. Dryden, 1663-1700. + Yorkshire Dialogue, 1673. + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - + Modern Scotch and Current English. Exmoor Scolding, 1746. Nairne, Kentish Tales, + North Eng. Dial. --------------- Barnes, 1844. 1700. + ----------------- Addison, 1717. Elworthy, 1875-88. Dick and Sal, 1821. + Allan Ramsay, 1717. Johnson, 1750. + Burns, 1790. Coleridge, 1805. + Scott, 1815. Macaulay, 1825. + Ian Maclaren, Barrie, Tennyson, 1830. + Crockett, etc. + + The vertical lines represent the four leading forms of + English--_Northern_, _Midland_, _Southern_, and _Kentish_--and the + names occurring down the course of each are those of writers and works + in that form of English at the given date. The thickness of the line + shows the comparative literary position of this form of speech at the + time: _thick_ indicating a _literary language_; _medium_, a _literary + dialect_; _thin_, a _popular dialect_ or _patois_; a _dotted_ line + shows that this period is _unrepresented_ by specimens. The horizontal + lines divide the periods; these (after the first two) refer mainly to + the Midland English; in inflectional decay the Northern English was at + least a century in advance of the Midland, and the Southern nearly as + much behind it. + +Beyond the limits of the British Isles, English is the language of +extensive regions, now or formerly colonies. In all these countries the +presence of numerous new objects and new conditions of life has led to +the supplementing of the vocabulary by the adoption of words from native +languages, and special adaptation and extension of the sense of English +words. The use of a common literature, however, prevents the overgrowth +of these local peculiarities, and also makes them more or less familiar +to Englishmen at home. It is only in the older states of the American +Union that anything like a local dialect has been produced; and even +there many of the so-called Americanisms are quite as much archaic +English forms which have been lost or have become dialectal in England +as developments of the American soil. + +The steps by which English, from being the language of a few thousand +invaders along the eastern and southern seaboard of Britain, has been +diffused by conquest and colonization over its present area form a +subject too large for the limits of this article. It need only be +remarked that within the confines of Britain itself the process is not +yet complete. Representatives of earlier languages survive in Wales and +the Scottish Highlands, though in neither case can the substitution of +English be very remote. In Ireland, where English was introduced by +conquest much later, Irish is still spoken in patches all over the +country; though English is understood, and probably spoken after a +fashion, almost everywhere. At opposite extremities of Britain, the +Cornish of Cornwall and the Norse dialects of Orkney and Shetland died +out very gradually in the course of the 18th century. The Manx, or +Celtic of Man, is even now in the last stage of dissolution; and in the +Channel Isles the Norman _patois_ of Jersey and Guernsey have largely +yielded to English. + +The table on p. 599 (a revision of that brought before the Philological +Society in Jan. 1876) graphically presents the chronological and +dialectal development of English. Various names have been proposed for +the different stages; it seems only necessary to add to those in the +table the descriptive names of Dr Abbott, who has proposed (_How to +Parse_, p. 298) to call the Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, the +"Synthetical or Inflexional Period"; the Old English Transition (Late +Anglo-Saxon of Dr Skeat), the "Period of Confusion"; the Early Middle +English, "Analytical Period" (1250-1350); the normal Middle English, +"National Period" (1350-1500); the Tudor English, "Period of Licence"; +and the Modern English, "Period of Settlement." + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--As the study of English has made immense advances + within the last generation, it is only in works recently published + that the student will find the subject satisfactorily handled. Among + the earlier works treating of the whole subject or parts of it may be + mentioned--_A History of English Rhythms_, by Edwin Guest (London, + 1838); the _Philological Essays_ of Richard Garnett (1835-1848), + edited by his son (London, 1859); _The English Language_, by R.G. + Latham (5th ed., London, 1862); _Origin and History of the English + Language_, by G.P. Marsh (revised 1885); _Lectures on the English + Language_, by the same (New York and London, 1863); _Historische + Grammatik der englischen Sprache_, by C.F. Koch (Weimar, 1863, &c.); + _Englische Grammatik_, by Eduard Matzner (Berlin, 1860-1865), (an + English translation by C.J. Grece, LL.B., London, 1874); _The + Philology of the English Tongue_, by John Earle, M.A. (Oxford, 1866, + 5th ed. 1892); _Comparative Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Language_, by + F.A. March (New York, 1870); _Historical Outlines of English + Accidence_, by the Rev. R. Morris, LL.D. (London, 1873), (new ed. by + Kellner); _Elementary Lessons in Historical English Grammar_, by the + same (London, 1874); _The Sources of Standard English_, by T.L. + Kington Oliphant, M.A. (London, 1873); _Modern English_, by F. Hall + (London, 1873); _A Shakespearian Grammar_, by E.A. Abbott, D.D. + (London, 1872); _How to Parse_, by the same (London, 1875); _Early + English Pronunciation_, &c., by A.J. Ellis (London, 1869); _The + History of English Sounds_, by Henry Sweet (London, 1874, 2nd ed. + 1888); as well as many separate papers by various authors in the + _Transactions of the Philological Society_, and the publications of + the Early English Text Society. + + Among more recent works are: M. Kaluza, _Historische Grammatik der + englischen Sprache_ (Berlin, 1890); Professor W.W. Skeat, _Principles + of English Etymology_ (Oxford, 1887-1891); Johan Storm, _Englische + Philologie_ (Leipzig, 1892-1896); L. Kellner, _Historical Outlines of + English Syntax_ (London, 1892); O.F. Emerson, _History of the English + Language_ (London and New York, 1894); Otto Jespersen, _Progress in + Language_, with special reference to English (London, 1894); Lorenz + Morsbach, _Mittelenglische Grammatik_, part i. (Halle, 1896); Paul, + "Geschichte der englischen Sprache," in _Grundriss der german. + Philologie_ (Strassburg, 1898); Eduard Sievers, _Angelsachsische + Grammatik_ (3rd ed., Halle, 1898); Eng. transl. of same (2nd ed.), by + A.S. Cook (Boston, 1887); K.D. Bulbring, _Altenglisches Elementarbuch_ + (Heidelberg, 1902); Greenough and Kittredge, _Words and their Ways in + English Speech_ (London and New York, 1902); Henry Bradley, _The + Making of English_ (London, 1904). Numerous contributions to the + subject have also been made in _Englische Studien_ (ed. Kolbing, later + Hoops; Leipzig, 1877 onward); _Anglia_ (ed. Wulker, Flugel, &c.; + Halle, 1878 onward); publications of Mod. Lang. Assoc. of America + (J.W. Bright; Baltimore, 1884 onward), and A.M. Elliott, _Modern + Language Notes_ (Baltimore, 1886 onward). + (J. A. H. M.; H. M. R. M.) + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] A careful examination of several letters of Bosworth's + Anglo-Saxon dictionary gives in 2000 words (including derivatives and + compounds, but excluding orthographic variants) 535 which still exist + as modern English words. + + [2] The practical convenience of having one name for what was the + same thing in various stages of development is not affected by the + probability that (E.A. Freeman notwithstanding) _Engle_ and _Englisc_ + were, at an early period, _not_ applied to the whole of the + inhabitants of Teutonic Britain, but only to a part of them. The + dialects of _Engle_ and _Seaxan_ were alike old forms of what was + afterwards English speech, and so, viewed in relation to it, _Old + English_, whatever their contemporary names might be. + + [3] The works of Gildas in the original Latin were edited by Mr + Stevenson for the English Historical Society. There is an English + translation in _Six Old English Chronicles_ in Bohn's Antiquarian + library. + + [4] As to the continued existence of Latin in Britain, see further in + Rhys's _Lectures on Welsh Philology_, pp. 226-227; also Dogatschar, + _Lautlehre d. gr., lat. u. roman. Lehnworte im Altengl._ (Strassburg, + 1888). + + [5] Aethelstan in 934 calls himself in a charter "Ongol-Saxna cyning + and Brytaenwalda eallaes thyses iglandes"; Eadred in 955 is + "Angul-seaxna cyning and casere totius Britanniae," and the name is + of frequent occurrence in documents written in Latin. These facts + ought to be remembered in the interest of the scholars of the 17th + century, who have been blamed for the use of the term Anglo-Saxon, as + if they had invented it. By "Anglo-Saxon" language they meant the + language of the people who _sometimes at least_ called themselves + "Anglo-Saxons." Even now the name is practically useful, when we are + dealing with the subject _per se_, as is _Old English_, on the other + hand, when we are treating it historically or in connexion with + English as a whole. + + [6] _Transactions of the Philological Society_ (_1873-1874_), p. 620; + new and much enlarged edition, 1888. + + [7] See on this Rhys, _Lectures on Welsh Philology_, v. + + [8] During the Old English period both _c_ and [g] appear to have + acquired a palatal value in conjunction with front or palatal + vowel-sounds, except in the north where _c_, and in some cases [g], + tended to remain guttural in such positions. This value was never + distinguished in Old English writing, but may be deduced from certain + phonetic changes depending upon it, and from the use of _c_, _cc_, as + an alternative for _tj_ (as in _ort_[g]_eard_, _orceard_ = orchard, + _fetian_, _feccean_ = fetch), as well as from the normal occurrence + of _ch_ and _y_ in these positions in later stages of the language, + e.g. _cild_ = child, _taecean_ = teach, [g]_iellan_ = yell, _dae_[g] + = day, &c. + + [9] For a discriminating view of the effects of the Norman Conquest + on the English Language, see Freeman, _Norman Conquest_, ch. xxv. + + [10] There is no reason to suppose that any attempt was made to + proscribe or suppress the native tongue, which was indeed used in + some official documents addressed to Englishmen by the Conqueror + himself. Its social degradation seemed even on the point of coming to + an end, when it was confirmed and prolonged for two centuries more by + the accession of the Angevin dynasty, under whom everything French + received a fresh impetus. + + [11] MS. Cotton Vesp. A. 22. + + [12] Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, &c., ed. for Cambridge Press, by W.W. + Skeat (1871-1887), second text. + + [13] _Old English Homilies of Twelfth Century_, first and second + series, ed. R. Morris (E.E.T.S.), (1868-1873). + + [14] The article _the_ becomes _te_ after a preceding _t_ or _d_ by + assimilation. + + [15] Earle, _Two of the Saxon Chronicles parallel_ (1865), p. 265. + + [16] Skeat, _Anglo-Saxon and Northumbrian Gospels_ (1874). + + [17] Edited for the Surtees Society, by Rev. J. Stevenson. + + [18] Edited for the Early English Text Society, by Rev. Dr Morris. + + [19] _The Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman_ exists in + three different recensions, all of which have been edited for the + Early English Text Society by Rev. W.W. Skeat. + + [20] Edited by Rev. Dr Morris for Early English Text Society, in + 1866. + + [21] Here, and in _tatt_, _tu_, _taer_, for _thatt_, _thu_, _thaet_, + after _t_, _d_, there is the same phonetic assimilation as in the + last section of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle above. + + [22] Edited for the Early English Text Society by Dr Morris (1865). + + [23] Trevisa, _Translation of Higden's Polychronicon_. + + [24] Skeat, _Specimens of English Literature_, pp. 49, 54. + + [25] _A Shakspearian Grammar_, by Dr E.A. Abbott. To this book we are + largely indebted for its admirable summary of the characters of Tudor + English. + + [26] _Evangelist_, _astronomy_, _dialogue_, are words that have so + lived, of which their form is the result. _Photograph_, _geology_, + &c., take this form as _if_ they had the same history. + + [27] See extended lists of the foreign words in English in Dr + Morris's _Historical Outlines of English Accidence_, p. 33. + + [28] See description and map in _Trans. of Philol. Soc._, 1875-1876, + p. 570. + + [29] _The Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland, its + Pronunciation, Grammar and Historical Relations, with an Appendix on + the present limits of the Gaelic and Lowland Scotch, and the + Dialectal Divisions of the Lowland Tongue; and a Linguistical Map of + Scotland_, by James A.H. Murray (London, 1873). + + [30] _A Glossary (with some pieces of Verse) of the Old Dialect of + the English Colony of Forth and Bargy_, collected by Jacob Poole, + edited by W. Barnes, B.D. (London, 1867). + + + + +ENGLISH LAW (_History_). In English jurisprudence "legal memory" is said +to extend as far as, but no further than the coronation of Richard I. +(Sept. 3, 1189). This is a technical doctrine concerning prescriptive +rights, but is capable of expressing an important truth. For the last +seven centuries, little more or less, the English law, which is now +overshadowing a large share of the earth, has had not only an extremely +continuous, but a matchlessly well-attested history, and, moreover, has +been the subject matter of rational exposition. Already in 1194 the +daily doings of a tribunal which was controlling and moulding the whole +system were being punctually recorded in letters yet legible, and from +that time onwards it is rather the enormous bulk than any dearth of +available materials that prevents us from tracing the transformation of +every old doctrine and the emergence and expansion of every new idea. If +we are content to look no further than the text-books--the books written +by lawyers for lawyers--we may read our way backwards to Blackstone (d. +1780), Hale (d. 1676), Coke (d. 1634), Fitzherbert (d. 1538), Littleton +(d. 1481), Bracton (d. 1268), Glanvill (d. 1190), until we are in the +reign of Henry of Anjou, and yet shall perceive that we are always +reading of one and the same body of law, though the little body has +become great, and the ideas that were few and indefinite have become +many and explicit. + +Beyond these seven lucid centuries lies a darker period. Nearly six +centuries will still divide us from the dooms of Aethelberht (c. 600), +and nearly seven from the _Lex Salica_ (c. 500). We may regard the +Norman conquest of England as marking the confluence of two streams of +law. The one we may call French or Frankish. If we follow it upwards we +pass through the capitularies of Carlovingian emperors and Merovingian +kings until we see Chlodwig and his triumphant Franks invading Gaul, +submitting their Sicambrian necks to the yoke of the imperial religion, +and putting their traditional usages into written Latin. The other +rivulet we may call Anglo-Saxon. Pursuing it through the code of Canute +(d. 1035) and the ordinances of Alfred (c. 900) and his successors, we +see Ine publishing laws in the newly converted Wessex (c. 690), and, +almost a century earlier, Aethelberht doing the same in the newly +converted Kent (c. 600). This he did, says Beda, in accordance with +Roman precedents. Perhaps from the Roman missionaries he had heard +tidings of what the Roman emperor had lately been doing far off in New +Rome. We may at any rate notice with interest that in order of time +Justinian's law-books fall between the _Lex Salica_ and the earliest +Kentish dooms; also that the great pope who sent Augustine to England is +one of the very few men who between Justinian's day and the 11th century +lived in the Occident and yet can be proved to have known the Digest. +In the Occident the time for the Germanic "folk-laws" (_Leges +Barbarorum_) had come, and a Canon law, ambitious of independence, was +being constructed, when in the Orient the lord of church and state was +"enucleating" all that was to live of the classical jurisprudence of +pagan Rome. It was but a brief interval between Gothic and Lombardic +domination that enabled him to give law to Italy: Gaul and Britain were +beyond his reach. + +The Anglo-Saxon laws that have come down to us (and we have no reason to +fear the loss of much beyond some dooms of the Mercian Offa) are best +studied as members of a large Teutonic family. Those that proceed from +the Kent and Wessex of the 7th century are closely related to the +continental folk-laws. Their next of kin seem to be the _Lex Saxonum_ +and the laws of the Lombards. Then, though the 8th and 9th centuries are +unproductive, we have from Alfred (c. 900) and his successors a series +of edicts which strongly resemble the Frankish capitularies--so strongly +that we should see a clear case of imitation, were it not that in +Frankland the age of legislation had come to its disastrous end long +before Alfred was king. This, it may be noted, gives to English legal +history a singular continuity from Alfred's day to our own. The king of +the English was expected to publish laws at a time when hardly any one +else was attempting any such feat, and the English dooms of Canute the +Dane are probably the most comprehensive statutes that were issued in +the Europe of the 11th century. No genuine laws of the sainted Edward +have descended to us, and during his reign England seems but too likely +to follow the bad example of Frankland, and become a loose congeries of +lordships. From this fate it was saved by the Norman duke, who, like +Canute before him, subdued a land in which kings were still expected to +publish laws. + +In the study of early Germanic law--a study which now for some +considerable time has been scientifically prosecuted in Germany--the +Anglo-Saxon dooms have received their due share of attention. A high +degree of racial purity may be claimed on their behalf. Celtic elements +have been sought for in them, but have never been detected. At certain +points, notably in the regulation of the blood-feud and the construction +of a tariff of atonements, the law of one rude folk will always be +somewhat like the law of another; but the existing remains of old Welsh +and old Irish law stand far remoter from the dooms of Aethelberht and Ine +than stand the edicts of Rothari and Liutprand, kings of the Lombards. +Indeed, it is very dubious whether distinctively Celtic customs play any +considerable part in the evolution of that system of rules of Anglian, +Scandinavian and Frankish origin which becomes the law of Scotland. +Within England itself, though for a while there was fighting enough +between the various Germanic folks, the tribal differences were not so +deep as to prevent the formation of a common language and a common law. +Even the strong Scandinavian strain seems to have rapidly blended with +the Anglian. It amplified the language and the law, but did not +permanently divide the country. If, for example, we can to-day +distinguish between _law_ and _right_, we are debtors to the Danes; but +very soon _law_ is not distinctive of eastern or _right_ of western +England. In the first half of the 12th century a would-be expounder of +the law of England had still to say that the country was divided between +the Wessex law, the Mercian law, and the Danes' law, but he had also to +point out that the law of the king's own court stood apart from and +above all partial systems. The local customs were those of shires and +hundreds, and shaded off into each other. We may speak of more Danish +and less Danish counties; it was a matter of degree; for rivers were +narrow and hills were low. England was meant by nature to be the land of +one law. + +Then as to Roman law. In England and elsewhere Germanic law developed in +an atmosphere that was charged with traditions of the old world, and many +of these traditions had become implicit in the Christian religion. It +might be argued that all that we call progress is due to the influence +exercised by Roman civilization; that, were it not for this, Germanic law +would never have been set in writing; and that theoretically unchangeable +custom would never have been supplemented or superseded by express +legislation. All this and much more of the same sort might be said; but +the survival in Britain, or the reintroduction into England, of anything +that we should dare to call Roman jurisprudence would be a different +matter. Eyes, carefully trained, have minutely scrutinized the +Anglo-Saxon legal texts without finding the least trace of a Roman rule +outside the ecclesiastical sphere. Even within that sphere modern +research is showing that the church-property-law of the middle ages, the +law of the ecclesiastical "benefice," is permeated by Germanic ideas. +This is true of Gaul and Italy, and yet truer of an England in which +Christianity was for a while extinguished. Moreover, the laws that were +written in England were, from the first, written in the English tongue; +and this gives them a unique value in the eyes of students of Germanic +folk-law, for even the very ancient and barbarous _Lex Salica_ is a Latin +document, though many old Frankish words are enshrined in it. Also we +notice--and this is of grave importance--that in England there are no +vestiges of any "Romani" who are being suffered to live under their own +law by their Teutonic rulers. On the Continent we may see Gundobad, the +Burgundian, publishing one law-book for the Burgundians and another for +the Romani who own his sway. A book of laws, excerpted chiefly from the +Theodosian code, was issued by Alaric the Visigoth for his Roman subjects +before the days of Justinian, and this book (the so-called _Breviarium +Alarici or Lex Romana Visigothorum_) became for a long while the chief +representative of Roman law in Gaul. The Frankish king in his expansive +realm ruled over many men whose law was to be found not in the _Lex +Salica_ or _Lex Ribuaria_, but in what was called the _Lex Romana_. "A +system of personal law" prevailed: the _homo Romanus_ handed on his Roman +law to his children, while Frankish or Lombardic, Swabian or Saxon law +would run in the blood of the _homo barbarus_. Of all this we hear +nothing in England. Then on the mainland of Europe Roman and barbarian +law could not remain in juxtaposition without affecting each other. On +the one hand we see distinctively Roman rules making their way into the +law of the victorious tribes, and on the other hand we see a decay and +debasement of jurisprudence which ends in the formation of what modern +historians have called a Roman "vulgar-law" (_Vulgarrecht_). For a short +age which centres round the year 800 it seemed possible that Frankish +kings, who were becoming Roman emperors, would be able to rule by their +capitularies nearly the whole of the Christian Occident. The dream +vanished before fratricidal wars, heathen invaders, centrifugal +feudalism, and a centripetal church which found its law in the newly +concocted forgeries of the Pseudo-Isidore (c. 850). The "personal laws" +began to transmute themselves into local customs, and the Roman +vulgar-law began to look like the local custom of those districts where +the Romani were the preponderating element in the population. Meanwhile, +the Norse pirates subdued a large tract of what was to be northern +France--a land where Romani were few. Their restless and boundless vigour +these Normans retained; but they showed a wonderful power of +appropriating whatever of alien civilization came in their way. In their +language, religion and law, they had become French many years before they +subdued England. It is a plausible opinion that among them there lived +some sound traditions of the Frankish monarchy's best days, and that +Norman dukes, rather than German emperors or kings, of the French, are +the truest spiritual heirs of Charles the Great. + + + The Norman age. + +In our own day, German historians are wont to speak of English law as a +"daughter" of French or Frankish law. This tendency derived its main +impulse from H. Brunner's proof that the germ of trial by jury, which +cannot be found in the Anglo-Saxon laws, can be found in the prerogative +procedure of the Frankish kings. We must here remember that during a +long age English lawyers wrote in French and even thought in French, and +that to this day most of the technical terms of the law, more especially +of the private law, are of French origin. Also it must be allowed that +when English law has taken shape in the 13th century it is very like one +of the _coutumes_ of northern France. Even when linguistic difficulties +have been surmounted, the Saxon Mirror of Eike von Repgow will seem far +less familiar to an Englishman than the so-called Establishments of St +Louis. This was the outcome of a slow process which fills more than a +century (1066-1189), and was in a great measure due to the reforming +energy of Henry II., the French prince who, in addition to England, +ruled a good half of France. William the Conqueror seems to have +intended to govern Englishmen by English law. After the tyranny of +Rufus, Henry I. promised a restoration of King Edward's law: that is, +the law of the Confessor's time (_Lagam Eadwardi regis vobis reddo_). +Various attempts were then made, mostly, so it would seem, by men of +French birth, to state in a modern and practicable form the _laga +Eadwardi_ which was thus restored. The result of their labours is an +intricate group of legal tracts which has been explored of late years by +Dr Liebermann. The best of these has long been known as the _Leges +Henrici Primi_, and aspires to be a comprehensive law-book. Its author, +though he had some foreign sources at his command, such as the _Lex +Ribuaria_ and an epitome of the Breviary of Alaric, took the main part +of his matter from the code of Canute and the older English dooms. +Neither the Conqueror nor either of his sons had issued many ordinances: +the invading Normans had little, if any, written law to bring with them, +and had invaded a country where kings had been lawgivers. Moreover, +there was much in the English system that the Conqueror was keenly +interested in retaining--especially an elaborate method of taxing the +land and its holders. The greatest product of Norman government, the +grandest feat of government that the world had seen for a long time +past, the compilation of _Domesday Book_, was a conservative effort, an +attempt to fix upon every landholder, French or English, the amount of +geld that was due from his predecessor in title. Himself the rebellious +vassal of the French king, the duke of the Normans, who had become king +of the English, knew much of disruptive feudalism, and had no mind to +see England that other France which it had threatened to become in the +days of his pious but incompetent cousin. The sheriffs, though called +_vice-comites_, were to be the king's officers; the shire-moots might be +called county courts, but were not to be the courts of counts. Much that +was sound and royal in English public law was to be preserved if William +could preserve it. + + + Royal justice. + +The gulf that divides the so-called _Leges Henrici_ (c. 1115) from the +text-book ascribed to Ranulf Glanvill (c. 1188) seems at first sight +very wide. The one represents a not easily imaginable chaos and clash of +old rules and new; it represents also a stage in the development of +feudalism which in other countries is represented chiefly by a +significant silence. The other is an orderly, rational book, which +through all the subsequent centuries will be readily understood by +English lawyers. Making no attempt to tell us what goes on in the local +courts, its author, who may be Henry II.'s chief justiciar, Ranulf +Glanvill, or may be Glanvill's nephew, Hubert Walter, fixes our +attention on a novel element which is beginning to subdue all else to +its powerful operation. He speaks to us of the justice that is done by +the king's own court. Henry II. had opened the doors of his +French-speaking court to the mass of his subjects. Judges chosen for +their ability were to sit there, term after term; judges were to travel +in circuits through the land, and in many cases the procedure by way of +"an inquest of the country," which the Norman kings had used for the +ascertainment of their fiscal rights, was to be at the disposal of +ordinary litigants. All this had been done in a piecemeal, experimental +fashion by ordinances that were known as "assizes." There had not been, +and was not to be, any enunciation of a general principle inviting all +who were wronged to bring in their own words their complaints to the +king's audience. The general prevalence of feudal justice, and of the +world-old methods of supernatural probation (ordeals, battle, oaths +sworn with oath-helpers), was to be theoretically respected; but in +exceptional cases, which would soon begin to devour the rule, a royal +remedy was to be open to any one who could frame his case within the +compass of some carefully-worded and prescript formula. With allusion to +a remote stage in the history of Roman law, a stage of which Henry's +advisers can have known little or nothing, we may say that a "formulary +system" is established which will preside over English law until modern +times. Certain actions, each with a name of its own, are open to +litigants. Each has its own formula set forth in its original (or, as we +might say, originating) writ; each has its own procedure and its +appropriate mode of trial. The litigant chooses his writ, his action, +and must stand or fall by his choice. Thus a book about royal justice +tends to become, and Glanvill's book already is, a commentary on +original writs. + +The precipitation of English law in so coherent a form as that which it +has assumed in Glanvill's book is not to be explained without reference +to the revival of Roman jurisprudence in Italy. Out of a school of +Lombard lawyers at Pavia had come Lanfranc the Conqueror's adviser, and +the Lombardists had already been studying Justinian's Institutes. Then +at length the Digest came by its rights. About the year 1100 Irnerius +was teaching at Bologna, and from all parts of the West men were eagerly +flocking to hear the new gospel of civilization. About the year 1149 +Vacarius was teaching Roman law in England. The rest of a long life he +spent here, and faculties of Roman and Canon law took shape in the +nascent university of Oxford. Whatever might be the fate of Roman law in +England, there could be no doubt that the Canon law, which was +crystallizing in the _Decretum Gratiani_ (c. 1139) and in the decretals +of Alexander III., would be the law of the English ecclesiastical +tribunals. The great quarrel between Henry II. and Thomas of Canterbury +brought this system into collision with the temporal law of England, and +the king's ministers must have seen that they had much to learn from the +methodic enemy. Some of them were able men who became the justices of +Henry's court, and bishops to boot. The luminous _Dialogue of the +Exchequer_ (c. 1179), which expounds the English fiscal system, came +from the treasurer, Richard Fitz Nigel, who became bishop of London; and +the treatise on the laws of England came perhaps from Glanvill, perhaps +from Hubert Walter, who was to be both primate and chief justiciar. +There was healthy emulation of the work that was being done by Italian +jurists, but no meek acceptance of foreign results. + + + Bracton. + +A great constructive era had opened, and its outcome was a large and +noble book. The author was Henry of Bratton (his name has been corrupted +into Bracton), who died in 1268 after having been for many years one of +Henry III.'s justices. The model for its form was the treatise of Azo of +Bologna ("master of all the masters of the laws," an Englishman called +him), and thence were taken many of the generalities of jurisprudence: +maxims that might be regarded as of universal and natural validity. But +the true core of the work was the practice of an English court which had +yearly been extending its operations in many directions. For half a +century past diligent record had been kept on parchment of all that this +court had done, and from its rolls Bracton cited numerous decisions. He +cited them as precedents, paying special heed to the judgments of two +judges who were already dead, Martin Pateshull and William Raleigh. For +this purpose he compiled a large Note Book, which was discovered by +Prof. Vinogradoff in the British Museum in 1884. Thus at a very early +time English "common law" shows a tendency to become what it afterwards +definitely became, namely, "case law." The term "common law" was being +taken over from the canonists by English lawyers, who used it to +distinguish the general law of the land from local customs, royal +prerogatives, and in short from all that was exceptional or special. +Since statutes and ordinances were still rarities, all expressly enacted +laws were also excluded from the English lawyers' notion of "the common +law." The Great Charter (1215) had taken the form of a grant of +"liberties and privileges," comparable to the grants that the king made +to individual men and favoured towns. None the less, it was in that age +no small body of enacted law, and, owing to its importance and +solemnity, it was in after ages regarded as the first article of a +statute book. There it was followed by the "provisions" issued at Merton +in 1236 and by those issued at Marlborough after the end of the Barons' +War. But during Henry III.'s long reign the swift development of English +law was due chiefly to new "original writs" and new "forms of action" +devised by the chancery and sanctioned by the court. Bracton knew many +writs that were unknown to Glanvill, and men were already perceiving +that limits must be set to the inventive power of the chancery unless +the king was to be an uncontrollable law-maker. Thus the common law was +losing the power of rapid growth when Bracton summed the attained +results in a book, the success of which is attested by a crowd of +manuscript copies. Bracton had introduced just enough of Roman law and +Bolognese method to save the law of England from the fate that awaited +German law in Germany. His book was printed in 1569, and Coke owed much +to Bracton. + +The comparison that is suggested when Edward I. is called the English +Justinian cannot be pressed very far. Nevertheless, as is well known, it +is in his reign (1272-1307) that English institutions finally take the +forms that they are to keep through coming centuries. We already see the +parliament of the three estates, the convocations of the clergy, the +king's council, the chancery or secretarial department, the exchequer or +financial department, the king's bench, the common bench, the +commissioners of assize and gaol delivery, the small group of +professionally learned judges, and a small group of professionally +learned lawyers, whose skill is at the service of those who will employ +them. Moreover, the statutes that were passed in the first eighteen +years of the reign, though their bulk seems slight to us nowadays, bore +so fundamental a character that in subsequent ages they appeared as the +substructure of huge masses of superincumbent law. Coke commented upon +them sentence by sentence, and even now the merest smatterer in English +law must profess some knowledge of _Quia emptores_ and _De donis +conditionalibus_. If some American states have, while others have not, +accepted these statutes, that is a difference which is not unimportant +to citizens of the United States in the 20th century. Then from the +early years of Edward's reign come the first "law reports" that have +descended to us: the oldest of them have not yet been printed; the +oldest that has been printed belongs to 1292. These are the precursors +of the long series of Year Books (Edw. II.-Hen. VIII.) which runs +through the residue of the middle ages. Lawyers, we perceive, are +already making and preserving notes of the discussions that take place +in court; French notes that will be more useful to them than the formal +Latin records inscribed upon the plea rolls. From these reports we learn +that there are already, as we should say, a few "leading counsel," some +of whom will be retained in almost every important cause. Papal +decretals had been endeavouring to withdraw the clergy from secular +employment. The clerical element had been strong among the judges of +Henry III.'s reign: Bracton was an archdeacon, Pateshull a dean, Raleigh +died a bishop. Their places begin to be filled by men who are not in +orders, but who have pleaded the king's causes for him--his serjeants or +servants at law--and beside them there are young men who are +"apprentices at law," and are learning to plead. Also we begin to see +men who, as "attorneys at law," are making it their business to appear +on behalf of litigants. The history of the legal profession and its +monopoly of legal aid is intricate, and at some points still obscure; +but the influence of the canonical system is evident: the English +attorney corresponds to the canonical proctor, and the English barrister +to the canonical advocate. The main outlines were being drawn in Edward +I.'s day; the legal profession became organic, and professional opinion +became one of the main forces that moulded the law. + +The study of English law fell apart from all other studies, and the +impulse that had flowed from Italian jurisprudence was ebbing. We have +two comprehensive text-books from Edward's reign: the one known to us as +_Fleta_, the other as _Britton_; both of them, however, quarry their +materials from Bracton's treatise. Also we have two little books on +procedure which are attributed to Chief-Justice Hengham, and a few other +small tracts of an intensely practical kind. Under the cover of fables +about King Alfred, the author of the _Mirror of Justices_ made a bitter +attack upon King Edward's judges, some of whom had fallen into deep +disgrace. English legal history has hardly yet been purged of the leaven +of falsehood that was introduced by this fantastic and unscrupulous +pamphleteer. His enigmatical book ends that literate age which begins +with Glanvill's treatise and the treasurer's dialogue. Between Edward +I.'s day and Edward IV.'s hardly anything that deserves the name of book +was written by an English lawyer. + + + 14th and 15th centuries. + +During that time the body of statute law was growing, but not very +rapidly. Acts of parliament intervened at a sufficient number of +important points to generate and maintain a persuasion that no limit, or +no ascertainable limit, can be set to the legislative power of king and +parliament. Very few are the signs that the judges ever permitted the +validity of a statute to be drawn into debate. Thus the way was being +prepared for the definite assertion of parliamentary "omnicompetence" +which we obtain from the Elizabethan statesman Sir Thomas Smith, and for +those theories of sovereignty which we couple with the names of Hobbes +and Austin. Nevertheless, English law was being developed rather by +debates in court than by open legislation. The most distinctively +English of English institutions in the later middle ages are the +Year-Books and the Inns of Court. Year by year, term by term, lawyers +were reporting cases in order that they and their fellows might know how +cases had been decided. The allegation of specific precedents was indeed +much rarer than it afterwards became, and no calculus of authority so +definite as that which now obtains had been established in Coke's day, +far less in Littleton's. Still it was by a perusal of reported cases +that a man would learn the law of England. A skeleton for the law was +provided, not by the Roman rubrics (such as public and private, real and +personal, possessory and proprietary, contract and delict), but by the +cycle of original writs that were inscribed in the chancery's _Registrum +Brevium_. A new form of action could not be introduced without the +authority of Parliament, and the growth of the law took the shape of an +explication of the true intent of ancient formulas. Times of inventive +liberality alternated with times of cautious and captious conservatism. +Coke could look back to Edward III.'s day as to a golden age of good +pleading. The otherwise miserable time which saw the Wars of the Roses +produced some famous lawyers, and some bold doctrines which broke new +ground. It produced also Sir Thomas Littleton's (d. 1481) treatise on +Tenures, which (though it be not, as Coke thought it, the most perfect +work that ever was written in any human science) is an excellent +statement of law in exquisitely simple language. + + + Legal education. + +Meanwhile English law was being scholastically taught. This, if we look +at the fate of native and national law in Germany, or France, or +Scotland, appears as a fact of primary importance. From beginnings, so +small and formless that they still elude research, the Inns of Court had +grown. The lawyers, like other men, had grouped themselves in gilds, or +gild-like "fellowships." The fellowship acquired property; it was not +technically incorporate, but made use of the thoroughly English +machinery of a trust. Behind a hedge of trustees it lived an autonomous +life, unhampered by charters or statutes. There was a hall in which its +members dined in common; there was the nucleus of a library; there were +also dormitories or chambers in which during term-time lawyers lived +celibately, leaving their wives in the country. Something of the college +thus enters the constitution of these fellowships; and then something +academical. The craft gild regulated apprenticeship; it would protect +the public against incompetent artificers, and its own members against +unfair competition. So the fellowship of lawyers. In course of time a +lengthy and laborious course of education of the medieval sort had been +devised. He who had pursued it to its end received a call to the bar of +his inn. This call was in effect a degree. Like the doctor or master of +a university, the full-blown barrister was competent to teach others, +and was expected to read lectures to students. But further, in a manner +that is still very dark, these societies had succeeded in making their +degrees the only steps that led to practice in the king's courts. At the +end of the middle ages (c. 1470) Sir John Fortescue rehearsed the +praises of the laws of England in a book which is one of the earliest +efforts of comparative politics. Contrasting England with France, he +rightly connects limited monarchy, public and oral debate in the law +courts, trial by jury, and the teaching of national law in schools that +are thronged by wealthy and well-born youths. But nearly a century +earlier, the assertion that English law affords as subtle and civilizing +a discipline as any that is to be had from Roman law was made by a man +no less famous than John Wycliffe. The heresiarch naturally loathed the +Canon law; but he also spoke with reprobation of the "paynims' law," the +"heathen men's law," the study of which in the two universities was +being fostered by some of the bishops. That study, after inspiring +Bracton, had come to little in England, though the canonist was +compelled to learn something of Justinian, and there was a small demand +for learned civilians in the court of admiralty, and in what we might +call the king's diplomatic service. No medieval Englishman did anything +considerable for Roman law. Even the canonists were content to read the +books of French and Italian masters, though John Acton (c. 1340) and +William Lyndwood (1430) wrote meritorious glosses. The Angevin kings, by +appropriating to the temporal forum the whole province of ecclesiastical +patronage, had robbed the decretists of an inexhaustible source of +learning and of lucre. The work that was done by the legal faculties at +Oxford and Cambridge is slight when compared with the inestimable +services rendered to the cause of national continuity by the schools of +English law which grew within the Inns of Court. + + + Chancery. + +A danger threatened: the danger that a prematurely osseous system of +common law would be overwhelmed by summary justice and royal equity. +Even when courts for all ordinary causes had been established, a reserve +of residuary justice remained with the king. Whatever lawyers and even +parliaments might say, it was seen to be desirable that the king in +council should with little regard for form punish offenders who could +break through the meshes of a tardy procedure and should redress wrongs +which corrupt and timid juries would leave unrighted. Papal edicts +against heretics had made familiar to all men the notion that a judge +should at times proceed _summarie et de plano et sine strepitu et figura +justitiae_. And so extraordinary justice of a penal kind was done by the +king's council upon misdemeanants, and extraordinary justice of a civil +kind was ministered by the king's chancellor (who was the specially +learned member of the council) to those who "for the love of God and in +the way of charity," craved his powerful assistance. It is now well +established that the chancellors started upon this course, not with any +desire to introduce rules of "equity" which should supplement, or +perhaps supplant, the rules of law, but for the purpose of driving the +law through those accidental impediments which sometimes unfortunately +beset its due course. The wrongs that the chancellor redressed were +often wrongs of the simplest and most brutal kind: assaults, batteries +and forcible dispossessions. However, he was warned off this field of +activity by parliament; the danger to law, to lawyers, to trial by jury, +was evident. But just when this was happening, a new field was being +opened for him by the growing practice of conveying land to trustees. +The English trust of land had ancient Germanic roots, and of late we +have been learning how in far-off centuries our Lombard cousins were in +effect giving themselves a power of testation by putting their lands in +trust. In England, when the forms of action were crystallizing, this +practice had not been common enough to obtain the protection of a writ; +but many causes conspired to make it common in the 14th century; and so, +with the general approval of lawyers and laity, the chancellors began to +enforce by summary process against the trustee the duty that lay upon +his conscience. In the next century it was clear that England had come +by a new civil tribunal. Negatively, its competence was defined by the +rule that when the common law offered a remedy, the chancellor was not +to intervene. Positively, his power was conceived as that of doing what +"good conscience" required, more especially in cases of "fraud, accident +or breach of confidence." His procedure was the summary, the +heresy-suppressing (not the ordinary and solemn) procedure of an +ecclesiastical court; but there are few signs that he borrowed any +substantive rules from legist or decretist, and many proofs that within +the new field of trust he pursued the ideas of the common law. It was +long, however, before lawyers made a habit of reporting his decisions. +He was not supposed to be tightly bound by precedent. Adaptability was +of the essence of the justice that he did. + + + The Tudor Age. + +A time of strain and trial came with the Tudor kings. It was +questionable whether the strong "governance" for which the weary nation +yearned could work within the limits of a parliamentary system, or would +be compatible with the preservation of the common law. We see new courts +appropriating large fields of justice and proceeding _summarie et de +plano_; the star chamber, the chancery, the courts of requests, of +wards, of augmentations, the councils of the North and Wales; a little +later we see the high commission. We see also that judicial torture +which Fortescue had called the road to hell. The stream of law reports +became intermittent under Henry VIII.; few judges of his or his son's +reign left names that are to be remembered. In an age of humanism, +alphabetically arranged "abridgments" of medieval cases were the best +work of English lawyers: one comes to us from Anthony Fitzherbert (d. +1538), and another from Robert Broke (d. 1558). This was the time when +Roman law swept like a flood over Germany. The modern historian of +Germany will speak of "the Reception" (that is, the reception of Roman +law), as no less important than the Renaissance and Reformation with +which it is intimately connected. Very probably he will bestow hard +words on a movement which disintegrated the nation and consolidated the +tyranny of the princelings. Now a project that Roman law should be +"received" in England occurred to Reginald Pole (d. 1558), a humanist, +and at one time a reformer, who with good fortune might have been either +king of England or pope of Rome. English law, said the future cardinal +and archbishop, was barbarous; Roman law was the very voice of nature +pleading for "civility" and good princely governance. Pole's words were +brought to the ears of his majestic cousin, and, had the course of +events been somewhat other than it was, King Henry might well have +decreed a reception. The role of English Justinian would have perfectly +suited him, and there are distinct traces of the civilian's Byzantinism +in the doings of the Church of England's supreme head. The academic +study of the Canon law was prohibited; regius professorships of the +civil law were founded; civilians were to sit as judges in the +ecclesiastical courts. A little later, the Protector Somerset was deeply +interested in the establishment of a great school for civilians at +Cambridge. Scottish law was the own sister of English law, and yet in +Scotland we may see a reception of Roman jurisprudence which might have +been more whole-hearted than it was, but for the drift of two British +and Protestant kingdoms towards union. As it fell out, however, Henry +could get what he wanted in church and state without any decisive +supersession of English by foreign law. The omnicompetence of an act of +parliament stands out the more clearly if it settles the succession to +the throne, annuls royal marriages, forgives royal debts, defines +religious creeds, attaints guilty or innocent nobles, or prospectively +lends the force of statute to the king's proclamations. The courts of +common law were suffered to work in obscurity, for jurors feared fines, +and matter of state was reserved for council or star chamber. The Inns +of Court were spared; their moots and readings did no perceptible harm, +if little perceptible good. + + + Coke. + +Yet it is no reception of alien jurisprudence that must be chronicled, +but a marvellous resuscitation of English medieval law. We may see it +already in the Commentaries of Edward Plowden (d. 1585) who reported +cases at length and lovingly. Bracton's great book was put in print, and +was a key to much that had been forgotten or misunderstood. Under +Parker's patronage, even the Anglo-Saxon dooms were brought to light; +they seemed to tell of a Church of England that had not yet been +enslaved by Rome. The new national pride that animated Elizabethan +England issued in boasts touching the antiquity, humanity, enlightenment +of English law. Resuming the strain of Fortescue, Sir Thomas Smith, +himself a civilian, wrote concerning the Commonwealth of England a book +that claimed the attention of foreigners for her law and her polity. +There was dignified rebuke for the French jurist who had dared to speak +lightly of Littleton. And then the common law took flesh in the person +of Edward Coke (1552-1634). With an enthusiastic love of English +tradition, for the sake of which many offences may be forgiven him, he +ranged over nearly the whole field of law, commenting, reporting, +arguing, deciding,--disorderly, pedantic, masterful, an incarnate +national dogmatism tenacious of continuous life. Imbued with this new +spirit, the lawyers fought the battle of the constitution against James +and Charles, and historical research appeared as the guardian of +national liberties. That the Stuarts united against themselves three +such men as Edward Coke, John Selden and William Prynne, is the measure +of their folly and their failure. Words that, rightly or wrongly, were +ascribed to Bracton rang in Charles's ears when he was sent to the +scaffold. For the modern student of medieval law many of the reported +cases of the Stuart time are storehouses of valuable material, since the +lawyers of the 17th century were mighty hunters after records. Prynne +(d. 1669), the fanatical Puritan, published ancient documents with +fervid zeal, and made possible a history of parliament. Selden (d. 1654) +was in all Europe among the very first to write legal history as it +should be written. His book about tithes is to this day a model and a +masterpiece. When this accomplished scholar had declared that he had +laboured to make himself worthy to be called a common lawyer, it could +no longer be said that the common lawyers were _indoctissimum genus +doctissimorum hominum_. Even pliant judges, whose tenure of office +depended on the king's will, were compelled to cite and discuss old +precedents before they could give judgment for their master; and even at +their worst moments they would not openly break with medieval tradition, +or declare in favour of that "modern police-state" which has too often +become the ideal of foreign publicists trained in Byzantine law. + + + Hale. + +The current of legal doctrine was by this time so strong and voluminous +that such events as the Civil War, the Restoration and the Revolution +hardly deflected the course of the stream. In retrospect, Charles II. +reigns so soon as life has left his father's body, and James II. ends a +lawless career by a considerate and convenient abdication. The statute +book of the restored king was enriched by leaves excerpted from the acts +of a lord protector; and Matthew Hale (d. 1676), who was, perhaps, the +last of the great record-searching judges, sketched a map of English law +which Blackstone was to colour. Then a time of self-complacency came for +the law, which knew itself to be the perfection of wisdom, and any +proposal for drastic legislation would have worn the garb discredited by +the tyranny of the Puritan Caesar. The need for the yearly renewal of the +Mutiny Act secured an annual session of parliament. The mass of the +statute law made in the 18th century is enormous; but, even when we have +excluded from view such acts as are technically called "private," the +residuary matter bears a wonderfully empirical, partial and minutely +particularizing character. In this "age of reason," as we are wont to +think it, the British parliament seems rarely to rise to the dignity of +a general proposition, and in our own day the legal practitioner is +likely to know less about the statutes of the 18th century than he knows +about the statutes of Edward I., Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. Parliament, +it should be remembered, was endeavouring directly to govern the nation. +There was little that resembled the permanent civil service of to-day. +The choice lay between direct parliamentary government and royal +"prerogative"; and lengthy statutes did much of that work of detail +which would now be done by virtue of the powers that are delegated to +ministers and governmental boards. Moreover, extreme and verbose +particularity was required in statutes, for judges were loath to admit +that the common law was capable of amendment. A vague doctrine, +inherited from Coke, taught that statutes might be so unreasonable as to +be null, and any political theory that seemed to derive from Hobbes +would have been regarded with not unjust suspicion. But the doctrine in +question never took tangible shape, and enough could be done to protect +the common law by a niggardly exposition of every legislating word. It +is to be remembered that some main features of English public law were +attracting the admiration of enlightened Europe. When Voltaire and +Montesquieu applauded, the English lawyer had cause for complacency. + +The common law was by no means stagnant. Many rules which come to the +front in the 18th century are hardly to be traced farther. Especially is +this the case in the province of mercantile law, where the earl of +Mansfield's (d. 1793) long presidency over the king's bench marked an +epoch. It is too often forgotten that, until Elizabeth's reign, England +was a thoroughly rustic kingdom, and that trade with England was mainly +in the hands of foreigners. Also in medieval fairs, the assembled +merchants declared their own "law merchant," which was considered to +have a supernational validity. In the reports of the common law courts +it is late in the day before we read of some mercantile usages which can +be traced far back in the statutes of Italian cities. Even on the basis +of the excessively elaborated land law--a basis which Coke's Commentary +on Littleton seemed to have settled for ever--a lofty and ingenious +superstructure could be reared. One after another delicate devices were +invented for the accommodation of new wants within the law; but only by +the assurance that the old law could not be frankly abolished can we be +induced to admire the subtlety that was thus displayed. As to procedure, +it had become a maze of evasive fictions, to which only a few learned +men held the historical clue. By fiction the courts had stolen business +from each other, and by fiction a few comparatively speedy forms of +action were set to tasks for which they were not originally framed. Two +fictitious persons, John Doe and Richard Roe, reigned supreme. On the +other hand, that healthy and vigorous institution, the Commission of the +Peace, with a long history behind it, was giving an important share in +the administration of justice to numerous country gentlemen who were +thus compelled to learn some law. A like beneficial work was being done +among jurors, who, having ceased to be regarded as witnesses, had become +"judges of fact." No one doubted that trial by jury was the "palladium" +of English liberties, and popularity awaited those who would exalt the +office of the jurors and narrowly limit the powers of the judge. + + + Equity. + +But during this age the chief addition to English jurisprudence was made +by the crystallization of the chancellor's equity. In the 17th century +the chancery had a narrow escape of sharing the fate that befell its +twin sister the star chamber. Its younger sister the court of requests +perished under the persistent attacks of the common lawyers. Having +outlived troubles, the chancery took to orderly habits, and administered +under the name of "equity" a growing group of rules, which in fact were +supplemental law. Stages in this process are marked by the +chancellorships of Nottingham (1673-1675) and Hardwicke (1737-1756). +Slowly a continuous series of Equity Reports began to flow, and still +more slowly an "equity bar" began to form itself. The principal outlines +of equity were drawn by men who were steeped in the common law. By way +of ornament a Roman maxim might be borrowed from a French or Dutch +expositor, or a phrase which smacked of that "nature-rightly" school +which was dominating continental Europe; but the influence exercised by +Roman law upon English equity has been the subject of gross +exaggeration. Parliament and the old courts being what they were, +perhaps it was only in a new court that the requisite new law could be +evolved. The result was not altogether satisfactory. Freed from contact +with the plain man in the jury-box, the chancellors were tempted to +forget how plain and rough good law should be, and to screw up the legal +standard of reasonable conduct to a height hardly attainable except by +those whose purses could command the constant advice of a family +solicitor. A court which started with the idea of doing summary justice +for the poor became a court which did a highly refined, but tardy +justice, suitable only to the rich. + + + Blackstone. + +About the middle of the century William Blackstone, then a disappointed +barrister, began to give lectures on English law at Oxford (1758), and +soon afterwards he began to publish (1765) his _Commentaries_. Accurate +enough in its history and doctrine to be an invaluable guide to +professional students and a useful aid to practitioners, his book set +before the unprofessional public an artistic picture of the laws of +England such as had never been drawn of any similar system. No nation +but the English had so eminently readable a law-book, and it must be +doubtful whether any other lawyer ever did more important work than was +done by the first professor of English law. Over and over again the +_Commentaries_ were edited, sometimes by distinguished men, and it is +hardly too much to say that for nearly a century the English lawyer's +main ideas of the organization and articulation of the body of English +law were controlled by Blackstone. This was far from all. The Tory +lawyer little thought that he was giving law to colonies that were on +the eve of a great and successful rebellion. Yet so it was. Out in +America, where books were few and lawyers had a mighty task to perform, +Blackstone's facile presentment of the law of the mother country was of +inestimable value. It has been said that among American lawyers the +_Commentaries_ "stood for the law of England," and this at a time when +the American daughter of English law was rapidly growing in stature, and +was preparing herself for her destined march from the Atlantic to the +Pacific Ocean. Excising only what seemed to savour of oligarchy, those +who had defied King George retained with marvellous tenacity the law of +their forefathers. Profound discussions of English medieval law have +been heard in American courts; admirable researches into the recesses of +the Year-Books have been made in American law schools; the names of the +great American judges are familiar in an England which knows little +indeed of foreign jurists; and the debt due for the loan of Blackstone's +_Commentaries_ is being fast repaid. Lectures on the common law +delivered by Mr Justice Holmes of the Supreme Court of the United States +may even have begun to turn the scale against the old country. No +chapter in Blackstone's book nowadays seems more antiquated than that +which describes the modest territorial limits of that English law which +was soon to spread throughout Australia and New Zealand and to follow +the dominant race in India. + + + Bentham. + +Long wars, vast economic changes and the conservatism generated by the +French Revolution piled up a monstrous arrear of work for the English +legislature. Meanwhile, Jeremy Bentham (d. 1832) had laboured for the +overthrow of much that Blackstone had lauded. Bentham's largest projects +of destruction and reconstruction took but little effect. Profoundly +convinced of the fungibility and pliability of mankind, he was but too +ready to draw a code for England or Spain or Russia at the shortest +notice; and, scornful as he was of the past and its historic deposit, a +code drawn by Bentham would have been a sorry failure. On the other +hand, as a critic and derider of the system which Blackstone had +complacently expounded he did excellent service. Reform, and radical +reform, was indeed sadly needed throughout a system which was encumbered +by noxious rubbish, the useless leavings of the middle ages: trial by +battle and compurgation, deodands and benefit of clergy, John Doe and +Richard Roe. It is perhaps the main fault of "judge-made law" (to use +Bentham's phrase) that its destructive work can never be cleanly done. +Of all vitality, and therefore of all patent harmfulness, the old rule +can be deprived, but the moribund husk must remain in the system doing +latent mischief. English law was full of decaying husks when Bentham +attacked it, and his persistent demand for reasons could not be +answered. At length a general interest in "law reform" was excited; +Romilly and Brougham were inspired by Bentham, and the great changes in +constitutional law which cluster round the Reform Act of 1832 were +accompanied by many measures which purged the private, procedural and +criminal law of much, though hardly enough, of the medieval dross. Some +credit for rousing an interest in law, in definitions of legal terms, +and in schemes of codification, is due to John Austin (d. 1859) who was +regarded as the jurist of the reforming and utilitarian group. But, +though he was at times an acute dissector of confused thought, he was +too ignorant of the English, the Roman and every other system of law to +make any considerable addition to the sum of knowledge; and when +Savigny, the herald of evolution, was already in the field, the day for +a "Nature-Right"--and Austin's projected "general jurisprudence" would +have been a Nature-Right--was past beyond recall. The obsolescence of +the map of law which Blackstone had inherited from Hale, and in which +many outlines were drawn by medieval formulas, left intelligent English +lawyers without a guide, and they were willing to listen for a while to +what in their insularity they thought to be the voice of cosmopolitan +science. Little came of it all. The revived study of Germanic law in +Germany, which was just beginning in Austin's day, seems to be showing +that the scheme of Roman jurisprudence is not the scheme into which +English law will run without distortion. + + + Recent changes. + +In the latter half of the 19th century some great and wise changes were +made by the legislature. Notably in 1875 the old courts were merged in a +new Supreme Court of Judicature, and a concurrent administration of law +and equity was introduced. Successful endeavours have been made also to +reduce the bulk of old statute law, and to improve the form of acts of +parliament; but the emergence of new forces whose nature may be +suggested by some such names as "socialism" and "imperialism" has +distracted the attention of the British parliament from the commonplace +law of the land, and the development of obstructive tactics has caused +the issue of too many statutes whose brevity was purchased by +disgraceful obscurity. By way of "partial codification" some branches of +the common law (bills of exchange, sale of goods, partnership) have been +skilfully stated in statutes, but a draft criminal code, upon which much +expert labour was expended, lies pigeon-holed and almost forgotten. +British India has been the scene of some large legislative exploits, and +in America a few big experiments have been made in the way of +code-making, but have given little satisfaction to the bulk of those who +are competent to appreciate their results. In England there are large +portions of the law which, in their present condition, no one would +think of codifying: notably the law of real property, in which may still +be found numerous hurtful relics of bygone centuries. So omnipresent are +statutes throughout the whole field of jurisprudence that the +opportunity of doing any great feat in the development of law can come +but seldom to a modern court. More and more, therefore, the fate of +English law depends on the will of parliament, or rather of the +ministry. The quality of legal text-books has steadily improved; some of +them are models of clear statement and good arrangement; but no one has +with any success aspired to be the Blackstone of a new age. + + + Law reporting. + +The Council of Law Reporting was formed in the year 1863. The council +now consists of three _ex-officio_ members--the attorney-general, the +solicitor-general and the president of the Incorporated Law Society, and +ten members appointed by the three Inns of Court, the Incorporated Law +Society and the council itself on the nomination of the general council +of the bar. The practitioner and the student now get for a subscription +of four guineas a year the reports in all the superior courts and the +House of Lords, and the judicial committee of the privy council issued +in monthly parts a king's printer's copy of the statutes, and weekly +notes, containing short notes of current decisions and announcements of +all new rules made under the Judicature Acts and other acts of +parliament, and other legal information. In addition the subscriber +receives the chronological index of the statutes published from time to +time by the Stationery Office, and last, but not least, the Digests of +decided cases published by the council from time to time. In 1892 a +Digest was published containing the cases and statutes for twenty-five +years, from 1865 to 1890, and this was supplemented by one for the +succeeding ten years, from 1891 to 1900. The digesting is now carried on +continuously by means of "Current Indexes," which are published monthly +and annually, and consolidated into a digest at stated intervals (say) +of five years. The Indian appeals series, which is not required by the +general practitioner, is supplied separately at one guinea a year. + + + Legal education. + +In the 16th and 17th centuries the corporate life of the Inns of Court in +London became less and less active. The general decay of the organization +of crafts and gilds showed itself among lawyers as among other craftsmen. +Successful barristers, sharing in the general prosperity of the country, +became less and less able and willing to devote their time to the welfare +of their profession as a whole. The Inns of Chancery, though some of +their buildings still remain--picturesque survivals in their +"suburbs"--ceased to be used as places for the education of students. The +benchers of the Inns of Court, until the revival towards the middle of +the 19th century, had wholly ceased to concern themselves with the +systematic teaching of law. The modern system of legal education may be +said to date from the establishment, in 1852, of the council of legal +education, a body of twenty judges and barristers appointed by the four +Inns of Court to control the legal education of students preparing to be +called to the bar. The most important feature is the examination which a +student must pass before he can be called. The examination (which by +degrees has been made "stiffer") serves the double purpose of fixing the +compulsory standard which all must reach, and of guiding the reading of +students who may desire, sooner or later, to carry their studies beyond +this standard. The subjects in which the examination is held are divided +into Roman law; Constitutional law and legal history; Evidence, Procedure +and Criminal law; Real and Personal Property; Equity; and Common law. The +council of legal education also appoint a body of readers and assistant +readers, practising barristers, who deliver lectures and hold classes. + +Meanwhile the custom remains by which a student reads for a year or more +as a pupil in the chambers of some practising barrister. In the 18th +century it first became usual for students to read with a solicitor or +attorney, and after a short time the modern practice grew up of reading +in the chambers of a conveyancer, equity draftsman or special pleader, +or, in more recent times, in the chambers of a junior barrister. Before +the modern examination system, a student required to have a certificate +from the barrister in whose chambers he had been a pupil before he could +be "called," but the only relic of the old system now is the necessity +of "eating dinners," six (three for university men) in each of the four +terms for three years, at one of the Inns of Court. + +The education of solicitors suffered from the absence of any +professional organization until the Incorporated Law Society was +established in 1825 and the following years. So far as any professional +education is provided for solicitors or required from them, this is due +to the efforts of the Law Society. As early as 1729 it was required by +statute that any person applying for admission as attorney or solicitor +should submit to examination by one of the judges, who was to test his +fitness and capacity in consideration of a fee of one shilling. At the +same time regular preliminary service under articles was required, that +is to say, under a contract by which the clerk was bound to serve for +five years. The examination soon became, perhaps always was, an empty +form. The Law Society, however, soon showed zeal for the education of +future solicitors. In 1833 lectures were instituted. In 1836 the first +regular examinations were established, and in 1860 the present system of +examinations--preliminary, intermediate and final--came into effect. Of +these only the last two are devoted to law, and both are of a strictly +professional character. The final examination is a fairly severe test of +practical acquaintance with all branches of modern English law. The Law +Society makes some provision for the teaching of students, but this +teaching is designed solely to assist in preparation for the +examinations. + +At the universities of Oxford and Cambridge there has, since 1850, been +an attempt to promote the study of law. The curriculum of legal subjects +in which lectures are given and examinations held is calculated to give +a student a sound fundamental knowledge of general principles, as well +as an elementary acquaintance with the rules of modern English law. +Jurisprudence, Roman law, Constitutional law and International law are +taught, as well as the law of Real and Personal Property, the Law of +Contract and Tort, Criminal law, Procedure and Evidence. But the law +tripos and the law schools suffer from remoteness from the law courts, +and from the exclusively academical character of the teaching. Law is +also taught, though not on a very large scale, at Manchester and at +Liverpool. London University has encouraged the study of law by its +examinations for law degrees, at which a comparatively high standard of +knowledge is required; and at University College, London, and King's +College, London, teaching is given in law and jurisprudence. + + AUTHORITIES.--F. Liebermann, _Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen_ (1898); + K.E. Digby, _History of the Law of Real Property_; Sir W. Dugdale, + _Origines juridicales_ (1671); O.W. Holmes, _The Common Law_ (Boston, + 1881); H. Hallam, _Constitutional History_; W.S. Holdsworth, _History + of English Law_, 3 vols. (1903-9); J. Reeves, _History of English + Law_, ed. W.F. Finlason (1869); T. Madox, _History and Antiquities of + the Exchequer_ (1769); C. de Franqueville, _Le Systeme judiciaire de + la Grande-Bretagne_ (Paris, 1893); Sir F. Pollock and F.W. Maitland, + _History of English Law_ (2 vols., 1898); H. Brunner, _The Sources of + the Law of England_, trans. by W. Hastie (1888); Sir R.K. Wilson, + _History of Modern English Law_ (1875); A.V. Dicey, _Law and Public + Opinion in England_ (1905); Sir J.F. Stephen, _History of the Criminal + Law of England_ (3 vols., 1883); W. Stubbs, _Select Charters, + Constitutional History_; the Publications of the Selden Society and + the Year Books in the Rolls Series. (F. W. M.) + + + + +ENGLISH LITERATURE. The following discussion of the evolution of English +literature, i.e. of the contribution to literature made in the course of +ages by the writers of England, is planned so as to give a comprehensive +view, the details as to particular authors and their work, and special +consideration of the greater writers, being given in the separate +articles devoted to them. It is divided into the following sections: (1) +Earliest times to Chaucer; (2) Chaucer to the end of the middle ages; +(3) Elizabethan times; (4) the Restoration period; (5) the Eighteenth +century; (6) the Nineteenth century. The object of these sections is to +form connecting links among the successive literary ages, leaving the +separate articles on individual great writers to deal with their special +interest; attention being paid in the main to the gradually developing +characteristics of the product, qua literary. The precise delimitation +of what may narrowly be called "English" literature, i.e. in the English +language, is perhaps impossible, and separate articles are devoted to +American literature (q.v.), and to the vernacular literatures of +Scotland (see SCOTLAND; and CELT: _Literature_), Ireland (see CELT: +_Literature_), and Wales (see CELT: _Literature_); see also CANADA: +_Literature_. Reference may also be made to such general articles on +particular forms as NOVEL; ROMANCE; VERSE, &c. + + +I. EARLIEST TIMES TO CHAUCER + +English literature, in the etymological sense of the word, had, so far +as we know, no existence until Christian times. There is no evidence +either that the heathen English had adopted the Roman alphabet, or that +they had learned to employ their native monumental script (the runes) on +materials suitable for the writing of continuous compositions of +considerable length. + +It is, however, certain that in the pre-literary period at least one +species of poetic art had attained a high degree of development, and +that an extensive body of poetry was handed down--not, indeed, with +absolute fixity of form or substance--from generation to generation. +This unwritten poetry was the work of minstrels who found their +audiences in the halls of kings and nobles. Its themes were the exploits +of heroes belonging to the royal houses of Germanic Europe, with which +its listeners claimed kinship. Its metre was the alliterative long line, +the lax rhythm of which shows that it was intended, not to be sung to +regular melodies, but to be recited--probably with some kind of +instrumental accompaniment. Of its beauty and power we may judge from +the best passages in _Beowulf_ (q.v.); for there can be little doubt +that this poem gained nothing and lost much in the process of literary +redaction. + +The conversion of the people to Christianity necessarily involved the +decline of the minstrelsy that celebrated the glories of heathen times. +Yet the descendants of Woden, even when they were devout Christians, +would not easily lose all interest in the achievements of their kindred +of former days. Chaucer's knowledge of "the song of Wade" is one proof +among others that even so late as the 14th century the deeds of Germanic +heroes had not ceased to be recited in minstrel verse. The paucity of +the extant remains of Old English heroic poetry is no argument to the +contrary. The wonder is that any of it has survived at all. We may well +believe that the professional reciter would, as a rule, be jealous of +any attempt to commit to writing the poems which he had received by +tradition or had himself composed. The clergy, to whom we owe the +writing and the preservation of the Old English MSS., would only in rare +instances be keenly interested in secular poetry. We possess, in fact, +portions of four narrative poems, treating of heroic legend--_Beowulf_, +_Widsith_, _Finnesburh_ and _Waldere_. The second of these has no +poetical merit, but great archaeological interest. It is an enumeration +of the famous kings known to German tradition, put into the mouth of a +minstrel (named Widsith, "far-travelled"), who claims to have been at +many of their courts and to have been rewarded by them for his song. The +list includes historical persons such as Ermanaric and Alboin, who +really lived centuries apart, but (with the usual chronological +vagueness of tradition) are treated as contemporaries. The extant +fragment of _Finnesburh_ (50 lines) is a brilliant battle piece, +belonging to a story of which another part is introduced episodically in +_Beowulf_. _Waldere_, of which we have two fragments (together 68 lines) +is concerned with Frankish and Burgundian traditions based on events of +the 5th century; the hero is the "Waltharius" of Ekkehart's famous Latin +epic. The English poem may possibly be rather a literary composition +than a genuine example of minstrel poetry, but the portions that have +survived are hardly inferior to the best passages of _Beowulf_. + +It may reasonably be assumed that the same minstrels who entertained the +English kings and nobles with the recital of ancient heroic traditions +would also celebrate in verse the martial deeds of their own patrons and +their immediate ancestors. Probably there may have existed an abundance +of poetry commemorative of events in the conquest of Britain and the +struggle with the Danes. Two examples only have survived, both belonging +to the 10th century: The _Battle of Brunanburh_, which has been greatly +over-praised by critics who were unaware that its striking phrases and +compounds are mere traditional echoes; and the _Battle of Maldon_, the +work of a truly great poet, of which unhappily only a fragment has been +preserved. + +One of the marvels of history is the rapidity and thoroughness with +which Christian civilization was adopted by the English. Augustine +landed in 597; forty years later was born an Englishman, Aldhelm, who in +the judgment of his contemporaries throughout the Christian world was +the most accomplished scholar and the finest Latin writer of his time. +In the next generation England produced in Bede (Baeda) a man who in +solidity and variety of knowledge, and in literary power, had for +centuries no rival in Europe. Aldhelm and Bede are known to us only from +their Latin writings, though the former is recorded to have written +vernacular poetry of great merit. The extant Old English literature is +almost entirely Christian, for the poems that belong to an earlier +period have been expurgated and interpolated in a Christian sense. From +the writings that have survived, it would seem as if men strove to +forget that England had ever been heathen. The four deities whose names +are attached to the days of the week are hardly mentioned at all. The +names Thunor and Tiw are sometimes used to translate the Latin Jupiter +and Mars; Woden has his place (but not as a god) in the genealogies of +the kings, and his name occurs once in a magical poem, but that is all. +Bede, as a historian, is obliged to tell the story of the conversion; +but the only native divinities he mentions are the goddesses Hreth and +Eostre, and all we learn about them is that they gave their names to +Hrethemonath (March) and Easter. That superstitious practices of heathen +origin long survived among the people is shown by the acts of church +councils and by a few poems of a magical nature that have been +preserved; but, so far as can be discovered, the definite worship of the +ancient gods quickly died out. English heathenism perished without +leaving a record. + +The Old English religious poetry was written, probably without +exception, in the cloister, and by men who were familiar with the Bible +and with Latin devotional literature. Setting aside the wonderful _Dream +of the Rood_, it gives little evidence of high poetic genius, though +much of it is marked by a degree of culture and refinement that we +should hardly have expected. Its material and thought are mainly derived +from Latin sources; its expression is imitated from the native heroic +poetry. Considering that a great deal of Latin verse was written by +Englishmen in the 7th and succeeding centuries, and that in one or two +poems the line is actually composed of an English and a Latin hemistich +rhyming together, it seems strange that the Latin influence on Old +English versification should have been so small. The alliterative long +line is throughout the only metre employed, and although the laws of +alliteration and rhythm were less rigorously obeyed in the later than in +the earlier poetry, there is no trace of approximation to the structure +of Latin verse. It is true that, owing to imitation of the Latin hymns +of the church, rhyme came gradually to be more and more frequently used +as an ornament of Old English verse; but it remained an ornament only, +and never became an essential feature. The only poem in which rhyme is +employed throughout is one in which sense is so completely sacrificed to +sound that a translation would hardly be possible. It was not only in +metrical respects that the Old English religious poetry remained +faithful to its native models. The imagery and the diction are mainly +those of the old heroic poetry, and in some of the poems Christ and the +saints are presented, often very incongruously, under the aspect of +Germanic warriors. Nearly all the religious poetry that has any +considerable religious value seems to have been written in Northumbria +during the 8th century. The remarkably vigorous poem of _Judith_, +however, is certainly much later; and the _Exodus_, though early, seems +to be of southern origin. For a detailed account of the Old English +sacred poetry, the reader is referred to the articles on CAeDMON and +CYNEWULF, to one or other of whom nearly every one of the poems, except +those of obviously late date, has at some time been attributed. + +The Riddles (q.v.) of the Exeter Book resemble the religious poetry in +being the work of scholars, but they bear much more decidedly the +impress of the native English character. Some of them rank among the +most artistic and pleasing productions of Old English poetry. The Exeter +Book contains also several pieces of a gnomic character, conveying +proverbial instruction in morality and worldly wisdom. Their morality is +Christian, but it is not unlikely that some of the wise sayings they +contain may have come down by tradition from heathen times. The very +curious _Dialogue of Solomon and Saturn_ may be regarded as belonging to +the same class. + +The most original and interesting portion of the Old English literary +poetry is the group of dramatic monologues--_The Banished Wife's +Complaint_, _The Husband's Message_, _The Wanderer_, _The Seafarer_, +_Deor_ and _Wulf and Eadwacer_. The date of these compositions is +uncertain, though their occurrence in the Exeter Book shows that they +cannot be later than the 10th century. That they are all of one period +is at least unlikely, but they are all marked by the same peculiar tone +of pathos. The monodramatic form renders it difficult to obtain a clear +idea of the situation of the supposed speakers. It is not improbable +that most of these poems may relate to incidents of heroic legend, with +which the original readers were presumed to be acquainted. This, +however, can be definitely affirmed only in the case of the two short +pieces--_Deor_ and _Wulf and Eadwacer_--which have something of a lyric +character, being the only examples in Old English of strophic structure +and the use of the refrain. _Wulf and Eadwacer_, indeed, exhibits a +still further development in the same direction, the monotony of the +long line metre being varied by the admission of short lines formed by +the suppression of the second hemistich. The highly developed art +displayed in this remarkable poem gives reason for believing that the +existing remains of Old English poetry very inadequately represent its +extent and variety. + +While the origins of English poetry go back to heathen times, English +prose may be said to have had its effective beginning in the reign of +Alfred. It is of course true that vernacular prose of some kind was +written much earlier. The English laws of Aethelberht of Kent, though it +is perhaps unlikely that they were written down, as is commonly +supposed, in the lifetime of Augustine (died A.D. 604), or even in that +of the king (d. 616), were well known to Bede; and even in the +12th-century transcript that has come down to us, their crude and +elliptical style gives evidence of their high antiquity. Later kings of +Kent and of Wessex followed the example of publishing their laws in the +native tongue. Bede is known to have translated the beginning of the +gospel of John (down to vi. 9). The early part of the Anglo-Saxon +Chronicle (q.v.) is probably founded partly on prose annals of +pre-Alfredian date. But although the amount of English prose written +between the beginning of the 7th and the middle of the 9th century may +have been considerable, Latin continued to be regarded as the +appropriate vehicle for works of any literary pretension. If the English +clergy had retained the scholarship which they possessed in the days of +Aldhelm and Bede, the creation of a vernacular prose literature would +probably have been longer delayed; for while Alfred certainly was not +indifferent to the need of the laity for instruction, the evil that he +was chiefly concerned to combat was the ignorance of their spiritual +guides. + +Of the works translated by him and the scholars whom he employed, _St +Gregory's Pastoral Care_ and his _Dialogues_ (the latter rendered by +Bishop Werferth) are expressly addressed to the priesthood; if the other +translations were intended for a wider circle of readers, they are all +(not excepting the secular _History of Orosius_) essentially religious +in purpose and spirit. In the interesting preface to the _Pastoral +Care_, in the important accounts of Northern lands and peoples inserted +in the _Orosius_, and in the free rendering and amplification of the +_Consolation_ of Boethius and of the _Soliloquies_ of Augustine, Alfred +appears as an original writer. Other fruits of his activity are his Laws +(preceded by a collection of those of his 7th-century predecessor, Ine +of Wessex), and the beginnings of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Old +English prose after Alfred is entirely of clerical authorship; even the +Laws, so far as their literary form is concerned, are hardly to be +regarded as an exception. Apart from the Chronicle (see ANGLO-SAXON +CHRONICLE), the bulk of this literature consists of translations from +Latin and of homilies and saints' lives, the substance of which is +derived from sources mostly accessible to us in their original form; it +has therefore for us little importance except from the philological +point of view. This remark may be applied, in the main, even to the +writings of Aelfric, notwithstanding the great interest which attaches to +his brilliant achievement in the development of the capacities of the +native language for literary expression. The translation of the gospels, +though executed in Aelfric's time (about 1000), is by other hands. The +sermons of his younger contemporary, Archbishop Wulfstan, are marked by +earnestness and eloquence, and contain some passages of historical +value. + +From the early years of the 11th century we possess an encyclopaedic +manual of the science of the time--chronology, astronomy, arithmetic, +metre, rhetoric and ethics--by the monk Byrhtferth, a pupil of Abbo of +Fleury. It is a compilation, but executed with intelligence. The +numerous works on medicine, the properties of herbs, and the like, are +in the main composed of selections from Latin treatises; so far as they +are original, they illustrate the history of superstition rather than +that of science. It is interesting to observe that they contain one or +two formulas of incantations in Irish. + +Two famous works of fiction, the romance of _Apollonius of Tyre_ and the +_Letter of Alexander_, which in their Latin form had much influence on +the later literature of Europe, were Englished in the 11th century with +considerable skill. To the same period belongs the curious tract on _The +Wonders of the East_. In these works, and some minor productions of the +time, we see that the minds of Englishmen were beginning to find +interest in other than religious subjects. + +The crowding of the English monasteries by foreigners, which was one of +the results of the Norman Conquest, brought about a rapid arrest of the +development of the vernacular literature. It was not long before the +boys trained in the monastic schools ceased to learn to read and write +their native tongue, and learned instead to read and write French. The +effects of this change are visible in the rapid alteration of the +literary language. The artificial tradition of grammatical correctness +lost its hold; the archaic literary vocabulary fell into disuse; and +those who wrote English at all wrote as they spoke, using more and more +an extemporized phonetic spelling based largely on French analogies. The +12th century is a brilliant period in the history of Anglo-Latin +literature, and many works of merit were written in French (see +ANGLO-NORMAN). But vernacular literature is scanty and of little +originality. The _Peterborough Chronicle_, it is true, was continued +till 1154, and its later portions, while markedly exemplifying the +changes in the language, contain some really admirable writing. But it +is substantially correct to say that from this point until the age of +Chaucer vernacular prose served no other purpose than that of popular +religious edification. For light on the intellectual life of the nation +during this period we must look mainly to the works written in Latin. +The homilies of the 12th century are partly modernized transcripts from +Aelfric and other older writers, partly translations from French and +Latin; the remainder is mostly commonplace in substance and clumsy in +expression. At the beginning of the 13th century the _Ancren Riwle_ +(q.v.), a book of counsel for nuns, shows true literary genius, and is +singularly interesting in its substance and spirit; but notwithstanding +the author's remarkable mastery of English expression, his culture was +evidently French rather than English. Some minor religious prose works +of the same period are not without merit. But these examples had no +literary following. In the early 14th century the writings of Richard +Rolle and his school attained great popularity. The profound influence +which they exercised on later religious thought, and on the development +of prose style, has seldom been adequately recognized. The _Ayenbite of +Inwyt_ (see MICHEL, DAN), a wretchedly unintelligent translation +(finished in 1340) from Frere Lorens's _Somme des vices et des vertus_, +is valuable to the student of language, but otherwise worthless. + +The break in the continuity of literary tradition, induced by the +Conquest, was no less complete with regard to poetry than with regard to +prose. The poetry of the 13th and the latter part of the 12th century +was uninfluenced by the written works of Old English poets, whose +archaic diction had to a great extent become unintelligible. But there +is no ground to suppose that the succession of popular singers and +reciters was ever interrupted. In the north-west, indeed, the old +recitative metre seems to have survived in oral tradition, with little +more alteration than was rendered necessary by the changes in the +language, until the middle of the 14th century, when it was again +adopted by literary versifiers. In the south this metre had greatly +degenerated in strictness before the Conquest, but, with gradually +increasing laxity in the laws of alliteration and rhythm, it continued +long in use. It is commonly believed, with great intrinsic probability +but with scanty actual evidence, that in the Old English period there +existed, beside the alliterative long line, other forms of verse adapted +not for recitation but for singing, used in popular lyrics and ballads +that were deemed too trivial for written record. The influence of native +popular poetic tradition, whether in the form of recited or of sung +verse, is clearly discernible in the earliest Middle English poems that +have been preserved. But the authors of these poems were familiar with +Latin, and probably spoke French as easily as their mother tongue; and +there was no longer any literary convention to restrain them from +adopting foreign metrical forms. The artless verses of the hermit +Godric, who died in 1170, exhibit in their metre the combined influence +of native rhythm and of that of Latin hymnology. The _Proverbs of +Alfred_, written about 1200, is (like the later _Proverbs of Hendyng_) +in style and substance a gnomic poem of the ancient Germanic type, +containing maxims some of which may be of immemorial antiquity; and its +rhythm is mainly of native origin. On the other hand, the solemn and +touching meditation known as the _Moral Ode_, which is somewhat earlier +in date, is in a metre derived from contemporary Latin verse--a line of +seven accents, broken by a caesura, and with feminine end-rhymes. In the +_Ormulum_ (see ORM) this metre (known as the septenarius) appears +without rhyme, and with a syllabic regularity previously without example +in English verse, the line (or distich, as it may be called with almost +equal propriety) having invariably fifteen syllables. In various +modified forms, the septenarius was a favourite measure throughout the +Middle English period. In the poetry of the 13th century the influence +of French models is conspicuous. The many devotional lyrics, some of +which, as the _Luve Ron_ of Thomas of Hales, have great beauty, show +this influence not only in their varied metrical form, but also in their +peculiar mystical tenderness and fervour. The _Story of Genesis and +Exodus_, the substance of which is taken from the Bible and Latin +commentators, derives its metre chiefly from French. Its poetical merit +is very small. The secular poetry also received a new impulse from +France. The brilliant and sprightly dialogue of the _Owl and +Nightingale_, which can hardly be dated later than about 1230, is a +"contention" of the type familiar in French and Provencal literature. +The "Gallic" type of humour may be seen in various other writings of +this period, notably in the _Land of Cockaigne_, a vivacious satire on +monastic self-indulgence, and in the fabliau of _Dame Siviz_, a story of +Eastern origin, told with almost Chaucerian skill. Predominantly, though +not exclusively French in metrical structure, are the charming love +poems collected in a MS. (Harl. 2253) written about 1320 in +Herefordshire, some of which (edited in T. Wright's _Specimens of Lyric +Poetry_) find a place in modern popular anthologies. It is noteworthy +that they are accompanied by some French lyrics very similar in style. +The same MS. contains, besides some religious poetry, a number of +political songs of the time of Edward II. They are not quite the +earliest examples of their kind; in the time of the Barons' War the +popular cause had had its singers in English as well as in French. +Later, the victories of Edward III. down to the taking of Guisnes in +1352, were celebrated by the Yorkshireman Laurence Minot in alliterative +verse with strophic arrangement and rhyme. + +At the very beginning of the 13th century a new species of composition, +the metrical chronicle, was introduced into English literature. The huge +work of Layamon, a history (mainly legendary) of Britain from the time +of the mythical Brutus till after the mission of Augustine, is a free +rendering of the Norman-French _Brut_ of Wace, with extensive additions +from traditional sources. Its metre seems to be a degenerate survival of +the Old English alliterative line, gradually modified in the course of +the work by assimilation to the regular syllabic measure of the French +original. Unquestionable evidence of the knowledge of the poem on the +part of later writers is scarce, but distinct echoes of its diction +appear in the chronicle ascribed to Robert of Gloucester, written in +rhymed septenary measures about 1300. This work, founded in its earlier +part on the Latin historians of the 12th century, is an independent +historical source of some value for the events of the writer's own +times. The succession of versified histories of England was continued by +Thomas Bek of Castleford in Yorkshire (whose work still awaits an +editor), and by Robert Mannyng of Brunne (Bourne, Lincolnshire). +Mannyng's chronicle, finished in 1338, is a translation, in its earlier +part from Wace's _Brut_, and in its later part from an Anglo-French +chronicle (still extant) written by Peter Langtoft, canon of +Bridlington. + +Not far from the year 1300 (for the most part probably earlier rather +than later) a vast mass of hagiological and homiletic verse was produced +in divers parts of England. To Gloucester belongs an extensive series +of Lives of Saints, metrically and linguistically closely resembling +Robert of Gloucester's Chronicle, and perhaps wholly or in part of the +same authorship. A similar collection was written in the north of +England, as well as a large body of homilies showing considerable poetic +skill, and abounding in exempla or illustrative stories. Of _exempla_ +several prose collections had already been made in Anglo-French, and +William of Wadington's poem _Manuel des peches_, which contains a great +number of them, was translated in 1303 by Robert Mannyng already +mentioned, with some enlargement of the anecdotic element, and frequent +omissions of didactic passages. The great rhyming chronicle of Scripture +history entitled _Cursor Mundi_ (q.v.) was written in the north about +this time. It was extensively read and transcribed, and exercised a +powerful influence on later writers down to the end of the 14th century. +The remaining homiletic verse of this period is too abundant to be +referred to in detail; it will be enough to mention the sermons of +William of Shoreham, written in strophic form, but showing little either +of metrical skill or poetic feeling. To the next generation belongs the +_Pricke of Conscience_ by Richard Rolle, the influence of which was not +less powerful than that of the author's prose writings. + +Romantic poetry, which in French had been extensively cultivated, both +on the continent and in England from the early years of the 12th +century, did not assume a vernacular form till about 1250. In the next +hundred years its development was marvellously rapid. Of the vast mass +of metrical romances produced during this period no detailed account +need here be attempted (see ROMANCE, and articles, &c. referred to; +ARTHURIAN ROMANCE). Native English traditions form the basis of _King +Horn_, _Guy of Warwick_, _Bevis of Hamtoun_ and _Havelok_, though the +stories were first put into literary form by Anglo-Norman poets. The +popularity of these home-grown tales (with which may be classed the +wildly fictitious _Coer de Lion_) was soon rivalled by that of +importations from France. The English rendering of _Floris and +Blancheflur_ (a love-romance of Greek origin) is found in the same MS. +that contains the earliest copy of _King Horn_. Before the end of the +century, the French "matter of Britain" was represented in English by +the Southern _Arthur and Merlin_ and the Northern _Tristram_ and _Yvaine +and Gawin_, the "matter of France" by _Roland and Vernagu_ and _Otuel_; +the _Alexander_ was also translated, but in this instance the immediate +original was an Anglo-French and not a continental poem. The tale of +Troy did not come into English till long afterwards. The Auchinleck MS., +written about 1330, contains no fewer than 14 poetical romances; there +were many others in circulation, and the number continued to grow. About +the middle of the 14th century, the Old English alliterative long line, +which for centuries had been used only in unwritten minstrel poetry, +emerges again in literature. One of the earliest poems in this revived +measure, _Wynnere and Wastour_, written in 1352, is by a professional +reciter-poet, who complains bitterly that original minstrel poetry no +longer finds a welcome in the halls of great nobles, who prefer to +listen to those who recite verses not of their own making. About the +same date the metre began to be employed by men of letters for the +translation of romance--_William of Palerne_ and _Joseph of Arimathea_ +from the French, _Alexander_ from Latin prose. The later development of +alliterative poetry belongs mainly to the age of Chaucer. + +The extent and character of the literature produced during the first +half of the 14th century indicate that the literary use of the native +tongue was no longer, as in the preceding age, a mere condescension to +the needs of the common people. The rapid disuse of French as the +ordinary medium of intercourse among the middle and higher ranks of +society, and the consequent substitution of English for French as the +vehicle of school instruction, created a widespread demand for +vernacular reading. The literature which arose in answer to this demand, +though it consisted mainly of translations or adaptations of foreign +works, yet served to develop the appreciation of poetic beauty, and to +prepare an audience in the near future for a poetry in which the genuine +thought and feeling of the nation were to find expression. + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Only general works need be mentioned here. Those cited + contain lists of books for more detailed information. (1) For the + literature from the beginnings to Chaucer:--B. ten Brink, _Geschichte + der englischen Litteratur_, vol. i. 2nd ed., by A. Brandl (Strassburg, + 1899) (English translation from the 1st ed. of 1877, by H.M. Kennedy, + London, 1883); _The Cambridge History of English Literature_, vol. i. + (1907). (2) For the Old English period:--R. Wulker, _Grundriss zur + Geschichte der angelsachsischen Litteratur_ (Leipzig, 1885); Stopford + A. Brooke, _English Literature from the Beginning to the Norman + Conquest_ (London, 1898); A. Brandl, "Altenglische Litteratur," in H. + Paul's _Grundriss der germanischen Philologie_, vol. ii. (2nd ed., + Strassburg, 1908). (3) For the early Middle English Period:--H. + Morley, _English Writers_, vol. iii. (London, 1888; vols. i. and ii., + dealing with the Old English period, cannot be recommended); A. + Brandl, "Mittelenglische Litteratur," in H. Paul's _Grundriss der + germanischen Philologie_, vol. ii. (1st ed., Strassburg, 1893); W.H. + Schofield, _English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer_ + (London, 1906). (H. Br.) + + +II. CHAUCER TO THE RENAISSANCE + +The age of Chaucer is of peculiar interest to the student of literature, +not only because of its brilliance and productiveness but also because +of its apparent promise for the future. In this, as in other aspects, +Chaucer (c. 1340-1400) is its most notable literary figure. Beginning as +a student and imitator of the best French poetry of his day, he was for +a time, like most of his French contemporaries, little more than a +skilful maker of elegant verses, dealing with conventional material in a +conventional way, arranging in new figures the same flowers and bowers, +sunsets and song-birds, and companies of fair women and their lovers, +that had been arranged and rearranged by every poet of the court circle +for a hundred years, and celebrated in sweet phrases of almost unvarying +sameness. Even at this time, to be sure, he was not without close and +loving observation of the living creatures of the real world, and his +verses often bring us flowers dewy and fragrant and fresh of colour as +they grew in the fields and gardens about London, and birds that had +learned their music in the woods; but his poetry was still not easily +distinguishable from that of Machault, Froissart, Deschamps, Transoun +and the other "courtly makers" of France. But while he was still +striving to master perfectly the technique of this pretty art of +trifling, he became acquainted with the new literature of Italy, both +poetry and prose. Much of the new poetry moved, like that of France, +among the conventionalities and artificialities of an unreal world of +romance, but it was of wider range, of fuller tone, of far greater +emotional intensity, and, at its best, was the fabric, not of elegant +ingenuity, but of creative human passion,--in Dante, indeed, a wonderful +visionary structure in which love and hate, and pity and terror, and the +forms and countenances of men were more vivid and real than in the world +of real men and real passions. The new prose--which Chaucer knew in +several of the writings of Boccaccio--was vastly different from any that +he had ever read in a modern tongue. Here were no mere brief anecdotes +like those _exempla_ which in the middle ages illustrated vernacular as +well as Latin sermons, no cumbrous, slow-moving treatises on the Seven +Deadly Sins, no half-articulate, pious meditations, but rapid, vivid, +well-constructed narratives ranging from the sentimental beauty of +stories like Griselda and the Franklin's Tale to coarse mirth and +malodorous vulgarity equal to those of the tales told later by Chaucer's +Miller and Reeve and Summoner. All these things he studied and some he +imitated. There is scarcely a feature of the verse that has not left +some trace in his own; the prose he did not imitate as prose, but there +can be little doubt that the subject matter of Boccaccio's tales and +novels, as well as his poems, affected the direction of Chaucer's +literary development, and quickened his habit of observing and utilizing +human life, and that the narrative art of the prose was influential in +the transformation of his methods of narration. + +This transformation was effected not so much through the mere +superiority of the Italian models to the French as through the stimulus +which the differences between the two gave to his reflections upon the +processes and technique of composition, for Chaucer was not a careless, +happy-go-lucky poet of divine endowment, but a conscious, reflective +artist, seeking not merely for fine words and fine sentiments, but for +the proper arrangement of events, the significant exponent of character, +the right tone, and even the appropriate background and atmosphere,--as +may be seen, for example, in the transformations he wrought in the +_Pardoner's Tale_. It is therefore in the latest and most original of +the _Canterbury Tales_ that his art is most admirable, most +distinguished by technical excellences. In these we find so many +admirable qualities that we almost forget that he had any defects. His +diction is a model of picturesqueness, of simplicity, of dignity, and of +perfect adaptation to his theme; his versification is not only correct +but musical and varied, and shows a progressive tendency towards freer +and more complex melodies; his best tales are not mere repetitions of +the ancient stories they retell, but new creations, transformed by his +own imaginative realization of them, full of figures having the +dimensions and the vivacity of real life, acting on adequate motives, +and moving in an atmosphere and against a background appropriate to +their characters and their actions. In the tales of the Pardoner, the +Franklin, the Summoner, the Squire, he is no less notable as a +consummate artist than as a poet. + +Chaucer, however, was not the only writer of his day remarkable for +mastery of technique. Gower, indeed, though a man of much learning and +intelligence, was neither a poet of the first rank nor an artist. +Despite the admirable qualities of clearness, order and occasional +picturesqueness which distinguish his work, he lacked the ability which +great poets have of making their words mean more than they say, and of +stirring the emotions even beyond the bounds of this enhanced meaning; +and there is not, perhaps, in all his voluminous work in English, French +and Latin, any indication that he regarded composition as an art +requiring consideration or any care beyond that of conforming to the +chosen rhythm and finding suitable rhymes. + +There were others more richly endowed as poets and more finely developed +as artists. There was the beginner of the _Piers Plowman_ cycle[1], the +author of the Prologue and first eight passus of the A-text, a man of +clear and profound observation, a poet whose imagination brought before +him with distinctness and reality visual images of the motley +individuals and masses of men of whom he wrote, an artist who knew how +to organize and direct the figures of his dream-world, the movement of +his ever-unfolding vision. There was the remarkable successor of this +man, the author of the B-text, an almost prophetic figure, a great +poetic idealist, and, helpless though he often was in the direction of +his thought, an absolute master of images and words that seize upon the +heart and haunt the memory. Besides these, an unknown writer far in the +north-west had, in _Gawayne and the Grene Knight_, transformed the +medieval romance into a thing of speed and colour, of vitality and +mystery, no less remarkable for its fluent definiteness of form than for +the delights of hall-feast and hunt, the graceful comedy of temptation, +and the lonely ride of the doomed Gawayne through the silence of the +forest and the deep snow. In the same region, by its author's power of +visual imagination, the Biblical paraphrase, so often a mere humdrum +narrative, had been transformed, in _Patience_, into a narrative so +detailed and vivid that the reader is almost ready to believe that the +author himself, rather than Jonah, went down into the sea in the belly +of the great fish, and sat humbled and rebuked beside the withered +gourd-vine. And there also, by some strange chance, blossomed, with +perhaps only a local and temporary fragrance until its rediscovery in +the 19th century, that delicate flower of loneliness and aspiration, +_Pearl_, a wonder of elaborate art as well as of touching sentiment. + +All these writings are great, not only relatively, but absolutely. There +is not one of them which would not, if written in our own time, +immediately mark its author as a man of very unusual ability. But the +point of special concern to us at the present moment is not so much that +they show remarkable poetic power, as that they possess technical merits +of a very high order. And we are accustomed to believe that, although +genius is a purely personal and incommunicable element, technical gains +are a common possession; that after Marlowe had developed the technique +of blank verse, this technique was available for all; that after Pope +had mastered the heroic couplet and Gray the ode, and Poe the short +story, all men could write couplets and odes and short stories of +technical correctness; that, as Tennyson puts it, + + "All can grow the flower now, + For all have got the seed." + +But this was singularly untrue of the technical gains made by Chaucer +and his great contemporaries. _Pearl_ and _Patience_ were apparently +unknown to the 15th century, but _Gawayne_ and _Piers Plowman_ and +Chaucer's works were known and were influential in one way or another +throughout the century. _Gawayne_ called into existence a large number +of romances dealing with the same hero or with somewhat similar +situations, some of them written in verse suggested by the remarkable +verse of their model, but the resemblance, even in versification, is +only superficial. _Piers Plowman_ gave rise to satirical allegories +written in the alliterative long line and furnished the figures and the +machinery for many satires in other metres, but the technical excellence +of the first _Piers Plowman_ poem was soon buried for centuries under +the tremendous social significance of itself and its successors. And +Chaucer, in spite of the fact that he was praised and imitated by many +writers and definitely claimed as master by more than one, not only +transmitted to them scarcely any of the technical conquests he had made, +but seems also to have been almost without success in creating any +change in the taste of the public that read his poems so eagerly, any +demand for better literature than had been written by his predecessors. + +Wide and lasting Chaucer's influence undoubtedly was. Not only was all +the court-poetry, all the poetry of writers who pretended to cultivation +and refinement, throughout the century, in England and Scotland, either +directly or indirectly imitative of his work, but even the humblest +productions of unpretentious writers show at times traces of his +influence. Scotland was fortunate in having writers of greater ability +than England had (see SCOTLAND: _Literature_). In England the three +chief followers of Chaucer known to us by name are Lydgate, Hoccleve +(see OCCLEVE) and Hawes. Because of their praise of Chaucer and their +supposed personal relations to him, Lydgate and Hoccleve are almost +inseparable in modern discussions, but 15th century readers and writers +appear not to have associated them very closely. Indeed, Hoccleve is +rarely mentioned, while Lydgate is not only mentioned continually, but +continually praised as Chaucer's equal or even superior. Hoccleve was +not, to be sure, as prolific as Lydgate, but it is difficult to +understand why his work, which compares favourably in quality with +Lydgate's, attracted so much less attention. The title of his greatest +poem, _De regimine principum_, may have repelled readers who were not +princely born, though they would have found the work full of the moral +and prudential maxims and illustrative anecdotes so dear to them; but +his attack upon Sir John Oldcastle as a heretic ought to have been +decidedly to the taste of the orthodox upper classes, while his +lamentations over his misspent youth, his tales and some of his minor +poems might have interested any one. Of a less vigorous spirit than +Lydgate, he was, in his mild way, more humorous and more original. Also +despite his sense of personal loss in Chaucer's death and his care to +transmit to posterity the likeness of his beloved master, he seems to +have been less slavish than Lydgate in imitating him. His memory is full +of Chaucer's phrases, he writes in verse-forms hallowed by the master's +use, and he tries to give to his lines the movement of Chaucer's +decasyllables, but he is comparatively free from the influence of those +early allegorical works of the Master which produced in the 15th century +so dreary a flock of imitations. + +Lydgate's productivity was enormous,--how great no man can say, for, as +was the case with Chaucer also, his fame caused many masterless poems to +be ascribed to him, but, after making all necessary deductions, the +amount of verse that has come down to us from him is astonishing. Here +it may suffice to say that his translations are predominantly epic +(140,000 lines), and his original compositions predominantly allegorical +love poems or didactic poems. If there is anything duller than a dull +epic it is a dull allegory, and Lydgate has achieved both. This is not +to deny the existence of good passages in his epics and ingenuity in his +allegories, but there is no pervading, persistent life in either. His +epics, like almost all the narrative verse of the time, whether epic, +legend, versified chronicle or metrical romance, seem designed merely to +satisfy the desire of 15th century readers for information, the craving +for facts--true or fictitious--the same craving that made possible the +poems on alchemy, on hunting, on manners and morals, on the duties of +parish priests, on the seven liberal arts. His allegories, like most +allegories of the age, are ingenious rearrangements of old figures and +old machinery, they are full of what had once been imagination but had +become merely memory assisted by cleverness. The great fault of all his +work, as of nearly all the literature of the age, is that it is merely a +more or less skilful manipulation of what the author had somewhere read +or heard, and not a faithful transcript of the author's own peculiar +sense or conception of what he had seen or heard or read. The fault is +not that the old is repeated, that a twice-told tale is retold, but that +it is retold without being re-imagined by the teller of the tale, +without taking on from his personality something that was not in it +before. Style, to be sure, was a thing that Lydgate and his fellows +tried to supply, and some of them supplied it abundantly according to +their lights. But style meant to them external decoration, classical +allusions, personifications, an inverted or even dislocated order of +words, and that famous "ornate diction," those "aureate terms," with +which they strove to surpass the melody, picturesqueness and dignity +which, for all its simplicity, they somehow dimly discerned in the +diction of Chaucer. + +Stephen Hawes, with his allegorical treatise on the seven liberal +sciences, came later than these men, only to write worse. He was a +disciple of Lydgate rather than of Chaucer, and is not only lacking in +the vigour and sensitiveness which Lydgate sometimes displays, but +exaggerates the defects of his master. If it be a merit to have +conceived the pursuit of knowledge under the form of the efforts of a +knight to win the hand of his lady, it is almost the sole merit to which +Hawes can lay claim. Two or three good situations, an episode of low +comedy, and the epitaph of the Knight with its famous final couplet, +exhaust the list of his credits. The efforts that have been made to +trace through Hawes the line of Spenser's spiritual ancestry seem not +well advised. The resemblances that have been pointed out are such as +arise inevitably from the allegories and from the traditional material +with which both worked. There is no reason to believe that Spenser owed +his general conception to Hawes, or that the _Faery Queene_ would have +differed in even the slightest detail from its present form if the +_Pastime of Pleasure_ had never been written. The machinery of chivalric +romance had already been applied to spiritual and moral themes in Spain +without the aid of Hawes. + +It is obvious that the fundamental lack of all these men was imaginative +power, poetic ability. This is a sufficient reason for failure to write +good poetry. But why did not men of better ability devote themselves to +literature in this age? Was it because of the perturbed conditions +arising from the prevalence of foreign and civil wars? Perhaps not, +though it is clear that if Sir Thomas Malory had perished in one of the +many fights through which he lived, the chivalric and literary impulses +which he perhaps received from the "Fadre of Curteisy," Richard +Beauchamp, earl of Warwick, would have gone for nothing and we should +lack the _Morte Darthur_. But it may very well be that the wars and the +tremendous industrial growth of England fixed the attention of the +strongest and most original spirits among the younger men and so +withdrew them from the possible attractions of literature. But, after +all, whatever general truth may lie in such speculations, the way of a +young man with his own life is as incalculable as any of the four things +which Agur son of Jakeh declared to be past finding out; local and +special accidents rather than general communal influences are apt to +shape the choice of boys of exceptional character, and we have many +instances of great talents turning to literature or art when war or +commerce or science was the dominant attraction of social life. + +But even recognizing that the followers of Chaucer were not men of +genius, it seems strange that their imitation of Chaucer was what it +was. They not only entirely failed to see what his merits as an artist +were and how greatly superior his mature work is to his earlier in point +of technique; they even preferred the earlier and imitated it almost +exclusively. Furthermore, his mastery of verse seemed to them to consist +solely in writing verses of approximately four or five stresses and +arranging them in couplets or in stanzas of seven or eight lines. Their +preference for the early allegorical work can be explained by their lack +of taste and critical discernment and by the great vogue of allegorical +writing in England and France. Men who are just beginning to think about +the distinction between literature and ordinary writing usually feel +that it consists in making literary expression differ as widely as +possible from simple direct speech. For this reason some sort of +artificial diction is developed and some artificial word order devised. +Allegory is used as an elegant method of avoiding unpoetical plainness, +and is an easy means of substituting logic for imagination. The failure +to reproduce in some degree at least the melody and smoothness of +Chaucer's decasyllabic verse, and the particular form which that failure +took in Lydgate, are to be explained by the fact that Lydgate and his +fellows never knew how Chaucer's verse sounded when properly read. It is +a mistake to suppose that the disappearance of final unaccented _e_ from +many words or its instability in many others made it difficult for +Lydgate and his fellows to write melodious verse. Melodious verse has +been written since the disappearance of all these sounds, and the +possibility of a choice between a form with final _e_ and one without it +is not a hindrance but an advantage to a poet, as Goethe, Schiller, +Heine and innumerable German poets have shown by their practice. The +real difficulty with these men was that they pronounced Chaucer's verse +as if it were written in the English of their own day. As a matter of +fact all the types of verse discovered by scholars in Lydgate's poems +can be discovered in Chaucer's also if they be read with Lydgate's +pronunciation. Chaucer did not write archaic English, as some have +supposed,--that is, English of an earlier age than his own,--it would +have been impossible for him to do so with the unfailing accuracy he +shows; he did, however, write a conservative, perhaps an old-fashioned, +English, such as was spoken by the conservative members of the class of +society to which he was attached and for which he wrote. An English with +fewer final _e_'s was already in existence among the less conservative +classes, and this rapidly became standard English in consequence of the +social changes which occurred during his own life. We know that a +misunderstanding of Chaucer's verse existed from the 16th century to the +time of Thomas Tyrwhitt; it seems clear that it began even earlier, in +Chaucer's own lifetime. + +There are several poems of the 15th century which were long ascribed to +Chaucer. Among them are:--the _Complaint of the Black Knight_, or +_Complaint of a Lover's Life_, now known to be Lydgate's; the _Mother of +God_, now ascribed to Hoccleve; the _Cuckoo and the Nightingale_, by +Clanvowe; _La Belle Dame sans merci_, a translation from the French of +Alain Chartier by Richard Ros; _Chaucer's Dream, or the Isle of Ladies_; +the _Assembly of Ladies_; the _Flower and the Leaf_; and the _Court of +Love_. The two poems of Lydgate and Hoccleve are as good as Chaucer's +poorest work. The _Assembly of Ladies_ and the _Flower and the Leaf_ are +perhaps better than the _Book of the Duchess_, but not so good as the +_Parliament of Fowls_. The _Flower and the Leaf_, it will be remembered, +was very dear to John Keats, who, like all his contemporaries, regarded +it as Chaucer's. An additional interest attaches to both it and the +_Assembly of Ladies_, from the fact that the author may have been a +woman; Professor Skeat is, indeed, confident that he knows who the woman +was and when she wrote. These poems, like the _Court of Love_, are +thoroughly conventional in material, all the figures and poetical +machinery may be found in dozens of other poems in England and France, +as Professor Neilson has shown for the _Court of Love_ and Mr Marsh for +the _Flower and the Leaf_; but there are a freshness of spirit and a +love of beauty in them that are not common; the conventional birds and +flowers are there, but they seem, like those of Chaucer's _Legend_, to +have some touch of life, and the conventional companies of ladies and +gentlemen ride and talk and walk with natural grace and ease. The _Court +of Love_ is usually ascribed to a very late date, as late even as the +middle of the 16th century. If this is correct, it is a notable instance +of the persistence of a Chaucerian influence. An effort has been made, +to be sure, to show that it was written by Scogan and that the writing +of it constituted the offence mentioned by Chaucer in his _Envoy to +Scogan_, but it has been clearly shown that this is impossible, both +because the language is later than Scogan's time and because nothing in +the poem resembles the offence clearly described by Chaucer. + +Whatever may be true of the authorship of the _Assembly of Ladies_ and +the _Flower and the Leaf_, there were women writers in England in the +middle ages. Juliana of Norwich wrote her _Revelations of Divine Love_ +before 1400. The much discussed Dame Juliana Berners, the supposed +compiler of the treatise on hunting in the _Book of St Albans_, may be +mythical, though there is no reason why a woman should not have written +such a book; and a shadowy figure that disappears entirely in the +sunlight is the supposed authoress of the _Nut Brown Maid_, for if +language is capable of definite meaning, the last stanza declares +unequivocally that the poem is the work of a man. But there is a poem +warning young women against entering a nunnery which may be by a woman, +and there is an interesting entry among the records of New Romney for +1463-1464, "Paid to Agnes Forde for the play of the Interlude of our +Lord's Passion, 6s. 8d.," which is apparently the earliest mention of a +woman dramatist in England. Finally, Margaret, countess of Richmond, the +mother of Henry VII., not only aided scholars and encouraged writers, +but herself translated the (spurious) fourth book of St Thomas a +Kempis's _Imitatio Christi_. Another Margaret, the duchess of Burgundy, +it will be remembered, encouraged Caxton in his translation and +printing. Women seem, indeed, to have been especially lovers of books +and patrons of writers, and Skelton, if we may believe his _Garland of +Laurel_, was surrounded by a bevy of ladies comparable to a modern +literary club; Erasmus's Suffragette Convention may correspond to no +reality, but the Learned Lady arguing against the Monk for the +usefulness and pleasure derived from books was not an unknown type. +Women were capable of many things in the middle ages. English records +show them to have been physicians, churchwardens, justices of the peace +and sheriffs, and, according to a satirist, they were also priests. + +The most original and powerful poetry of the 15th century was composed +in popular forms for the ear of the common people and was apparently +written without conscious artistic purpose. Three classes of productions +deserve special attention,--songs and carols, popular ballads and +certain dramatic compositions. The songs and carols belong to a species +which may have existed in England before the Norman Conquest, but which +certainly was greatly modified by the musical and lyric forms of France. +The best of them are the direct and simple if not entirely artless +expressions of personal emotion, and even when they contain, as they +sometimes do, the description of a person, a situation, or an event, +they deal with these things so subjectively, confine themselves so +closely to the rendering of the emotional effect upon the singer, that +they lose none of their directness or simplicity. Some of them deal with +secular subjects, some with religious, and some are curious and +delightful blendings of religious worship and aspiration with earthly +tenderness for the embodiments of helpless infancy and protecting +motherhood which gave Christianity so much of its power over the +affections and imagination of the middle ages. Even those which begin as +mere expressions of joy in the Yule-tide eating and drinking and +merriment catch at moments hints of higher joys, of finer emotions, and +lift singer and hearer above the noise and stir of earth. Hundreds of +songs written and sung in the 15th century must have perished; many, no +doubt, lived only a single season and were never even written down; but +chance has preserved enough of them to make us wonder at the age which +could produce such masterpieces of tantalizing simplicity. + +The lyrics which describe a situation form a logical, if not a real +transition to those which narrate an episode or an event. The most +famous of the latter, the _Nut Brown Maid_, has often been called a +ballad, and "lyrical ballad" it is in the sense established by Coleridge +and Wordsworth, but its affinities are rather with the song or carol +than with the folk-ballad, and, like Henryson's charming _Robin and +Malkin_, it is certainly the work of a man of culture and of conscious +artistic purpose and methods. Unaccompanied, as it is, by any other work +of the same author, this poem, with its remarkable technical merits, is +an even more astonishing literary phenomenon than the famous single +sonnet of Blanco White. It can hardly be doubted that the author learned +his technique from the songs and carols. + +The folk-ballad, like the song or carol, belongs in some form to +immemorial antiquity. It is doubtless a mistake to suppose that any +ballad has been preserved to us that is a purely communal product, a +confection of the common knowledge, traditions and emotions of the +community wrought by subconscious processes into a song that finds +chance but inevitable utterance through one or more individuals as the +whole commune moves in its molecular dance. But it is equally a mistake +to argue that ballads are essentially metrical romances in a state of +decay. Both the matter and the manner of most of the best ballads forbid +such a supposition, and it can hardly be doubted that in some of the +folk-ballads of the 15th century are preserved not only traditions of +dateless antiquity, but formal elements and technical processes that +actually are derived from communal song and dance. By the 15th century, +however, communal habits and processes of composition had ceased, and +the traditional elements, formulae and technique had become merely +conventional aids and guides for the individual singer. Ancient as they +were, conventional as, in a sense, they also were, they exercised none +of the deadening, benumbing influence of ordinary conventions. They +furnished, one may say, a vibrant framework of emotional expression, +each tone of which moved the hearers all the more powerfully because it +had sung to them so many old, unhappy, far-off things, so many battles +and treacheries and sudden griefs; a framework which the individual +singer needed only to fill out with the simplest statement of the event +which had stirred his own imagination and passions to produce, not a +work of art, but a song of universal appeal. Not a work of art, because +there are scarcely half a dozen ballads that are really works of art, +and the greatest ballads are not among these. There is scarcely one that +is free from excrescences, from dulness, from trivialities, from +additions that would spoil their greatest situations and their greatest +lines, were it not that we resolutely shut our ears and our eyes, as we +should, to all but their greatest moments. But at their best moments the +best ballads have an almost incomparable power, and to a people sick, as +we are, of the ordinary, the usual, the very trivialities and +impertinences of the ballads only help to define and emphasize these +best moments. In histories of English literature the ballads have been +so commonly discussed in connexion with their rediscovery in the 18th +century, that we are apt to forget that some of the very best were +demonstrably composed in the 15th and that many others of uncertain date +probably belong to the same time. + +Along with the genuine ballads dealing with a recent event or a +traditional theme there were ballads in which earlier romances are +retold in ballad style. This was doubtless inevitable in view of the +increasing epic tendency of the ballad and the interest still felt in +metrical romances, but it should not mislead us into regarding the +genuine folk-ballad as an out-growth of the metrical romance. + +Besides the ordinary epic or narrative ballad, the 15th century produced +ballads in dramatic form, or, perhaps it were better to say, dramatized +some of its epic ballads. How commonly this was done we do not know, +but the scanty records of the period indicate that it was a widespread +custom, though only three plays of this character (all concerning Robin +Hood) have come down to us. These plays had, however, no further +independent development, but merely furnished elements of incident and +atmosphere to later plays of a more highly organized type. With these +ballad plays may also be mentioned the Christmas plays (usually of St +George) and the sword-dance plays, which also flourished in the 15th +century, but survive for us only as obscure elements in the masques and +plays of Ben Jonson and in such modern rustic performances as Thomas +Hardy has so charmingly described in _The Return of the Native_. + +The additions which the 15th century made to the ancient cycles of +Scripture plays, the so-called Mysteries, are another instance of a +literary effort which spent itself in vain (see DRAMA). The most notable +of these are, of course, the world renowned comic scenes in the +_Towneley_ (or _Wakefield_) _Plays_, in the pageants of Cain, of Noah +and of the Shepherds. In none of these is the 15th century writer +responsible for the original comic intention; in the pageants of Cain +and of the Shepherds fragments of the work of a 14th century writer +still remain to prove the earlier existence of the comic conception, and +that it was traditional in the Noah pageant we know from the testimony +of Chaucer's Miller; but none the less the 15th century writer was a +comic dramatist of original power and of a skill in the development of +both character and situation previously unexampled in England. The +inability of Lydgate to develop a comic conception is strikingly +displayed if one compares his _Pageant for Presentation before the King +at Hereford_ with the work of this unknown artist. But in our admiration +for this man and his famous episode of Mak and the fictitious infant, we +are apt to forget the equally fine, though very different qualities +shown in some of the later pageants of the _York Plays_. Such, for +example, is the final pageant, that of the _Last Judgment_, a drama of +slow and majestic movement, to be sure, but with a large and fine +conception of the great situation, and a noble and dignified elocution +not inadequate to the theme. + +The _Abraham and Isaac_ play of the Brome MS., extant as a separate play +and perhaps so performed, which has been so greatly admired for its +cumulative pathos, also belongs demonstrably to this century. It is not, +as has been supposed, an intermediate stage between French plays and the +Chester _Abraham and Isaac_, but is derived directly from the latter by +processes which comparison of the two easily reveals. Scripture plays of +a type entirely different from the well-known cyclic mysteries, +apparently confined to the Passion and Resurrection and the related +events, become known to us for the first time in the records of this +century. Such plays seem to have been confined to the towns of the +south, and, as both their location and their structure suggest, may have +been borrowed from France. In any event, the records show that they +flourished greatly and that new versions were made from time to time. + +Another form of the medieval drama, the Morality Play, had its origin in +the 15th century,--or else very late in the 14th. The earliest known +examples of it in England date from about 1420. These are the _Castle of +Perseverance_ and the _Pride of Life_. Others belonging to the century +are _Mind, Will and Understanding_, _Mankind_ and Medwall's _Nature_. +There are also parts of two pageants in the _Ludus Coventriae_ (c. 1460) +that are commonly classed as Moralities, and these, together with the +existence of a few personified abstractions in other plays, have led +some critics to suppose that the Morality was derived from the Mystery +by the gradual introduction of personified abstractions in the place of +real persons. But the two kinds of plays are fundamentally different, +different in subject and in technique; and no replacement of real +persons by personifications can change a Mystery into a Morality. +Moreover, the Morality features in Mysteries are later than the origin +of the Morality itself and are due to the influence of the latter. The +Morality Play is merely a dramatized allegory, and derives its +characters and its peculiar technique from the application of the +dramatic method to the allegory, the favourite literary form of the +middle ages. None of the 15th century Moralities is literature of the +first rank, though both the _Castle of Perseverance_ and _Pride of Life_ +contain passages ringing with a passionate sincerity that communicates +itself to the hearer or reader. But it was not until the beginning of +the 16th century that a Morality of permanent human interest appeared in +_Everyman_, which, after all, is a translation from the Dutch, as is +clearly proved by the fact that in the two prayers near the end of the +play the Dutch has complicated but regular stanzas, whereas the English +has only irregularly rhymed passages. + +Besides the Mysteries and Moralities, the 15th century had also Miracle +Plays, properly so called, dealing with the lives, martyrdoms and +miracles of saints. As we know these only from records of their +performance or their mere existence--no texts have been preserved to us, +except the very curious _Play of the Sacrament_--it is impossible to +speak of their literary or dramatic qualities. The Miracle Play as a +form was, of course, not confined to the 15th century. Notwithstanding +the assertions of historians of literature that it died out in England +soon after its introduction at the beginning of the 12th century, its +existence can be demonstrated from c. 1110 to the time of Shakespeare. +But records seem to indicate that it flourished especially during this +period of supposed barrenness. + +What was the nature of the "Komedy of Troylous and Pandor" performed +before Henry VIII. on the 6th of January 1516 we have no means of +knowing. It is very early indeed to assume the influence of either +classical or Italian drama, and although we have no records of similar +plays from the 15th century, it must be remembered that our records are +scanty, that the middle ages applied the dramatic method to all sorts of +material, and that it is therefore not impossible that secular plays +like this were performed at court at a much earlier date. The record at +any rate does not indicate that it was a new type of play, and the +Griselda story had been dramatized in France, Italy and the Netherlands +before 1500. + +That not much good prose was written in the 15th century is less +surprising than that so little good verse was written. The technique of +verse composition had been studied and mastered in the preceding age, as +we have seen, but the technique of prose had apparently received no +serious consideration. Indeed, it is doubtful if any one thought of +prose as a possible medium of artistic expression. Chaucer apparently +did not, in spite of the comparative excellence of his Preface to the +_Astrolabe_ and his occasional noteworthy successes with the +difficulties of the philosophy of Boethius; Wycliffe is usually clumsy; +and the translators of Mandeville, though they often give us passages of +great charm, obviously were plain men who merely translated as best they +could. There was, however, a comparatively large amount of prose written +in the 15th century, mainly for religious or educational purposes, +dealing with the same sorts of subjects that were dealt with in verse, +and in some cases not distinguishable from the verse by any feature but +the absence of rhyme. The vast body of this we must neglect; only five +writers need be named: John Capgrave, Reginald Pecock, Sir John +Fortescue, Caxton and Malory. Capgrave, the compiler of the first +chronicle in English prose since the Conquest, wrote by preference in +Latin; his English is a condescension to those who could not read Latin +and has the qualities which belong to the talk of an earnest and sincere +man of commonplace ability. Pecock and Fortescue are more important. +Pecock (c. 1395-c. 1460) was a man of singularly acute and logical mind. +He prided himself upon his dialectic skill and his faculty for +discovering arguments that had been overlooked by others. His writings, +therefore--or at least the _Repressor_--are excellent in general +structure and arrangement, his ideas are presented clearly and simply, +with few digressions or excrescences, and his sentences, though +sometimes too long, are more like modern prose than any others before +the age of Elizabeth. His style is lightened by frequent figures of +speech, mostly illustrative, and really illustrative, of his ideas, +while his intellectual ingenuity cannot fail to interest even those whom +his prejudices and preconceptions repel. Fortescue, like Capgrave, wrote +by preference in Latin, and, like Pecock, was philosophical and +controversial. But his principal English work, the _Difference between +an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy_, differs from Pecock's in being +rather a pleading than a logical argument, and the geniality and glowing +patriotism of its author give it a far greater human interest. + +No new era in literary composition was marked by the activity of William +Caxton as translator and publisher, though the printing-press has, of +course, changed fundamentally the problem of the dissemination and +preservation of culture, and thereby ultimately affected literary +production profoundly. But neither Caxton nor the writers whose works he +printed produced anything new in form or spirit. His publications range +over the whole field of 15th century literature, and no doubt he tried, +as his quaint prefaces indicate, to direct the public taste to what was +best among the works of the past, as when he printed and reprinted the +_Canterbury Tales_, but among all his numerous publications not one is +the herald of a new era. The only book of permanent interest as +literature which he introduced to the world was the _Morte Darthur_ of +Sir Thomas Malory, and this is a compilation from older romances (see +ARTHURIAN LEGEND). It is, to be sure, the one book of permanent literary +significance produced in England in the 15th century; it glows with the +warmth and beauty of the old knight's conception of chivalry and his +love for the great deeds and great men of the visionary past, and it +continually allures the reader by its fresh and vivid diction and by a +syntax which, though sometimes faulty, has almost always a certain naive +charm; "thystorye (i.e. the history) of the sayd Arthur," as Caxton long +ago declared, "is so gloryous and shynyng, that he is stalled in the +first place of the moost noble, beste and worthyest of the Crysten men"; +it is not, however, as the first of a new species, but as the final +flower of an old that this glorious and shining book retains its place +in English literature. + +Whatever may have been the effect of the wars and the growth of +industrial life in England in withdrawing men of the best abilities from +the pursuit of literature, neither these causes nor any other interfered +with the activity of writers of lesser powers. The amount of writing is +really astonishing, as is also its range. More than three hundred +separate works (exclusive of the large number still ascribed to Lydgate +and of the seventy printed by Caxton) have been made accessible by the +Early English Text Society and other public or private presses, and it +seems probable that an equal number remains as yet unpublished. No list +of these writings can be given here, but it may not be unprofitable to +indicate the range of interests by noting the classes of writing +represented. The classification is necessarily rough, as some writings +belong to more than one type. We may note, first, love poems, +allegorical and unallegorical, narrative, didactic, lyrical and +quasi-lyrical; poems autobiographical and exculpatory; poems of eulogy +and appeal for aid; tales of entertainment or instruction, in prose and +in verse; histories ancient and modern, and brief accounts of recent +historical events, in prose and in verse; prose romances and metrical +romances; legends and lives of saints, in prose and in verse; poems and +prose works of religious meditation, devotion and controversy; treatises +of religious instruction, in prose and in verse; ethical and +philosophical treatises, and ethical and prudential treatises; treatises +of government, of political economy, of foreign travel, of hygiene, of +surgery, of alchemy, of heraldry, of hunting and hawking and fishing, of +farming, of good manners, and of cooking and carving. Prosaic and +intended merely to serve practical uses as many of these were, verse is +the medium of expression as often as prose. Besides this large amount +and variety of English compositions, it must be remembered that much was +also written in Latin, and that Latin and French works of this and other +centuries were read by the educated classes. + +Although the intellectual and spiritual movement which we call the +Italian Renaissance was not unknown in England in the 14th and 15th +centuries, it is not strange that it exercised no perceptible influence +upon English literature, except in the case of Chaucer. Chaucer was the +only English man of letters before the 16th century who knew Italian +literature. The Italians who visited England and the Englishmen who +visited Italy were interested, not in literature, but in scholarship. +Such studies as were pursued by Free, Grey, Flemming, Tilly, Gunthorpe +and others who went to Italy, made them better grammarians and +rhetoricians, and no doubt gave them a freer, wider outlook, but upon +their return to England they were immediately absorbed in administrative +cares, which left them little leisure for literary composition, even if +they had had any inclination to write. They prepared the way, however, +for the leaders of the great intellectual awakening which began in +England with Linacre, Colet, More and their fellows, and which finally +culminated in the age of Spenser, Bacon, Shakespeare, Jonson, Gilbert, +Harvey and Harriott. + +When the middle ages ceased in England it is impossible to say +definitely. Long after the new learning and culture of the Renaissance +had been introduced there, long after classical and Italian models were +eagerly chosen and followed, the epic and lyric models of the middle +ages were admired and imitated, and the ancient forms of the drama lived +side by side with the new until the time of Shakespeare himself. John +Skelton, although according to Erasmus "unum Britannicarum literarum +lumen ac decus," and although possessing great originality and vigour +both in diction and in versification when attacking his enemies or +indulging in playful rhyming, was not only a great admirer of Lydgate, +but equalled even the worst of his predecessors in aureate pedantries of +diction, in complicated impossibilities of syntax, and in meaningless +inversions of word-order whenever he wished to write elegant and +dignified literature. And not a little of the absurd diction of the +middle of the 16th century is merely a continuation of the bad ideals +and practices of the refined writers of the 15th. + +In fine, the 15th century has, aside from its vigorous, though sometimes +coarse, popular productions, little that can interest the lover of +literature. It offers, however, in richest profusion problems for the +literary antiquarian and the student of the relations between social +conditions and literary productivity,--problems which have usually been +attacked only with the light weapons of irresponsible speculation, but +which may perhaps be solved by a careful comparative study of many +literatures and many periods. Moreover, although in the quality of its +literary output it is decidedly inferior to the 14th century, the amount +and the wide range of its productions indicate the gradual extension of +the habit of reading to classes of society that were previously +unlettered; and this was of great importance for the future of English +literature, just as the innumerable dramatic performances throughout +England were important in developing audiences for Marlowe and +Shakespeare and Beaumont and Fletcher. + + For bibliography see vol. ii. of the _Cambridge History of Literature_ + (1909); and Brandl's _Geschichte der mittelenglischen Literatur_ + (reprinted from Paul's _Grundriss der germanischen Philologie_). + Interesting general discussions may be found in the larger histories + of English Literature, such as Ten Brink's, Jusserand's, and (a little + more antiquated) Courthope's and Morley's. (J. M. Ma.) + + +III. ELIZABETHAN TIMES + +_General Influences, and Prologue to 1579._--The history of letters in +England from More's _Utopia_ (1516), the first Platonic vision, to +Milton's _Samson Agonistes_ (1671), the latest classic tragedy, is one +and continuous. That is the period of the English Renaissance, in the +wider sense, and it covers all and more of the literature loosely called +"Elizabethan." With all its complexity and subdivisions, it has as real +a unity as the age of Pericles, or that of Petrarch and Boccaccio, or +the period in Germany that includes both Lessing and Heine. It is +peculiar in length of span, in variety of power, and in wealth of +production, though its master-works on the greater scale are relatively +few. It is distinct, while never quite cut off, from the middle age +preceding, and also from the classical or "Augustan" age that followed. +The coming of Dryden denoted a new phase; but it was still a phase of +the Renaissance; and the break that declared itself about 1660 counts as +nothing beside the break with the middle ages; for this implied the +whole change in art, thought and temper, which re-created the European +mind. It is true that many filaments unite Renaissance and middle ages, +not only in the religious and purely intellectual region, but in that of +art. The matter of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the tales of Arthur and of +Troilus, the old fairy folklore of the South, the topic of the _Falls of +Princes_, lived on; and so did the characteristic medieval form, +allegory and many of the old metres of the 14th century. But then these +things were transformed, often out of knowledge. Shakespeare's use of +the histories of Macbeth, Lear and Troilus, and Spenser's of the +allegoric romance, are examples. And when the gifts of the middle ages +are not transformed, as in the _Mirror for Magistrates_, they strike us +as survivals from a lost world. + +So vital a change took long in the working. The English Renaissance of +letters only came into full flower during the last twenty years of the +16th century, later than in any Southern land; but it was all the richer +for delay, and would have missed many a life-giving element could it +have been driven forward sooner. If the actual process of genius is +beyond analysis, we can still notice the subjects which genius receives, +or chooses, to work upon, and also the vesture which it chooses for +them; and we can watch some of the forces that long retard but in the +end fertilize these workings of genius. + + + General forces. + +What, then, in England, were these forces? Two of them lie outside +letters, namely, the political settlement, culminating in the later +reign of Elizabeth, and the religious settlement, whereby the Anglican +Church grew out of the English Reformation. A third force lay within the +sphere of the Renaissance itself, in the narrower meaning of the term. +It was culture--the prefatory work of culture and education, which at +once prepared and put off the flowering of pure genius. "Elizabethan" +literature took its complexion from the circumstance that all these +three forces were in operation at once. The Church began to be fully +articulate, just when the national feeling was at its highest, and the +tides of classical and immigrant culture were strongest. Spenser's +_Faerie Queene_, Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_ and Shakespeare's +_Henry V._ came in the same decade (1590-1600). But these three forces, +political, religious and educational, were of very different duration +and value. The enthusiasm of 1590-1600 was already dying down in the +years 1600-1610, when the great tragedies were written; and soon a +wholly new set of political forces began to tell on art. The religious +inspiration was mainly confined to certain important channels; and +literature as a whole, from first to last, was far more secular than +religious. But Renaissance culture, in its ramifications and +consequences, tells all the time and over the whole field, from 1500 to +1660. It is this culture which really binds together the long and varied +chronicle. Before passing to narrative, a short review of each of these +elements is required. + + + Politics. + +Down to 1579 the Tudor rule was hardly a direct inspiration to authors. +The reign of Henry VII. was first duly told by Bacon, and that of Henry +VIII. staged by Shakespeare and Fletcher, in the time of James I. Sir +Thomas More found in Roper, and Wolsey in Cavendish, sound biographers, +who are nearly the earliest in the language. The later years of Henry +VIII. were full of episodes too tragically picturesque for safe handling +in the lifetime of his children. The next two reigns were engrossed with +the religious war; and the first twenty years of Elizabeth, if they laid +the bases of an age of peace, well-being, and national self-confidence +that was to prove a teeming soil for letters, were themselves poor in +themes for patriotic art. The abortive treason of the northern earls was +echoed only in a ringing ballad. But the voyagers, freebooters, and +explorers reported their experiences, as a duty, not for fame; and +these, though not till the golden age, were edited by Hakluyt, and +fledged the poetic fancies that took wing from the "Indian Peru" to the +"still-vext Bermoothes." Yet, in default of any true historian, the +queen's wise delays and diplomacies that upheld the English power, and +her refusal to launch on a Protestant or a national war until occasion +compelled and the country was ready, were subjects as uninspiring to +poets as the burning questions of the royal marriage or the royal title. +But by 1580 the nation was filled with the sense of Elizabeth's success +and greatness and of its own prosperity. No shorter struggle and no less +achievement could have nursed the insolent, jubilant patriotism of the +years that followed; a feeling that for good reasons was peculiar to +England among the nations, and created the peculiar forms of the +chronicle play and poem. These were borrowed neither from antiquity nor +from abroad, and were never afterwards revived. The same exultation +found its way into the current forms of ode and pastoral, of masque and +allegory, and into many a dedication and interlude of prose. It was so +strong as to outlive the age that gave it warrant. The passion for +England, the passion of England for herself, animates the bulk of +Drayton's _Poly-Olbion_, which was finished so late as 1622. But the +public issues were then changing, the temper was darker; and the civil +struggle was to speak less in poetry than in the prose of political +theory and ecclesiastical argument, until its after-explosion came in +the verse of Milton. + + + Religious change. + +The English Reformation, so long political rather than doctrinal or +imaginative, cost much writing on all sides; but no book like Calvin's +_Institution_ is its trophy, at once defining the religious change for +millions of later men and marking a term of departure in the national +prose. Still, the debating weapons, the axes and billhooks, of +vernacular English were sharpened--somewhat jaggedly--in the pamphlet +battles that dwarfed the original energies of Sir Thomas More and evoked +those of Tyndale and his friends. The powers of the same style were +proved for descriptive economy by Starkey's Dialogue between Pole and +Lupset, and for religious appeal by the blunt sound rhetoric and +forthright jests in the sermons of Latimer (died 1555). Foxe's reports +of the martyrs are the type of early Protestant English (1563); but the +reforming divines seldom became real men of letters even when their +Puritanism, or discontent with the final Anglican settlement and its +temper, began to announce itself. Their spirit, however, comes out in +many a corner of poetry, in Gascoigne's _Steel Glass_ as in Spenser's +_Shepherd's Calendar_; and the English Reformation lived partly on its +pre-natal memories of Langland as well as of Wycliffe. The fruit of the +struggle, though retarded, was ample. Carrying on the work of Fisher and +Cranmer, the new church became the nursing mother of English prose, and +trained it more than any single influence,--trained it so well, for the +purposes of sacred learning, translation and oratory, and also as a +medium of poetic feeling, that in these activities England came to rival +France. How late any religious writer of true rank arose may be seen by +the lapse of over half a century between Henry VIII.'s Act of Supremacy +and Hooker's treatise. But after Hooker the chain of eloquent divines +was unbroken for a hundred years. + + + Classical culture. + +Renaissance culture had many stages and was fed from many streams. At +the outset of the century, in the wake of Erasmus, under the teaching of +Colet and his friends, there spread a sounder knowledge of the Greek and +Latin tongues, of the classic texts, and so of the ancient life and +mind. This period of humanism in the stricter sense was far less +brilliant than in Italy and France. No very great scholar or savant +arose in Britain for a long time; but neo-Latin literature, the +satellite of scholarship, shone brightly in George Buchanan. But +scholarship was created and secured; and in at least one, rather +solitary, work of power, the _Utopia_ (which remained in Latin till +1551), the fundamental process was begun which appropriates the Greek +mind, not only for purposes of schooling, but as a source of new and +independent thinking. In and after the middle of the century the +classics were again put forward by Cheke, by Wilson in his _Art of +Rhetoric_ (1553), and by Ascham in his letters and in his _Schoolmaster_ +(1570), as the true staple of humane education, and the pattern for a +simple yet lettered English. The literature of translations from the +classics, in prose and verse, increased; and these works, at first +plain, business-like, and uninspired, slowly rose in style and power, +and at last, like the translations from modern tongues, were written by +a series of masters of English, who thus introduced Plutarch and Tacitus +to poets and historians. This labour of mediation was encouraged by the +rapid expansion and reform of the two universities, of which almost +every great master except Shakespeare was a member; and even Shakespeare +had ample Latin for his purpose. + + + Italy and France. + +The direct impact of the classics on "Elizabethan" literature, whether +through such translations or the originals, would take long to describe. +But their indirect impact is far stronger, though in result the two are +hard to discern. This is another point that distinguishes the English +Renaissance from the Italian or the French, and makes it more complex. +The knowledge of the thought, art and enthusiasms of Rome and Athens +constantly came round through Italy or France, tinted and charged in the +passage with something characteristic of those countries. The early +playwrights read Seneca in Latin and English, but also the foreign +Senecan tragedies. Spenser, when starting on his pastorals, studied the +Sicilians, but also Sannazaro and Marot. Shakespeare saw heroic +antiquity through Plutarch, but also, surely, through Montaigne's +reading of antiquity. Few of the poets can have distinguished the +original fountain of Plato from the canalized supply of the Italian +Neoplatonists. The influence, however, of Cicero on the Anglican pulpit +was immediate as well as constant; and so was that of the conciser Roman +masters, Sallust and Tacitus, on Ben Jonson and on Bacon. Such scattered +examples only intimate the existence of two great chapters of English +literary history,--the effects of the classics and the effects of Italy. +The bibliography of 16th-century translations from the Italian in the +fields of political and moral speculation, poetry, fiction and the +drama, is so large as itself to tell part of the story. The genius of +Italy served the genius of England in three distinctive ways. It +inspired the recovery, with new modulations, of a lost music and a lost +prosody. It modelled many of the chief poetic forms, which soon were +developed out of recognition; such were tragedy, allegory, song, +pastoral and sonnet. Thirdly, it disclosed some of the master-thoughts +upon government and conduct formed both by the old and the new +Mediterranean world. Machiavelli, the student of ancient Rome and modern +Italy, riveted the creed of Bacon. It might be said that never has any +modern people so influenced another in an equal space of time--and +letters, here as ever, are only the voice, the symbol, of a whole life +and culture--if we forgot the sway of French in the later 17th and 18th +centuries. And the power of French was alive also in the 16th. The track +of Marot, of Ronsard and the Pleiad and Desportes, of Rabelais and +Calvin and Montaigne, is found in England. Journeymen like Boisteau and +Belleforest handed on immortal tales. The influence is noteworthy of +Spanish mannerists, above all of Guevara upon sententious prose, and of +the novelists and humorists, headed by Cervantes, upon the drama. German +legend is found not only in Marlowe's _Faustus_, but in the by-ways of +play and story. It will be long before the rich and coloured tangle of +these threads has been completely unravelled with due tact and science. +The presence of one strand may here be mentioned, which appears in +unexpected spots. + + + Philosophy. + +As in Greece, and as in the day of Coleridge and Shelley, the fabric of +poetry and prose is shot through with philosophical ideas; a further +distinction from other literatures like the Spanish of the golden age or +the French of 1830. But these were not so much the ideas of the new +physical science and of Bacon as of the ethical and metaphysical +ferment. The wave of free talk in the circles of Marlowe, Greville and +Raleigh ripples through their writings. Though the direct influence of +Giordano Bruno on English writers is probably limited to a reminiscence +in the _Faerie Queene_ (Book vii.), he was well acquainted with Sidney +and Greville, argued for the Copernican theory at Greville's house, +lectured on the soul at Oxford, and published his epoch-marking Italian +dialogues during his two years' stay (1583-1585) in London. The debates +in the earlier schools of Italy on the nature and tenure of the soul are +heard in the _Nosce Teipsum_ (1599) of Sir John Davies; a stoicism, "of +the schools" as well as "of the blood," animates Cassius and also the +French heroes of Chapman; and if the earlier drama is sown with Seneca's +old maxims on sin and destiny, the later drama, at least in Shakespeare, +is penetrated with the freer reading of life and conduct suggested by +Montaigne. Platonism--with its _vox angelica_ sometimes a little +hoarse--is present from the youthful _Hymns_ of Spenser to the last +followers of Donne; sometimes drawn from Plato, it is oftener the +Christianized doctrine codified by Ficino or Pico. It must be noted that +this play of philosophic thought only becomes marked after 1580, when +the preparatory tunings of English literature are over. + +We may now quickly review the period down to 1580, in the departments of +prose, verse and drama. It was a time which left few memorials of form. + + + Prose to 1580. + +Early modern English prose, as a medium of art, was of slow growth. For +long there was alternate strife and union (ending in marriage) between +the Latin, or more rhetorical, and the ancestral elements of the +language, and this was true both of diction and of construction. We need +to begin with the talk of actual life, as we find it in the hands of the +more naif writers, in its idiom and gusto and unshapen power, to see how +style gradually declared itself. In state letters and reports, in the +recorded words of Elizabeth and Mary of Scotland and public men, in +travels and memoirs, in Latimer, in the rude early versions of Cicero +and Boethius, in the more unstudied speech of Ascham or Leland, the +material lies. At the other extreme there are the English liturgy (1549, +1552, 1559, with the final fusion of Anglican and Puritan eloquence), +and the sermons of Fisher and Cranmer,--nearly the first examples of a +sinuous, musical and Ciceronian cadence. A noble pattern for +saga-narrative and lyrical prose was achieved in the successive versions +(1526-1540-1568) of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, where a native +simple diction of short and melodious clauses are prescribed by the +matter itself. Prose, in fact, down to Shakespeare's time, was largely +the work of the churchmen and translators, aided by the chroniclers. +About the mid-century the stories, as well as the books of conduct and +maxim, drawn from Italy and France, begin to thicken. Perverted symmetry +of style is found in euphuistic hacks like Pettie. Painter's _Palace of +Pleasure_ (1566) provided the plots of Bandello and others for the +dramatists. Hoby's version (1561) of Castiglione's _Courtier_, with its +command of elate and subtle English, is the most notable imported book +between Berners's _Froissart_ (1523-1525) and North's _Plutarch_ (1579). +Ascham's _Schoolmaster_ is the most typical English book of Renaissance +culture, in its narrower sense, since _Utopia_. Holinshed's _Chronicle_ +(1577-1587) and the work of Halle, if pre-critical, were all the fitter +to minister to Shakespeare. + + + Verse to 1580. + +The lyric impulse was fledged anew at the court of Henry VIII. The short +lines and harping burdens of Sir Thomas Wyatt's songs show the revival, +not only of a love-poetry more plangent than anything in English since +Chaucer, but also of the long-deadened sense of metre. In Wyatt's +sonnets, octaves, terzines and other Italian measures, we can watch the +painful triumphant struggles of this noble old master out of the slough +of formlessness in which verse had been left by Skelton. Wyatt's primary +deed was his gradual rediscovery of the iambic decasyllabic line duly +accented--the line that had been first discovered by Chaucer for +England; and next came its building into sonnet and stanza. Wyatt (d. +1542) ended with perfect formal accuracy; he has the honours of victory; +and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey (d. 1547), a younger-hearted and more +gracious but a lighter poet, carried on his labour, and caught some of +Chaucer's as well as the Italian tunes. The blank verse of his two +translated _Aeneids_, like all that written previous to Peele, gave +little inkling of the latencies of the measure which was to become the +cardinal one of English poetry. It was already the vogue in Italy for +translations from the classics; and we may think of Surrey importing it +like an uncut jewel and barely conscious of its value. His original +poems, like those of Wyatt, waited for print till the eve of +Elizabeth's reign, when they appeared, with those of followers like +Grimoald, in Tottel's _Miscellany_ (1557), the first of many such +garlands, and the outward proof of the poetical revival dating twenty +years earlier. But this was a false dawn. Only one poem of authentic +power, Sackville's _Induction_ (1563) to that dreary patriotic venture, +_A Mirror for Magistrates_, was published for twenty years. In spirit +medieval, this picture of the gates of hell and of the kings in bale +achieves a new melody and a new intensity, and makes the coming of +Spenser far less incredible. But poetry was long starved by the very +ideal that nursed it--that of the all-sided, all-accomplished "courtier" +or cavalier, to whom verse-making was but one of all the accomplishments +that he must perfect, like fencing, or courting, or equestrian skill. +Wyatt and Surrey, Sackville and Sidney (and we may add Hamlet, a true +Elizabethan) are of this type. One of the first competent professional +writers was George Gascoigne, whose remarks on metric, and whose blank +verse satire, _The Steel Glass_ (1576), save the years between Sackville +and Spenser. Otherwise the gap is filled by painful rhymesters with rare +flashes, such as Googe, Churchyard and Turberville. + + + Drama to 1580. + +The English Renaissance drama, both comic and tragic, illustrates on the +largest scale the characteristic power of the antique at this period--at +first to reproduce itself in imitation, and then to generate something +utterly different from itself, something that throws the antique to the +winds. Out of the Morality, a sermon upon the certainty of death or the +temptations of the soul, acted by personified qualities and supernatural +creatures, had grown up, in the reign of Henry VII., the Interlude, a +dialogue spoken by representative types or trades, who faintly recalled +those in Chaucer's _Prologue_. These forms, which may be termed +medieval, continued long and blended; sometimes heated, as in +_Respublica_, with doctrine, and usually lightened by the comic play of +a "Vice" or incarnation of sinister roguery. John Heywood was the chief +maker of the pure interludes, and Bishop Bale of the Protestant medleys; +his _King Johan_, a reformer's partisan tract in verse, contains the +germs of the chronicle play. In the drama down to 1580 the native talent +is sparse enough, but the historical interest is high. Out of a seeming +welter of forms, the structure, the metres and the species that Kyd and +Marlowe found slowly emerged. Comedy was first delivered from the +interlude, and fashioned in essence as we know it, by the schoolmasters. +Drawing on Plautus, they constructed duly-knitted plots, divided into +acts and scenes and full of homely native fun, for their pupils to +present. In _Thersites_ (written 1537), the oldest of these pieces, and +in Udall's _Ralph Roister Doister_ (1552 at latest), the best known of +them, the characters are lively, and indeed are almost individuals. In +others, like _Misogonus_ (written 1560), the abstract element and +improving purpose remain, and the source is partly neo-Latin comedy, +native or foreign. Romance crept in: serious comedy, with its brilliant +future, the comedy of high sentiment and averted dangers mingled still +with farce, was shadowed forth in _Damon and Pithias_ and in the curious +play _Common Conditions_; while the domestic comedy of intrigue dawned +in Gascoigne's _Supposes_, adapted from Ariosto. Thus were displaced the +ranker rustic fun of _Gammer Gurton's Needle_ (written c. 1559) and +other labours of "rhyming mother-wits." But there was no style, no talk, +no satisfactory metre. The verse of comedy waited for Greene, and its +prose for Lyly. Structure, without style, was also the main achievement +of the early tragedies. The Latin plays of Buchanan, sometimes biblical +in topic, rest, as to their form, upon Euripides. But early English +tragedy was shapen after the Senecan plays of Italy and after Seneca +himself, all of whose dramas were translated by 1581. _Gorboduc, or +Ferrex and Porrex_, acted about 1561, and written by Sackville and +Norton, and Hughes' _Misfortunes of Arthur_ (acted 1588), are not so +much plays as wraiths of plays, with their chain of slaughters and +revenges, their two-dimensional personages, and their lifeless maxims +which fail to sweeten the bloodshot atmosphere. The Senecan form was not +barren in itself, as its sequel in France was to show: it was only +barren for England. After Marlowe it was driven to the study, and was +still written (possibly under the impulse of Mary countess of +Pembroke), by Daniel and Greville, with much reminiscence of the French +Senecans. But it left its trail on the real drama. It set the pattern of +a high tragical action, often motived by revenge, swayed by large ideas +of fate and retribution, and told in blank metre; and it bequeathed, +besides many moral sentences, such minor points of mechanism as the +Ghost, the Chorus and the inserted play. There were many hybrid forms +like _Gismond of Salern_, based on foreign story, alloyed with the mere +personifications of the Morality, and yet contriving, as in the case of +_Promos and Cassandra_ (the foundation of _Measure for Measure_), to +interest Shakespeare. Thus the drama by 1580 had some of its carpentry, +though not yet a true style or versification. These were only to be won +by escape from the classic tutelage. The ruder chronicle play also +began, and the reigns of John and Henry V. amongst others were put upon +the stage. + + + Spenser. + +_Verse from Spenser to Donne_.--Sir Philip Sidney almost shares with +Edmund Spenser the honours of announcing the new verse, for part of his +_Astrophel and Stella_ was written, if not known in unpublished form, +about 1580-1581, and contains ten times the passion and poetry of _The +Shepherd's Calendar_ (1579). This work, of which only a few passages +have the seal of Spenser's coming power, was justly acclaimed for its +novelty of experiment in many styles, pastoral, satiric and triumphal, +and in many measures: though it was criticized for its "rustic" and +archaic diction--a "no language" that was to have more influence upon +poetry than any of the real dialects of England. Spenser's desire to +write high tragedy, avowed in his _October_, was not to be granted; his +nine comedies are lost; and he became the chief non-dramatic poet of his +time and country. Both the plaintive pessimism of Petrarch and du +Bellay, with their favourite method of emblem, and the Platonic theory +of the spiritual love and its heavenly begetting sank into him; and the +_Hymns To Love_ and _To Beauty_ are possibly his earliest verses of +sustained perfection and exaltation. These two strains of feeling +Spenser never lost and never harmonized; the first of them recurs in his +_Complaints_ of 1591, above all in _The Ruins of Time_, the second in +his _Amoretti_ (1595) and _Colin Clout_ and _Epithalamion_, which are +autobiographical. These and a hundred other threads are woven into _The +Faerie Queene_, an unfinished allegorical epic in honour of moral +goodness, of which three books came out in 1590 and three more in 1596, +while the fragment _Of Constancy_ (so-called) is first found in the +posthumous folio of 1609. This poem is the fullest reflex, outside the +drama, of the soul and aspirations of the time. For its scenery and +mechanism the _Orlando Furioso_ of Ariosto furnishes the framework. In +both poems tales of knightly adventure intertwine unconfused; in both +the slaying of monsters, the capture of strong places, and the release +of the innocent, hindered by wizard and sorcerer, or aided by magic +sword and horn and mirror, constitute the quest; and in both warriors, +ladies, dwarfs, dragons and figures from old mythology jostle dreamily +together. To all this pomp Spenser strove to give a moral and often also +a political meaning. Ariosto was not a _vates sacer_; and so Spenser +took Tasso's theme of the holy war waged for the Sepulchre, and expanded +it into a war between good and evil, as he saw them in the world; +between chastity and lust, loyalty and detraction, England and Spain, +England and Rome, Elizabeth and usurpers, Irish governor and Irish +rebel, right and wrong. The title-virtues of his six extant books he +affects to take from Aristotle; but Holiness, Temperance, Chastity, +Justice, Friendship and Courtesy form a medley of medieval, puritanical +and Greek ideals. + +Spenser's moral sentiments, often ethereally noble, might well be +contrasted, and that not always to their credit, with those more secular +and naturalistic ones that rule in Shakespeare or in Bernardino Telesio +and Giordano Bruno. But _The Faerie Queene_ lives by its poetry; and its +poetry lives independently of its creed. The idealized figures of +Elizabeth, who is the Faerie Queene, and of the "magnificent" Prince +Arthur, fail to bind the adventures together, and after two books the +poem breaks down in structure. And indeed all through it relies on +episode and pageant, on its prevailing and insuppressible loveliness of +scene and tint, of phrasing and of melody, beside which the inner +meaning is often an interruption. Spenser is not to be tired; in and out +of his tapestry, with its "glooming light much like a shade," pace his +figures on horseback, or in durance, with their clear and pictorial +allegoric trappings; and they go either singly, or in his favourite +masques or pageants, suggested by emblematical painting or civic +procession. He is often duly praised for his lingering and liquid +melodies and his gracious images, or blamed for their langour; but his +ground-tone is a sombre melancholy--unlike that of Jaques--and his +deepest quality as a writer is perhaps his angry power. Few of his forty +and more thousand lines are unpoetical; in certainty of style amongst +English poets who have written profusely, he has no equals but Chaucer, +Milton and Shelley. His "artificial" diction, drawn from middle English, +from dialect or from false analogy, has always the intention and nearly +always the effect of beauty; we soon feel that its absence would be +unnatural, and it has taken its rank among the habitual and exquisite +implements of English poetry. This equality of noble form is Spenser's +strength, as dilution and diffusion of phrase, and a certain monotonous +slowness of _tempo_, are beyond doubt his weaknesses. His chief +technical invention, the nine-line stanza (_ababbcbcC_) was developed +not from the Italian octave (_abababcc_), but by adding an alexandrine +to the eight-line stave (_ababbcbc_) of Chaucer's _Monk's Tale_. It is +naturally articulated twice--at the fifth line, where the turn of +repeated rhyme inevitably charms, and at the ninth, which runs now to a +crashing climax, now to a pensive and sighing close. In rhyming, +Spenser, if not always accurate, is one of the most natural and +resourceful of poets. His power over the heroic couplet or quatrain is +shown in his fable, _Mother Hubbard's Tale_, and in his curious verse +memoir, _Colin Clout_; both of which are medleys of satire and flattery. +With formal tasks so various and so hard, it is wonderful how effortless +the style of Spenser remains. His _Muiopotmos_ is the lightest-handed of +mock-heroics. No writer of his day except Marlowe was so faithful to the +law of beauty. + + + Spenserians. + +The mantle of Spenser fell, somewhat in shreds, upon poets of many +schools until the Restoration. As though in thanks to his master Tasso, +he lent to Edward Fairfax, the best translator of the _Jerusalem +Delivered_ (_Godfrey of Bulloigne_, 1600), some of his own ease and +intricate melody. Harington, the witty translator of Ariosto (1591) and +spoilt child of the court, owed less to Spenser. The allegorical +colouring was nobly caught, if sometimes barbarized, in the _Christ's +Victory and Triumph_ of the younger Giles Fletcher (1610), and Spenser's +emblematic style was strained, even cracked, by Phineas Fletcher in _The +Purple Island_ (1633), an aspiring fable, gorgeous in places, of the +human body and faculties. Both of these brethren clipped and marred the +stanza, but they form a link between Spenser and their student Milton. +The allegoric form, long-winded and broken-backed, survived late in +Henry More's and Joseph Beaumont's verse disquisitions on the soul. +Spenser's pastoral and allusive manner was allowed by Drayton in his +_Shepherd's Garland_ (1593), and differently by William Browne in +_Britannia's Pastorals_ (1613-1616), and by William Basse; while his +more honeyed descriptions took on a mawkish taste in the anonymous +_Britain's Ida_ and similar poems. His golden Platonic style was +buoyantly echoed in _Orchestra_ (1596), Sir John Davies' poem on the +dancing spheres. He is continually traceable in 17th-century verse, +blending with the alien currents of Ben Jonson and of Donne. He was +edited and imitated in the age of Thomson, in the age of William Morris, +and constantly between. + + + Drayton and Daniel. + +The typical Elizabethan poet is Michael Drayton; who followed Spenser in +pastoral, Daniel, Sidney, Spenser and Shakespeare in sonnet, Daniel +again in chronicle and legend, and Marlowe in mythological story, and +who yet remained himself. His _Endimion and Phoebe_ in passages stands +near _Hero and Leander_; his _England's Heroical Epistles_ (1597) are in +ringing rhetorical couplets; his _Odes_ (1606), like the _Ballad of +Agincourt_ and the _Virginian Voyage_, forestall and equal Cowper's or +Campbell's; his _Nymphidia_ (1627) was the most popular of burlesque +fairy poems; and his pastorals are full of graces and felicities. The +work of Drayton that is least read and most often mentioned is his +_Poly-Olbion_ (1612-1622), a vast and pious effort, now and then nobly +repaid, to versify the scenery, legend, customs and particularities of +every English county. The more recluse and pensive habit of Samuel +Daniel chills his long chronicle poems; but with Chapman he is the +clearest voice of Stoicism in Elizabethan letters; and his harmonious +nature is perfectly expressed in a style of happy, even excellence, free +alike from "fine madness" and from strain. Sonnet and epistle are his +favoured forms, and in his _Musophilus_ (1599) as well as in his +admirable prose _Defence of Rhyme_ (1602), he truly prophesies the hopes +and glories of that _illustre vulgare_, the literary speech of England. +All this patriotic and historic verse, like the earlier and ruder +_Albion's England_ (1586) of William Warner, or Fitzgeoffrey's poem upon +Drake, or the outbursts of Spenser, was written during or inspired by +the last twenty years of the queen's reign; and the same is true of +Shakespeare's and most of the other history plays, which duly eclipsed +the formal, rusty-gray chronicle poem of the type of the _Mirror for +Magistrates_, though editions (1559-1610) of the latter were long +repeated. Patriotic verse outside the theatre, however, full of zeal, +started at a disadvantage compared with love-sonnet, song, or mythic +narrative, because it had no models before it in other lands, and +remained therefore the more shapeless. + + + Sonnets. + +The English love-sonnet, brought in by Wyatt and rifest between 1590 and +1600, was revived as a purely studious imitation by Watson in his +_Hekatompathia_ (1582), a string of translations in one of the +exceptional measures that were freely entitled "sonnets." But from the +first, in the hands of Sidney, whose _Astrophel and Stella_ (1591) was +written, as remarked above, about 1581, the sonnet was ever ready to +pulse into feeling, and to flash into unborrowed beauty, embodying +sometimes dramatic fancy and often living experience. These three fibres +of imitation, imagination and confession are intertwisted beyond +severance in many of the cycles, and now one, now another is uppermost. +Incaution might read a personal diary into Thomas Lodge's _Phillis_ +(1593), which is often a translation from Ronsard. Literal judges have +announced that Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ are but his mode of taking +exercise. But there is poetry in "God's plenty" almost everywhere; and +few of the series fail of lovely lines or phrasing or even of perfect +sonnets. This holds of Henry Constable's _Diana_ (1592), of the +_Parthenophil and Parthenophe_ of Barnabe Barnes (1593), inebriate with +poetry, and of the stray minor groups, _Alcilia, Licia, Caelia_; while +the _Caelica_ of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, in irregular form, is full +of metaphysical passion struggling to be delivered. _Astrophel and +Stella_, Drayton's _Idea_ (1594-1619), Spenser's _Amoretti_ and +Shakespeare's _Sonnets_ (printed 1609) are addressed to definite and +probably to known persons, and are charged with true poetic rage, +ecstatic or plaintive, desperate or solemn, if they are also +intermingled with the mere word-play that mocks or beguiles the ebb of +feeling, or with the purely plastic work that is done for solace. In +most of these series, as in Daniel's paler but exquisitely-wrought +_Delia_ (1591-1592), the form is that of the three separate quatrains +with the closing couplet for emotional and melodic climax; a scheme +slowly but defiantly evolved, through traceable gradations, from that +stricter one of Italy, which Drummond and Milton revived, and where the +crisis properly coincides with the change from octave to sestet. + + + Mythic poems. + +The amorous mythologic tale in verse derives immediately from +contemporary Italy, but in the beginning from Ovid, whose +_Metamorphoses_, familiar in Golding's old version (1555-1557), +furnished descriptions, decorations and many tales, while his _Heroides_ +gave Chaucer and Boccaccio a model for the self-anatomy of tragic or +plaintive sentiment. Within ten years, between 1588 and 1598, during the +early sonnet-vogue, appeared Lodge's _Scillaes Metamorphosis_, +Shakespeare's _Venus and Adonis_ and _Rape of Lucrece_, Marlowe's _Hero +and Leander_ and Drayton's _Endimion and Phoebe_. Shakespeare owed +something to Lodge, and Drayton to Marlowe. All these points describe a +love-situation at length, and save in one instance they describe it from +without. The exception is Marlowe, who achieves a more than Sicilian +perfection; he says everything, and is equal to everything that he has +to say. In _Venus and Adonis_ the poet is enamoured less of love than of +the tones and poses of lovers and of the beauty and gallant motion of +animals, while in The _Rape of Lucrece_ he is intent on the gradations +of lust, shame and indignation, in which he has a spectator's interest. +Virtuosity, or the delight of the executant in his own brilliant +cunning, is the mark of most of these pieces. + + + Lyric. + +If we go to the lyrics, the versified mythic tales and the sonnets of +Elizabethan times for the kind of feeling that Moliere's Alceste loved +and that Burns and Shelley poured into song, we shall often come away +disappointed, and think the old poetry heartless. But it is not +heartless, any more than it is always impassioned or personal; it is +decorative. The feeling is often that of the craftsman; it is not of the +singer who spends his vital essence in song and commands an answering +thrill so long as his native language is alive or understood. The arts +that deal with ivories or enamelling or silver suggest themselves while +we watch the delighted tinting and chasing, the sense for gesture and +grouping (in _Venus and Adonis_), or the delicate beating out of rhyme +in a madrigal, or the designing of a single motive, or two contrasted +motives, within the panel of the sonnet. And soon it is evident how +passion and emotion readily become plastic matter too, whether they be +drawn from books or observation or self-scrutiny. This is above all the +case in the sonnet; but it is found in the lyric as well. The result is +a wonderful fertility of lyrical pattern, a wonderfully diffused power +of lyrical execution, never to recur at any later time of English +literature. Wyatt had to recover the very form of such verse from +oblivion, and this he did in the school of translation and adaptation. +Not only the decasyllabic, but the lyric, in short lines had almost died +out of memory, and Wyatt brought it back. From his day to Spenser's +there is not much lyric that is noteworthy, though in Gascoigne and +others the impulse is seen. The introduction of Italian music, with its +favourite metrical schemes, such as the madrigal, powerfully schooled +and coloured lyric: in especial, the caressing double ending, regular in +Italian but heavier in English, became common. The Italian poems were +often translated in their own measure, line by line, and the musical +setting retained. Their tunes, or other tunes, were then coupled with +new and original poems; and both appeared together in the song-books of +Dowland the lutanist, of Jones and Byrd (1588), and in chief (1601-1619) +of Thomas Campion. The words of Campion's songs are not only supremely +musical in the wider sense, but are chosen for their singing quality. +Misled awhile by the heresy that rhyme was wrong, he was yet a master of +lovely rhyming, as well as of a lyrical style of great range, gaily or +gravely happy. But, as with most of his fellows, singing is rather his +calling than his consolation. The lyrics that are sprinkled in plays and +romances are the finest of this period, and perhaps, in their kind, of +any period. Shakespeare is the greatest in this province also; but the +power of infallible and unforgettable song is often granted to slighter, +gentler playwrights like Greene and Dekker, while it is denied to men of +weightier build and sterner purpose like Chapman and Jonson. The songs +of Jonson are indeed at their best of absolute and antique finish; but +the irrevocable dew of night or dawn seldom lies upon them as it lies on +the songs of Webster or of Fletcher. The best lyrics in the plays are +dramatic; they must be read in their own setting. While the action +stops, they seize and dally with the dominant emotion of the scene, and +yet relieve it. The songs of Lodge and Breton, of Drayton and Daniel, of +Oxford and Raleigh, and the fervid brief flights of the Jesuit +Southwell, show the omnipresence of the vital gift, whether among +professional writers of the journalistic type, or among poets whose gift +was not primarily song, or among men of action and quality or men of +religion, who only wrote when they were stirred. Lullaby and valentine +and compliment, and love-plaint ranging from gallantry to desperation, +are all there: and the Fortunate Hour, which visits commonly only a few +men in a generation, and those but now and then in their lives, is never +far off. But the master of melody, Spenser, left no songs, apart from +his two insuperable wedding odes. And religious lyric is rarer before +the reign of James. Much of the best lyric is saved for us by the +various Miscellanies, _A Handful of Pleasant Delights_ (1584), the +_Phoenix Nest_ (1593) and Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_ (1602); while +other such collections, like _England's Helicon_ (1600), were chiefly +garlands of verse that was already in print. + +There is plenty of satiric anger and raillery in the spirit of the time, +but the most genuine part of it is drawn off into drama. Except for +stray passages in Spenser, Drayton and others, formal satire, though +profuse, was a literary unreal thing, a pose in the manner of Persius or +Juvenal, and tiresome in expression. In this kind only Donne triumphed. +The attempts of Lodge and Hall and Marston and John Davies of Hereford +and Guilpin and Wither are for the most part simply weariful in +different ways, and satire waited for Dryden and his age. The attempt, +however, persisted throughout. Wyatt was the first and last who +succeeded in the genial, natural Horatian style. + + + Metaphysical or fantastic schools. + +_Verse from Donne to Milton_.--As the age of Elizabeth receded, some +changes came slowly over non-dramatic verse. In Jonson, as in John Donne +(1573-1631), one of the greater poets of the nation, and in many writers +after Donne, may be traced a kind of Counter-Renaissance, or revulsion +against the natural man and his claims to pleasure--a revulsion from +which regret for pleasure lost is seldom far. Poetry becomes more +ascetic and mystical, and this feeling takes shelter alike in the +Anglican and in the Roman faith. George Herbert (_The Temple_, 1633), +the most popular, quaint and pious of the school, but the least +poetical; Crashaw, with his one ecstatic vision (_The Flaming Heart_) +and occasional golden stanzas; Henry Vaughan, who wrote from 1646 to +1678, with his mystical landscape and magical cadences; and Thomas +Traherne, his fellow-dreamer, are the best known of the religious +Fantastics. But, earlier than most of these are Lord Herbert of +Cherbury, and Habington with his _Castara_ (1634), who show the same +temper, if a fitful power and felicity. Such writers form the devouter +section of the famous "metaphysical" or "fantastic" school, which +includes, besides Donne its founder, pure amorists like Carew (whose +touch on certain rhythms has no fellow), young academic followers like +Cartwright and Cleveland (in whom survives the vein of satire that also +marks the school), and Abraham Cowley, who wrote from 1633 to 1678, and +was perhaps the most acceptable living poet about the middle of the +century. In his _Life of Cowley_ Johnson tramples on the "metaphysical" +poets and their vices, and he is generally right in detail. The shock of +cold quaintness, which every one of them continually administers, is +fatal. Johnson only erred in ignoring all their virtues and all their +historical importance. + +In Donne poetry became deeply intellectualized, and in temper +disquisitive and introspective. The poet's emotion is played with in a +cat-and-mouse fashion, and he torments it subtly. Donne's passion is so +real, if so unheard-of, and his brain so finely-dividing, that he can +make almost any image, even the remotest, even the commonest, poetical. +His satires, his _Valentine_, his _Litany_, and his lyric or odic pieces +in general, have an insolent and sudden daring which is warranted by +deep-seated power and is only equalled by a few of those tragedians who +are his nearest of kin. The recurring contrast of "wit" or intelligence, +and "will" or desire, their struggle, their mutual illumination, their +fusion as into some third and undiscovered element of human nature, are +but one idiosyncrasy of Donne's intricate soul, whose general progress, +so far as his dateless poems permit of its discovery, seems to have been +from a paganism that is unashamed but crossed with gusts of compunction, +to a mystical and otherwordly temper alloyed with covetous regrets. The +_Anatomy of the World_ and other ambitious pieces have the same quality +amid their outrageous strangeness. In Donne and his successors the +merely ingenious and ransacking intellect often came to overbalance +truth and passion; and hence arose conceits and abstract verbiage, and +the difficulty of finding a perfect poem, however brief, despite the +omnipresence of the poetic gift. The "fantastic" school, if it contains +some of the rarest sallies and passages in English, is one of the least +satisfactory. Its faults only exaggerate those of Sidney, Greville and +Shakespeare, who often misuse homely or technical metaphor; and English +verse shared, by coincidence not by borrowing, and with variations of +its own, in the general strain and torture of style that was besetting +so many poets of the Latin countries. Yet these poets well earn the name +of metaphysical, not for their philosophic phrasing, but for the +shuttle-flight of their fancy to and fro between the things of earth and +the realities of spirit that lie beyond the screen of the flesh. + + + Rhythm. + +Between Spenser and Milton many measures of lyrical and other poetry +were modified. Donne's frequent use of roughly-accentual, almost +tuneless lines is unexplained and was not often followed. Rhythm in +general came to be studied more for its own sake, and the study was +rewarded. The lovely cordial music of Carew's amorous iambics, or of +Wither's trochees, or of Crashaw's odes, or of Marvell's octo-syllables, +has never been regained. The formal ode set in, sometimes regularly +"Pindaric" in strophe-grouping, sometimes irregularly "Pindaric" as in +Cowley's experiments. Above all, the heroic couplet, of the isolated, +balanced, rhetorical order, such as Spenser, Drayton, Fairfax and +Sylvester, the translator (1590-1606) of Du Bartas, had often used, +began to be a regular instrument of verse, and that for special purposes +which soon became lastingly associated with it. The flatteries of Edmund +Waller and the Ovidian translations of Sandys dispute the priority for +smoothness and finish, though the fame was Waller's for two generations; +but Denham's overestimated _Cooper's Hill_ (1642), Cowley's _Davideis_ +(1656), and even Ogilby's _Aeneid_ made the path plainer for Dryden, the +first sovereign of the rhetorical couplet which throve as blank verse +declined. Sonnet and madrigal were the favoured measures of William +Drummond of Hawthornden, a real and exquisite poet of the studio, who +shows the general drift of verse towards sequestered and religious +feeling. Drummond's _Poems_ of 1616 and _Flowers of Zion_ (1623) are +full of Petrarch and Plato as well as of Christian resignation, and he +kept alive the artistry of phrasing and versification in a time of +indiscipline and conflicting forms. William Browne has been named as a +Spenserian, but his _Britannia's_ Pastorals (1613-1616), with their +slowly-rippling and overflowing couplets which influenced Keats, were a +medley of a novel kind. George Wither may equally rank among the lighter +followers of Spenser, the easy masters of lyrical narrative, and the +devotional poets. But his _Shepherd's Hunting_ and other pieces in his +volume of 1622 contain lovely landscapes, partly English and partly +artificial, and stand far above his pious works, and still further above +the dreary satires which he lived to continue after the Restoration. + + + Herrick. + + The long poem. + +Of poets yet unmentioned, Robert Herrick is the chief, with his two +thousand lyrics and epigrams, gathered in _Hesperides_ and _Noble +Numbers_ (1648). His power of song and sureness of cadence are not +excelled within his range of topic, which includes flowers and +maidens--whom he treats as creatures of the same race--and the swift +decay of both their beauties, and secular regret over this decay and his +own mortality and the transience of amorous pleasure, and the virtues of +his friends, and country sports and lore, and religious compunction for +his own paganism. The _Hesperides_ are pure Renaissance work, in natural +sympathy with the Roman elegiac writings and with the Pseudo-Anacreon. +Cowley is best where he is nearest Herrick, and his posy of short lyrics +outlives his "epic and Pindaric art." There are many writers who last by +virtue of one or two poems; Suckling by his adept playfulness, Lovelace +and Montrose by a few gallant stanzas, and many a nameless poet by many +a consummate cadence. It is the age of sudden flights and brief +perfections. All the farther out of reach, yet never wholly despaired of +or unattempted in England, was the "long poem," heroical and noble, the +"phantom epic," that shadow of the ancient masterpieces, which had +striven to life in Italy and France. Davenant's _Gondibert_ (1651), +Cowley's _Davideis_ and Chamberlayne's _Pharonnida_ (1659) attest the +effort which Milton in 1658 resumed with triumph. These works have +between them all the vices possible to epic verse, dulness and flatness, +faintness and quaintness and incoherence. But there is some poetry in +each of them, and in _Pharonnida_ there is far more than enough poetry +to save it. + + + Milton. + +Few writers have found a flawless style of their own so early in life as +John Milton (1608-1674). His youthful pieces show some signs of Spenser +and the Caroline fantastics; but soon his vast poetical reading ran +clear and lay at the service of his talent. His vision and phrasing of +natural things were already original in the _Nativity Ode_, written when +he was twenty; and, there also, his versification was already that of a +master, of a renovator. The pensive and figured beauty of _L'Allegro_ +and _Il Penseroso_, two contrasted emblematic panels, the high innocent +Platonism and golden blank verse of the _Comus_ (1634); the birth of +long-sleeping power in the _Lycidas_ (1637), with its unapproached +contrivance both in evolution and detail, where the precious essences of +earlier myth and pastoral seem to be distilled for an offering in honour +of the tombless friend;--the newness, the promise, the sureness of it +all amid the current schools! The historian finds in these poems, with +their echoes of Plato and Sannazzaro, of Geoffrey of Monmouth and St +John, the richest and most perfect instance of the studious, decorative +Renaissance style, and is not surprised to find Milton's scholars a +century later in the age of Gray. The critic, while feeling that the +strictly lyrical, spontaneous element is absent, is all the more baffled +by the skill and enduring charm. The sonnets were written before or +during Milton's long immersion (1637-1658) in prose and warfare, and +show the same gifts. They are not cast in the traditional form of +love-cycle, but are occasional poems; in metre they revert, not always +strictly but once or twice in full perfection, to the Italian scheme; +and they recall not Petrarch but the spiritual elegies or patriot +exaltations of Dante or Guidiccioni. + +Milton also had a medieval side to his brain, as the _History of +Britain_ shows. The heroic theme, which he had resolved from his youth +up to celebrate, at last, after many hesitations, proved to be the fall +of man. This, for one of his creed and for the audience he desired, was +the greatest theme of all. Its scene was the Ptolemaic universe with the +Christian heaven and hell inserted. The time, indicated by retrospect +and prophecy, was the whole of that portion of eternity, from the +creation of Christ to the doomsday, of which the history was sacredly +revealed. The subject and the general span of the action went back to +the popular mystery play; and Milton at first planned out _Paradise +Lost_ as such a play, with certain elements of classic tragedy embodied. +But according to the current theory the epic, not the drama, was the +noblest form of verse; and, feeling where his power lay, he adopted the +epic. The subject, therefore, was partly medieval, partly +Protestant,--for Milton was a true Protestant in having a variant of +doctrine shared by no other mortal. But the ordering and presentment, +with their overture, their interpolated episodes or narratives, their +journeys between Olympus, Earth and hell, invocations, set similes, +battles and divine thunderbolts, are those of the classical epic. Had +Milton shared the free thought as well as the scholarship of the +Renaissance, the poem could never have existed. With all his range of +soul and skill, he had a narrower speculative brain than any poet of +equal gift; and this was well for his great and peculiar task. But +whatever Milton may fail to be, his heroic writing is the permanent and +absolute expression of something that in the English stock is +inveterate--the Promethean self-possession of the mind in defeat, its +right to solitude there, its claim to judge and deny the victor. This is +the spirit of his devils, beside whom his divinities, his unfallen +angels (Abdiel excepted), and even his human couple with their radiance +and beauty of line, all seem shadowy. The discord between Milton's +doctrine and his sympathies in _Paradise Lost_ (1667) has never escaped +notice. The discord between his doctrine and his culture comes out in +_Paradise Regained_ (1671), when he has at once to reprobate and +glorify Athens, the "mother of arts." In this afterthought to the +earlier epic the action is slight, the Enemy has lost spirit, and the +Christ is something of a pedagogue. But there is a new charm in its +even, grey desert tint, sprinkled with illuminations of gold and luxury. +In _Samson Agonistes_ (1671) the ethical treatment as well as the +machinery is Sophoclean, and the theology not wholly Christian. But the +fault of Samson is forgotten in his suffering, which is Milton's own; +and thus a cross-current of sympathy is set up, which may not be much in +keeping with the story, but revives the somewhat exhausted interest and +heightens a few passages into a bare and inaccessible grandeur. + +The essential solitude of Milton's energies is best seen in his later +style and versification. When he resumed poetry about 1658, he had +nothing around him to help him as an artist in heroic language. The most +recent memories of the drama were also the worst; the forms of Cowley +and Davenant, the would-be epic poets, were impossible. Spenser's manner +was too even and fluid as a rule for such a purpose, and his power was +of an alien kind. Thus Milton went back, doubtless full of Greek and +Latin memories, to Marlowe, Shakespeare and others among the greater +dramatists (including John Ford); and their tragic diction and measure +are the half-hidden bases of his own. The product, however, is unlike +anything except the imitations of itself. The incongruous elements of +the _Paradise Lost_ and its divided sympathies are cemented, at least +superficially, by its style, perhaps the surest for dignity, character +and beauty that any Germanic language has yet developed. If dull and +pedantic over certain stretches, it is usually infallible. It is many +styles in one, and Time has laid no hand on it. In these three later +poems its variety can be seen. It is perfect in personal invocation and +appeal; in the complex but unfigured rhetoric of the speeches; in +narrative of all kinds; for the inlaying work of simile or scenery or +pageant, where the quick, pure impressions of Milton's youth and +prime--possibly kept fresher by his blindness--are felt through the +sometimes conventional setting; and for soliloquy and choric speech of a +might unapproachable since Dante. To these calls his blank verse +responds at every point. It is the seal of Milton's artistry, as of his +self-confidence, for it greatly extends, for the epical purpose, all the +known powers and liberties of the metre; and yet, as has often been +shown, it does so not spasmodically but within fixed technical laws or +rather habits. Latterly, the underlying metrical _ictus_ is at times +hard to detect. But Milton remains by far the surest and greatest +instrumentalist, outside the drama, on the English unrhymed line. He +would, however, have scorned to be judged on his form alone. His soul +and temper are not merely unique in force. Their historic and +representative character ensure attention, so long as the oppositions of +soul and temper in the England of Milton's time remain, as they still +are, the deepest in the national life. He is sometimes said to harmonize +the Renaissance and the Puritan spirit; but he does not do this, for +nothing can do it. The Puritan spirit is the deep thing in Milton; all +his culture only gives immortal form to its expression. The critics have +instinctively felt that this is true; and that is why their political +and religious prepossessions have nearly always coloured, and perhaps +must colour, every judgment passed upon him. Not otherwise can he be +taken seriously, until historians are without public passions and +convictions, or the strife between the hierarch and the Protestant is +quenched in English civilization. + + + Drama. + +_Drama, 1580-1642_.--We must now go back to the drama, which lies behind +Milton, and is the most individual product of all English Literature. +The nascent drama of genius can be found in the "University wits," who +flourished between 1580 and 1595, and the chief of whom are Lyly, Kyd, +Peele, Greene and Marlowe. John Lyly is the first practitioner in +prose--of shapely comic plot and pointed talk--the artificial but actual +talk of courtly masquers who rally one another with a bright and barren +finish that is second nature. _Campaspe_, _Sapho and Phao_, _Midas_, and +Lyly's other comedies, mostly written from 1580 to 1591, are frail +vessels, often filled with compliment, mythological allegory, or topical +satire, and enamelled with pastoral interlude and flower-like song. The +work of Thomas Kyd, especially _The Spanish Tragedy_ (written c. 1585), +was the most violent effort to put new wine into the old Senecan +bottles, and he probably wrote the lost pre-Shakespearian _Hamlet_. He +transmitted to the later drama that subject of pious but ruinous +revenge, which is used by Chapman, Marston, Webster and many others; and +his chief play was translated and long acted in Germany. Kyd's want of +modulation is complete, but he commands a substantial skill of dramatic +mechanism, and he has more than the feeling for power, just as Peele and +Greene have more than the feeling for luxury or grace. To the expression +of luxury Peele's often stately blank verse is well fitted, and it is by +far the most correct and musical before Marlowe's, as his _Arraignment +of Paris_ (1584) and his _David and Bethsabe_ attest. Greene did +something to create the blank verse of gentle comedy, and to introduce +the tone of idyll and chivalry, in his _Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_ +(1594). Otherwise these writers, with Nashe and Lodge, fall into the +wake of Marlowe. + + + Marlowe. + +_Tamburlaine_, in two parts (part i. c. 1587), _The Life and Death of +Doctor Faustus_, _The Jew of Malta_, _Edward II._ (the first chronicle +play of genius), and the incomplete poem _Hero and Leander_ are +Christopher Marlowe's title-deeds (1564-1593). He established tragedy, +and inspired its master, and created for it an adequate diction and +versification. His command of vibrant and heroic recitative should not +obscure his power, in his greater passages, describing the descent of +Helen, the passing of Mortimer, and the union of Hero and Leander, to +attain a kind of Greek transparency and perfection. The thirst for ideal +beauty, for endless empire, and for prohibited knowledge, no poet has +better expressed, and in this respect Giordano Bruno is nearest him in +his own time. This thirst is his own; his great cartoon-figures, +gigantic rather than heroic, proclaim it for him: their type recurs +through the drama, from Richard III. to Dryden's orotund heroes; but in +_Faustus_ and in _Edward II._ they become real, almost human beings. His +constructive gift is less developed in proportion, though Goethe praised +the planning-out of _Faustus_. The glory and influence of Marlowe on the +side of form rest largely on his meteoric blank lines, which are varied +not a little, and nobly harmonized into periods, and resonant with names +to the point of splendid extravagance; and their sound is heard in +Milton, whom he taught how to express the grief and despair of demons +dissatisfied with their kingdom. Shakespeare did not excel Marlowe in +Marlowe's own excellences, though he humanized Marlowe's Jew, launched +his own blank verse on the tide of Marlowe's oratory, and modulated, in +_Richard II._, his master's type of chronicle tragedy. + + + Shakespeare. + + 1590-1595. + +As the middle ages receded, the known life of man upon this earth became +of sovereign interest, and of this interest the drama is the freest +artistic expression. If Marlowe is the voice of the impulse to explore, +the plays of Shakespeare are the amplest freight brought home by any +voyager. Shakespeare is not only the greatest but the earliest English +dramatist who took humanity for his province. But this he did not do +from the beginning. He was at first subdued to what he worked in; and +though the dry pedantic tragedy was shattered and could not touch him, +the gore and rant, the impure though genuine force of Kyd do not seem at +first to have repelled him; if, as is likely, he had a hand in _Titus +Andronicus_. He probably served with Marlowe and others of the school at +various stages in the composition of the three chronicle dramas finally +entitled _Henry VI_. But besides the high-superlative style that is +common to them all, there runs through them the rhymed rhetoric with +which Shakespeare dallied for some time, as well as the softer +flute-notes and deeper undersong that foretell his later blank verse. In +_Richard III._, though it is built on the scheme and charged with the +style of Marlowe, Shakespeare first showed the intensity of his original +power. But after a few years he swept out of Marlowe's orbit into his +own vaster and unreturning curve. In _King John_ the lyrical, epical, +satirical and pathetic chords are all present, if they are scarcely +harmonized. Meantime, Lyly and Greene having displaced the uncouther +comedy, Shakespeare learned all they had to teach, and shaped the comedy +of poetic, chivalrous fancy and good-tempered high spirits, which showed +him the way of escape from his own rhetoric, and enabled him to perfect +his youthful, noble and gentle blank verse. This attained its utmost +fineness in _Richard II._, and its full cordiality and beauty in the +other plays that consummate this period--_A Midsummer Night's Dream_, +_The Merchant of Venice_, and one romantic tragedy, _Romeo and Juliet_. +Behind them lay the earlier and fainter romances, with their chivalry +and gaiety, _The Comedy of Errors_, _Love's Labour's Lost_ and _The Two +Gentlemen of Verona_. Throughout these years blank verse contended with +rhyme, which Shakespeare after a while abandoned save for special +purposes, as though he had exhausted its honey. The Italian Renaissance +is felt in the scenery and setting of these plays. The _novella_ +furnishes the story, which passes in a city of the Southern type, with +its absolute ruler, its fantastic by-laws on which the plot nominally +turns, and its mixture of real life and marvel. The personages, at first +fainter of feature and symmetrically paired, soon assume sharper +outline: Richard II. and Shylock, Portia and Juliet, and Juliet's Nurse +and Bottom are created. The _novella_ has left the earth and taken +wings: the spirit is now that of youth and Fancy (or love brooding among +the shallows) with interludes of "fierce vexation," or of tragedy, or of +kindly farce. And there is a visionary element, felt in the musings of +Theseus upon the nature of poetry of the dream-faculty itself; an +element which is new, like the use made of fairy folklore, in the poetry +of England. + + + 1596-1600. + +Tragedy is absent in the succeeding histories (1597-1599), and the +comedies of wit and romance (1599-1600), in which Shakespeare perfected +his style for stately, pensive or boisterous themes. Falstaff, the most +popular as he is the wittiest of all imaginable comic persons, +dominates, as to their prose or lower world, the two parts of _Henry +IV._, and its interlude or offshoot, _The Merry Wives of Windsor_. The +play that celebrates Henry V. is less a drama than a pageant, +diversified with mighty orations and cheerful humours, and filled with +the love of Shakespeare for England. Here the most indigenous form of +art invented by the English Renaissance reaches its climax. The +Histories are peopled chiefly by men and warriors, of whom Hotspur, +"dying in his excellence and flower," is perhaps more attractive than +Henry of Agincourt. But in the "middle comedies," _As You Like It_, +_Much Ado_, and _Twelfth Night_, the warriors are home at court, where +women rule the scene and deserve to rule it; for their wit now gives the +note; and Shakespeare's prose, the medium of their talk, has a finer +grace and humour than ever before, euphuism lying well in subjection +behind it. + + + 1601-1608. + +Mankind and this world have never been so sharply sifted or so sternly +consoled, since Lucretius, as in Shakespeare's tragedies. The energy +which created them evades, like that of the sun, our estimate. But they +were not out of relation to their time, the first few years of the reign +of James, with its conspiracies, its Somerset and Overbury horrors, its +enigmatic and sombre figures like Raleigh, and its revulsion from +Elizabethan buoyancy. In the same decade were written the chief +tragedies of Jonson, Chapman, Dekker, Marston, Tourneur; and _The White +Devil_, and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_, and _The Maid's Tragedy_, and _A +Woman Killed with Kindness_. But, in spite of Shakespeare's affinities +with these authors at many points, _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Lear_, +_Othello_, with the three Roman plays (written at intervals and not +together), and the two quasi-antique plays _Troilus and Cressida_, and +_Timon of Athens_, form a body of drama apart from anything else in the +world. They reveal a new tragic philosophy, a new poetic style, a new +dramatic technique and a new world of characters. In one way above all +Shakespeare stands apart; he not only appropriates the ancient pattern +of heroism, of right living and right dying, revealed by North's +Plutarch; others did this also; but the intellectual movement of the +time, though by no means fully reflected, is reflected in his tragedies +far more than elsewhere. The new and troublous thoughts on man and +conduct that were penetrating the general mind, the freedom and play of +vision that Montaigne above all had stimulated, here find their fullest +scope; and Florio's translation (1603) of Montaigne's Essays, coming out +between the first and the second versions of Shakespeare's _Hamlet_, +counted probably for more than any other book. The _Sonnets_ (published +1609) are also full of far-wandering thoughts on truth and beauty and on +good and evil. The story they reveal may be ranked with the situations +of the stranger dramas like _Troilus_ and _Measure for Measure_. But +whether or no it is a true story, and the Sonnets in the main a +confession, they would be at the very worst a perfect dramatic record of +a great poet's suffering and friendship. + + + Last period. + +Shakespeare's last period, that of his tragi-comedies, begins about 1608 +with his contributions to _Pericles, Prince of Tyre_. For unknown +reasons he was moved, about the time of his retirement home, to record, +as though in justice to the world, the happy turns by which tragic +disaster is at times averted. _Pericles_, _The Winter's Tale_, +_Cymbeline_, and _The Tempest_ all move, after a series of crimes, +calumnies, or estrangements, to some final scene of enthralling beauty, +where the lost reappear and love is recovered; as though after all the +faint and desperate last partings--of Lear and Cordelia, of Hamlet and +Horatio--which Shakespeare had imagined, he must make retrieval with the +picture of young and happy creatures whose life renews hope even in the +experienced. To this end he chose the loose action and free atmosphere +of the _roman d'aventure_, which had already been adapted by Beaumont +and Fletcher, who may herein have furnished Shakespeare with novel and +successful theatrical effects, and who certainly in turn studied his +handiwork. In _The Tempest_ this tragi-comic scheme is fitted to the +tales brought by explorers of far isles, wild men, strange gods and airy +music. Even if it be true that in Prospero's words the poet bids +farewell to his magic, he took part later nevertheless in the +composition of _Henry VIII._; and not improbably also in _The Two Noble +Kinsmen_. His share in two early pieces, _Arden of Feversham_ (1592) and +_Edward III._, has been urged, never established, and of many other +dramas he was once idly accused. + +Shakespeare's throne rests on the foundation of three equal and master +faculties. One is that of expression and versification; the next is the +invention and presentation of human character in action; the third is +the theatrical faculty. The writing of Dante may seem to us more +steadily great and perfect, when we remember Shakespeare's conceits, his +experiments, his haste and impatience in his long wrestle with tragic +language, his not infrequent sheer infelicities. But Dante is always +himself, he had not to find words for hundreds of imaginary persons. +Balzac, again, may have created and exhibited as many types of mankind, +but except in soul he is not a poet. Shakespeare is a supreme if not +infallible poet; his verse, often of an antique simplicity or of a rich, +harmonious, romantic perfection, is at other times strained and +shattered with what it tries to express, and attains beauty only through +discord. He is also many persons in one; in his _Sonnets_ he is even, it +may be thought, himself. But he had furthermore to study a personality +not of his own fancying--with something in it of Caliban, of Dogberry +and of Cleopatra--that of the audience in a playhouse. He belongs +distinctly to the poets like Jonson and Massinger who are true to their +art as practical dramatists, not to the poets like Chapman whose works +chance to be in the form of plays. Shakespeare's mastery of this art is +approved now by every nation. But apart from the skill that makes him +eternally actable--the skill of raising, straining and relieving the +suspense, and bringing it to such an ending as the theatre will +tolerate--he played upon every chord in his own hearers. He frankly +enlisted Jew-hatred, Pope-hatred and France-hatred; he flattered the +queen, and celebrated the Union, and stormed the house with his +_fanfare_ over the national soldier, Henry of Agincourt, and glorified +England, as in _Cymbeline_, to the last. But in deeper ways he is the +chief of playwrights. Unlike another master, Ibsen, he nearly always +tells us, without emphasis, by the words and behaviour of his +characters, which of them we are to love and hate, and when we are to +love and when to hate those whom we can neither love nor hate wholly. +Yet he is not to be bribed, and deals to his characters something of the +same injustice or rough justice that is found in real life. His loyalty +to life, as well as to the stage, puts the crown on his felicity and his +fertility, and raises him to his solitude of dramatic greatness. + + + Jonson. + +Shakespeare's method could not be imparted, and despite reverberations +in Beaumont, Fletcher, Webster and others he left no school. But his +friend Ben Jonson, his nearest equal in vigour of brain, though not in +poetical intuition, was the greatest of dramatic influences down to the +shutting of the theatres in 1642, and his comedies found fresh disciples +even after 1660. He had "the devouring eye and the portraying hand"; he +could master and order the contents of a mighty if somewhat burdensome +memory into an organic drama, whether the matter lay in Roman historians +or before his eyes in the London streets. He had an armoury of doctrine, +drawn from the _Poetics_ and Horace, which moulded his creative +practice. This was also partly founded on a revulsion against the plays +around him, with their loose build and moral improbabilities. But in +spite of his photographic and constructive power, his vision is too +seldom free and genial; it is that of the satirist who thinks that his +office is to improve mankind by derisively representing it. And he does +this by beginning with the "humour," or abstract idiosyncrasy or +quality, and clothing it with accurately minute costume and gesture, so +that it may pass for a man; and indeed the result is as real as many a +man, and in his best-tempered and youthful comedy, _Every Man in his +Humour_ (acted 1598), it is very like life. In Jonson's monumental +pieces, _Volpone or the Fox_ (acted 1605) and _The Alchemist_ (acted +1610), our laughter is arrested by the lowering and portentous +atmosphere, or is loud and hard, startled by the enormous skill and +energy displayed. Nor are the joy and relief of poetical comedy given +for an instant by _The Silent Woman_, _Bartholomew Fair_ (acted 1614), +or _The Staple of News_, still less by topical plays like _Cynthia's +Revels_, though their unfailing farce and rampant fun are less charged +with contempt. The erudite tragedies, _Sejanus_ (acted 1603) and +_Catiline_, chiefly live by passages of high forensic power. Jonson's +finer elegies, eulogies and lyrics, which are many, and his fragmentary +_Sad Shepherd_, show that he also had a free and lovely talent, often +smothered by doctrine and temper; and his verse, usually strong but full +of knots and snags, becomes flowing and graciously finished. His prose +is of the best, especially in his _Discoveries_, a series of ethical +essays and critical maxims; its prevalently brief and emphatic rhythms +suggesting those of Hobbes, and even, though less easy and civil and +various, those of Dryden. The "sons" of Jonson, Randolph and Browne, +Shadwell and Wilson, were heirs rather to his riot of "humours," his +learned method and satiric aim, than to his larger style, his +architectural power, or his relieving graces. + + + Romantic drama. + +As a whole, the romantic drama (so to entitle the remaining bulk of +plays down to 1642) is a vast stifled jungle, full of wild life and +song, with strange growths and heady perfumes, with glades of sunshine +and recesses of poisoned darkness; it is not a cleared forest, where +single and splendid trees grow to shapely perfection. It has "poetry +enough for anything"; passionate situations, and their eloquence; and a +number, doubtless small considering its mass, of living and memorable +personages. Moral keeping and constructive mastery are rarer still; and +too seldom through a whole drama do we see human life and hear its +voices, arranged and orchestrated by the artist. But it can be truly +said in defence that while structure without poetry is void (as it +tended at times to be in Ben Jonson), poetry without structure is still +poetry, and that the romantic drama is like nothing else in this world +for variety of accent and unexpectedness of beauty. We must read it +through, as Charles Lamb did, to do it justice. The diffusion of its +characteristic excellences is surprising. Of its extant plays it is +hardly safe to leave one unopened, if we are searchers for whatsoever is +lovely or admirable. The reasons for the lack of steadfast power and +artistic conscience lay partly in the conditions of the stage. +Playwrights usually wrote rapidly for bread, and sold their rights. The +performances of each play were few. There was no authors' copyright, and +dramas were made to be seen and heard, not to be read. There was no +articulate dramatic criticism, except such as we find casually in +Shakespeare, and in the practice and theory of Jonson, who was deaf or +hostile to some of the chief virtues of the romantic playwrights. + + + Chapman. + +The wealth of dramatic production is so great that only a broad +classification is here offered. George Chapman stands apart, nearest to +the greatest in high austerity of sentiment and in the gracious gravity +of his romantic love-comedies. But the crude melodrama of his tragedies +is void of true theatrical skill. His quasi-historical French tragedies +on Bussy d'Ambois and Biron and Chabot best show his gift and also his +insufferable interrupting quaintness. His versions of Homer (1598-1624), +honoured alike by Jonson and by Keats, are the greatest verse +translations of the time, and the real work of Chapman's life. Their +virtues are only partially Homer's, but the general epic nobility and +the majesty of single lines, which in length are the near equivalent of +the hexameter, redeem the want of Homer's limpidity and continuity and +the translator's imperfect knowledge of Greek. A vein of satiric +ruggedness unites Jonson and Chapman with Marston and Hall, the +professors of an artificial and disgusting invective; and the same +strain spoils Marston's plays, and obscures his genuine command of the +language of feverish and bitter sentiment. With these writers satire and +contempt of the world lie at the root both of their comedy and tragedy. + + + Dekker and Heywood. + + Middleton and Webster. + + Beaumont and Fletcher. + + Massinger. + + The Many. + +It is otherwise with most of the romantic dramatists, who may be +provisionally grouped as follows. (_a_) Thomas Dekker and Thomas Heywood +are writers-of-all-work, the former profuse of tracts and pamphlets, the +latter of treatises and compilations. They are both unrhetorical and +void of pose, and divide themselves between the artless comedy of +bustling, lively, English humours and pathetic, unheroic tragedy. But +Dekker has splendid and poetical dreams, in _Old Fortunatus_ (1600) and +_The Honest Whore_, both of luxury and of tenderness; while Heywood, as +in his _English Traveller_ and _Woman killed with Kindness_ (acted +1603), excels in pictures of actual, chivalrous English gentlemen and +their generosities. The fertility and volubility of these writers, and +their modest carelessness of fame, account for many of their +imperfections. With them may be named the large crowd of professional +journeymen, who did not want for power, but wrote usually in partnership +together, like Munday, Chettle and Drayton, or supplied, like William +Rowley, underplots of rough, lively comedy or tragedy. (_b_) Amongst +dramatists of primarily tragic and sombre temper, who in their best +scenes recall the creator of Angelo, Iago and Timon, must be named +Thomas Middleton (1570?-1627), John Webster, and Cyril Tourneur. +Middleton has great but scattered force, and his verse has the grip and +ring of the best period without a sign of the decadence. He is strong in +high comedy, like _The Old Law_, that turns on some exquisite point of +honour--"the moral sense of our ancestors"; in comedy that is merely +graphic and vigorous; and in detached sketches of lowering wickedness +and lust, like those in _The Changeling_ and _Women beware Women_. He +and Webster each created one unforgettable desperado, de Flores in _The +Changeling_ and Bosola in _The Duchess of Malfi_ (whose "pity," when it +came, was "nothing akin to him"). In Webster's other principal play, +_Vittoria Corombona, or the White Devil_ (produced about 1616), the +title-character is not less magnificent in defiant crime than Goneril or +Lady Macbeth. The style of Webster, for all his mechanical horrors, +distils the essences of pity and terror, of wrath and scorn, and is +profoundly poetical; and his point of view seems to be blank fatalism, +without Shakespeare's ever-arching rainbow of moral sympathy. Cyril +Tourneur, in _The Revenger's Tragedy_, is even more of a poet than +Webster; he can find the phrase for half-insane wrath and nightmare +brooding, but his chaos of impieties revolts the artistic judgment. +These specialists, when all is said, are great men in their dark +province, (_c_) The playwrights who may be broadly called romantic, of +whom Beaumont, Fletcher and Massinger are the chief, while they share in +the same sombre vein, have a wider range and move more in the daylight. +The three just named left a very large body of drama, tragic, comic and +tragi-comic, in which their several shares can partly be discerned by +metrical or other tests. Beaumont (d. 1616) is nearest the prime, with +his vein of Cervantesque mockery and his pure, beautifully-broken and +cadenced verse, which is seen in his contributions to Philaster and _The +Maid's Tragedy_. Fletcher (d. 1625) brings us closest to the actual +gaieties and humours of Jacobean life; he has a profuse comic gift and +the rare instinct for natural dialogue. His verse, with its flood of +vehement and expansive rhetoric, heard at its best in plays like +_Bonduca_, cannot cheat us into the illusion that it is truly dramatic; +but it overflows with beauty, like his silvery but monotonous +versification with its endecasyllabics arrested at the end. In Fletcher +the decadence of form and feeling palpably begins. His personages often +face about at critical instants and bely their natures by sudden +revulsions. Wanton and cheap characters invite not only dramatic but +personal sympathy, as though the author knew no better. There is too +much fine writing about a chastity which is complacent rather than +instinctive, and satisfied with its formal resistances and technical +escapes; so that we are far from Shakespeare's heroines. These faults +are present also in Philip Massinger (d. 1640), who offers in +substantial recompense, not like Beaumont and Fletcher treasures of +incessant vivacious episode and poetry and lyric interlude, but an often +splendid and usually solid constructive skill, and a steady eloquence +which is like a high table-land without summits. _A New Way to Pay Old +Debts_ (1632) is the most enduring popular comedy of the time outside +Shakespeare's, and one of the best. Massinger's interweaving of +impersonal or political conceptions, as in _The Bondman_ and _The Roman +Actor_, is often a triumph of arrangement; and though he wrote in the +reign of Charles, he is saved by many noble qualities from being merely +an artist of the decline, (_d_) A mass of plays, of which the authorship +is unknown, uncertain or attached to a mere name, baffle classification. +There are domestic tragedies, such as _Arden of Feversham_; scions of +the vindictive drama, like _The Second Maiden's Tragedy_; historic or +half-historic tragedies like _Nero_. There are chronicle histories, of +which the last and one of the best is Ford's _Perkin Warbeck_, and +melodramas of adventure such as Thomas Heywood poured forth. There are +realistic citizen comedies akin to _The Merry Wives_, like Porter's +refreshing _Two Angry Women of Abingdon_; there are Jonsonian comedies, +vernacular farces, light intrigue-pieces like Field's and many more. Few +of these, regarded as wholes, come near to perfection; few fail of some +sally or scene that proves once more the unmatched diffusion of the +dramatic or poetic instinct. (_e_) Outside the regular drama there are +many varieties: academic plays, like _The Return from Parnassus_ and +_Lingua_, which are still mirthful; many pastoral plays or +entertainments in the Italian style, like _The Faithful Shepherdess_; +versified character-sketches, of which Day's _Parliament of Bees_, with +its Theocritean grace and point, is the happiest; many masques and +shows, often lyrically and scenically lovely, of which kind Jonson is +the master, and Milton, in his _Comus_, the transfigurer; Senecan dramas +made only to be read, like Daniel's and Fulke Greville's; and Latin +comedies, like _Ignoramus_. All these species are only now being fully +grouped, sifted and edited by scholars, but a number of the six or seven +hundred dramas of the time remain unreprinted. + + + Ford and Shirley. + +There remain two writers, John Ford and James Shirley, who kept the +higher tradition alive till the Puritan ordinance crushed the theatre in +1642. Ford is another specialist, of grave, sinister and concentrated +power (reflected in his verse and diction), to whom no topic, the incest +of Annabella in _'Tis Pity She's a Whore_, or the high crazed heroism of +Calantha in _The Broken Heart_, is beyond the pale, if only he can +dominate it; as indeed he does, without complicity, standing above his +subject. Shirley, a fertile writer, has the general characteristic +gifts, in a somewhat dilute but noble form, of the more romantic +playwrights, and claims honour as the last of them. + +_Prose from 1579 to 1660._--With all the unevenness of poetry, the sense +of style, of a standard, is everywhere; felicity is never far off. Prose +also is full of genius, but it is more disfigured than verse by +aberration and wasted power. A central, classic, durable, adaptive prose +had been attained by Machiavelli, and by Amyot and Calvin, before 1550. +In England it was only to become distinct after 1660. Vocabulary, +sentence-structure, paragraph, idiom and rhythm were in a state of +unchartered freedom, and the history of their crystallization is not yet +written. But in more than compensation there is a company of prose +masters, from Florio and Hooker to Milton and Clarendon, not one of whom +clearly or fully anticipates the modern style, and who claim all the +closer study that their special virtues have been for ever lost. They +seem farther away from us than the poets around them. The verse of +Shakespeare is near to us, for its tradition has persisted; his prose, +the most natural and noble of his age, is far away, for its tradition +has not persisted. One reason of this difference is that English prose +tried to do more work than that of France and Italy; it tried the work +of poetry; and it often did that better than it did the normal work of +prose. This overflow of the imaginative spirit gave power and elasticity +to prose, but made its task of finding equilibrium the harder. Moreover, +prose in England was for long a natural growth, never much affected by +critical or academic canons as in France; and when it did submit to +canons, the result was often merely manner. The tendons and sinews of +the language, still in its adolescent power and bewilderment, were long +unset; that is, the parts of speech--noun and verb, epithet and +adverb--were in freer interchange than at any period afterwards. The +build, length and cadence of a complex sentence were habitually +elaborate; and yet they were disorganized, so that only the ear of a +master could regulate them. The law of taste and measure, perhaps +through some national disability, was long unperceived. Prose, in fact, +could never be sure of doing the day's work in the right fashion. The +cross-currents of pedantry in the midst of simplicity, the distrust of +clear plain brevity, which was apt to be affected when it came, the +mimicries of foreign fashions, and the quaintness and cumbrousness of so +much average writing, make it easier to classify Renaissance prose by +its interests than by its styles. + + + The novel. + + Lyly and euphuism. + +The Elizabethan novel was always unhappily mannered, and is therefore +dead. It fed the drama, which devoured it. The tales of Boccaccio, +Bandello, Cinthio, Margaret of Navarre, and others were purveyed, as +remarked above, in the forgotten treasuries of Painter, Pettie, Fenton +and Whetstone, and many of these works or their originals filled a shelf +in the playwrights' libraries. The first of famous English novels, +Lyly's _Euphues_ (1578), and its sequel _Euphues and his England_, are +documents of form. They are commended by a certain dapper shrewdness of +observation and an almost witty priggery, not by any real beauty or deep +feeling. Euphuism, of which Lyly was only the patentee, not the +inventor, strikes partly back to the Spaniard Guevara, and was a model +for some years to many followers like Lodge and Greene. It did not +merely provide Falstaff with a pattern for mock-moral diction and +vegetable similes. It genuinely helped to organize the English sentence, +complex or co-ordinate, and the talk of Portia and Rosalind shows what +could be made of it. By the arch-euphuists, clauses and clusters of +clauses were paired for parallel or contrast, with the beat of emphatic +alliteration on the corresponding parts of speech in each constituent +clause. This was a useful discipline for prose in its period of groping. +Sidney's incomposite and unfinished _Arcadia_, written 1580-1581, +despite its painful forced antitheses, is sprinkled with lovely rhythms, +with pleasing formal landscapes, and even with impassioned sentiment and +situation, through which the writer's eager and fretted spirit shines. +Both these stories, like those of Greene and Lodge, show by their +somewhat affected, edited delineation of life and their courtly tone +that they were meant in chief for the eyes of ladies, who were excluded +alike from the stage and from its audience. Nashe's drastic and +photographic tale of masculine life, _Jack Wilton, or The Unfortunate +Traveller_, stands almost alone, but some of the gap is filled by the +contemporary pamphlets, sometimes vivid, often full of fierce or maudlin +declamation, of Nashe himself--by far the most powerful of the +group--and of Greene, Dekker and Nicholas Breton. Thus the English novel +was a minor passing form; the leisurely and amorous romance went on in +the next century, owing largely to French influence and example. + + + Criticism. + +In criticism, England may almost be counted with the minor Latin +countries. Sidney, in his _Defence of Poesy_ (1595, written about 1580), +and Jonson, in his _Discoveries_, offer a well-inspired and lofty +restatement of the current answers to the current questions, but could +give no account of the actual creative writing of the time. To defend +the "truth" of poetry--which was identified with all inventive writing +and not only with verse--poetry was saddled with the work of science and +instruction. To defend its character it was treated as a delightful but +deliberate bait to good behaviour, a theory at best only true of +allegory and didactic verse. The real relation of tragedy to spiritual +things, which is admittedly shown, however hard its definition, in +Shakespeare's plays, no critic for centuries tried to fathom. One of the +chief quarrels turned on metric. A few lines that Sidney and Campion +wrote on what they thought the system of Latin quantity are really +musical. This theory, already raised by Ascham, made a stir, at first in +the group of Harvey, Sidney, Dyer and Spenser, called the "Areopagus," +an informal attempt to copy the Italian academies; and it was revived on +the brink of the reign of James. But Daniel's firm and eloquent _Defence +of Rhyming_ (1602) was not needed to persuade the poets to continue +rhyming in syllabic verse. The stricter view of the nature and +classification of poetry, and of the dramatic unity of action, is +concisely given, partly by Jonson, partly by Bacon in his _Advancement +of Learning_ and _De Augmentis_; and Jonson, besides passing his famed +judgments on Shakespeare and Bacon, enriched our critical vocabulary +from the Roman rhetoricians. Scholastic and sensible manuals, like +Webbe's _Discourse of Poetry_ and the _Art of English Poesy_ (1589) +ascribed to Puttenham, come in the rear. + + + Translators. + +The translators count for more than the critics; the line of their great +achievements from Berners' _Froissart_ (1523-1525) to Urquhart's +_Rabelais_ (1653) is never broken long; and though their lives are often +obscure, their number witnesses to that far-spread diffusion of the +talent for English prose, which the wealth of English poetry is apt to +hide. The typical craftsman in this field, Philemon Holland, translated +Livy, Pliny, Suetonius, Plutarch's _Morals_ and Camden's _Britannia_, +and his fount of English is of the amplest and purest. North, in his +translation, made from Amyot's classic French, of Plutarch's _Lives_ +(1579), disclosed one of the master-works of old example; Florio, in +Montaigne's _Essays_ (1603), the charter of the new freedom of mental +exploration; and Shelton, in _Don Quixote_ (1612), the chief tragi-comic +creation of continental prose. These versions, if by no means accurate +in the letter, were adequate in point of soul and style to their great +originals; and the English dress of Tacitus (1591), Apuleius, +Heliodorus, Commines, _Celestina_ and many others, is so good and often +so sumptuous a fabric, that no single class of prose authors, from the +time of More to that of Dryden, excels the prose translators, unless it +be the Anglican preachers. Their matter is given to them, and with it a +certain standard of form, so that their natural strength and richness of +phrase are controlled without being deadened. But the want of such +control is seen in the many pamphleteers, who are the journalists of the +time, and are often also playwrights or tale-tellers, divines or +politicians. The writings, for instance, of the hectic, satiric and +graphic Thomas Nashe, run at one extreme into fiction, and at the other +into the virulent rag-sheets of the Marprelate controversy, which is of +historical and social but not of artistic note, being only a fragment +of that vast mass of disputatious literature, which now seems grotesque, +excitable or dull. + + + Hooker. + +Richard Hooker's _Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_ (1594-1597), an +accepted defence of the Anglican position against Geneva and Rome, is +the first theological work of note in the English tongue, and the first +of note since Wycliffe written by an Englishman. It is a plea for reason +as one of the safe and lawful guides to the faith; but it also speaks +with admirable temper and large feeling to the ceremonial and aesthetic +sense. The First Book, the scaffolding of the treatise, discusses the +nature of law at large; but Hooker hardly has pure speculative power, +and the language had not yet learnt to move easily in abstract trains of +thought. In its elaboration of clause and period, in its delicate +resonant eloquence, Hooker's style is Ciceronian; but his inversions and +mazes of subordinate sentence somewhat rack the genius of English. Later +divines like Jeremy Taylor had to disintegrate, since they could not +wield, this admirable but over-complex eloquence. The sermons +(1621-1631) of Donne have the mingled strangeness and intimacy of his +verse, and their subtle flame, imaginative tenacity, and hold upon the +springs of awe make them unique. Though without artificial symmetry, +their sentences are intricately harmonized, in strong contrast to such +pellet-like clauses as those of the learned Lancelot Andrewes, who was +Donne's younger contemporary and the subject of Milton's Latin epitaph. + + + Bacon. + +With Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosophy began its unbroken +course and took its long-delayed rank in Europe. His prose, of which he +is the first high and various master in English, was shaped and coloured +by his bent as orator and pleader, by his immixture in affairs, by his +speculative brain, and by his use and estimate of Latin. In his +conscious craftsmanship, his intellectual confidence and curiosity, his +divining faith in the future of science, and his resolve to follow the +leadings of nature and experience unswervingly; in his habit of storing +and using up his experience, and in his wide wordly insight, +crystallized in maxim, he suggests a kind of Goethe, without the poetic +hand or the capacity for love and lofty suffering. He saw all nature in +a map, and wished to understand and control her by outwitting the +"idols," or inherent paralysing frailties of the human judgment. He +planned but could not finish a great cycle of books in order to realize +this conception. The _De Augmentis Scientiarum_ (1623) expanded from the +English _Advancement of Knowledge_ (1605) draws the map; the _Novum +Organum_ (1620) sets out the errors of scholasticism and the methods of +inductive logic; the _New Atlantis_ sketches an ideally equipped and +moralized scientific community. Bacon shared with the great minds of his +century the notion that Latin would outlast any vernacular tongue, and +committed his chief scientific writings to a Latin which is alive and +splendid and his own, and which also disciplined and ennobled his +English. The _Essays_ (1597, 1612, 1625) are his lifelong, gradually +accumulated diary of his opinions on human life and business. These +famous compositions are often sadly mechanical. They are chippings and +basketings of maxims and quotations, and of anecdotes, often classical, +put together inductively, or rather by "simple enumeration" of the pros +and cons. Still they are the honest notes of a practical observer and +statesman, disenchanted--why not?--with mankind, concerned with cause +and effect rather than with right and wrong, wanting the finer faith and +insight into men and women, but full of reality, touched with +melancholy, and redeeming some arid, small and pretentious counsels by +many that are large and wise. Though sometimes betraying the workshop, +Bacon's style, at its best, is infallibly expressive; like Milton's +angels, it is "dilated or condensed" according to its purposes. In youth +and age alike, Bacon commanded the most opposite patterns and extremes +of prose--the curt maxim, balanced in antithesis or triplet, or standing +solitary; the sumptuous, satisfying and brocaded period; the movements +of exposition, oratory, pleading and narrative. The _History of Henry +VII._ (1622), written after his fall from office, is in form as well as +insight and mastery of material the one historical classic in English +before Clarendon. Bacon's musical sense for the value and placing of +splendid words and proper names resembles Marlowe's. But the master of +mid-Renaissance prose is Shakespeare; with him it becomes the voice of +finer and more impassioned spirits than Bacon's--the voice of Rosalind +and Hamlet. And the eulogist of both men, Ben Jonson, must be named in +their company for his senatorial weight and dignity of ethical counsel +and critical maxim. + + + Hobbes. + + Funereal prose. + +As the Stuart rule declined and fell, prose became enriched from five +chief sources: from philosophy, whether formal or unmethodical; from +theology and preaching and political dispute; from the poetical +contemplation of death; from the observation of men and manners; and +from antiquarian scholarship and history. As in France, where the first +three of these kinds of writings flourished, it was a time rather of +individual great writers than of any admitted pattern or common ideal of +prose form, although in France this pattern was always clearlier +defined. The mental energy, meditative depth, and throbbing brilliant +colour of the English drama passed with its decay over into prose. But +Latin was still often the supplanter: the treatise of Lord Herbert of +Cherbury, _De Veritate_, of note in the early history of Deism, and much +of the writing of the ambidextrous Thomas Hobbes, are in Latin. In this +way Latin disciplined English once more, though it often tempted men of +genius away from English. _The Leviathan_ (1651) with its companion +books on _Human Nature_ and _Liberty_, and Hobbes' explosive dialogue on +the civil wars, _Behemoth_ (1679), have the bitter concision of Tacitus +and the clearness of a half-relief in bronze. Hobbes' speculations on +the human animal, the social contract, the absolute power of the +sovereign, and the subservience owed to the sovereign by the Church or +"Kingdom of Darkness," enraged all parties, and left their track on the +thought and controversial literature of the century. With Ben Jonson and +the jurist Selden (whose English can be judged from his _Table Talk_), +Hobbes anticipates the brief and clear sentence-structure of the next +age, though not its social ease and amenity of form. But his grandeur is +not that of a poet, and the poetical prose is the most distinctive kind +of this period. It is eloquent above all on death and the vanity of +human affairs; its solemn tenor prolongs the reflections of Claudio, of +Fletcher's Philaster, or of Spenser's Despair. It is exemplified in +Bacon's Essay _Of Death_, in the anonymous descant on the same subject +wrongly once ascribed to him, in Donne's plea for suicide, in Raleigh's +_History of the World_, in Drummond's _Cypress Grove_ (1623), in Jeremy +Taylor's sermons and _Holy Dying_ (1651), and in Sir Thomas Browne's +_Urn-Burial_ (1658) and _Letter to a Friend_. Its usual vesture is a +long purple period, freely Latinized, though Browne equally commands the +form of solemn and monumental epigram. He is also free from the +dejection that wraps round the other writers on the subject, and a holy +quaintness and gusto relieve his ruminations. The _Religio Medici_ +(1642), quintessentially learned, wise and splendid, is the fullest +memorial of his power. Amongst modern prose writers, De Quincey is his +only true rival in musical sensibility to words. + + + Jeremy Taylor. + + Burton. + +Jeremy Taylor, the last great English casuist and schoolman, and one of +the first pleaders for religious tolerance (in his _Liberty of +Prophesying_, 1647), is above all a preacher; tender, intricate, +copious, inexhaustible in image and picturesque quotation. From the +classics, from the East, from the animal world, from the life of men and +children, his illustrations flow, without end or measure. He is a master +of the lingering cadence, which soars upward and onward on its coupled +clauses, as on balanced iridescent wings, and is found long after in his +scholar Ruskin. Imaginative force of another kind pervades Robert +Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621), where the humorous medium +refracts and colours every ray of the recluse's far-travelled spirit. +The mass of Latin citation, woven, not quilted, into Burton's style, is +another proof of the vitality of the cosmopolitan language. Burton and +Browne owe much to the pre-critical learning of their time, which yields +up such precious savours to their fancy, that we may be thankful for the +delay of more precise science and scholarship. Fancy, too, of a +suddener and wittier sort, preserves some of the ample labours of Thomas +Fuller, which are scattered over the years 1631-1662; and the _Lives_ +and _Compleat Angler_ (1653) of Izaak Walton are unspoilt, happy or +pious pieces of idyllic prose. No adequate note on the secular or sacred +learning of the time can here be given; on Camden, with his vast +erudition, historical, antiquarian and comparatively critical +(_Britannia_, in Latin, 1586); or on Ussher, with his patristic and +chronological learning, one of the many _savants_ of the Anglican +church. Other divines of the same camp pleaded, in a plainer style than +Taylor, for freedom of personal judgment and against the multiplying of +"vitals in religion"; the chief were Chillingworth, one of the closest +of English apologists, in his _Religion of Protestants_ (1638), and John +Hales of Eton. The Platonists, or rather Plotinists, of Cambridge, who +form a curious digression in the history of modern philosophy, produced +two writers, John Smith and Henry More, of an exalted and esoteric +prose, more directly inspired by Greece than any other of the time; and +their champion of erudition, Cudworth, in his _True Intellectual +System_, gave some form to their doctrine. + + + Clarendon. + + Milton's prose. + +Above the vast body of pamphlets and disputatious writing that form the +historian's material stands Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon's _History of +the Rebellion_, printed in 1702-1704, thirty years after his death. +Historical writing hitherto, but for Bacon's _Henry VII._, had been +tentative though profuse. Raleigh's vast disquisition upon all things, +_The History of the World_ (1614), survives by passages and poetic +splendours; gallantly written second-hand works like Knolles's _History of +the Turks_, and the rhetorical _History of the Long Parliament_ by May, +had failed to give England rank with France and Italy. Clarendon's book, +one of the greatest of memoirs and most vivid of portrait-galleries, +spiritually unappreciative of the other side, but full of a subtle +discrimination of character and political motive, brings its author into +line with Retz and Saint-Simon, the watchers and recorders and sometimes +the makers of contemporary history. Clarendon's _Life_, above all the +picture of Falkland and his friends, is a personal record of the +delightful sort in which England was thus far infertile. He is the last +old master of prose, using and sustaining the long, sinuous sentence, +unworkable in weaker hands. He is the last, for Milton's polemic prose, +hurled from the opposite camp, was written between 1643 and 1660. Whether +reviling bishops or royal privilege or indissoluble monogamy, or recalling +his own youth and aims; or claiming liberty for print in _Areopagitica_ +(1644); in his demonic defiances, or angelic calls to arms, or his animal +eruptions of spite and hatred, Milton leaves us with a sense of the motive +energies that were to be transformed into _Paradise Lost_ and _Samson_. +His sentences are ungainly and often inharmonious, but often irresistible; +he rigidly withstood the tendencies of form, in prose as in verse, that +Dryden was to represent, and thus was true to his own literary dynasty. + + + The Authorized Version. + +A special outlying position belongs to the Authorized Version (1611) of +the Bible, the late fruit of the long toil that had begun with +Tyndale's, and, on the side of style, with the Wycliffite translations. +More scholarly than all the preceding versions which it utilized, it won +its incomparable form, not so much because of the "grand style that was +in the air," which would have been the worst of models, as because the +style had been already tested and ennobled by generations of +translators. Its effect on poetry and letters was for some time far +smaller than its effect on the national life at large, but it was the +greatest translation--being of a whole literature, or rather of two +literatures--in an age of great translations. + +Some other kinds of writing soften the transition to Restoration prose. +The vast catalogue of Characters numbers hundreds of titles. Deriving +from Theophrastus, who was edited by Casaubon in 1592, they are yet +another Renaissance form that England shared with France. But in English +hands, failing a La Bruyere--in Hall's, in Overbury's, even in those of +the gay and skilful Earle (_Microcosmographie_, 1628)--the Character is +a mere list of the attributes and oddities of a type or calling. It is +to the Jonsonian drama of humours what the Pensee, or detached remark, +practised by Bishop Hall and later by Butler and Halifax, is to the +Essay. These works tended long to be commonplace or didactic, as the +popular _Resolves_ of Owen Feltham shows. Cowley was the first essayist +to come down from the desk and talk as to his equals in easy phrases of +middle length. A time of dissension was not the best for this kind of +peaceful, detached writing. The letters of James Howell, the +autobiography of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, and the memoirs of Kenelm +Digby belong rather to the older and more mannered than to the more +modern form, though Howell's English is in the plainer and quicker +movement. + + +IV. RESTORATION PERIOD + + French influence. + +_Literature from 1660 to 1700._--The Renaissance of letters in England +entered on a fresh and peculiar phase in the third quarter of the +century. The balance of intellectual and artistic power in Europe had +completely shifted since 1580. Inspiration had died down in Italy, and +its older classics were no longer a stimulus. The Spanish drama had +flourished, but its influence though real was scattered and indirect. +The Germanic countries were slowly emerging into literature; England +they scarcely touched. But the literary empire of France began to +declare itself both in Northern and Southern lands, and within half a +century was assured. Under this empire the English genius partly fell, +though it soon asserted its own equality, and by 1720 had so reacted +upon France as more than to repay the debt. Thus between 1660 and 1700 +is prepared a temporary dual control of European letters. But in the age +of Dryden France gave England more than it received; it gave more than +it had ever given since the age of Chaucer. During Charles II.'s days +Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine and Bossuet ran the best of their course. +Cavalier exiles like Waller, Cowley and Hobbes had come back from the +winter of their discontent in Paris, and Saint-Evremond, the typical +_bel esprit_ and critic, settled long in England. A vast body of +translations from the French is recounted, including latterly the works +of the Protestant refugees printed in the free Low Countries or in +England. Naturally this influence told most strongly on the social forms +of verse and prose--upon comedy and satire, upon criticism and maxim and +epigram, while it also affected theology and thought. And this meant the +Renaissance once more, still unexhausted, only working less immediately +and in fresh if narrower channels. Greek literature, Plato and Homer and +the dramatists, became dimmer; the secondary forms of Latin poetry came +to the fore, especially those of Juvenal and the satirists, and the +_pedestris sermo_, epistolary and critical, of Horace. These had some +direct influence, as Dryden's translation of them, accompanying his +Virgil and Lucretius, may show. But they came commended by Boileau, +their chief modernizer, and in their train was the fashion of gallant, +epigrammatic and social verse. The tragedy of Corneille and Racine, +developed originally from the Senecan drama, contended with the +traditions of Shakespeare and Fletcher, and was reinforced by that of +the correcter Jonson, in shaping the new theatre of England. The French +codifiers, who were often also the distorters, of Aristotle's _Poetics_ +and Horace's _Ars poetica_, furnished a canonical body of criticism on +the epic and the drama, to which Dryden is half a disciple and half a +rebel. All this implied at once a loss of the larger and fuller +inspirations of poetry, a decadence in its great and primary forms, +epic, lyric and tragic, and a disposition, in default of such creative +power, to turn and take stock of past production. In England, therefore, +it is the age of secondary verse and of nascent, often searching +criticism. + + + Science and Letters. + +The same critical spirit was also whetted in the fields of science and +speculation, which the war and the Puritan rule had not encouraged. The +activities of the newly-founded Royal Society told directly upon +literature, and counted powerfully in the organization of a clear, +uniform prose--the "close, naked, natural way of speaking," which the +historian of the Society, Sprat, cites as part of its programme. And +the style of Sprat, as of scientific masters like Newton and Ray the +botanist, itself attests the change. A time of profound and peaceful and +fruitful scientific labour began; the whole of Newton's _Principia_ +appeared in 1687; the dream of Bacon came nearer, and England was less +isolated from the international work of knowledge. The spirit of method +and observation and induction spread over the whole field of thought and +was typified in John Locke, whose _Essay concerning Human Understanding_ +came out in English in 1690, and who applied the same deeply sagacious +and cautious calculus to education and religion and the "conduct of the +understanding." But his works, though their often mellow and dignified +style has been ignorantly underrated, also show the change in +philosophic writing since Hobbes. The old grandeur and pugnacity are +gone; the imaginative play of science, or quasi-science, on the +literature of reflection is gone; the eccentrics, the fantasts, the +dreamers are gone, or only survive in curious transitional writers like +Joseph Glanvil (_Scepsis scientifica_, 1665) or Thomas Burnet (_Sacred +Theory of the Earth_, 1684). This change was in part a conscious and an +angry change, as is clear from the attacks made in Samuel Butler's +_Hudibras_ (1663-1668) upon scholastic verbiage, astrology, fanatical +sects and their disputes, poetic and "heroic" enthusiasm and +intellectual whim. + + + Courtly and social influence. + +Before the Restoration men of letters, with signal exceptions like +Milton and Marvell, had been Cavalier, courtly and Anglican in their +sympathies. The Civil War had scattered them away from the capital, +which, despite Milton's dream in _Areopagitica_ of its humming and +surging energies, had ceased to be, what it now again became, the +natural haunt and Rialto of authors. The taste of the new king and court +served to rally them. Charles II. relished _Hudibras_, used and +pensioned Dryden, sat under Barrow and South and heard them with +appreciation, countenanced science, visited comedies, and held his own +in talk by mother-wit. Letters became the pastime, and therefore one of +the more serious pursuits, of men of quality, who soon excelled in song +and light scarifying verse and comedy, and took their own tragedies and +criticisms gravely. Poetry under such auspices became gallant and +social, and also personal and partisan; and satire was soon its most +vital form, with the accessories of compliment, rhymed popular +argumentation and elegy. The social and conversational instinct was the +master-influence in prose. It produced a subtle but fundamental change +in the attitude of author to reader. Prose came nearer to living speech, +it became more civil and natural and persuasive, and this not least in +the pulpit. The sense of ennui, or boredom, which seemed as unknown in +the earlier part of the century as it is to the modern German, became +strongly developed, and prose was much improved by the fear of provoking +it. In all these ways the Restoration accompanied and quickened a +speedier and greater change in letters than any political event in +English history since the reign of Alfred, when prose itself was +created. + + + Prose and criticism. + +The formal change in prose can thus be assigned to no one writer, for +the good reason that it presupposes a change of spoken style lying +deeper than any personal influence. If we begin with the writing that is +nearest living talk--the letters of Otway or Lady Rachel Russell, or the +diary of Pepys (1659-1669)--that supreme disclosure of our +mother-earth--or the evidence in a state trial, or the dialogue in the +more natural comedies; if we then work upwards through some of the +plainer kinds of authorship, like the less slangy of L'Estrange's +pamphlets, or Burnet's _History of My Own Time_, a solid Whig memoir of +historical value, until we reach really admirable or lasting prose like +Dryden's _Preface_ to his _Fables_ (1700), or the maxims of Halifax;--if +we do this, we are aware, amid all varieties, survivals and reversions, +of a strong and rapid drift towards the style that we call modern. And +one sign of this movement is the revulsion against any over-saturating +of the working, daily language, and even of the language of appeal and +eloquence, with the Latin element. In Barrow and Glanvil, descendants of +Taylor and Browne, many Latinized words remain, which were soon +expelled from style like foreign bodies from an organism. As in the +mid-sixteenth and the mid-eighteenth century, the process is visible by +which the Latin vocabulary and Latin complication of sentence first +gathers strength, and then, though not without leaving its traces, is +forced to ebb. The instinct of the best writers secured this result, and +secured it for good and all. In Dryden's diction there is a nearly +perfect balance and harmony of learned and native constituents, and a +sensitive tact in Gallicizing; in his build of sentence there is the +same balance between curtness or bareness and complexity or ungainly +lengthiness. For ceremony and compliment he keeps a rolling period, for +invective a short sharp stroke without the gloves. And he not only uses +in general a sentence of moderate scale, inclining to brevity, but he +finds out its harmonies; he is a seeming-careless but an absolute master +of rhythm. In delusive ease he is unexcelled; and we only regret that he +could not have written prose oftener instead of plays. We should thus, +however, have lost their prefaces, in which the bulk and the best of +Dryden's criticisms appear. From the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ (1668) +down to the _Preface to Fables_ (1700) runs a series of essays: _On the +Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy_, _On Heroic Plays_, _On Translated +Verse_, _On Satire_ and many more; which form the first connected body +of criticisms in the language, and are nobly written always. Dryden's +prose is literature as it stands, and yet is talk, and yet again is +mysteriously better than talk. The critical writings of John Dennis are +but a sincere application of the rules and canons that were now becoming +conventional; Rymer, though not so despicable as Macaulay said, is still +more depressing than Dennis; and for any critic at once so free, so +generous and so sure as Dryden we wait in vain for a century. + + + Contributors to the new prose. + +Three or four names are usually associated with Dryden's in the work of +reforming or modifying prose: Sprat, Tillotson, Sir William Temple, and +George Savile, marquis of Halifax; but the honours rest with Halifax. +Sprat, though clear and easy, has little range; Tillotson, though lucid, +orderly, and a very popular preacher, has little distinction; Temple, +the elegant essayist, has a kind of barren gloss and fine literary +manners, but very little to say. The political tracts, essays and maxims +of Halifax (died 1695) are the most typically modern prose between +Dryden and Swift, and are nearer than anything else to the best French +writing of the same order, in their finality of epigram, their neatness +and mannerliness and sharpness. The _Character of a Trimmer_ and _Advice +to a Daughter_ are the best examples. + + + Preachers. + +Religious literature, Anglican and Puritan, is the chief remaining +department to be named. The strong, eloquent and coloured preaching of +Isaac Barrow the mathematician, who died in 1677, is a survival of the +larger and older manner of the Church. In its balance of logic, learning +and emotion, in its command alike of Latin splendour and native force, +it deserves a recognition it has lost. Another athlete of the pulpit, +Robert South, who is so often praised for his wit that his force is +forgotten, continues the lineage, while Tillotson and the elder Sherlock +show the tendency to the smoother and more level prose. But the +revulsion against strangeness and fancy and magnificence went too far; +it made for a temporary bareness and meanness and disharmony, which had +to be checked by Addison, Bolingbroke and Berkeley. From what Addison +saved our daily written English, may be seen in the vigorous slangy +hackwork of Roger L'Estrange, the translator and pamphleteer, in the +news-sheets of Dunton, and in the satires of Tom Brown. These writers +were debasing the coinage with their street journalism. + + + Puritan prose. + + Bunyan. + +Another and far nobler variety of vernacular prose is found in the +Puritans. Baxter and Howe, Fox and Bunyan, had the English Bible behind +them, which gave them the best of their inspiration, though the first +two of them were also erudite men. Richard Baxter, an immensely fertile +writer, is best remembered by those of his own fold for his _Saint's +Everlasting Rest_ (1650) and his autobiography, John Howe for his +evangelical apologia _The Living Temple of God_ (1675), Fox for his +_Journal_ and its mixture of quaintness and rapturous mysticism. John +Bunyan, the least instructed of them all, is their only born artist. His +creed and point of view were those of half the nation--the half that was +usually inarticulate in literature, or spoke without style or genius. +His reading, consisting not only of the Bible, but of the popular +allegories of giants, pilgrims and adventure, was also that of his +class. _The Pilgrim's Progress_, of which the first part appeared in +1678, the second in 1684, is the happy flowering sport amidst a growth +of barren plants of the same tribe. The _Progress_ is a dream, more +vivid to its author than most men's waking memories to themselves; the +emblem and the thing signified are merged at every point, so that +Christian's journey is not so much an allegory with a key as a spiritual +vision of this earth and our neighbours. _Grace Abounding_, Bunyan's +diary of his own voyage to salvation, _The Holy War_, an overloaded +fable of the fall and recovery of mankind, and _The Life and Death of Mr +Badman_, a novel telling of the triumphal earthly progress of a +scoundrelly tradesman, are among Bunyan's other contributions to +literature. His union of spiritual intensity, sharp humorous vision, and +power of simple speech consummately chosen, mark his work off alike from +his own inarticulate public and from all other literary performance of +his time. + + + Transitional verse. + + Hudibras. + + Songsters. + +The transition from the older to the newer poetry was not abrupt. Old +themes and tunes were slowly disused, others previously of lesser mark +rose into favour, and a few quite fresh ones were introduced. The poems +of John Oldham and Andrew Marvell belong to both periods. Both of them +begin with fantasy and elegy, and end with satires, which indeed are +rather documents than works of art. The monody of Oldham on his friend +Morwent is poorly exchanged for the _Satires on the Jesuits_ (1681), and +the lovely metaphysical verses of Marvell on gardens and orchards and +the spiritual love sadly give place to his _Last Instructions to a +Painter_ (1669). In his _Horatian Ode_ Marvell had nobly and impartially +applied his earlier style to national affairs; but the time proved too +strong for this delightful poet. Another and a stranger satire had soon +greeted the Restoration, the _Hudibras_ (1663-1678) of Samuel Butler, +with its companion pieces. The returned wanderers delighted in this +horribly agile, boisterous and fierce attack on the popular party and +its religions, and its wrangles and its manners. Profoundly eccentric +and tiresomely allusive in his form, and working in the short rhyming +couplets thenceforth called "Hudibrastics," Butler founded a small and +peculiar but long-lived school of satire. The other verse of the time is +largely satire of a different tone and metre; but the earlier kind of +finished and gallant lyric persisted through the reign of Charles II. +The songs of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, are usually malicious, +sometimes passionate; they have a music and a splendid self-abandonment +such as we never meet again till Burns. Sedley and Dorset and Aphra Behn +and Dryden are the rightful heirs of Carew and Lovelace, those +infallible masters of short rhythms; and this secret also was lost for a +century afterwards. + + + Dryden. + +In poetry, in prose, and to some extent in drama, John Dryden, the +creature of his time, is the master of its expression. He began with +panegyric verse, first on Cromwell and then on Charles, which is full of +fine things and false writing. The _Annus Mirabilis_ (1667) is the chief +example, celebrating the Plague, the Fire and the naval victory, in the +quatrains for which Davenant's pompous _Gondibert_ had shown the way. +The _Essay on Dramatic Poesy_ (1668), a dialogue on the rivalries of +blank verse with rhyme, and of the Elizabethan drama with the French, is +perfect modern prose; and to this perfection Dryden attained at a bound, +while he attained his poetical style more gradually. He practised his +couplet in panegyric, in heroic tragedy, and in dramatic prologue and +epilogue for twenty years before it was consummate. Till 1680 he +supported himself chiefly by his plays, which have not lived so long as +their critical prefaces, already mentioned. His diction and +versification came to their full power in his satires, rhymed arguments, +dedications and translations. _Absalom and Achitophel_ (part i., 1681; +part ii., with Nahum Tate, 1682), as well as _The Medal_ and _Mac +Flecknoe_, marked a new birth of English satire, placing it at once on a +level with that of any ancient or modern country. The mixture of deadly +good temper, Olympian unfairness, and rhetorical and metrical skill in +each of these poems has never been repeated. The presentment of +Achitophel, earl of Shaftesbury, in his relations with Absalom Walters +and Charles the minstrel-king of Judah, as well as the portraits of +Shimei and Barzillai and Jotham, the eminent Whigs and Tories, and of +the poets Og and Doeg, are things whose vividness age has never +discoloured. Dryden's Protestant arguings in _Religio Laici_ (1682) and +his equally sincere Papistical arguings in _The Hind and the Panther_ +(1687) are just as skilful. His translations of Virgil and parts of +Lucretius, of Chaucer and Boccaccio (_Fables_, 1700), set the seal on +his command of his favourite couplet for the higher kinds of appeal and +oratory. His _Ode_ on Anne Killigrew, and his popular but coarser +_Alexander's Feast_, have a more lyric harmony; and his songs, inserted +in his plays, reflect the change of fashion by their metrical adeptness +and often thorough-going wantonness. The epithet of "glorious," in its +older sense of a certain conscious and warranted pride of place, not in +that of boastful or pretentious, suits Dryden well. Not only did he +leave a model and a point of departure for Pope, but his influence +recurs in Churchill, in Gray, in Johnson and in Crabbe, where he is seen +counteracting, with his large, wholesome and sincere bluntness, the +acidity of Pope. Dryden was counted near Shakespeare and Milton until +the romantic revival renewed the sense of proportion; but the same sense +now demands his acknowledgment as the English poet who is nearest to +their frontiers of all those who are exiled from their kingdom. + + + Tragedy. + + Otway. + +Restoration and Revolution tragedy is nearly all abortive; it is now +hard to read it for pleasure. But it has noble flights, and its historic +interest is high. Two of its species, the rhymed heroic play and the +rehandling of Shakespeare in blank verse, were also brought to their +utmost by Dryden, though in both he had many companions. The heroic +tragedies were a hybrid offspring of the heroic romance and French +tragedy; and though _The Conquest of Granada_ (1669-1670) and _Tyrannic +Love_ would be very open to satire in Dryden's own vein, they are at +least generously absurd. Their intention is never ignoble, if often +impossible. After a time Dryden went back to Shakespeare, after a +fashion already set by Sir William Davenant, the connecting link with +the older tragedy and the inaugurator of the new. They "revived" +Shakespeare; they vamped him in a style that did not wholly perish till +after the time of Garrick. _The Tempest_, _Troilus and Cressida_, and +_Antony and Cleopatra_ were thus handled by Dryden; and the last of +these, as converted by him into _All for Love_ (1678), is loftier and +stronger than any of his original plays, its blank verse renewing the +ties of Restoration poetry with the great age. The heroic plays, written +in one or other metre, lived long, and expired in the burlesques of +Fielding and Sheridan. _The Rehearsal_ (1671), a gracious piece of +fooling partially aimed at Dryden by Buckingham and his friends, did not +suffice to kill its victims. Thomas Otway and Nathaniel Lee, both of +whom generally used blank verse, are the other tragic writers of note, +children indeed of the extreme old age of the drama. Otway's long-acted +_Venice Preserved_ (1682) has an almost Shakespearian skill in +melodrama, a wonderful tide of passionate language, and a blunt and bold +delineation of character; but Otway's inferior style and verse could +only be admired in an age like his own. Lee is far more of a poet, +though less of a dramatist, and he wasted a certain talent in noise and +fury. + + + Comedy. + + Wycherley. + +Restoration comedy at first followed Jonson, whom it was easy to try and +imitate; Shadwell and Wilson, whose works are a museum for the social +antiquary, photographed the humours of the town. Dryden's many comedies +often show his more boisterous and blatant, rarely his finer qualities. +Like all playwrights of the time he pillages from the French, and +vulgarizes Moliere without stint or shame. A truer light comedy began +with Sir George Etherege, who mirrored in his fops the gaiety and +insolence of the world he knew. The society depicted by William +Wycherley, the one comic dramatist of power between Massinger and +Congreve, at first seems hardly human; but his energy is skilful and +faithful as well as brutal; he excels in the graphic reckless exhibition +of outward humours and bustle; he scavenges in the most callous good +spirits and with careful cynicism. _The Plain Dealer_ (1677), a skilful +transplantation, as well as a depravation of Moliere's _Le Misanthrope_, +is his best piece: he writes in prose, and his prose is excellent, +modern and lifelike. + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--General Histories: Hallam, _Introduction to the Lit. of + Europe_ (1838-1839); G. Saintsbury, _Elizabethan Literature_ (1890), + and _History of Literary Criticism_, vol. ii. (1902); W.J. Courthorpe, + _History of English Poetry_, vols. i.-v. (1895-1905); J.J. Jusserand, + _Histoire litteraire du peuple anglais_, vol. ii. (1904); T. Seccombe + and J.W. Allen, _The Age of Shakespeare_ (2 vols., 1903); D. Hannay, + _The Later Renaissance_ (1898); H.J.C. Grierson, _First Half of 17th + Century_; O. Elton, _The Augustan Ages_ (1899); Masson, _Life of + Milton_ (6 vols., London, 1881-1894); R. Garnett, _The Age of Dryden_ + (1901); W. Raleigh, _The English Novel_ (1894); J.J. Jusserand, _Le + Roman anglais au temps de Shakespeare_ (1887, Eng. tr., 1901); G. + Gregory Smith, _Elizabethan Critical Essays_ (2 vols., 1904, reprints + and introd.). Classical and Foreign Influences.--Mary A. Scott, + _Elizabethan Translations from the Italian_ (bibliography), + (Baltimore, 1895); E. Koeppel, _Studien zur Gesch. der ital. Novelle + i. d. eng. Litteratur des 16ten Jahrh._ (Strasb., 1892); L. Einstein + _The Italian Renaissance in England_ (New York, 1902); J. Erskine, + _The Elizabethan Lyric_ (New York, 1903); J.S. Harrison, _Platonism in + Eliz. Poetry of the 16th and 17th Centuries_ (New York, 1903); S. Lee, + _Elizabethan Sonnets_ (2 vols., 1904); C.H. Herford, _Literary + Relations of England and Germany in 16th Century_; J.G. Underhill, + _Spanish Lit. in the England of the Tudors_ (New York, 1899); J.E. + Spingarn, _Hist. of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_ (New York, + 1899). Many articles in _Englische Studien_, _Anglia_, &c., on + influences, texts and sources. See too arts. DRAMA; SONNET; + RENAISSANCE. (O. E.*) + + +V. THE 18TH CENTURY + + Social changes. + +In the reign of Anne (1702-1714) the social changes which had commenced +with the Restoration of 1660 began to make themselves definitely felt. +Books began to penetrate among all classes of society. The period is +consequently one of differentiation and expansion. As the practice of +reading becomes more and more universal, English writers lose much of +their old idiosyncrasy, intensity and obscurity. As in politics and +religion, so in letters, there is a great development of nationality. +Commercial considerations too for the first time become important. We +hear relatively far less of religious controversy, of the bickering +between episcopalians and nonconformists and of university squabbles. +Specialization and cumbrous pedantry fall into profound disfavour. +Provincial feeling exercises a diminishing sway, and literature becomes +increasingly metropolitan or suburban. With the multiplication of +moulds, the refinement of prose polish, and the development of breadth, +variety and ease, it was natural enough, having regard to the place that +the country played in the world's affairs, that English literature +should make its debut in western Europe. The strong national savour +seemed to stimulate the foreign appetite, and as represented by Swift, +Pope, Defoe, Young, Goldsmith, Richardson, Sterne and Ossian, if we +exclude Byron and Scott, the 18th century may be deemed the cosmopolitan +age, _par excellence_, of English Letters. The charms of 18th-century +English literature, as it happens, are essentially of the rational, +social and translatable kind: in intensity, exquisiteness and +eccentricity of the choicer kinds it is proportionately deficient. It is +pre-eminently an age of prose, and although verbal expression is seldom +represented at its highest power, we shall find nearly every variety of +English prose brilliantly illustrated during this period: the +aristocratic style of Bolingbroke, Addison and Berkeley; the gentlemanly +style of Fielding; the keen and logical controversy of Butler, +Middleton, Smith and Bentham; the rhythmic and balanced if occasionally +involved style of Johnson and his admirers; the limpid and flowing +manner of Hume and Mackintosh; the light, easy and witty flow of +Walpole; the divine chit-chat of Cowper; the colour of Gray and +Berkeley; the organ roll of Burke; the detective journalism of Swift and +Defoe; the sly familiarity of Sterne; the dance music and wax candles +of Sheridan; the pomposity of Gibbon; the air and ripple of Goldsmith; +the peeping preciosity of Boswell,--these and other characteristics can +be illustrated in 18th-century prose as probably nowhere else. + +But more important to the historian of literature even than the +development of qualities is the evolution of types. And in this respect +the 18th century is a veritable index-museum of English prose. +Essentially, no doubt, it is true that in form the prose and verse of +the 18th century is mainly an extension of Dryden, just as in content it +is a reflection of the increased variety of the city life which came +into existence as English trade rapidly increased in all directions. But +the taste of the day was rapidly changing. People began to read in +vastly increasing numbers. The folio was making place on the shelves for +the octavo. The bookseller began to transcend the mere tradesman. Along +with newspapers the advertizing of books came into fashion, and the +market was regulated no longer by what learned men wanted to write, but +what an increasing multitude wanted to read. The arrival of the octavo +is said to have marked the enrolment of man as a reader, that of the +novel the attachment of woman. Hence, among other causes, the rapid +decay of lyrical verse and printed drama, of theology and epic, in +ponderous tomes. The fashionable types of which the new century was to +witness the fixation are accordingly the essay and the satire as +represented respectively by Addison and Steele, Swift and Goldsmith, and +by Pope and Churchill. Pope, soon to be followed by Lady Mary Wortley +Montagu, was the first Englishman who treated letter-writing as an art +upon a considerable scale. Personalities and memoirs prepare the way for +history, in which as a department of literature English letters hitherto +had been almost scandalously deficient. Similarly the new growth of +fancy essay (Addison) and plain biography (Defoe) prepared the way for +the English novel, the most important by far of all new literary +combinations. Finally, without going into unnecessary detail, we have a +significant development of topography, journalism and criticism. In the +course of time, too, we shall perceive how the pressure of town life and +the logic of a capital city engender, first a fondness for landscape +gardening and a somewhat artificial Arcadianism, and then, by degrees, +an intensifying love of the country, of the open air, and of the rare, +exotic and remote in literature. + + + Locke: Addison. + +At the outset of the new century the two chief architects of public +opinion were undoubtedly John Locke and Joseph Addison. When he died at +High Laver in October 1704 at the mature age of seventy-two, Locke had, +perhaps, done more than any man of the previous century to prepare the way +for the new era. Social duty and social responsibility were his two +watchwords. The key to both he discerned in the _Human Understanding_--"no +province of knowledge can be regarded as independent of reason." But the +great modernist of the time was undoubtedly Joseph Addison (1672-1719). He +first left the 17th century, with its stiff euphuisms, its formal +obsequiousness, its ponderous scholasticism and its metaphorical +antitheses, definitely behind. He did for English culture what Rambouillet +did for that of France, and it is hardly an exaggeration to call the +half-century before the great fame of the English novel, the half century +of the _Spectator_. + + + Steele. + +Addison's mind was fertilized by intercourse with the greater and more +original genius of Swift and with the more inventive and more genial +mind of Steele. It was Richard Steele (1672-1729) in the _Tatler_ of +1709-1710 who first realized that the specific which that urbane age +both needed and desired was no longer copious preaching and rigorous +declamation, but homoeopathic doses of good sense, good taste and +good-humoured morality, disguised beneath an easy and fashionable style. +Nothing could have suited Addison better than the opportunity afforded +him of contributing an occasional essay or roundabout paper in praise of +virtue or dispraise of stupidity and bad form to his friend's +periodical. When the _Spectator_ succeeded the _Tatler_ in March 1711, +Addison took a more active share in shaping the chief characters (with +the immortal baronet, Sir Roger, at their head) who were to make up the +"Spectator Club"; and, better even than before, he saw his way, perhaps, +to reinforcing his copious friend with his own more frugal but more +refined endowment. Such a privileged talent came into play at precisely +the right moment to circulate through the coffee houses and to convey a +large measure of French courtly ease and elegance into the more humdrum +texture of English prose. Steele became rather disreputable in his later +years, Swift was banished and went mad, but Addison became a personage +of the utmost consideration, and the essay as he left it became an +almost indispensable accomplishment to the complete gentlemen of that +age. As an architect of opinion from 1717 to 1775 Addison may well rank +with Locke. + + + Swift. + + Arbuthnot. + + Bolingbroke. + +The other side, both in life and politics, was taken by Jonathan Swift +(1667-1745), who preferred to represent man on his unsocial side. He +sneered at most things, but not at his own order, and he came to defend +the church and the country squirearchy against the conventicle and Capel +court. To undermine the complacent entrenchments of the Whig capitalists +at war with France no sap proved so effectual as his pen. Literary +influence was then exercised in politics mainly by pamphlets, and Swift +was the greatest of pamphleteers. In the _Journal to Stella_ he has left +us a most wonderful portrait of himself in turn currying favour, +spoiled, petted and humiliated by the party leaders of the Tories from +1710-1713. He had always been savage, and when the Hanoverians came in +and he was treated as a suspect, his hate widened to embrace all mankind +(_Gulliver's Travels_, 1726) and he bit like a mad dog. Would that he +could have bitten more, for the infection of English stylists! In wit, +logic, energy, pith, resourcefulness and Saxon simplicity, his prose has +never been equalled. The choicest English then, it is the choicest +English still. Dr John Arbuthnot (1667-1735) may be described as an +understudy of Swift on the whimsical side only, whose malignity, in a +nature otherwise most kindly, was circumscribed strictly by the limits +of political persiflage. Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), unorthodox as +he was in every respect, discovered a little of Swift's choice pessimism +in his assault (in _The Fable of the Bees_ of 1723) against the genteel +optimism of the _Characteristics_ of Lord Shaftesbury. Neither the +matter nor the manner of the brilliant Tory chieftain Henry St John, +Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), appears to us now as being of the +highest significance; but, although Bolingbroke's ideas were +second-hand, his work has an historical importance; his dignified, +balanced and decorated style was the cynosure of 18th-century statesmen. +His essays on "History" and on "a Patriot King" both disturb a soil well +prepared, and set up a reaction against such evil tendencies as a +narrowing conception of history and a primarily factious and partisan +conception of politics. It may be noted here how the fall of Bolingbroke +and the Tories in 1714 precipitated the decay of the Renaissance ideal +of literary patronage. The dependence of the press upon the House of +Lords was already an anomaly, and the practical toleration achieved in +1695 removed another obstacle from the path of liberation. The +government no longer sought to strangle the press. It could generally be +tuned satisfactorily and at the worst could always be temporarily +muzzled. The pensions hitherto devoted to men of genius were diverted +under Walpole to spies and journalists. Yet one of the most unscrupulous +of all the fabricators of intelligence, looked down upon as a huckster +of the meanest and most inconsiderable literary wares, established his +fame by a masterpiece of which literary genius had scarcely even +cognizance. + + + Defoe. + +The new trade of writing was represented most perfectly by Daniel Defoe +(1660-1731), who represents, too, what few writers possess, a competent +knowledge of work and wages, buying and selling, the squalor and roguery +of the very hungry and the very mean. From reporting sensations and +chronicling _faits divers_, Defoe worked his way almost insensibly to +the Spanish tale of the old Mendoza or picaresque pattern. _Robinson +Crusoe_ was a true story expanded on these lines, and written down under +stress of circumstance when its author was just upon sixty. Resembling +that of Bunyan and, later, Smollett in the skilful use made of places, +facts and figures, Defoe's style is the mirror of man in his shirt +sleeves. What he excelled in was plain, straightforward story-telling, +in understanding and appraising the curiosity of the man in the street, +and in possessing just the knowledge and just the patience, and just the +literary stroke that would enable him most effectually to satisfy it. He +was the first and cleverest of all descriptive reporters, for he knew +better than any successor how and where to throw in those irrelevant +details, tricks of speech and circumlocution, which tend to give an air +of verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincing narrative--the funny little +splutterings and naivetes as of a plain man who is not telling a tale +for effect, but striving after his own manner to give the plain +unvarnished truth. Defoe contributes story, Addison character, Fielding +the life-atmosphere, Richardson and Sterne the sentiment, and we have +the 18th-century novel complete--the greatest literary birth of modern +time. Addison, Steele, Swift and Defoe, as master-builders of prose +fiction, are consequently of more importance than the "Augustan poets," +as Pope and his school are sometimes called, for the most that they can +be said to have done is to have perfected a more or less transient mode +of poetry. + + + Pope. + + Thomson. + + Collins. Gray. + +To the passion, imagination or musical quality essential to the most +inspired kinds of poetry Alexander Pope (1688-1744) can lay small claim. +His best work is contained in the _Satires_ and _Epistles_, which are +largely of the proverb-in-rhyme order. Yet in lucid, terse and pungent +phrases he has rarely if ever been surpassed. His classical fancy, his +elegant turn for periphrasis and his venomous sting alike made him the +idol of that urbane age. Voltaire in 1726 had called him the best poet +living, and at his death his style was paramount throughout the +civilized world. It was the apotheosis of wit, point, lucidity and +technical correctness. Pope was the first Englishman to make poetry pay +(apart from patronage). He was flattered by imitation to an extent which +threatened to throw the school of poetry which he represented into +permanent discredit. Prior, Gay, Parnell, Akenside, Pomfret, Garth, +Young, Johnson, Goldsmith, Falconer, Glover, Grainger, Darwin, Rogers, +Hayley and indeed a host of others--the once famous mob of gentlemen who +wrote with ease--worshipped Pope as their poetic founder. The +second-rate wore his badge. But although the cult of Pope was the +established religion of poetic taste from 1714 to 1798, there were +always nonconformists. The poetic revolt, indeed, was far more versatile +than the religious revival of the century. The _Winter_ (1726) of James +Thomson may be regarded as inaugurating a new era in English poetry. +Lady Winchilsea, John Philips, author of _Cyder_, and John Dyer, whose +_Grongar Hill_ was published a few months before _Winter_, had pleaded +by their work for a truthful and unaffected, and at the same time a +romantic treatment of nature in poetry; but the ideal of artificiality +and of a frigid poetic diction by which English poetry was dominated +since the days of Waller and Cowley was first effectively challenged by +Thomson. At the time when the Popean couplet was at the height of its +vogue he deliberately put it aside in favour of the higher poetic power +of blank verse. And he it was who transmitted the sentiment of natural +beauty not merely to imitators such as Savage, Armstrong, Somerville, +Langhorne, Mickle and Shenstone, but also to his elegist, William +Collins, to Gray and to Cowper, and so indirectly to the lyrical bards +of 1798. By the same hands and those of Shenstone experiments were being +made in the stanza of _The Faerie Queene_; a little later, owing to the +virtuosity of Bishop Percy, the cultivation of the old English and +Scottish ballad literature was beginning to take a serious turn. +Dissatisfaction with the limitations of "Augustan" poetry was similarly +responsible for the revived interest in Shakespeare and Chaucer. Gray +stood not only for a far more intimate worship of wild external nature, +but also for an awakened curiosity in Scandinavian, Celtic and Icelandic +poetry. + +To pretend then that the poetic heart of the 18th century was Popean to +the core is nothing short of extravagance. There were a number of true +poets in the second and third quarters of the century to whom all +credit is due as pioneers and precentors of the romantic movement under +the depressing conditions to which innovators in poetry are commonly +subject. They may strike us as rather an anaemic band after the great +Elizabethan poets. Four of them were mentally deranged (Collins, Smart, +Cowper, Blake), while Gray was a hermit, and Shenstone and Thomson the +most indolent of recluses. The most adventurous, one might say the most +virile of the group, was a boy who died at the age of seventeen. Single +men all (save for Blake), a more despondent group of artists as a whole +it would not perhaps be easy to discover. Catacombs and cypresses were +the forms of imagery that came to them most naturally. Elegies and +funeral odes were the types of expression in which they were happiest. +Yet they strove in the main to follow the gleam in poetry, to reinstate +imagination upon its throne, and to substitute the singing voice for the +rhetorical recitative of the heroic couplet. Within two years of the +death of Pope, in 1746, William Collins was content to _sing_ (not say) +what he had in him without a glimpse of wit or a flash of eloquence--and +in him many have discerned the germ of that romantic _eclosion_ which +blossomed in _Christabel_. A more important if less original factor in +that movement was Collins's severe critic Thomas Gray, a man of the +widest curiosities of his time, in whom every attribute of the poet to +which scholarship, taste and refinement are contributory may be found to +the full, but in whom the strong creative energy is fatally +lacking--despite the fact that he wrote a string of "divine truisms" in +his _Elegy_, which has given to multitudes more of the exquisite +pleasure of poetry than any other single piece in the English language. +Shenstone and Percy, Capell, the Wartons and eventually Chatterton, +continued to mine in the shafts which Gray had been the first to sink. +Their laborious work of discovery resembled that which was commencing in +regard to the Gothic architecture which the age of Pope had come to +regard as rude and barbaric. The Augustans had come seriously to regard +all pre-Drydenic poetry as grossly barbarian. One of the greatest +achievements of the mid-eighteenth century was concerned with the +disintegration of this obstinate delusion. The process was manifold; and +it led, among other things, to a realization of the importance of the +study of comparative literature. + + + The novel. + + Richardson. + +The literary grouping of the 18th century is, perhaps, the biggest thing +on the whole that English art has to show; but among all its groups the +most famous, and probably the most original, is that of its +proto-novelists Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and Sterne. All nations +have had their novels, which are as old at least as Greek vases. The +various types have generally had collective appellations such as +Milesian Tales, Alexandrian Romances, Romances of Chivalry, Acta +Sanctorum, Gesta Romanorum, Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, Romances of +Roguery, Arabian Nights; but owing to the rivalry of other more popular +or more respectable or at least more eclectic literary forms, they +seldom managed to attain a permanent lodgment in the library. The taste +in prose fiction changes, perhaps, more rapidly than that in any other +kind of literature. In Britain alone several forms had passed their +prime since the days of Caxton and his Arthurian prose romance of _Morte +d'Arthur_. Such were the wearisome Arcadian romance or pastoral heroic; +the new centos of tales of chivalry like the _Seven Champions of +Christendom_; the utopian, political and philosophical romances +(_Oceana_, _The Man in the Moone_); the grotesque and facetious stories +of rogues retailed from the Spanish or French in dwarf volumes; the +prolix romance of modernized classic heroism (_The Grand Cyrus_); the +religious allegory (Bunyan's _Life and Death of Mr Badman_); the novels +of outspoken French or Italian gallantry, represented by Aphra Behn; the +imaginary voyages so notably adapted to satire by Dr Swift; and last, +but not least, the minutely prosaic chronicle-novels of Daniel Defoe. +The prospect of the novel was changing rapidly. The development of the +individual and of a large well-to-do urban middle class, which was +rapidly multiplying its area of leisure, involved a curious and +self-conscious society, hungry for pleasure and new sensations, anxious +to be told about themselves, willing in some cases even to learn +civilization from their betters. The disrepute into which the drama had +fallen since Jeremy Collier's attack on it directed this society by an +almost inevitable course into the flowery paths of fiction. The novel, +it is true, had a reputation which was for the time being almost as +unsavoury as that of the drama, but the novel was not a confirmed +ill-doer, and it only needed a touch of genius to create for it a vast +congregation of enthusiastic votaries. In the _Tatler_ and _Spectator_ +were already found the methods and subjects of the modern novel. The De +Coverley papers in the _Spectator_, in fact, want nothing but a +love-thread to convert them into a serial novel of a high order. The +supreme importance of the sentimental interest had already been +discovered and exemplified to good purpose in France by Madame de la +Fayette, the Marquise de Tencin, Marivaux and the Abbe Prevost. Samuel +Richardson (1689-1762), therefore, when he produced the first two modern +novels of European fame in _Pamela_ (1740) and _Clarissa_ (1748), +inherited far more than he invented. There had been Richardsonians +before Richardson. _Clarissa_ is nevertheless a pioneer work, and we +have it on the high authority of M. Jusserand that the English have +contributed more than any other people to the formation of the +contemporary novel. Of the long-winded, typical and rather chaotic +English novel of love analysis and moral sentiment (as opposed to the +romance of adventure) Richardson is the first successful charioteer. + + + Fielding. + + Smollett. + +The novel in England gained prodigiously by the shock of opposition +between the ideals of Richardson and Henry Fielding (1707-1754), his +rival and parodist. Fielding's brutal toleration is a fine corrective to +the slightly rancid morality of Richardson, with its frank insistence +upon the cash-value of chastity and virtue. Fielding is, to be brief, +the succinct antithesis of Richardson, and represents the opposite pole +of English character. He is the Cavalier, Richardson the Roundhead; he +is the gentleman, Richardson the tradesman; he represents church and +county, Richardson chapel and borough. Richardson had much of the +patient insight and intensity of genius, but he lacked the humour and +literary accomplishment which Fielding had in rich abundance. Fielding +combined breadth and keenness, classical culture and a delicate Gallic +irony to an extent rare among English writers. He lacked the delicate +intuition of Richardson in the analysis of women, nor could he compass +the broad farcical humour of Smollett or the sombre colouring by which +Smollett produces at times such poignant effects of contrast. There was +no poetry in Fielding; but there was practically every other ingredient +of a great prose writer--taste, culture, order, vivacity, humour, +penetrating irony and vivid, pervading common sense, and it is +Fielding's chef-d'oeuvre _Tom Jones_ (1749) that we must regard if not +as the fundament at least as the head of the corner in English prose +fiction. Before _Tom Jones_ appeared, the success of the novel had drawn +a new competitor into the field in Tobias Smollett, the descendant of a +good western lowland family who had knocked about the world and seen +more of its hurlyburly than Fielding himself. In _Roderick Random_ +(1748) Smollett represents a rougher and more uncivilized world even +than that depicted in _Joseph Andrews_. The savagery and horse-play +peculiar to these two novelists derives in part from the rogue romance +of Spain (as then recently revived by Lesage), and has a counterpart to +some extent in the graphic art of Hogarth and Rowlandson; yet one cannot +altogether ignore an element of exaggeration which has greatly injured +both these writers in the estimation (and still more in the affection) +of posterity. The genius which struggles through novels such as +_Roderick Random_ and _Ferdinand Count Fathom_ was nearly submerged +under the hard conditions of a general writer during the third quarter +of the 18th century, and it speaks volumes for Smollett's powers of +recuperation that he survived to write two such masterpieces of sardonic +and humorous observation as his _Travels_ and _Humphry Clinker_. + + + Sterne. + +The fourth proto-master of the English novel was the antiquarian +humorist Lawrence Sterne. Though they owed a good deal to _Don Quixote_ +and the French novelists, Fielding and Smollett were essentially +observers of life in the quick. Sterne brought a far-fetched style, a +bookish apparatus and a deliberate eccentricity into fiction. _Tristram +Shandy_, produced successively in nine small volumes between 1760 and +1764, is the pretended history of a personage who is not born (before +the fourth volume) and hardly ever appears, carried on in an eccentric +rigmarole of old and new, original and borrowed humour, arranged in a +style well known to students of the later Valois humorists as +_fatrasie_. Far more than Moliere, Sterne took his literary _bien_ +wherever he found it. But he invented a kind of tremolo style of his +own, with the aid of which, in conjunction with the most unblushingly +indecent innuendoes, and with a conspicuous genius for humorous +portraiture, trembling upon the verge of the pathetic, he succeeded in +winning a new domain for the art of fiction. + +These four great writers then, Richardson, Fielding, Smollett and +Sterne--all of them great pessimists in comparison with the benignant +philosophers of a later fiction--first thoroughly fertilized this +important field. Richardson obtained a European fame during his +lifetime. Sterne, as a pioneer impressionist, gave all subsequent +stylists a new handle. Fielding and Smollett grasped the new instrument +more vigorously, and fashioned with it models which, after serving as +patterns to Scott, Marryat, Cooper, Ainsworth, Dickens, Lever, +Stevenson, Merriman, Weyman and other romancists of the 19th century, +have still retained a fair measure of their original popularity +unimpaired. + + + Johnson. + +Apart from the novelists, the middle period of the 18th century is +strong in prose writers: these include Dr Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, +Lord Chesterfield and Horace Walpole. The last three were all influenced +by the sovereign lucidity of the best French style of the day. +Chesterfield and Walpole were both writers of aristocratic experience +and of European knowledge and sentiment. Johnson alone was a +distinctively English thinker and stylist. His knowledge of the world, +outside England, was derived from books, he was a good deal of a +scholar, an earnest moralist, and something of a divine; his style, at +any rate, reaches back to Taylor, Barrow and South, and has a good deal +of the complex structure, the cadence, and the balance of English and +Latinistic words proper to the 17th century, though the later influence +of Addison and Bolingbroke is also apparent; Johnson himself was fond of +the essay, the satire in verse, and the moral tale (_Rasselas_); but he +lacked the creative imagination indispensable for such work and excelled +chiefly as biographer and critic. For a critic even, it must be admitted +that he was singly deficient in original ideas. He upholds authority. He +judges by what he regards as the accepted rules, derived by Dryden, +Rapin, Boileau, Le Bossu, Rymer, Dennis, Pope and such "estimable +critics" from the ancients, whose decisions on such matters he regards +as paramount. He tries to carry out a systematic, motived criticism; but +he asserts rather than persuades or convinces. We go to his critical +works (_Lives of the Poets_ and _Essay on Shakespeare_) not for their +conclusions, but for their shrewd comments on life, and for an +application to literary problems of a caustic common sense. Johnson's +character and conversation, his knowledge and memory were far more +remarkable than his ideas or his writings, admirable though the best of +these were; the exceptional traits which met in his person and made that +age regard him as a nonpareil have found in James Boswell a delineator +unrivalled in patience, dexterity and dramatic insight. The result has +been a portrait of a man of letters more alive at the present time than +that which any other age or nation has bequeathed to us. In most of his +ideas Johnson was a generation behind the typical academic critics of +his date, Joseph and Thomas Warton, who championed against his authority +what the doctor regarded as the finicking notions of Gray. Both of the +Wartons were enthusiastic for Spenser and the older poetry; they were +saturated with Milton whom they placed far above the correct Mr Pope, +they wrote sonnets (thereby provoking Johnson's ire) and attempted to +revive medieval and Celtic lore in every direction. Johnson's one +attempt at a novel or tale was _Rasselas_, a long "Rambler" essay upon +the vanity of human hope and ambition, something after the manner of the +Oriental tales of which Voltaire had caught the idea from Swift and +Montesquieu; but _Rasselas_ is quite unenlivened by humour, personality +or any other charm. + + + Goldsmith. + +This one quality that Johnson so completely lacked was possessed in its +fullest perfection by Oliver Goldsmith, whose style is the supreme +expression of 18th-century clearness, simplicity and easy graceful +fluency. Much of Goldsmith's material, whether as playwright, story +writer or essayist, is trite and commonplace--his material worked up by +any other hand would be worthless. But, whenever Goldsmith writes about +human life, he seems to pay it a compliment, a relief of fun and good +fellowship accompanies his slightest description, his playful and +delicate touch could transform every thought that he handled into +something radiant with sunlight and fragrant with the perfume of youth. +Goldsmith's plots are Irish, his critical theories are French with a +light top dressing of Johnson and Reynolds or Burke, while his prose +style is an idealization of Addison. His versatility was great, and, in +this and in other respects, he and Johnson are constantly reminding us +that they were hardened professionals, writing against time for money. + + + Chesterfield and Walpole. + +Much of the best prose work of this period, from 1740 to 1780, was done +under very different conditions. The increase of travel, of intercourse +between the nobility of Europe, and of a sense of solidarity, +self-consciousness, leisure and connoisseurship among that section of +English society known as the governing class, or, since Disraeli, as +"the Venetian oligarchy," could hardly fail to produce an increasing +crop of those elaborate collections of letters and memoirs which had +already attained their apogee in France with Mme de Sevigne and the duc +de Saint-Simon. England was not to remain far behind, for in 1718 +commence the _Letters_ of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; ten years more saw +the commencement of Lord Hervey's _Memoirs of the Reign of George II._; +and Lord Chesterfield and Lord Orford (better known as Horace Walpole) +both began their inimitable series of _Letters_ about 1740. These +writings, none of them written ostensibly for the press, serve to show +the enormous strides that English prose was making as a medium of +vivacious description. The letters are all the recreation of extensive +knowledge and cosmopolitan acquirements; they are not strong on the +poetic or imaginative side of things, but they have an intense +appreciation of the actual and mundane side of fallible humanity. Lord +Chesterfield's _Letters_ to his son and to his godson are far more, for +they introduce a Ciceronian polish and a Gallic irony and wit into the +hitherto uncultivated garden of the literary graces in English prose. +Chesterfield, whose theme is manners and social amenity, deliberately +seeks a form of expression appropriate to his text--the perfection of +tact, neatness, good order and _savoir faire_. After his grandfather, +the marquess of Halifax, Lord Chesterfield, the synonym in the vulgar +world for a heartless exquisite, is in reality the first fine gentleman +and epicurean in the best sense in English polite literature. Both +Chesterfield and Walpole were conspicuous as raconteurs in an age of +witty talkers, of whose talk R.B. Sheridan, in _The School for Scandal_ +(1777), served up a _supreme_. Some of it may be tinsel, but it looks +wonderfully well under the lights. The star comedy of the century +represents the sparkle of this brilliant crowd: it reveals no hearts, +but it shows us every trick of phrase, every eccentricity of manner and +every foible of thought. But the most mundane of the letter writers, the +most frivolous, and also the most pungent, is Horace Walpole, whose +writings are an epitome of the history and biography of the Georgian +era. "Fiddles sing all through them, wax lights, fine dresses, fine +jokes, fine plate, fine equipages glitter and sparkle; never was such a +brilliant, smirking Vanity Fair as that through which he leads us." Yet, +in some ways, he was a corrective to the self-complacency of his +generation, a vast dilettante, lover of "Gothic," of curios and +antiques, of costly printing, of old illuminations and stained glass. In +his short miracle-novel, called _The Castle of Otranto_, he set a +fashion for mystery and terror in fiction, for medieval legend, +diablerie, mystery, horror, antique furniture and Gothic jargon, which +led directly by the route of Anne Radcliffe, Maturin, _Vathek_, _St +Leon_ and _Frankenstein_, to _Queenhoo Hall_, to _Waverley_ and even to +Hugo and Poe. + + + Fanny Burney. Boswell. + +Meanwhile the area of the Memoir was widening rapidly in the hands of +Fanny, the sly daughter of the wordly-wise and fashionable musician, Dr +Burney, author of a novel (_Evelina_) most satirical and facete, written +ere she was well out of her teens; not too kind a satirist of her former +patroness, Mrs Thrale (afterwards Piozzi), the least tiresome of the new +group of scribbling sibyls, blue stockings, lady dilettanti and Della +Cruscans. Both, as portraitists and purveyors of _Johnsoniana_, were +surpassed by the inimitable James Boswell, first and most fatuous of all +interviewers, in brief a biographical genius, with a new recipe, +distinct from Sterne's, for disclosing personality, and a deliberate, +artificial method of revealing himself to us, as it were, unawares. + +From all these and many other experiments, a far more flexible prose was +developing in England, adapted for those critical reviews, magazines and +journals which were multiplying rapidly to exploit the new masculine +interest, apart from the schools, in history, topography, natural +philosophy and the picturesque, just as circulating libraries were +springing up to exploit the new feminine passion for fiction, which +together with memoirs and fashionable poetry contributed to give the +booksellers bigger and bigger ideas. + + + The progress of authorship. + +It is surprising how many types of literary productions with which we +are now familiar were first moulded into definite and classical form +during the Johnsonian period. In addition to the novel one need only +mention the economic treatise, as exemplified for the first time in the +admirable symmetry of _The Wealth of Nations_, the diary of a faithful +observer of nature such as Gilbert White, the _Fifteen Discourses_ +(1769-1791) in which Sir Joshua Reynolds endeavours for the first time +to expound for England a philosophy of Art, the historico-philosophical +tableau as exemplified by Robertson and Gibbon, the light political +parody of which the poetry of _The Rolliad_ and _Anti-Jacobin_ afford so +many excellent models; and, going to the other extreme, the ponderous +archaeological or topographical monograph, as exemplified in Stuart and +Revett's _Antiquities of Athens_, in Robert Wood's colossal _Ruins of +Palmyra_ (1753), or the monumental _History of Leicestershire_ by John +Nichols. Such works as this last might well seem the outcome of Horace +Walpole's maxim: In this scribbling age "let those who can't write, +glean." In short, the literary landscape in Johnson's day was slowly but +surely assuming the general outlines to which we are all accustomed. The +literary conditions of the period dated from the time of Pope in their +main features, and it is quite possible that they were more considerably +modified in Johnson's own lifetime than they have been since. The +booksellers, or, as they would now be called, publishers, were steadily +superseding the old ties of patronage, and basing their relations with +authors upon a commercial footing. A stage in their progress is marked +by the success of Johnson's friend and Hume's correspondent, William +Strahan, who kept a coach, "a credit to literature." The evolution of a +normal status for the author was aided by the definition of copyright +and gradual extinction of piracy. + + + Historians. + +Histories of their own time by Clarendon and Burnet have been in much +request from their own day to this, and the first, at least, is a fine +monument of English prose; Bolingbroke again, in 1735, dwelt memorably +upon the ethical, political and philosophical value of history. But it +was not until the third quarter of the 18th century that English +literature freed itself from the imputation of lagging hopelessly behind +France, Italy and Germany in the serious work of historical +reconstruction. Hume published the first volume of his _History of +England_ in 1754. Robertson's _History of Scotland_ saw the light in +1759 and his _Charles V._ in 1769; Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the +Roman Empire_ came in 1776. Hume was, perhaps, the first modernist in +history; he attempted to give his work a modern interest and, Scot +though he was, a modern style--it could not fail, as he knew, to derive +piquancy from its derision of the Whiggish assumption which regarded +1688 as a political millennium. Wm. Robertson was, perhaps, the first +man to adapt the polished periphrases of the pulpit to historical +generalization. The gifts of compromise which he had learned as +Moderator of the General Assembly he brought to bear upon his historical +studies, and a language so unfamiliar to his lips as academic English he +wrote with so much the more care that the greatest connoisseurs of the +day were enthusiastic about "Robertson's wonderful style." Even more +portentous in its superhuman dignity was the style of Edward Gibbon, who +combined with the unspiritual optimism of Hume and Robertson a far more +concentrated devotion to his subject, an industry more monumental, a +greater co-ordinative vigour, and a malice which, even in the 18th +century, rendered him the least credulous man of his age. Of all +histories, therefore, based upon the transmitted evidence of other ages +rather than on the personal observation of the writer's own, Gibbon's +_Decline and Fall_ has hitherto maintained its reputation best. Hume, +even before he was superseded, fell a prey to continuations and +abridgements, while Robertson was supplanted systematically by the +ornate pages of W.H. Prescott. + +The increasing transparency of texture in the working English prose +during this period is shown in the writings of theologians such as +Butler and Paley, and of thinkers such as Berkeley and Hume, who, by +prolonging and extending Berkeley's contention that matter was an +abstraction, had shown that mind would have to be considered an +abstraction too, thereby signalling a school of reaction to common sense +or "external reality" represented by Thomas Reid, and with modifications +by David Hartley, Abraham Tucker and others. Butler and Paley are merely +two of the biggest and most characteristic apologists of that day, both +great stylists, though it must be allowed that their very lucidity and +good sense excites almost more doubt than it stills, and both very +successful in repelling the enemy in controversy, though their very +success accentuates the faults of that unspiritual age in which +churchmen were so far more concerned about the title deeds than about +the living portion of the church's estate. Free thought was already +beginning to sap their defences in various directions, and in Tom Paine, +Priestley, Price, Godwin and Mackintosh they found more formidable +adversaries than in the earlier deists. The greatest champion, however, +of continuity and conservation both in church and state, against the new +schools of latitudinarians and radicals, the great eulogist of the +unwritten constitution, and the most perfect master of emotional prose +in this period, prose in which the harmony of sense and sound is +attained to an extent hardly ever seen outside supreme poetry, was +Edmund Burke, one of the most commanding intellects in the whole range +of political letters--a striking contrast in this respect to Junius, +whose mechanical and journalistic talent for invective has a quite +ephemeral value. + + + Return to nature. + + Change in poetic spirit. + + Cowper. Blake. Burns. + +From 1660 to 1760 the English mind was still much occupied in shaking +off the last traces of feudality. The crown, the parliament, the manor +and the old penal code were left, it is true: but the old tenures and +gild-brotherhoods, the old social habits, miracles, arts, faith, +religion and letters were irrevocably gone. The attempt of the young +Chevalier in 1745 was a complete anachronism, and no sooner was this +generally felt to be so than men began to regret that it should so be. +Men began to describe as "grand" and "picturesque" scenery hitherto +summarized as "barren mountains covered in mist"; while Voltaire and +Pope were at their height, the world began to realize that the Augustan +age, in its zeal for rationality, civism and trim parterres, had +neglected the wild freshness of an age when literature was a wild flower +that grew on the common. Rousseau laid the axe to the root of this +over-sophistication of life; Goldsmith, half understanding, echoed some +of his ideas in "The Deserted Village." Back from books to men was now +the prescription--from the crowded town to the spacious country. From +plains and valleys to peaks and pinewoods. From cities, where men were +rich and corrupt, to the earlier and more primitive moods of earth. The +breath had scarcely left the body of the Grand Monarque before an +intrigue was set on foot to dispute the provisions of his will. So with +the critical testament of Pope. Within a few years of his death we find +Gray, Warton, Hurd and other disciples of the new age denying to Pope +the highest kind of poetic excellence, and exalting imagination and +fancy into a sphere far above the Augustan qualities of correct taste +and good judgment. Decentralization and revolt were the new watchwords +in literature. We must eschew France and Italy and go rather to Iceland +or the Hebrides for fresh poetic emotions: we must shun academies and +classic coffee-houses and go into the street-corners or the hedge-lanes +in search of Volkspoesie. An old muniment chest and a roll of yellow +parchment were the finest incentives to the new spirit of the +picturesque. How else are we to explain the enthusiasm that welcomed the +sham Ossianic poems of James Macpherson in 1760; Percy's patched-up +ballads of 1765 (_Reliques of Ancient Poetry_); the new enthusiasm for +Chaucer; the "black letter" school of Ritson, Tyrrwhitt, George Ellis, +Steevens, Ireland and Malone; above all, the spurious 15th-century poems +poured forth in 1768-1769 with such a wild gusto of archaic imagination +by a prodigy not quite seventeen years of age? Chatterton's precocious +fantasy cast a wonderful spell upon the romantic imagination of other +times. It does not prepare us for the change that was coming over the +poetic spirit of the last two decades of the century, but it does at +least help us to explain it. The great masters of verse in Britain +during this period were the three very disparate figures of William +Cowper, William Blake and Robert Burns. Cowper was not a poet of vivid +and rapturous visions. There is always something of the rusticating +city-scholar about his humour. The ungovernable impulse and imaginative +passion of the great masters of poesy were not his to claim. His motives +to express himself in verse came very largely from the outside. The +greater part, nearly all his best poetry is of the occasional order. To +touch and retouch, he says, in one of his letters--among the most +delightful in English--is the secret of almost all good writing, +especially verse. Whatever is short should be nervous, masculine and +compact. In all the arts that raise the best occasional poetry to the +level of greatness Cowper is supreme. In phrase-moulding, verbal +gymnastic and prosodical marquetry he has scarcely a rival, and the +fruits of his poetic industry are enshrined in the filigree of a most +delicate fancy and a highly cultivated intelligence, purified and thrice +refined in the fire of mental affliction. His work expresses the rapid +civilization of his time, its humanitarian feeling and growing +sensitiveness to natural beauty, home comfort, the claims of animals and +the charms of light literature. In many of his short poems, such as "The +Royal George," artistic simplicity is indistinguishable from the stern +reticence of genius. William Blake had no immediate literary +descendants, for he worked alone, and Lamb was practically alone in +recognizing what he wrote as poetry. But he was by far the most original +of the reactionaries who preceded the Romantic Revival, and he caught +far more of the Elizabethan air in his lyric verse than any one else +before Coleridge. The _Songs of Innocence_ and _Songs of Experience_, in +1789 and 1794, sing themselves, and have a bird-like spontaneity that +has been the despair of all song-writers from that day to this. After +1800 he winged his flight farther and farther into strange and unknown +regions. In the finest of these earlier lyrics, which owe so little to +his contemporaries, the ripple of the stream of romance that began to +gush forth in 1798 is distinctly heard. But the first poetic genius of +the century was unmistakably Robert Burns. In song and satire alike +Burns is racy, in the highest degree, of the poets of North Britain, who +since Robert Sempill, Willy Hamilton of Gilbertfield, douce Allan +Ramsay, the Edinburgh periwig-maker and miscellanist, and Robert +Fergusson, "the writer-chiel, a deathless name," had kept alive the old +native poetic tradition, had provided the strolling fiddlers with merry +and wanton staves, and had perpetuated the daintiest shreds of national +music, the broadest colloquialisms, and the warmest hues of patriotic +or local sentiment. Burns immortalizes these old staves by means of his +keener vision, his more fiery spirit, his stronger passion and his +richer volume of sound. Burns's fate was a pathetic one. Brief, broken +glimpses of a genius that could never show itself complete, his poems +wanted all things for completeness: culture, leisure, sustained effort, +length of life. Yet occasional, fragmentary, extemporary as most of them +are, they bear the guinea stamp of true genius. His eye is unerring, his +humour of the ripest, his wit both fine and abundant. His ear is less +subtle, except when dialect is concerned. There he is infallible. +Landscape he understands in subordination to life. For abstract ideas +about Liberty and 1789 he cares little. But he is a patriot and an +insurgent, a hater of social distinction and of the rich. Of the divine +right or eternal merit of the system under which the poor man sweats to +put money into the rich man's pocket and fights to keep it there, and is +despised in proportion to the amount of his perspiration, he had a low +opinion. His work has inspired the meek, has made the poor feel +themselves less of ciphers in the world and given courage to the +down-trodden. His love of women has inspired some of the most ardently +beautiful lyrics in the world. Among modern folk-poets such as Jokai and +Mistral, the position of Burns in the hearts of his own people is the +best assured. + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--The dearth of literary history in England makes + it rather difficult to obtain a good general view of letters in + Britain during the 18th century. Much may be gleaned, however, from + chapters of Lecky's _History of England during the 18th Century_, from + Stephen's _Lectures on English Literature and Society in the 18th + Century_ (1904), from Taine's _History of English Literature_ (van + Laun's translation), from vols. v. and vi. of Prof. Courthope's + _History of English Poetry_, and from the second volume of Chambers's + _Cyclopaedia of English Literature_ (1902). The two vols. dealing + respectively with the _Age of Pope_ and the _Age of Johnson_ in Bell's + Handbooks of English Literature will be found useful, and suggestive + chapters will be found in Saintsbury's _Short History_ and in A.H. + Thompson's _Student's History of English Literature_ (1901). The same + may, perhaps, be said of books v. and vi. in the _Bookman Illustrated + History of English Literature_ (1906), by the present writer. + Sidelights of value are to be found in Walter Raleigh's little book on + the _English Novel_, in Beljame's _Le Publique et les hommes de + lettres en Angleterre au XVIII^e siecle_, in H.A. Beers' _History of + English Romanticism in the 18th Century_ (1899), and above all in Sir + Leslie Stephen's _History of English Thought during the 18th Century_; + Stephen's _Hours in a Library_, the monographs dealing with the period + in the English Men of Letters series, the Vignettes and Portraits of + Austin Dobson and George Paston, Elwin's _Eighteenth Century Men of + Letters_, and Thomas Wright's _Caricature History of the Georges_, + must also be kept in mind. (T. Se.) + + +VI. THE 19TH CENTURY + +We have seen how great was the reverence which the 18th century paid to +poetry, and how many different kinds of poetic experiment were going on, +mostly by the imitative efforts of revivalists (Spenserians, Miltonians, +Shakespeareans, Ballad-mongers, Scandinavian, Celtic, Gothic scholars +and the like), but also in the direction of nature study and landscape +description, while the more formal type of Augustan poetry, satire and +description, in the direct succession of Pope, was by no means +neglected. + + + Wordsworth. + +The most original vein in the 19th century was supplied by the +Wordsworth group, the first manifesto of which appeared in the _Lyrical +Ballads_ of 1798. William Wordsworth himself represents, in the first +place, a revolutionary movement against the poetic diction of +study-poets since the first acceptance of the Miltonic model by Addison. +His ideal, imperfectly carried out, was a reversion to popular language +of the utmost simplicity and directness. He added to this the idea of +the enlargement of man by Nature, after Rousseau, and went further than +this in the utterance of an essentially pantheistic desire to become +part of its loveliness, to partake in a mystical sense of the loneliness +of the mountain, the sound of falling water, the upper horizon of the +clouds and the wind. To the growing multitude of educated people who +were being pent in huge cities these ideas were far sweeter than the +formalities of the old pastoral. Wordsworth's great discovery, perhaps, +was that popular poetry need not be imitative, artificial or +condescending, but that a simple story truthfully told of the passion, +affliction or devotion of simple folk, and appealing to the primal +emotion, is worthy of the highest effort of the poetic artist, and may +achieve a poetic value far in advance of conventional descriptions of +strikingly grouped incidents picturesquely magnified or rhetorically +exaggerated. But Wordsworth's theories might have ended very much where +they began, had it not been for their impregnation by the complementary +genius of Coleridge. + + + Coleridge. + +Coleridge at his best was inspired by the supreme poetic gifts of +passion, imagination, simplicity and mystery, combining form and colour, +sound and sense, novelty and antiquity, realism and romanticism, +scholarly ode and popular ballad. His three fragmentary poems _The Rime +of the Ancient Mariner_, _Christabel_ and _Kubla Khan_ are the three +spells and touchstones, constituting what is often regarded by the best +judges as the high-standard of modern English poetry. Their subtleties +and beauties irradiated the homelier artistic conceptions of Wordsworth, +and the effect on him was permanent. Coleridge's inspiration, on the +other hand, was irrecoverable; a physical element was due, no doubt, to +the first exaltation indirectly due to the opium habit, but the moral +influence was contributed by the Wordsworths. The steady will of the +Dalesman seems to have constrained Coleridge's imagination from aimless +wandering; his lofty and unwavering self-confidence inspired his friend +with a similar energy. Away from Wordsworth after 1798, Coleridge lost +himself in visions of work that always remained to be "transcribed," by +one who had every poetic gift--save the rudimentary will for sustained +and concentrated effort. + + + Lamb. + + Hazlitt. + + Leigh Hunt. De Quincey. + +Coleridge's more delicate sensibility to the older notes of that more +musical era in English poetry which preceded the age of Dryden and Pope +was due in no small measure to the luminous yet subtle intuitions of his +friend Charles Lamb. Lamb's appreciation of the imaginative beauty +inhumed in old English literature amounted to positive genius, and the +persistence with which he brought his perception of the supreme +importance of imagination and music in poetry to bear upon some of the +finest creative minds of 1800, in talk, letters, selections and essays, +brought about a gradual revolution in the aesthetic morality of the day. +He paid little heed to the old rhetoric and the _ars poetica_ of +classical comparison. His aim was rather to discover the mystery, the +folk-seed and the old-world element, latent in so much of the finer +ancient poetry and implicit in so much of the new. The _Essays of Elia_ +(1820-1825) are the binnacle of Lamb's vessel of exploration. Lamb and +his great rival, William Hazlitt, both maintained that criticism was not +so much an affair of learning, or an exercise of comparative and +expository judgment, as an act of imagination in itself. Hazlitt became +one of the master essayists, a fine critical analyst and declaimer, +denouncing all insipidity and affectation, stirring the soul with +metaphor, soaring easily and acquiring a momentum in his prose which +often approximates to the impassioned utterance of Burke. Like Lamb, he +wanted to measure his contemporaries by the Elizabethans, or still older +masters, and he was deeply impressed by _Lyrical Ballads_. The new +critics gradually found responsible auxiliaries, notably Leigh Hunt, De +Quincey and Wilson of _Blackwood's_. Leigh Hunt, not very important in +himself, was a cause of great authorship in others. He increased both +the depth and area of modern literary sensibility. The world of books +was to him an enchanted forest, in which every leaf had its own secret. +He was the most catholic of critics, but he knew what was poor--at least +in other people. As an essayist he is a feminine diminutive of Lamb, +excellent in fancy and literary illustration, but far inferior in +decisive insight or penetrative masculine wit. The Miltonic quality of +impassioned pyramidal prose is best seen in Thomas De Quincey, of all +the essayists of this age, or any age, the most diffuse, unequal and +irreducible to rule, and which yet at times trembles upon the brink of a +rhythmical sonority which seems almost to rival that of the greatest +poetry. Leigh Hunt supplies a valuable link between Lamb, the sole +external moderator of the Lake school, Byron, Shelley, and the junior +branch of imaginative Aesthetic, represented by Keats. + + + Keats. + +John Keats (1795-1821), three years younger than Shelley, was the +greatest poetic artist of his time, and would probably have surpassed +all, but for his collapse of health at twenty-five. His vocation was as +unmistakable as that of Chatterton, with whose youthful ardour his own +had points of likeness. The two contemporary conceptions of him as a +fatuous Cockney Bunthorne or as "a tadpole of the lakes" were equally +erroneous. But Keats was in a sense the first of the virtuoso or +aesthetic school (caricatured later by the formula of "Art for Art's +sake"); artistic beauty was to him a kind of religion, his expression +was more technical, less personal than that of his contemporaries, he +was a conscious "romantic," and he travelled in the realms of gold with +less impedimenta than any of his fellows. Byron had always himself to +talk about, Wordsworth saw the universe too much through the medium of +his own self-importance, Coleridge was a metaphysician, Shelley hymned +Intellectual Beauty; Keats treats of his subject, "A Greek Urn," "A +Nightingale," the season of "Autumn," in such a way that our thought +centres not upon the poet but upon the enchantment of that which he +sings. In his three great medievalising poems, "The Pot of Basil," "The +Eve of St Agnes" and "La Belle Dame Sans Merci," even more than in his +Odes, Keats is the forerunner of Tennyson, the greatest of the +word-painters. But apart from his perfection of loveliness, he has a +natural magic and a glow of humanity surpassing that of any other known +poet. His poetry, immature as it was, gave a new beauty to the language. +His loss was the greatest English Literature has sustained. + + + Landor. + +Before Tennyson, Rossetti and Morris, Keats's best disciples in the +aesthetic school were Thomas Lovell Beddoes, George Dailey and Thomas +Hood, the failure of whose "Midsummer Fairies" and "Fair Inez" drove him +into that almost mortific vein of verbal humour which threw up here and +there a masterpiece such as "The Song of a Shirt." The master virtuoso +of English poetry in another department (the classical) during this and +the following age was Walter Savage Landor, who threw off a few +fragments of verse worthy of the Greek Anthology, but in his Dialogues +or "Imaginary Conversations" evolved a kind of violent monologizing upon +the commonplace which descends into the most dismal caverns of egotism. +Carlyle furiously questioned his competence. Mr Shaw allows his +classical amateurship and respectable strenuosity of character, but +denounces his work, with a substratum of truth, as that of a +"blathering, unreadable pedant." + + + Shelley. + +Among those, however, who found early nutriment in Landor's Miltonic +_Gebir_ (1798) must be reckoned the most poetical of our poets. P.B. +Shelley was a spirit apart, who fits into no group, the associate of +Byron, but spiritually as remote from him as possible, hated by the +rationalists of his age, and regarded by the poets with more pity than +jealousy. He wrote only for poets, and had no public during his lifetime +among general readers, by whom, however, he is now regarded as _the +poet_ par excellence. In his conduct it must be admitted that he was in +a sense, like Coleridge, irresponsible, but on the other hand his poetic +energy was irresistible and all his work is technically of the highest +order of excellence. In ideal beauties it is supreme; its great lack is +its want of humanity; in this he is the opposite of Wordsworth who reads +human nature into everything. Shelley, on the other hand, dehumanises +things and makes them unearthly. He hangs a poem, like a cobweb or a +silver cloud, on a horn of the crescent moon, and leaves it to dangle +there in a current of ether. His quest was continuous for figures of +beauty, figures, however, more ethereal and less sensuous than those in +Keats; having obtained such an idea he passed it again and again through +the prism of his mind, in talk, letters, prefaces, poems. The deep sense +of the mystery of words and their lightest variations in the skein of +poetry, half forgotten since Milton's time, had been recovered in a +great measure by Coleridge and Wordsworth since 1798; Lamb, too, and +Hazlitt, and, perhaps, Hogg were in the secret, while Keats had its +open sesame on his lips ere he died. The union of poetic emotion with +verbal music of the greatest perfection was the aim of all, but none of +these masters made words breathe and sing with quite the same +spontaneous ease and fervour that Shelley attained in some of the lyrics +written between twenty-four and thirty, such as "The Cloud," "The +Skylark," the "Ode of the West Wind," "The Sensitive Plant," the "Indian +Serenade." + +The path of the new romantic school had been thoroughly prepared during +the age of Gray, Cowper and Burns, and it won its triumphs with little +resistance and no serious convulsions. The opposition was noisy, but its +representative character has been exaggerated. In the meantime, however, +the old-fashioned school and the Popean couplet, the Johnsonian dignity +of reflection and the Goldsmithian ideal of generalized description, +were well maintained by George Crabbe (1754-1832), "though Nature's +sternest painter yet the best," a worsted-stockinged Pope and austere +delineator of village misdoing and penurious age, and Samuel Rogers +(1763-1855), the banker poet, liberal in sentiment, extreme Tory in +form, and dilettante delineator of Italy to the music of the heroic +couplet. Robert Southey, Thomas Campbell and Thomas Moore were a dozen +years younger and divided their allegiance between two schools. In the +main, however, they were still poeticisers of the orthodox old pattern, +though all wrote a few songs of exceptional merit, and Campbell +especially by defying the old anathemas. + + + Byron. + +The great champion of the Augustan masters was himself the architect of +revolution. First the idol and then the outcast of respectable society, +Lord Byron sought relief in new cadences and new themes for his poetic +talent. He was, however, essentially a history painter or a satirist in +verse. He had none of the sensitive aesthetic taste of a Keats, none of +the spiritual ardour of a Shelley, or of the elemental beauty or +artistry of Wordsworth or Coleridge. He manages the pen (said Scott) +with the careless and negligent ease of a man of quality. The "Lake +Poets" sought to create an impression deep, calm and profound, Byron to +start a theme which should enable him to pose, travel, astonish, +bewilder and confound as lover of daring, freedom, passion and revolt. +For the subtler symphonic music--that music of the spheres to which the +ears of poets alone are attuned--Byron had an imperfect sympathy. The +delicate ear is often revolted in his poetry by the vices of impromptu +work. He steadily refused to polish, to file or to furbish--the damning, +inevitable sign of a man born to wear a golden tassel. "I am like the +tiger. If I miss the first spring I go growling back to the jungle." +Subtlety is sacrificed to freshness and vigour. The exultation, the +breadth, the sweeping magnificence of his effects are consequently most +appreciated abroad, where the ineradicable flaws of his style have no +power to annoy. + +The European fame of Byron was from the first something quite unique. At +Missolonghi people ran through the streets crying "The great man is +dead--he is gone." His corpse was refused entrance at Westminster; but +the poet was taken to the inmost heart of Russia, Poland, Spain, Italy, +France, Germany, Scandinavia, and among the Slavonic nations generally. +In Italy his influence is plainly seen in Berchet, Leopardi, Giusti, and +even Carducci. In Spain the Myrtle Society was founded in Byron's +honour. Hugo in his _Orientales_ traversed Greece. Chateaubriand joined +the Greek Committee. Delavigne dedicated his verse to Byron; Lamartine +wrote another canto to _Childe Harold_; Merimee is interpenetrated by +Byronesque feeling which also animates the best work of Heine, Pushkin, +Lermontov, and Mickievicz, and even De Musset. + + + Criticism. + +Like Scott, Byron was a man of two eras, and not too much ahead of his +time to hold the Press-Dragon in fee. His supremacy and that of his +satellites Moore and Campbell were championed by the old papers and by +the two new blatant Quarterlies, whose sails were filled not with the +light airs of the future but by the Augustan "gales" of the classical +past. The distinction of this new phalanx of old-fashioned critics who +wanted to confer literature by university degree was that they wrote as +gentlemen for gentlemen: they first gave criticism in England a +respectable shakedown. Francis Jeffrey, a man of extraordinary ability +and editor of _The Edinburgh Review_ from 1803 to 1829 (with the +mercurial Sydney Smith, the first of English conversationists, as his +aide-de-camp), exercised a powerful influence as a standardizer of the +second rate. He was one of the first of the critics to grasp firmly the +main idea of literary evolution--the importance of time, environment, +race and historical development upon the literary landscape; but he was +vigorously aristocratic in his preferences, a hater of mystery, +symbolism or allegory, an instinctive individualist of intolerant +pattern. His chief weapons against the new ideas were social superiority +and omniscience, and he used both unsparingly. The strident political +partisanship of the _Edinburgh_ raised up within six years a serious +rival in the _Quarterly_, which was edited in turn by the good-natured +pedagogue William Gifford and by Scott's extremely able son-in-law John +Gibson Lockhart, the "scorpion" of the infant _Blackwood_. With the aid +of the remnant of the old anti-Jacobins, Canning, Ellis, Barrow, +Southey, Croker, Hayward, Apperley and others, the theory of _Quarterly_ +infallibility was carried to its highest point of development about +1845. + +The historical and critical work of the _Quarterly_ era, as might be +expected, was appropriate to this gentlemanly censorship. The thinkers +of the day were economic or juristic--Bentham, the great codifier; +Malthus, whose theory of population gave Darwin his main impulse to +theorise; and Mackintosh, whose liberal opposition to Burke deserved a +better fate than it has ever perhaps received. The historians were +mainly of the second class--the judicial Hallam, the ornate Roscoe, the +plodding Lingard, the accomplished Milman, the curious Isaac D'Israeli, +the academic Bishop Thirlwall. Mitford and Grote may be considered in +the light of Tory and Radical historical pamphleteers, but Grote's work +has the much larger measure of permanent value. As the historian of +British India, James Mill's industry led him beyond his thesis of +Benthamism in practice. Sir William Napier's heroic picture of the +Peninsular War is strongly tinged by bias against the Tory +administration of 1808-1813; but it conserves some imperishable scenes +of war. Some of the most magnetic prose of the Regency Period was +contained in the copious and insincere but profoundly emotionalising +pamphlets of the self-taught Surrey labourer William Cobbett, in whom +Diderot's paradox of a comedian is astonishingly illustrated. Lockhart's +Lives of Burns and of Sir Walter Scott--the last perhaps the most +memorable prose monument of its epoch--appeared in 1828 and 1838, and +both formed the subjects of Thomas Carlyle in the _Edinburgh Review_, +where, under the unwelcome discipline of Jeffrey, the new prophet worked +nobly though in harness. + + + Scott. + +Great as the triumph of the Romantic masters and the new ideas was, it +is in the ranks of the Old School after all that we have to look for the +greatest single figure in the literature of this age. Except in the +imitative vein of ballad or folk-song, the poetry of Sir Walter Scott is +never quite first-rate. It is poetry for repetition rather than for +close meditation or contemplation, and resembles a military band more +than a full orchestra. Nor will his prose bear careful analysis. It is a +good servant, no more. When we consider, however, not the intensity but +the vast extent, range and versatility of Scott's powers, we are +constrained to assign him the first place in his own age, if not that in +the next seat to Shakespeare in the whole of the English literary +Pantheon. Like Shakespeare, he made humour and a knowledge of human +nature his first instruments in depicting the past. Unlike Shakespeare, +he was a born antiquary, and he had a great (perhaps excessive) belief +in _mise en scene_, costume, patois and scenic properties generally. His +portraiture, however, is Shakespearean in its wisdom and maturity, and, +although he wrote very rapidly, it must be remembered that his mind had +been prepared by strenuous work for twenty years as a storehouse of +material in which nothing was handled until it had been carefully +mounted by the imagination, classified in the memory, and tested by +experimental use. Once he has got the imagination of the reader well +grounded to earth, there is nothing he loves better than telling a good +story. Of detail he is often careless. But he trusted to a full wallet, +and rightly, for mainly by his abundance he raised the literature of the +novel to its highest point of influence, breathing into it a new spirit, +giving it a fulness and universality of life, a romantic charm, a +dignity and elevation, and thereby a coherence, a power and predominance +which it never had before. + +In Scott the various lines of 18th-century conservatism and 19th-century +romantic revival most wonderfully converge. His intense feeling for Long +Ago made him a romantic almost from his cradle. The master faculties of +history and humour made a strong conservative of him; but his Toryism +was of a very different spring from that of Coleridge or Wordsworth. It +was not a reaction from disappointment in the sequel of 1789, nor was it +the result of reasoned conviction. It was indwelling, rooted deeply in +the fibres of the soil, to which Scott's attachment was passionate, and +nourished as from a source by ancestral sentiment and "heather" +tradition. This sentiment made Scott a victorious pioneer of the +Romantic movement all over Europe. At the same time we must remember +that, with all his fondness for medievalism, he was fundamentally a +thorough 18th-century Scotsman and successor of Bailie Nicol Jarvie: a +worshipper of good sense, toleration, modern and expert governmental +ideas, who valued the past chiefly by way of picturesque relief, and was +thoroughly alive to the benefit of peaceful and orderly rule, and deeply +convinced that we are much better off as we are than we could have been +in the days of King Richard or good Queen Bess. Scott had the mind of an +enlightened 18th-century administrator and statesmen who had made a +fierce hobby of armour and old ballads. To expect him to treat of +intense passion or romantic medievalism as Charlotte Bronte or Dante +Gabriel Rossetti would have treated them is as absurd as to expect to +find the sentiments of a Mrs Browning blossoming amidst the horse-play +of _Tom Jones_ or _Harry Lorrequer_. Scott has few niceties or secrets: +he was never subtle, morbid or fantastic. His handling is ever broad, +vigorous, easy, careless, healthy and free. Yet nobly simple and +straightforward as man and writer were, there is something very complex +about his literary legacy, which has gone into all lands and created +bigoted enemies (Carlyle, Borrow) as well as unexpected friends +(Hazlitt, Newman, Jowett); and we can seldom be sure whether his +influence is reactionary or the reverse. There has always been something +semi-feudal about it. The "shirra" has a demesne in letters as broad as +a countryside, a band of mesne vassals and a host of Eildon hillsmen, +Tweedside cottiers, minor feudatories and forest retainers attached to +the "Abbotsford Hunt." Scott's humour, humanity and insistence upon the +continuity of history transformed English literature profoundly. + + + Transition fiction. + +Scott set himself to coin a quarter of a million sterling out of the new +continent of which he felt himself the Columbus. He failed (quite +narrowly), but he made the Novel the paymaster of literature for at +least a hundred years. His immediate contemporaries and successors were +not particularly great. John Galt (1779-1839), Susan Ferrier (1782-1854) +and D.M. Moir (1798-1851) all attempted the delineation of Scottish +scenes with a good deal of shrewdness of insight and humour. The main +bridge from Scott to the great novelists of the 'forties and 'fifties +was supplied by sporting, military, naval and political novels, +represented in turn by Surtees, Smith, Hook, Maxwell, Lever, Marryat, +Cooper, Morier, Ainsworth, Bulwer Lytton and Disraeli. Surtees gave +all-important hints to _Pickwick_, Marryat developed grotesque +character-drawing, Ainsworth and Bulwer attempted new effects in +criminology and contemporary glitter. Disraeli in the 'thirties was one +of the foremost romantic wits who had yet attempted the novel. Early in +the 'forties he received the laying-on of hands from the Young England +party, and attempted to propagandize the good tidings of his mission in +_Coningsby_ and _Sybil_, novels full of _entrainement_ and promise, if +not of actual genius. Unhappily the author was enmeshed in the fatal +drolleries of the English party system, and _Lothair_ is virtually a +confession of abandoned ideals. He completes the forward party in +fiction; Jane Austen (1775-1815) stands to this as Crabbe and Rogers to +Coleridge and Shelley. She represents the fine flower of the expiring +18th century. Scott could do the trumpet notes on the organ. She fingers +the fine ivory flutes. She combines self-knowledge and artistic +reticence with a complete tact and an absolute lucidity of vision within +the area prescribed. Within the limits of a park wall in a country +parish, absolutely oblivious of Europe and the universe, her art is +among the finest and most finished that our literature has to offer. In +irony she had no rival at that period. But the trimness of her plots and +the delicacy of her miniature work have affinities in Maria Edgeworth, +Harriet Martineau and Mary Russell Mitford, three excellent writers of +pure English prose. There is a finer aroma of style in the contemporary +"novels" of Thomas Love Peacock (1785-1866). These, however, are rather +tournaments of talk than novels proper, releasing a flood of satiric +portraiture upon the idealism of the day--difficult to be apprehended in +perfection save by professed students. Peacock's style had an +appreciable influence upon his son-in-law George Meredith (1828-1909). +His philosophy is for the most part Tory irritability exploding in +ridicule; but Peacock was one of the most lettered men of his age, and +his flouts and jeers smack of good reading, old wine and respectable +prejudices. In these his greatest successor was George Borrow +(1803-1881), who used three volumes of half-imaginary autobiography and +road-faring in strange lands as a sounding-board for a kind of romantic +revolt against the century of comfort, toleration, manufactures, +mechanical inventions, cheap travel and commercial expansion, +unaccompanied (as he maintains) by any commensurate growth of human +wisdom, happiness, security or dignity. + + + The Victorian era. + +In the year of Queen Victoria's accession most of the great writers of +the early part of the century, whom we may denominate as "late +Georgian," were silent. Scott, Byron, Shelley, Keats, Coleridge, Lamb, +Sheridan, Hazlitt, Mackintosh, Crabbe and Cobbett were gone. Wordsworth, +Southey, Campbell, Moore, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, De Quincey, Miss +Edgeworth, Miss Mitford, Leigh Hunt, Brougham, Samuel Rogers were still +living, but the vital portion of their work was already done. The +principal authors who belong equally to the Georgian and Victorian eras +are Landor, Bulwer, Marryat, Hallam, Milman and Disraeli; none of whom, +with the exception of the last, approaches the first rank in either. The +significant work of Tennyson, the Brownings, Carlyle, Dickens, +Thackeray, the Brontes, George Eliot, Mrs Gaskell, Trollope, the +Kingsleys, Spencer, Mill, Darwin, Ruskin, Grote, Macaulay, Freeman, +Froude, Lecky, Buckle, Green, Maine, Borrow, FitzGerald, Arnold, +Rossetti, Swinburne, Meredith, Hardy, Stevenson, Morris, Newman, Pater, +Jefferies--the work of these writers may be termed conclusively +Victorian; it gives the era a stamp of its own and distinguishes it as +the most varied in intellectual riches in the whole course of our +literature. Circumstances have seldom in the world been more favourable +to a great outburst of literary energy. The nation was secure and +prosperous to an unexampled degree, conscious of the will and the power +to expand still further. The canons of taste were still aristocratic. +Books were made and unmade according to a regular standard. Literature +was the one form of art which the English understood, in which they had +always excelled since 1579, and in which their originality was supreme. +To the native genius for poetry was now added the advantage of materials +for a prose which in lucidity and versatility should surpass even that +of Goldsmith and Hazlitt. The diversity of form and content of this +great literature was commensurate with the development of human +knowledge and power which marked its age. In this and some other +respects it resembles the extraordinary contemporary development in +French literature which began under the reign of Louis Philippe. The one +signally disconcerting thing about the great Victorian writers is their +amazing prolixity. Not content with two or three long books, they write +whole literatures. A score of volumes, each as long as the Bible or +Shakespeare, barely represents the output of such authors as Carlyle, +Ruskin, Froude, Dickens, Thackeray, Newman, Spencer or Trollope. They +obtained vast quantities of new readers, for the middle class was +beginning to read with avidity; but the quality of brevity, the +knowledge when to stop, and with it the older classic conciseness and +the nobler Hellenic idea of a perfect measure--these things were as +though they had not been. Meanwhile, the old schools were broken up and +the foolscap addressed to the old masters. Singers, entertainers, +critics and historians abound. Every man may say what is in him in the +phrases that he likes best, and the sole motto that compels is "every +style is permissible except the style that is tiresome." The old models +are strangely discredited, and the only conventions which hold are those +concerning the subjects which English delicacy held to be tabooed. These +conventions were inordinately strict, and were held to include all the +unrestrained, illicit impulses of love and all the more violent +aberrations from the Christian code of faith and ethics. Infidel +speculation and the liaisons of lawless love (which had begun to form +the staple of the new French fiction--hence regarded by respectable +English critics of the time as profoundly vitiated and scandalous) had +no recognized existence and were totally ignored in literature designed +for general reading. The second or Goody-two-Shoes convention remained +strictly in force until the penultimate decade of the 19th century, and +was acquiesced in or at least submitted to by practically all the +greatest writers of the Victorian age. The great poets and novelists of +that day easily out-topped their fellows. Society had no difficulty in +responding to the summons of its literary leaders. Nor was their fame +partial, social or sectional. The great novelists of early Victorian +days were aristocratic and democratic at once. Their popularity was +universal within the limits of the language and beyond it. The greatest +of men were men of imagination rather than men of ideas, but such +sociological and moral ideas as they derived from their environment were +poured helter-skelter into their novels, which took the form of huge +pantechnicon magazines. Another distinctive feature of the Victorian +novel is the position it enabled women to attain in literature, a +position attained by them in creative work neither before nor since. + + + Dickens. + +The novelists to a certain extent created their own method like the +great dramatists, but such rigid prejudices or conventions as they found +already in possession they respected without demur. Both Dickens and +Thackeray write as if they were almost entirely innocent of the +existence of sexual vice. As artists and thinkers they were both +formless. But the enormous self-complacency of the England of their +time, assisted alike by the part played by the nation from 1793 to 1815, +evangelicalism, free trade (which was originally a system of +super-nationalism) and later, evolution, generated in them a great +benignity and a strong determination towards a liberal and humanitarian +philosophy. Despite, however, the diffuseness of the envelope and the +limitations of horizon referred to, the unbookish and almost unlettered +genius of Charles Dickens (1812-1870), the son of a poor lower +middle-class clerk, almost entirely self-educated, has asserted for +itself the foremost place in the literary history of the period. Dickens +broke every rule, rioted in absurdity and bathed in extravagance. But +everything he wrote was received with an almost frantic joy by those who +recognized his creations as deifications of themselves, his scenery as +drawn by one of the quickest and intensest observers that ever lived, +and his drollery as an accumulated dividend from the treasury of human +laughter. Dickens's mannerisms were severe, but his geniality as a +writer broke down every obstruction, reduced Jeffrey to tears and Sydney +Smith to helpless laughter. + + + Thackeray. + +The novel in France was soon to diverge and adopt the form of an +anecdote illustrating the traits of a very small group of persons, but +the English novel, owing mainly to the predilection of Dickens for those +Gargantuan entertainers of his youth, Fielding and Smollett, was to +remain anchored to the history. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) +was even more historical than Dickens, and most of his leading +characters are provided with a detailed genealogy. Dickens's great +works, excepting _David Copperfield_ and _Great Expectations_, had all +appeared when Thackeray made his mark in 1848 with _Vanity Fair_, and +Thackeray follows most of his predecessor's conventions, including his +conventional religion, ethics and politics, but he avoids his worse +faults of theatricality. He never forces the note or lashes himself into +fury or sentimentality; he limits himself in satire to the polite sphere +which he understands, he is a great master of style and possesses every +one of its fairy gifts except brevity. He creates characters and scenes +worthy of Dickens, but within a smaller range and without the same +abundance. He is a traveller and a cosmopolitan, while Dickens is +irredeemably Cockney. He is often content to criticize or annotate or to +preach upon some congenial theme, while Dickens would be in the flush of +humorous creation. His range, it must be remembered, is wide, in most +respects a good deal wider than his great contemporary's, for he is at +once novelist, pamphleteer, essayist, historian, critic, and the writer +of some of the most delicate and sentimental _vers d'occasion_ in the +language. + + + Charlotte Bronte. + + George Eliot. + + Kingsley. Trollope. Reade. Meredith. Hardy. + +The absorption of England in itself is shown with exceptional force in +the case of Thackeray, who was by nature a cosmopolitan, yet whose work +is so absorbed with the structure of English society as to be almost +unintelligible to foreigners. The exploration of the human heart and +conscience in relation to the new problems of the time had been almost +abandoned by the novel since Richardson's time. It was for woman to +attempt to resolve these questions, and with the aid of powerful +imagination to propound very different conclusions. The conviction of +Charlotte Bronte (1816-1855) was that the mutual passionate love of one +man and one woman is sacred and creates a centre of highest life, energy +and joy in the world. George Eliot (1819-1880), on the other hand, +detected a blind and cruel egoism in all such ecstasy of individual +passion. It was in the autumn of 1847 that _Jane Eyre_ shocked the +primness of the coteries by the unconcealed ardour of its love passages. +Twelve years later _Adam Bede_ astonished the world by the intensity of +its ethical light and shade. The introspective novel was now very +gradually to establish a supremacy over the historical. The romance of +the Brontes' forlorn life colours _Jane Eyre_, colours _Wuthering +Heights_ and colours _Villette_; their work is inseparable from their +story to an extent that we perhaps hardly realize. George Eliot did not +receive this adventitious aid from romance, and her work was, perhaps, +unduly burdened by ethical diatribe, scientific disquisition and moral +and philosophical asides. It is more than redeemed, however, by her +sovereign humour, by the actual truth in the portrayal of that +absolutely self-centred Midland society of the 'thirties and 'forties, +and by the moral significance which she extracts from the smaller +actions and more ordinary characters of life by means of sympathy, +imagination and a deep human compassion. Her novels are generally +admitted to have obtained twin summits in _Adam Bede_ (1859) and +_Middlemarch_ (1872). An even nicer delineator of the most delicate +shades of the curiously remote provincial society of that day was Mrs +Gaskell (1810-1865), whose _Cranford_ and _Wives and Daughters_ attain +to the perfection of easy, natural and unaffected English narrative. +Enthusiasm and a picturesque boyish ardour and partisanship are the +chief features of _Westward Ho!_ and the other vivid and stirring novels +of Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), to which a subtler gift in the +discrimination of character must be added in the case of his brother +Henry Kingsley (1830-1876). Charles, however, was probably more +accomplished as a poet than in the to him too exciting operation of +taking sides in a romance. The novels of Trollope, Reade and Wilkie +Collins are, generally speaking, a secondary product of the literary +forces which produced the great fiction of the 'fifties. The two last +were great at structure and sensation: Trollope dogs the prose of +every-day life with a certainty and a clearness that border upon +inspiration. The great novels of George Meredith range between 1859 and +1880, stories of characters deeply interesting who reveal themselves to +us by flashes and trust to our inspiration to do the rest. The wit, the +sparkle, the entrain and the horizon of these books, from _Richard +Feverel_ to the master analysis of _The Egoist_, have converted the +study of Meredith into an exact science. Thomas Hardy occupies a place +scarcely inferior to Meredith's as a stylist, a discoverer of new +elements of the plaintive and the wistful in the vanishing of past +ideals, as a depicter of the old southern rustic life of England and its +tragi-comedy, in a series of novels which take rank with the greatest. + + + Tennyson. + +If Victorian literature had something more than a paragon in Dickens, it +had its paragon too in the poet Tennyson. The son of a Lincolnshire +parson of squirearchal descent, Alfred Tennyson consecrated himself to +the vocation of poesy with the same unalterable conviction that had +characterized Milton, Pope, Thomson, Wordsworth and Keats, and that was +yet to signalize Rossetti and Swinburne, and he became easily the +greatest virtuoso of his time in his art. To lyrics and idylls of a +luxurious and exotic picturesqueness he gave a perfection of technique +which criticism has chastened only to perfect in such miracles of +description as "The Lotus Eaters," "The Dream of Fair Women," and "Morte +d'Arthur." He received as vapour the sense of uneasiness as to the +problems of the future which pervaded his generation, and in the elegies +and lyrics of _In Memoriam_, in _The Princess_ and in _Maud_ he gave +them back to his contemporaries in a running stream, which still +sparkles and radiates amid the gloom. After the lyrical monodrama of +_Maud_ in 1855 he devoted his flawless technique of design, harmony and +rhythm to works primarily of decoration and design (_The Idylls of the +King_), and to experiments in metrical drama for which the time was not +ripe; but his main occupation was varied almost to the last by lyrical +blossoms such as "Frater Ave," "Roman Virgil," or "Crossing the Bar," +which, like "Tears, Idle Tears" and "O that 'twere possible," embody the +aspirations of Flaubert towards a perfected art of language shaping as +no other verse probably can. + + + Browning. + +Few, perhaps, would go now to _In Memoriam_ as to an oracle for +illumination and guidance as many of Queen Victoria's contemporaries +did, from the Queen herself downwards. And yet it will take very long +ere its fascination fades. In language most musical it rearticulates the +gospel of Sorrow and Love, and it remains still a pathetic expression of +emotions, sentiments and truths which, as long as human nature remains +the same, and as long as calamity, sorrow and death are busy in the +world, must be always repeating themselves. Its power, perhaps, we may +feel of this poem and indeed of most of Tennyson's poetry, is not quite +equal to its charm. And if we feel this strongly, we shall regard Robert +Browning as the typical poet of the Victorian era. His thought has been +compared to a galvanic battery for the use of spiritual paralytics. The +grave defect of Browning is that his ideas, however excellent, are so +seldom completely won; they are left in a twilight, or even a darkness +more Cimmerian than that to which the worst of the virtuosi dedicate +their ideas. Similarly, even in his "Dramatic Romances and Lyrics" +(1845) or his "Men and Women" (1855) he rarely depicts action, seldom +goes further than interpreting the mind of man as he approaches action. +If Dickens may be described as the eye of Victorian literature, Tennyson +the ear attuned to the subtlest melodies, Swinburne the reed to which +everything blew to music, Thackeray the velvet pulpit-cushion, Eliot the +impending brow, and Meredith the cerebral dome, then Browning might well +be described as the active brain itself eternally expounding some point +of view remote in time and place from its own. Tennyson was ostensibly +and always a poet in his life and his art, in his blue cloak and +sombrero, his mind and study alike stored with intaglios of the thought +of all ages, always sounding and remodelling his verses so that they +shall attain the maximum of sweetness and symmetry. He was a recluse. +Browning on the other hand dissembled his poethood, successfully +disguised his muse under the semblance of a stock merchant, was civil to +his fellowmen, and though nervous with bores, encountered every one he +met as if he were going to receive more than he could impart. In +Tennyson's poetry we are always discovering new beauties. In Browning's +we are finding new blemishes. Why he chose rhythm and metre for +seven-eighths of his purpose is somewhat of a mystery. His protest +against the materialistic view of life is, perhaps, a more valid one +than Tennyson's; he is at pains to show us the noble elements valuable +in spite of failure to achieve tangible success. He realizes that the +greater the man, the greater is the failure, yet protests unfailingly +against the despondent or materialist view of life. His nimble +appreciation of character and motive attracts the attentive curiosity of +highly intellectual people; but the question recurs with some +persistence as to whether poetry, after all, was the right medium for +the expression of these views. + + + Ruskin. Morris. Symonds. Pater. + +Many of Browning's ideas and fertilizations will, perhaps, owing to the +difficulty and uncertainty which attaches to their form, penetrate the +future indirectly as the stimulant of other men's work. This is +especially the case with those remarkable writers who have for the first +time given the fine arts a considerable place in English literature, +notably John Ruskin (_Modern Painters_, 1842, _Seven Lamps_, 1849, +_Stones of Venice_, 1853), William Morris, John Addington Symonds and +Walter Pater. Browning, it is true, shared the discipleship of the first +two with Kingsley and Carlyle. But Ruskin outlived all discipleships and +transcended almost all the prose writers of his period in a style the +elements of emotional power in which still preserve their secret. + + + Arnold. + +More a poet of doubt than either Tennyson or the college friend, A.H. +Clough, whose loss he lamented in one of the finest pastoral elegies of +all ages, Matthew Arnold takes rank with Tennyson, Browning and +Swinburne alone among the Dii Majores of Victorian poetry. He is perhaps +a disciple of Wordsworth even more than of Goethe, and he finds in +Nature, described in rarefied though at times intensely beautiful +phrase, the balm for the unrest of man's unsatisfied yearnings, the +divorce between soul and intellect, and the sense of contrast between +the barren toil of man and the magic operancy of nature. His most +delicate and intimate strains are tinged with melancholy. The infinite +desire of what might have been, the _lacrimae rerum_, inspires +"Resignation," one of the finest pieces in his volume of 1849 (_The +Strayed Reveller_). In the deeply-sighed lines of "Dover Beach" in 1867 +it is associated with his sense of the decay of faith. The dreaming +garden trees, the full moon and the white evening star of the beautiful +English-coloured _Thyrsis_ evoke the same mood, and render Arnold one of +the supreme among elegiac poets. But his poetry is the most individual +in the circle and admits the popular heart never for an instant. As a +popularizer of Renan and of the view of the Bible, not as a talisman but +as a literature, and, again, as a chastener of his contemporaries by +means of the iteration of a few telling phrases about philistines, +barbarians, sweetness and light, sweet reasonableness, high seriousness, +Hebraism and Hellenism, "young lions of the _Daily Telegraph_," and "the +note of provinciality," Arnold far eclipsed his fame as a poet during +his lifetime. His crusade of banter against the bad civilization of his +own class was one of the most audaciously successful things of the kind +ever accomplished. But all his prose theorizing was excessively +superficial. In poetry he sounded a note which the prose Arnold seemed +hopelessly unable ever to fathom. + + + Rossetti. + +It is easier to speak of the virtuoso group who derived their first +incitement to poetry from Chatterton, Keats and the early exotic ballads +of Tennyson, far though these yet were from attaining the perfection in +which they now appear after half a century of assiduous correction. The +chief of them were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, his sister Christina, William +Morris and Algernon Charles Swinburne. The founders of this school, +which took and acquired the name Pre-Raphaelite, were profoundly +impressed by the Dante revival and by the study of the early Florentine +masters. Rossetti himself was an accomplished translator from Dante and +from Villon. He preferred Keats to Shelley because (like himself) he had +no philosophy. The 18th century was to him as if it had never been, he +dislikes Greek lucidity and the open air, and prefers lean medieval +saints, spectral images and mystic loves. The passion of these students +was retrospective; they wanted to revive the literature of a forgotten +past, Italian, Scandinavian, French, above all, medieval. To do this is +a question of enthusiastic experiment and adventure. Rossetti leads the +way with his sonnets and ballads. Christina follows with _Goblin +Market_, though she subsequently, with a perfected technique, writes +poetry more and more confined to the religious emotions. William Morris +publishes in 1858 his _Defence of Guenevere_, followed in ten years by +_The Earthly Paradise_, a collection of metrical tales, which hang in +the sunshine like tapestries woven of golden thread, where we should +naturally expect the ordinary paperhanging of prose romance. + + + Swinburne. + +From the verdurous gloom of the studio with its mysterious and occult +properties in which Rossetti compounded his colours, Morris went forth +shortly to chant and then to narrate Socialist songs and parables. +Algernon Charles Swinburne set forth to scandalize the critics of 1866 +with the roses and lilies of vice and white death in _Poems and +Ballads_, which was greeted with howls and hisses, and reproach against +a "fleshly school of modern poetry." Scandalous verses these were, +rioting on the crests of some of these billows of song. More discerning +persons perceived the harmless impersonal unreality and mischievous +youthful extravagance of all these Cyprian outbursts, that the poems +were the outpourings of a young singer up to the chin in the Pierian +flood, and possessed by a poetic energy so urgent that it could not wait +to apply the touchstones of reality or the chastening planes of +experience. Swinburne far surpassed the promoters of this exotic school +in technical excellence, and in _Atalanta in Calydon_ and its successors +may be said to have widened the bounds of English song, to have created +a new music and liberated a new harmonic scale in his verse. Of the two +elements which, superadded to a consummate technique, compose the great +poet, intensity of imagination and intensity of passion, the latter in +Swinburne much predominated. The result was a great abundance of heat +and glow and not perhaps quite enough defining light. Hence the tendency +to be incomprehensible, so fatal in its fascination for the poets of the +last century, which would almost justify the title of the triumvirs of +twilight to three of the greatest. It is this incomprehensibility which +alienates the poet from the popular understanding and confines his +audience to poets, students and scholars. Poetry is often comparable to +a mountain range with its points and aiguilles, its peaks and crags, its +domes and its summits. But Swinburne's poetry, filled with the sound and +movement of great waters, is as incommunicable as the sea. Trackless and +almost boundless, it has no points, no definite summits. The poet never +seems to know precisely when he is going to stop. His metrical flow is +wave-like, beautiful and rather monotonous, inseparable from the general +effect. His endings seem due to an exhaustion of rhythm rather than to +an exhaustion of sense. A cessation of meaning is less perceptible than +a cessation of magnificent sound. + + + Newman and the Church. + +Akin in some sense to the attempt made to get behind the veil and to +recapture the old charms and spells of the middle ages, to discover the +open sesame of the _Morte D'Arthur_ and the _Mabinogion_ and to reveal +the old Celtic and monastic life which once filled and dominated our +islands, was the attempt to overthrow the twin gods of the 'forties and +'fifties, state-Protestantism and the sanctity of trade. The curiously +assorted Saint Georges who fought these monsters were John Henry Newman +and Thomas Carlyle. The first cause of the movement was, of course, the +anomalous position of the Anglican Church, which had become a province +of the oligarchy officered by younger sons. It stood apart from foreign +Protestantism; its ignorance of Rome, and consequently of what it +protested against, was colossal; it was conscious of itself only as an +establishment--it had produced some very great men since the days of the +non-jurors, when it had mislaid its historical conscience, but these had +either been great scholars in their studies, such as Berkeley, Butler, +Warburton, Thomas Scott, or revivalists, evangelicals and missionaries, +such as Wilson, Wesley, Newton, Romaine, Cecil, Venn, Martyn, who were +essentially Congregationalists rather than historical Churchmen. A new +spiritual beacon was to be raised; an attempt was to be made to realize +the historical and cosmic aspects of the English Church, to examine its +connexions, its descent and its title-deeds. In this attempt Newman was +to spend the best years of his life. + +The growth of liberal opinions and the denudation of the English Church +of spiritual and historical ideas, leaving "only pulpit orators at +Clapham and Islington and two-bottle orthodox" to defend it, seemed to +involve the continued existence of Anglicanism in any form in +considerable doubt. Swift had said at the commencement of the 18th +century that if an act was passed for the extirpation of the gospel, +bank stock might decline 1%; but a century later it is doubtful whether +the passing of such a bill would have left any trace, however +evanescent, upon the stability of the money market. The Anglican _via +media_ had enemies not only in the philosophical radicals, but also in +the new caste of men of science. Perhaps, as J.A. Froude suggests, these +combined enemies, _The Edinburgh Review_, Brougham, Mackintosh, the +Reform Ministry, Low Church philosophy and the London University were +not so very terrible after all. The Church was a vested interest which +had a greater stake in the country and was harder to eradicate than they +imagined. But it had nothing to give to the historian and the idealist. +They were right to fight for what their souls craved after and found in +the Church of Andrewes, Herbert, Ken and Waterland. Belief in the divine +mission of the Church lingered on in the minds of such men as Alexander +Knox or his disciple Bishop Jebb; but few were prepared to answer the +question--"What is the Church as spoken of in England? Is it the Church +of Christ?"--and the answers were various. Hooker had said it was "the +nation"; and in entirely altered circumstances, with some +qualifications, Dr Arnold said the same. It was "the Establishment" +according to the lawyers and politicians, both Whig and Tory. It was an +invisible and mystical body, said the Evangelicals. It was the aggregate +of separate congregations, said the Nonconformists. It was the +parliamentary creation of the Reformation, said the Erastians. The true +Church was the communion of the Pope; the pretended Church was a +legalized schism, said the Roman Catholics. All these ideas were +floating about, loose and vague, among people who talked much about the +Church. + +One thing was persistently obvious, namely, that the nationalist church +had become opportunist in every fibre, and that it had thrown off almost +every semblance of ecclesiastical discipline. The view was circulated +that the Church owed its continued existence to the good sense of the +individuals who officered it, and to the esteem which possession and +good sense combined invariably engendered in the reigning oligarchy. But +since Christianity was true--and Newman was the one man of modern times +who seems never to have doubted this, never to have overlooked the +unmistakable threat of eternal punishment to the wicked and +unbelieving--modern England, with its march of intellect and its chatter +about progress, was advancing with a light heart to the verge of a +bottomless abyss. By a diametrically opposite chain of reasoning Newman +reached much the same conclusion as Carlyle. Newman sought a haven of +security in a rapprochement with the Catholic Church. The medieval +influences already at work in Oxford began to fan the flame which +kindled to a blaze in the ninetieth of the celebrated _Tracts for the +Times_. It proved the turning of the ways leading Keble and Pusey to +Anglican ritual and Newman to Rome. This anti-liberal campaign was +poison to the state-churchmen and Protestants, and became perhaps the +chief intellectual storm centre of the century. Charles Kingsley in 1864 +sought to illustrate by recent events that veracity could not be +considered a Roman virtue. + + + Scientific cross-currents. + + Macaulay. + +After some preliminary ironic sparring Newman was stung into writing +what he deliberately called _Apologia pro vita sua_. In this, apart from +the masterly dialectic and exposition in which he had already shown +himself an adept, a volume of autobiography is made a chapter of general +history, unsurpassed in its kind since the _Confessions_ of St +Augustine, combined with a perfection of form, a precision of phrasing +and a charm of style peculiar to the genius of the author, rendering it +one of the masterpieces of English prose. But while Newman was thus +sounding a retreat, louder and more urgent voices were signalling the +advance in a totally opposite direction. The _Apologia_ fell in point of +time between _The Origin of Species_ and _Descent of Man_, in which +Charles Darwin was laying the corner stones of the new science of which +Thomas Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace were to be among the first +apostles, and almost coincided with the _First Principles_ of a +synthetic philosophy, in which Herbert Spencer was formulating a set of +probabilities wholly destructive to the acceptance of positive truth in +any one religion. The typical historian of the 'fifties, Thomas +Babington Macaulay, and the seminal thinker of the 'sixties, John Stuart +Mill, had as determinedly averted their faces from the old conception of +revealed religion. Nourished in the school of the great Whig pamphleteer +historians, George Grote and Henry Hallam, Macaulay combined gifts of +memory, enthusiastic conviction, portraiture and literary expression, +which gave to his historical writing a resonance unequalled (even by +Michelet) in modern literature. In spite of faults of taste and +fairness, Macaulay's resplendent gifts enabled him to achieve for the +period from Charles II. to the peace of Ryswick what Thucydides had done +for the Peloponnesian War. The pictures that he drew with such exultant +force are stamped ineffaceably upon the popular mind. His chief faults +are not of detail, but rather a lack of subtlety as regards +characterization and motive, a disposition to envisage history too +exclusively as a politician, and the sequence of historical events as a +kind of ordered progress towards the material ideals of universal trade +and Whig optimism as revealed in the Great Exhibition of 1851. + + + Carlyle. + +Macaulay's tendency to disparage the past brought his whole vision of +the Cosmos into sharp collision with that of his rival appellant to the +historical conscience, Thomas Carlyle, a man whose despair of the +present easily exceeded Newman's. But Carlyle's despondency was totally +irrespective of the attitude preserved by England towards the Holy +Father, whom he seldom referred to save as "the three-hatted Papa" and +"servant of the devil." It may be in fact almost regarded as the reverse +or complement to the excess of self-complacency in Macaulay. We may +correct the excess of one by the opposite excess of the other. Macaulay +was an optimist in ecstasy with the material advance of his time in +knowledge and power; the growth of national wealth, machinery and means +of lighting and locomotion caused him to glow with satisfaction. +Carlyle, the pessimist, regards all such symptoms of mechanical +development as contemptible. Far from panegyrizing his own time, he +criticizes it without mercy. Macaulay had great faith in rules and +regulations, reform bills and parliamentary machinery. Carlyle regards +them as wiles of the devil. Frederick William of Prussia, according to +Macaulay, was the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and +Puck, his palace was hell, and Oliver Twist and Smike were petted +children compared with his son the crown prince. In the same bluff and +honest father Carlyle recognized the realized ideal of his fancy and +hugged the just man made perfect to his heart of hearts. Such men as +Bentham and Cobden, Mill and Macaulay, had in Carlyle's opinion spared +themselves no mistaken exertion to exalt the prosperity and happiness of +their own day. The time had come to react at all hazards against the +prevalent surfeit of civilization. Henceforth his literary activity was +to take two main directions. First, tracts for the times against modern +tendencies, especially against the demoralizing modern talk about +progress by means of money and machinery which emanated like a miasma +from the writings of such men as Mill, Macaulay, Brougham, Buckle and +from the Quarterlies. Secondly, a cyclopean exhibition of Caesarism, +discipline, the regimentation of workers, and the convertibility of the +Big Stick and the Bible, with a preference to the Big Stick as a +panacea. The snowball was to grow rapidly among such writers as +Kingsley, Ruskin, George Borrow, unencumbered by reasoning or deductive +processes which they despised. Carlyle himself felt that the condition +of England was one for anger rather than discussion. He detested the +rationalism and symmetry of such methodists of thought as Mill, Buckle, +Darwin, Spencer, Lecky, Ricardo and other demonstrations of the dismal +science--mere chatter he called it. The palliative philanthropy of the +day had become his aversion even more than the inroads of Rome under +cover of the Oxford movement which Froude, Borrow and Kingsley set +themselves to correct. As an historian of a formal order Carlyle's +historical portraits cannot bear a strict comparison with the published +work of Gibbon and Macaulay, or even of Maine and Froude in this period, +but as a biographer and autobiographer Carlyle's caustic insight has +enabled him to produce much which is of the very stuff of human nature. +Surrounded by philomaths and savants who wrote smoothly about the +perfectibility of man and his institutions, Carlyle almost alone refused +to distil his angry eloquence and went on railing against the passive +growth of civilization at the heart of which he declared that he had +discovered a cancer. This uncouth Titan worship and prostration before +brute force, this constant ranting about jarls and vikings trembles +often on the verge of cant and comedy, and his fiddling on the one +string of human pretension and bankruptcy became discordant almost to +the point of chaos. Instinctively destructive, he resents the +apostleship of teachers like Mill, or the pioneer discoveries of men +like Herbert Spencer and Darwin. He remains, nevertheless, a great +incalculable figure, the cross grandfather of a school of thought which +is largely unconscious of its debt and which so far as it recognizes it +takes Carlyle in a manner wholly different from that of his +contemporaries. + + + New schools. + + History. + +The deaths of Carlyle and George Eliot (and also of George Borrow) in +1881 make a starting-point for the new schools of historians, novelists, +critics and biographers, and those new nature students who claim to cure +those evil effects of civilization which Carlyle and his disciples had +discovered. History in the hands of Macaulay, Buckle and Carlyle had +been occupied mainly with the bias and tendency of change, the results +obtained by those who consulted the oracle being more often than not +diametrically opposite. With Froude still on the one hand as the +champion of Protestantism, and with E.A. Freeman and J.R. Green on the +other as nationalist historians, the school of applied history was fully +represented in the next generation, but as the records grew and +multiplied in print in accordance with the wise provisions made in 1857 +by the commencement of the Rolls Series of medieval historians, and the +Calendars of State Papers, to be followed shortly by the rapidly growing +volumes of Calendars of Historical Manuscripts, historians began to +concentrate their attention more upon the process of change as their +right subject matter and to rely more and more upon documents, +statistics and other impersonal and disinterested forms of material. +Such historical writers as Lecky, Lord Acton, Creighton, Morley and +Bryce contributed to the process of transition mainly as essayists, but +the new doctrines were tested and to a certain extent put into action by +such writers as Thorold Rogers, Stubbs, Gardiner and Maitland. The +theory that History is a science, no less and no more, was propounded in +so many words by Professor Bury in his inaugural lecture at Cambridge in +1903, and this view and the corresponding divergence of history from the +traditional pathway of Belles Lettres has become steadily more dominant +in the world of historical research and historical writing since 1881. +The bulk of quite modern historical writing can certainly be justified +from no other point of view. + + + The novel. + +The novel since 1881 has pursued a course curiously analogous to that of +historical writing. Supported as it was by masters of the old regime +such as Meredith and Hardy, and by those who then ranked even higher in +popular esteem such as Wilkie Collins, Anthony Trollope, Besant and +Rice, Blackmore, William Black and a monstrous rising regiment of lady +novelists--Mrs Lynn Linton, Rhoda Broughton, Mrs Henry Wood, Miss +Braddon, Mrs Humphry Ward, the type seemed securely anchored to the old +formulas and the old ways. In reality, however, many of these popular +workers were already moribund and the novel was being honeycombed by +French influence. + +This is perceptible in Hardy, but may be traced with greater +distinctness in the best work of George Gissing, George Moore, Mark +Rutherford, and later on of H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and John +Galsworthy. The old novelists had left behind them a giant's robe. +Intellectually giants, Dickens and Thackeray were equally gigantic +spendthrifts. They worked in a state of fervent heat above a glowing +furnace, into which they flung lavish masses of unshaped metal, caring +little for immediate effect or minute dexterity of stroke, but knowing +full well that the emotional energy of their temperaments was capable of +fusing the most intractable material, and that in the end they would +produce their great downright effect. Their spirits rose and fell, but +the case was desperate; copy had to be despatched at once or the current +serial would collapse. Good and bad had to make up the tale against +time, and revelling in the very exuberance and excess of their humour, +the novelists invariably triumphed. It was incumbent on the new school +of novelists to economize their work with more skill, to relieve their +composition of irrelevancies, to keep the writing in one key, and to +direct it consistently to one end--in brief, to unify the novel as a +work of art and to simplify its ordonnance. + +The novel, thus lightened and sharpened, was conquering new fields. The +novel of the 'sixties remained not, perhaps, to win many new triumphs, +but a very popular instrument in the hands of those who performed +variations on the old masters, and much later in the hands of Mr William +de Morgan, showing a new force and quiet power of its own. The novel, +however, was ramifying in other directions in a way full of promise for +the future. A young Edinburgh student, Robert Louis Stevenson, had +inherited much of the spirit of the Pre-Raphaelitic virtuosos, and +combined with their passion for the romance of the historic past a +curiosity fully as strong about the secrets of romantic technique. A +coterie which he formed with W.E. Henley and his cousin R.A.M. Stevenson +studied words as a young art student studies paints, and made studies +for portraits of buccaneers with the same minute drudgery that Rossetti +had studied a wall or Morris a piece of figured tapestry. While thus +forming a new romantic school whose work when wrought by his methods +should be fit to be grafted upon the picturesque historic fiction of +Scott and Dumas, Stevenson was also naturalizing the short story of the +modern French type upon English ground. In this particular field he was +eclipsed by Rudyard Kipling, who, though less original as a man of +letters, had a technical vocabulary and descriptive power far in advance +of Stevenson's, and was able in addition to give his writing an exotic +quality derived from Oriental colouring. This regional type of writing +has since been widely imitated, and the novel has simultaneously +developed in many other ways, of which perhaps the most significant is +the psychological study as manipulated severally by Shorthouse, Mallock +and Henry James. + + + Criticism. + +The expansion of criticism in the same thirty years was not a whit less +marked than the vast divagation of the novel. In the early 'eighties it +was still tongue-bound by the hypnotic influence of one or two copy-book +formulae--Arnold's "criticism of life" as a definition of poetry, and +Walter Pater's implied doctrine of art for art's sake. That two dicta so +manifestly absurd should have cast such an augur-like spell upon the +free expression of opinion, though it may of course, like all such +instances, be easily exaggerated, is nevertheless a curious example of +the enslavement of ideas by a confident claptrap. A few representatives +of the old schools of motived or scientific criticism, deduced from the +literatures of past time, survived the new century in Leslie Stephen, +Saintsbury, Stopford Brooke, Austin Dobson, Courthope, Sidney Colvin, +Watts-Dunton; but their agreement is certainly not greater than among +the large class of emancipated who endeavour to concentrate the +attention of others without further ado upon those branches of +literature which they find most nutritive. Among the finest appreciators +of this period have been Pattison and Jebb, Myers, Hutton, Dowden, A.C. +Bradley, William Archer, Richard Garnett, E. Gosse and Andrew Lang. +Birrell, Walkley and Max Beerbohm have followed rather in the wake of +the Stephens and Bagehot, who have criticized the sufficiency of the +titles made out by the more enthusiastic and lyrical eulogists. In +Arthur Symons, Walter Raleigh and G.K. Chesterton the new age possessed +critics of great originality and power, the work of the last two of whom +is concentrated upon the application of ideas about life at large to the +conceptions of literature. In exposing palpable nonsense as such, no one +perhaps did better service in criticism than the veteran Frederic +Harrison. + +In the cognate work of memoir and essay, the way for which has been +greatly smoothed by co-operative lexicographical efforts such as the +_Dictionary of National Biography_, the _New English Dictionary_, the +_Victoria County History_ and the like, some of the most dexterous and +permeating work of the transition from the old century to the new was +done by H.D. Traill, Gosse, Lang, Mackail, E.V. Lucas, Lowes Dickinson, +Richard le Gallienne, A.C. Benson, Hilaire Belloc, while the open-air +relief work for dwellers pent in great cities, pioneered by Gilbert +White, has been expanded with all the zest and charm that a novel +pursuit can endow by such writers as Richard Jefferies, an open-air and +nature mystic of extraordinary power at his best, Selous, Seton +Thompson, W.H. Hudson. + + + Poetry. + +The age has not been particularly well attuned to the efforts of the +newer poets since Coventry Patmore in the _Angel in the House_ achieved +embroidery, often extremely beautiful, upon the Tennysonian pattern, and +since Edward FitzGerald, the first of all letter-writing commentators on +life and letters since Lamb, gave a new cult to the decadent century in +his version of the Persian centoist Omar Khayyam. The prizes which in +Moore's day were all for verse have now been transferred to the prose +novel and the play, and the poets themselves have played into the hands +of the Philistines by disdaining popularity in a fond preference for +virtuosity and obscurity. Most kinds of the older verse, however, have +been well represented, descriptive and elegiac poetry in particular by +Robert Bridges and William Watson; the music of the waters of the +western sea and its isles by W.B. Yeats, Synge, Moira O'Neill, "Fiona +Macleod" and an increasing group of Celtic bards; the highly wrought +verse of the 17th-century lyrists by Francis Thompson, Lionel Johnson, +Ernest Dowson; the simplicity of a more popular strain by W.H. Davies, +of a brilliant rhetoric by John Davidson, and of a more intimate romance +by Sturge Moore and Walter de la Mare. Light verse has never, perhaps, +been represented more effectively since Praed and Calverley and Lewis +Carroll than by Austin Dobson, Locker Lampson, W.S. Gilbert and Owen +Seaman. The names of C.M. Doughty, Alfred Noyes, Herbert Trench and +Laurence Binyon were also becoming prominent at the opening of the 20th +century. For originality in form and substance the palm rests in all +probability with A.E. Housman, whose _Shropshire Lad_ opens new avenues +and issues, and with W.E. Henley, whose town and hospital poems had a +poignant as well as an ennobling strain. The work of Henry Newbolt, Mrs. +Meynell and Stephen Phillips showed a real poetic gift. Above all these, +however, in the esteem of many reign the verses of George Meredith and +of Thomas Hardy, whose _Dynasts_ was widely regarded by the best judges +as the most remarkable literary production of the new century. + + + Drama. + +The new printed and acted drama dates almost entirely from the late +'eighties. Tom Robertson in the 'seventies printed nothing, and his +plays were at most a timid recognition of the claims of the drama to +represent reality and truth. The enormous superiority of the French +drama as represented by Augier, Dumas _fils_ and Sardou began to dawn +slowly upon the English consciousness. Then in the 'eighties came Ibsen, +whose daring in handling actuality was only equalled by his intrepid +stage-craft. Oscar Wilde and A.W. Pinero were the first to discover how +the spirit of these new discoveries might be adapted to the English +stage. Gilbert Murray, with his fascinating and tantalizing versions +from Euripides, gave a new flexibility to the expansion that was going +on in English dramatic ideas. Bernard Shaw and his disciples, +conspicuous among them Granville Barker, gave a new seasoning of wit to +the absolute novelties of subject, treatment and application with which +they transfixed the public which had so long abandoned thought upon +entering the theatre. This new adventure enjoyed a _succes de stupeur_, +the precise range of which can hardly be estimated, and the force of +which is clearly by no means spent. + + + 20th-century changes. + +English literature in the 20th century still preserves some of the old +arrangements and some of the consecrated phrases of patronage and +aristocracy; but the circumstances of its production were profoundly +changed during the 19th century. By 1895 English literature had become a +subject of regular instruction for a special degree at most of the +universities, both in England and America. This has begun to lead to +research embodied in investigations which show that what were regarded +as facts in connexion with the earlier literature can be regarded so no +longer. It has also brought comparative and historical treatment of a +closer kind and on a larger scale to bear upon the evolution of literary +types. On the other hand it has concentrated an excessive attention +perhaps upon the grammar and prosody and etymology of literature, it has +stereotyped the admiration of lifeless and obsolete forms, and has +substituted antiquarian notes and ready-made commentary for that live +enjoyment, which is essentially individual and which tends insensibly to +evaporate from all literature as soon as the circumstance of it changes. +It is prone, moreover, to force upon the immature mind a rapt admiration +for the mirror before ever it has scanned the face of the original. A +result due rather to the general educational agencies of the time is +that, while in the middle of the 19th century one man could be found to +write competently on a given subject, in 1910 there were fifty. Books +and apparatus for reading have multiplied in proportion. The fact of a +book having been done quite well in a certain way is no longer any bar +whatever to its being done again without hesitation in the same way. +This continual pouring of ink from one bottle into another is calculated +gradually to raise the standard of all subaltern writing and compiling, +and to leave fewer and fewer books securely rooted in a universal +recognition of their intrinsic excellence, power and idiosyncrasy or +personal charm. Even then, of what we consider first-rate in the 19th +century, for instance, but a very small residuum can possibly survive. +The one characteristic that seems likely to cling and to differentiate +this voluble century is its curious reticence, of which the 20th century +has already made uncommonly short work. The new playwrights have +untaught England a shyness which came in about the time of Southey, +Wordsworth and Sir Walter Scott. That the best literature has survived +hitherto is at best a pious opinion. As the area of experience grows it +is more and more difficult to circumscribe or even to describe the +supreme best, and such attempts have always been responsible for base +superstition. It is clear that some limitation of the literary +stock-in-trade will become increasingly urgent as time goes on, and the +question may well occur as to whether we are insuring the right baggage. +The enormous apparatus of literature at the present time is suitable +only to a peculiar phasis and manner of existence. Some hold to the +innate and essential aristocracy of literature; others that it is bound +to develop on the popular and communistic side, for that at present, +like machinery and other deceptive benefits, it is a luxury almost +exclusively advantageous to the rich. But to predict the direction of +change in literature is even more futile than to predict the direction +of change in human history, for of all factors of history, literature, +if one of the most permanent, is also one of the least calculable. + + BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--_The Age of Wordsworth_ and _The Age of + Tennyson_ in Bell's "Handbooks of English Literature" are of special + value for this period. Prof. Dowden's and Prof. Saintsbury's + 19th-century studies fill in interstices; and of the "Periods of + European Literature," the _Romantic Revolt_ and _Romantic Triumph_ are + pertinent, as are the literary chapters in vols. x. and xi. of the + _Cambridge Modern History_. Of more specific books George Brandes's + _Literary Currents of the Nineteenth Century_, Stedman's _Victorian + Poets_, Holman Hunt's _Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood_, R.H. Hutton's + _Contemporary Thought_ (and companion volumes), Sir Leslie Stephen's + _The Utilitarians_, Buxton Forman's _Our Living Poets_, Dawson's + _Victorian Novelists_, Thureau-Dangin's _Renaissance des idees + catholiques en Angleterre_, A. Chevrillon's _Sydney Smith et la + renaissance des idees liberales en Angleterre_, A.W. Benn's _History + of English Thought in the Nineteenth Century_, the publishing + histories of Murray, Blackwood, Macvey Napier, Lockhart, &c., J.M. + Robertson's _Modern Humanists_, and the critical miscellanies of Lord + Morley, Frederic Harrison, W. Bagehot, A. Birrell, Andrew Lang and E. + Gosse, will be found, in their several degrees, illuminating. The + chief literary lives are those of Scott by Lockhart, Carlyle by + Froude, Macaulay by Trevelyan, Dickens by Forster and Charlotte Bronte + by Mrs Gaskell. (T. Se.) + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] _Piers Plowman_ has been so long attributed as a whole to + Langland (q.v.), that in spite of modern analytical criticism it is + most conveniently discussed under that name. + + + + +ENGLISHRY (_Englescherie_), a legal name given, in the reign of William +the Conqueror, to the presentment of the fact that a person slain was an +Englishman. If an unknown man was found slain, he was presumed to be a +Norman, and the hundred was fined accordingly, unless it could be proved +that he was English. Englishry, if established, excused the hundred. Dr +W. Stubbs (_Constitutional History_, i. 196) says that possibly similar +measures were taken by King Canute. Englishry was abolished in 1340. + + See _Select Cases from the Coroners' Rolls, 1265-1413_, ed. C. Gross, + Selden Society (London, 1896). + + + + +ENGRAVING, the process or result of the action implied by the verb "to +engrave" or mark by incision, the marks (whether for inscriptive, +pictorial or decorative purposes) being produced, not by simply staining +or discolouring the material (as with paint, pen or pencil), but by +cutting into or otherwise removing a portion of the substance. In the +case of pictures, the engraved surface is reproduced by printing; but +this is only one restricted sense of "engraving," since the term +includes seal-engraving (where a cast is taken), and also the chased +ornamentation of plate or gems, &c. + +The word itself is derived from an O. Fr. _engraver_ (not to be confused +with the same modern French word used for the running of a boat's keel +into the beach, or for the sticking of a cart's wheels in the mud,--from +_greve_, Provencal _grava_, sands of the sea or river shore; cf. Eng. +"gravel"); it was at one time supposed that the Gr. _[Greek: graphein]_, +to write, was etymologically connected, but this view is not now +accepted, and (together with "grave," meaning either to engrave, or the +place where the dead are buried) the derivation is referred to a common +Teutonic form signifying "to dig" (O. Eng. _grafan_, Ger. _graben_). The +modern French _graver_, to engrave, is a later adoption. The idea of a +furrow, by digging or cutting, is thus historically associated with an +engraving, which may properly include the rudest marks cut into any +substance. In old English literature it included carving and sculpture, +from which it has become convenient to differentiate the terminology; +and the ancients who chiselled their writing on slabs of stone were +really "engraving." The word is not applicable, therefore, either +strictly to lithography (q.v.), nor to any of the photographic processes +(see PROCESS), except those in which the surface of the plate is +actually eaten into or lowered. In the latter case, too, it is +convenient to mark a distinction and to ignore the strict analogy. In +modern times the term is, therefore, practically restricted--outside the +spheres of gem-engraving and seal-engraving (see GEM), or the inscribing +or ornamenting of stone, plate, glass, &c.--to the art of making +original pictures (i.e. by the draughtsman himself, whether copies of +an original painting or not), either by incised lines on metal plates +(see LINE-ENGRAVING), or by the corrosion of the lines with acid (see +ETCHING), or by the roughening of a metal surface without actual lines +(see MEZZOTINT), or by cutting a wood surface away so as to leave lines +in relief (see WOOD-ENGRAVING); the result in each case may be called +generically an engraving, and in common parlance the term is applied, +though incorrectly, to the printed reproduction or "print." + +Of these four varieties of engraving--line-engraving, etching, mezzotint +or wood-engraving--the woodcut is historically the earliest. +Line-engraving is now practically obsolete, while etching and mezzotint +have recently come more and more to the front. To the draughtsman the +difference in technical handling in each case has in most cases some +relation to his own artistic impulse, and to his own feeling for beauty. +A line engraver, as P.G. Hamerton said, will not see or think like an +etcher, nor an etcher like an engraver in mezzotint. Each kind, with its +own sub-varieties, has its peculiar effect and attraction. A real +knowledge of engraving can only be attained by a careful study and +comparison of the prints themselves, or of accurate facsimiles, so that +books are of little use except as guides to prints when the reader +happens to be unaware of their existence, or else for their explanation +of technical processes. The value of the prints varies not only +according to the artist, but also according to the fineness of the +impression, and the "state" (or stage) in the making of the plate, which +may be altered from time to time. "Proofs" may also be taken from the +plate, and even touched up by the artist, in various stages and various +degrees of fineness of impression. + +The department of art-literature which classifies prints is called +_Iconography_, and the classifications adopted by iconographers are of +the most various kinds. For example, if a complete book were written on +Shakespearian iconography it would contain full information about all +prints illustrating the life and works of Shakespeare, and in the same +way there may be the iconography of a locality or of a single event. + + The history of engraving is a part of iconography, and various + histories of the art exist in different languages. In England W.Y. + Ottley wrote an _Early History of Engraving_, published in two volumes + 4to (1816), and began what was intended to be a series of notices on + engravers and their works. The facilities for the reproduction of + engravings by the photographic processes have of late years given an + impetus to iconography. One of the best modern writers on the subject + was Georges Duplessis, the keeper of prints in the national library of + France. He wrote a _History of Engraving in France_ (1888), and + published many notices of engravers to accompany the reproductions by + M. Amand Durand. He is also the author of a useful little manual + entitled _Les Merveilles de la gravure_ (1871). Jansen's work on the + origin of wood and plate engraving, and on the knowledge of prints of + the 15th and 16th centuries, was published at Paris in two volumes 8vo + in 1808. Among general works see Adam Bartsch, _Le Peintre-graveur_ + (1803-1843); J.D. Passavant, _Le Peintre-graveur_ (1860-1864); P.G. + Hamerton, _Graphic Arts_ (1882); William Gilpin, _Essay on Prints_ + (1781); J. Maberly, _The Print Collector_ (1844); W.H. Wiltshire, + _Introduction to the Study and Collection of Ancient Prints_ (1874); + F. Wedmore, _Fine Prints_ (1897). See also the lists of works given + under the separate headings for LINE-ENGRAVING, ETCHING, MEZZOTINT and + WOOD-ENGRAVING. + + + + +ENGROSSING, a term used in two legal senses: (1) the writing or copying +of a legal or other document in a fair large hand (_en gros_), and (2) +the buying up of goods wholesale in order to sell at a higher price so +as to establish a monopoly. The word "engross" has come into English +ultimately from the Late Lat. _grossus_, thick, stout, large, through +the A. Fr. _engrosser_, Med. Lat. _ingrossare_, to write in a large +hand, and the French phrase _en gros_, in gross, wholesale. Engrossing +and the kindred practices of forestalling and regrating were early +regarded as serious offences in restraint of trade, and were punishable +both at common law and by statute. They were of more particular +importance in relation to the distribution of corn supplies. The statute +of 1552 defines engrossing as "buying corn growing, or any other corn, +grain, butter, cheese, fish or other dead victual, with _intent to sell +the same again_." The law forbade all dealing in corn as an article of +ordinary merchandise, apart from questions of foreign import or export. +The theory was that when corn was plentiful in any district it should be +consumed at what it would bring, without much respect to whether the +next harvest might be equally abundant, or to what the immediate wants +of an adjoining province of the same country might be. The first statute +on the subject appears to have been passed in the reign of Henry III., +though the general policy had prevailed before that time both in popular +prejudice and in the feudal custom. The statute of Edward VI. (1552) was +the most important, and in it the offences were elaborately defined; by +this statute any one who bought corn to sell it again was made liable to +two months' imprisonment with forfeit of the corn. A second offence was +punished by six months' imprisonment and forfeit of double the value of +the corn, and a third by the pillory and utter ruin. Severe as this +statute was, liberty was given by it to transport corn from one part of +the country under licence to men of approved probity, which implied that +there was to be some buying of corn to sell it again and elsewhere. +Practically "engrossing" came to be considered buying wholesale to sell +again wholesale. "Forestalling" was different, and the statutes were +directed against a class of dealers who went forward and bought or +contracted for corn and other provisions, and spread false rumours in +derogation of the public and open markets appointed by law, to which our +ancestors appear to have attached much importance, and probably in these +times not without reason. The statute of Edward VI. was modified by many +subsequent enactments, particularly by the statute of 1663, by which it +was declared that there could be no "engrossing" of corn when the price +did not exceed 48s. per quarter, and which Adam Smith recognized, though +it adhered to the variable and unsatisfactory element of price, as +having contributed more to the progress of agriculture than any previous +law in the statute book. In 1773 these injurious statutes were +abolished, but the penal character of "engrossing" and "forestalling" +had a root in the common law of England, as well as in the popular +prejudice, which kept the evil alive to a later period. As the public +enlightenment increased the judges were at no loss to give +interpretations of the common law consistent with public policy. +Subsequent to the act of 1773, for example, there was a case of +conviction and punishment for engrossing hops, _R._ v. _Waddington_, +1800, 1 East, 143, but though this was deemed a sound and proper +judgment at the time, yet it was soon afterwards overthrown in other +cases, on the ground that buying wholesale to sell wholesale was not in +"restraint of trade" as the former judges had assumed. + +In 1800, one John Rusby was indicted for having bought ninety quarters +of oats at 41s. per quarter and selling thirty of them at 43s. the same +day. Lord Kenyon, the presiding judge, animadverted strongly against the +repealing act of 1773, and addressed the jury strongly against the +accused. Rusby was heavily fined, but, on appeal, the court was equally +divided as to whether engrossing, forestalling and regrating were still +offences at common law. In 1844, all the statutes, English, Irish and +Scottish, defining the offences, were repealed and with them the +supposed common law foundation. In the United States there have been +strong endeavours by the government to suppress trusts and combinations +for engrossing. (See also TRUSTS; MONOPOLY.) + + AUTHORITIES.--D. Macpherson, _Annals of Commerce_ (1805); J.S. + Girdler, _Observations on Forestalling, Regrating and Ingrossing_ + (1800); W. Cunningham, _Growth of English Industry and Commerce_; W.J. + Ashley, _Economic History_; Sir J. Stephen, _History of Criminal Law_; + Murray, _New English Dictionary_. + + + + +ENGYON, an ancient town of the interior of Sicily, a Cretan colony, +according to legend, and famous for an ancient temple of the Matres +which aroused the greed of Verres. Its site is uncertain; some +topographers have identified it with Gangi, a town 20 m. S.S.E. of +Cefalu, but only on the ground of the similarity of the two names. + + See C. Hulsen in Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopadie_, v. 2568. + + + + +ENID, a city and the county-seat of Garfield county, Oklahoma, U.S.A., +about 55 m. N.W. of Guthrie. Pop. (1900) 3444; (1907) 10,087 (355 of +negro descent); (1910) 13,799. Enid is served by the St Louis & San +Francisco, the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe, and the Chicago, Rock Island +& Pacific railways, and by several branch lines, and is an important +railway centre. It is the seat of the Oklahoma Christian University +(1907; co-educational). Enid is situated in a flourishing agricultural +and stock-raising region, of which it is the commercial centre, and has +various manufactures, including lumber, brick, tile and flour. Natural +gas was discovered near the city in 1907. Enid was founded in 1893 and +was chartered as a city in the same year. + + + + +ENIGMA (Gr. [Greek: ainigma]), a riddle or puzzle, especially a form of +verse or prose composition in which the answer is concealed by means of +metaphors. Such were the famous riddle of the Sphinx and the riddling +answers of the ancient oracles. The composition of enigmas was a +favourite amusement in Greece and prizes were often given at banquets +for the best solution of them (Athen. x. 457). In France during the 17th +century enigma-making became fashionable. Boileau, Charles Riviere +Dufresny and J.J. Rousseau did not consider it beneath their literary +dignity. In 1646 the abbe Charles Cotier (1604-1682) published a +_Recueil des enigmes de ce temps_. The word is applied figuratively to +anything inexplicable or difficult of understanding. + + + + +ENKHUIZEN, a seaport of Holland in the province of North Holland, on the +Zuider Zee, and a railway terminus, 11-1/2 m. N.E. by E. of Hoorn, with +which it is also connected by steam tramway. In conjunction with the +railway service there is a steamboat ferry to Stavoren in Friesland. +Pop. (1900) 6865. Enkhuizen, like its neighbour Hoorn, exhibits many +interesting examples of domestic architecture dating from the 16th and +17th centuries, when it was an important and flourishing city. The +facades of the houses are usually built in courses of brick and stone, +and adorned with carvings, sculptures and inscriptions. Some ruined +gateways belonging to the old city walls are still standing; among them +being the tower-gateway called the Dromedary (1540), which overlooks the +harbour. The tower contains several rooms, one of which was formerly +used as a prison. Among the churches mention must be made of the +Zuiderkerk, or South church, with a conspicuous tower (1450-1525); and +the Westerkerk, or West church, which possesses a beautifully carved +Renaissance screen and pulpit of the middle of the 16th century, and a +quaint wooden bell-house (1519) built for use before the completion of +the bell-tower. There are also a Roman Catholic church and a synagogue. +The picturesque town hall (1688) contains some finely decorated rooms +with paintings by Johan van Neck, a collection of local antiquities and +the archives. Other interesting buildings are the orphanage (1616), +containing some 17th and 18th century portraits and ancient leather +hangings; the weigh-house (1559), the upper story of which was once used +by the Surgeons' Gild, several of the window-panes (dating chiefly from +about 1640), being decorated with the arms of various members; the +former mint (1611); and the ancient assembly-house of the dike-reeves of +Holland and West Friesland. Enkhuizen possesses a considerable fishing +fleet and has some shipbuilding and rope-making, as well as market +traffic. + + + + +ENNEKING, JOHN JOSEPH (1841- ), American landscape painter, was born, +of German ancestry, in Minster, Ohio, on the 4th of October 1841. He was +educated at Mount St Mary's College, Cincinnati, served in the American +Civil War in 1861-1862, studied art in New York and Boston, and gave it +up because his eyes were weak, only to return to it after failing in the +manufacture of tinware. In 1873-1876 he studied in Munich under Schleich +and Leier, and in Paris under Daubigny and Bonnat; and in 1878-1879 he +studied in Paris again and sketched in Holland. Enneking is a +"plein-airist," and his favourite subject is the "November twilight" of +New England, and more generally the half lights of early spring, late +autumn, and winter dawn and evening. + + + + +ENNIS (Gaelic, _Innis_, an island; Irish, _Ennis_ and _Inish_), the +county town of Co. Clare, Ireland, in the east parliamentary division, +on the river Fergus, 25 m. W.N.W. from Limerick by the Great Southern & +Western railway. Pop. of urban district (1901) 5093. It is the junction +for the West Clare line. Ennis has breweries, distilleries and extensive +flour-mills; and in the neighbourhood limestone is quarried. The +principal buildings are the Roman Catholic church, which is the +pro-cathedral of the diocese of Killaloe; the parish church formed out +of the ruins of the Franciscan Abbey, founded in 1240 by Donough Carbrac +O'Brien; a school on the foundation of Erasmus Smith, and various county +buildings. The abbey, though greatly mutilated, is full of interesting +details, and includes a lofty tower, a marble screen, a chapter-house, a +notable east window, several fine tombs and an altar of St Francis. On +the site of the old court-house a colossal statue in white limestone of +Daniel O'Connell was erected in 1865. The interesting ruins of Clare +Abbey, founded in 1194 by Donnell O'Brien, king of Munster, are half-way +between Ennis and the village of Clare Castle. O'Brien also founded +Killone Abbey, beautifully situated on the lough of the same name, 3 m. +S. of the town, possessing the unusual feature of a crypt and a holy +well. Five miles N.W. of Ennis is Dysert O'Dea, with interesting +ecclesiastical remains, a cross, a round tower and a castle. Ennis was +incorporated in 1612, and returned two members to the Irish parliament +until the Union, and thereafter one to the Imperial parliament until +1885. + + + + +ENNISCORTHY, a market town of Co. Wexford, Ireland, in the north +parliamentary division, on the side of a steep hill above the Slaney, +which here becomes navigable for barges of large size. Pop. of urban +district (1901) 5458. It is 77-1/2 m. S. by W. from Dublin by the Dublin +& South-Eastern railway. There are breweries and flour-mills; tanning, +distilling and woollen manufactures are also prosecuted to some extent, +and the town is the centre of the agricultural trade for the district, +which is aided by the water communication with Wexford. There are +important fowl markets and horse-fairs. Enniscorthy was taken by +Cromwell in 1649, and in 1798 was stormed and burned by the rebels, +whose main forces encamped on an eminence called Vinegar Hill, which +overlooks the town from the east. The old castle of Enniscorthy, a +massive square pile with a round tower at each corner, is one of the +earliest military structures of the Anglo-Norman invaders, founded by +Raymond le Gros (1176). Ferns, the next station to Enniscorthy on the +railway towards Dublin, was the seat of a former bishopric, and the +modernized cathedral, and ruins of a church, an Augustinian monastery +founded by Dermod Mac-Morrough about 1160, and a castle of the Norman +period, are still to be seen. Enniscorthy was incorporated by James I., +and sent two members to the Irish parliament until the Union. + + + + +ENNISKILLEN, WILLIAM WILLOUGHBY COLE, 3RD EARL OF (1807-1886), British +palaeontologist, was born on the 25th of January 1807, and educated at +Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford. As Lord Cole he early began to devote +his leisure to the study and collection of fossil fishes, with his +friend Sir Philip de M.G. Egerton, and he amassed a fine collection at +Florence Court, Enniskillen--including many specimens that were +described and figured by Agassiz and Egerton. This collection was +subsequently acquired by the British Museum. He died on the 21st of +November 1886, being succeeded by his son (b. 1845) as 4th earl. + +The first of the Coles (an old Devonshire and Cornwall family) to settle +in Ireland was Sir William Cole (d. 1653), who was "undertaker" of the +northern plantation and received a grant of a large property in +Fermanagh in 1611, and became provost and later governor of Enniskillen. +In 1760 his descendant John Cole (d. 1767) was created Baron +Mountflorence, and the latter's son, William Willoughby Cole +(1736-1803), was in 1776 created Viscount Enniskillen and in 1789 earl. +The 1st earl's second son, Sir Galbraith Lowry Cole (1772-1842), was a +prominent general in the Peninsular War, and colonel of the 27th +Inniskillings, the Irish regiment with whose name the family was +associated. + + + + +ENNISKILLEN [INNISKILLING], a market town and the county town of county +Fermanagh, Ireland, in the north parliamentary division, picturesquely +situated on an island in the river connecting the upper and lower loughs +Erne, 116 m. N.W. from Dublin by the Great Northern railway. Pop. of +urban district (1901) 5412. The town occupies the whole island, and is +connected with two suburbs on the mainland on each side by two bridges. +It has a brewery, tanneries and a small manufactory of cutlery, and a +considerable trade in corn, pork and flax. In 1689 Enniskillen defeated +a superior force sent against it by James II. at the battle of Crom; and +part of the defenders of the town were subsequently formed into a +regiment of cavalry, which still retains the name of the Inniskilling +Dragoons. The town was incorporated by James I., and returned two +members to the Irish parliament until the Union; thereafter it returned +one to the Imperial parliament until 1885. There are wide communications +by water by the river and the upper and lower loughs Erne, and by the +Ulster canal to Belfast. The loughs contain trout, large pike and other +coarse fish. Two miles from Enniskillen in the lower lough is Devenish +Island, with its celebrated monastic remains. The abbey of St Mary here +was founded by St Molaise (Laserian) in the 6th century; here too are a +fine round tower 85 ft. high, remains of domestic buildings, a holed +stone and a tall well-preserved cross. The whole is carefully preserved +by the commissioners of public works under the Irish Church Act of 1869. +Steamers ply between Enniskillen and Belleek on the lower lake, and +between Enniskillen and Knockninny on the upper lake. + + + + +ENNIUS, QUINTUS (239-170 B.C.), ancient Latin poet, was born at Rudiae +in Calabria. Familiar with Greek as the language in common use among the +cultivated classes of his district, and with Oscan, the prevailing +dialect of lower Italy, he further acquired a knowledge of Latin; to use +his own expression (Gellius xvii. 17), he had three "hearts" (_corda_), +the Latin word being used to signify the seat of intelligence. He is +said (Servius on _Aen._ vii. 691) to have claimed descent from one of +the legendary kings of his native district, Messapus the eponymous hero +of Messapia, and this consciousness of ancient lineage is in accordance +with the high self-confident tone of his mind, with his sympathy with +the dominant genius of the Roman republic, and with his personal +relations to the members of her great families. Of his early years +nothing is directly known, and we first hear of him in middle life as +serving during the Second Punic War, with the rank of centurion, in +Sardinia, in the year 204, where he attracted the attention of Cato the +elder, and was taken by him to Rome in the same year. Here he taught +Greek and adapted Greek plays for a livelihood, and by his poetical +compositions gained the friendship of the greatest men in Rome. Amongst +these were the elder Scipio and Fulvius Nobilior, whom he accompanied on +his Aetolian campaign (189). Through the influence of Nobilior's son, +Ennius subsequently obtained the privilege of Roman citizenship (Cicero, +_Brutus_, 20. 79). He lived plainly and simply on the Aventine with the +poet Caecilius Statius. He died at the age of 70, immediately after +producing his tragedy _Thyestes_. In the last book of his epic poem, in +which he seems to have given various details of his personal history, he +mentions that he was in his 67th year at the date of its composition. He +compared himself, in contemplation of the close of the great work of his +life, to a gallant horse which, after having often won the prize at the +Olympic games, obtained his rest when weary with age. A similar feeling +of pride at the completion of a great career is expressed in the +memorial lines which he composed to be placed under his bust after +death,--"Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; +for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men." From +the impression stamped on his remains, and from the testimony of his +countrymen, we think of him as a man of a robust, sagacious and cheerful +nature (Hor. _Epp._ ii. 1. 50; Cic. _De sen._ 5); of great industry and +versatility; combining imaginative enthusiasm and a vein of religious +mysticism with a sceptical indifference to popular beliefs and a scorn +of religious imposture; and tempering the grave seriousness of a Roman +with a genial capacity for enjoyment (Hor. _Epp._ i. 19. 7). + +Till the appearance of Ennius, Roman literature, although it had +produced the epic poem of Naevius and some adaptations of Greek tragedy, +had been most successful in comedy. Naevius and Plautus were men of +thoroughly popular fibre. Naevius suffered for his attacks on members of +the aristocracy, and, although Plautus carefully avoids any direct +notice of public matters, yet the bias of his sympathies is indicated in +several passages of his extant plays. Ennius, on the other hand, was by +temperament in thorough sympathy with the dominant aristocratic element +in Roman life and institutions. Under his influence literature became +less suited to the popular taste, more especially addressed to a limited +and cultivated class, but at the same time more truly expressive of what +was greatest and most worthy to endure in the national sentiment and +traditions. He was a man of many-sided activity. He devoted attention to +questions of Latin orthography, and is said to have been the first to +introduce shorthand writing in Latin. He attempted comedy, but with so +little success that in the canon of Volcacius Sedigitus he is mentioned, +solely as a mark of respect "for his antiquity," tenth and last in the +list of comic poets. He may be regarded also as the inventor of Roman +satire, in its original sense of a "medley" or "miscellany," although it +was by Lucilius that the character of aggressive and censorious +criticism of men and manners was first imparted to that form of +literature. The word _satura_ was originally applied to a rude scenic +and musical performance, exhibited at Rome before the introduction of +the regular drama. The _saturae_ of Ennius were collections of writings +on various subjects, written in various metres and contained in four (or +six) books. Among these were included metrical versions of the physical +speculations of Epicharmus, of the gastronomic researches of +Archestratus of Gela (_Hedyphagetica_), and, probably, of the +rationalistic doctrines of Euhemerus. It may be noticed that all these +writers whose works were thus introduced to the Romans were Sicilian +Greeks. Original compositions were also contained in these _saturae_, +and among them the panegyric on Scipio, unless this was a drama. The +satire of Ennius seems to have resembled the more artistic satire of +Horace in its record of personal experiences, in the occasional +introduction of dialogue, in the use made of fables with a moral +application, and in the didactic office which it assumed. + +But the chief distinction of Ennius was gained in tragic and narrative +poetry. He was the first to impart to the Roman adaptations of Greek +tragedy the masculine dignity, pathos and oratorical fervour which +continued to animate them in the hands of Pacuvius and Accius, and, when +set off by the acting of Aesopus, called forth vehement applause in the +age of Cicero. The titles of about twenty-five of his tragedies are +known to us, and a considerable number of fragments, varying in length +from a few words to about fifteen lines, have been preserved. These +tragedies were for the most part adaptations and, in some cases, +translations from Euripides. One or two were original dramas, of the +class called _praetextae_, i.e. dramas founded on Roman history or +legend; thus, the _Ambracia_ treated of the capture of that city by his +patron Nobilior, the _Sabinae_ of the rape of the Sabine women. The +heroes and heroines of the Trojan cycle, such as Achilles, Ajax, +Telamon, Cassandra, Andromache, were prominent figures in some of the +dramas adapted from the Greek. Several of the more important fragments +are found in Cicero, who expresses a great admiration for their manly +fortitude and dignified pathos. In these remains of the tragedies of +Ennius we can trace indications of strong sympathy with the nobler and +bolder elements of character, of vivid realization of impassioned +situations, and of sagacious observation of life. The frank bearing, +fortitude and self-sacrificing heroism of the best type of the soldierly +character find expression in the persons of Achilles, Telamon and +Eurypylus; and a dignified and passionate tenderness of feeling makes +itself heard in the lyrical utterances of Cassandra and Andromache. The +language is generally nervous and vigorous, occasionally vivified with +imaginative energy. But it flows less smoothly and easily than that of +the dialogue of Latin comedy. It shows the same tendency to aim at +effect by alliterations, assonances and plays on words. The rudeness of +early art is most apparent in the inequality of the metres in which both +the dialogue and the "recitative" are composed. + +But the work which gained him his reputation as the Homer of Rome, and +which called forth the admiration of Cicero and Lucretius and frequent +imitation from Virgil, was the _Annales_, a long narrative poem in +eighteen books, containing the record of the national story from +mythical times to his own. Although the whole conception of the work +implies that confusion of the provinces of poetry and history which was +perpetuated by later writers, and especially by Lucan and Silius +Italicus, yet it was a true instinct of genius to discern in the idea of +the national destiny the only possible motive of a Roman epic. The +execution of the poem (to judge from the fragments, amounting to about +six hundred lines), although rough, unequal and often prosaic, seems to +have combined the realistic fidelity and freshness of feeling of a +contemporary chronicle with the vivifying and idealizing power of +genius. Ennius prided himself especially on being the first to form the +strong speech of Latium into the mould of the Homeric hexameter in place +of the old Saturnian metre. And although it took several generations of +poets to beat their music out to the perfection of the Virgilian +cadences, yet in the rude adaptation of Ennius the secret of what +ultimately became one of the grandest organs of literary expression was +first discovered and revealed. The inspiring idea of the poem was +accepted, purified of all alien material, and realized in artistic shape +by Virgil in his national epic. He deliberately imparted to that poem +the charm of antique associations by incorporating with it much of the +phraseology and sentiment of Ennius. The occasional references to Roman +history in Lucretius are evidently reminiscences of the _Annales_. He as +well as Cicero speaks of him with pride and affection as "Ennius +noster." Of the great Roman writers Horace had least sympathy with him; +yet he testifies to the high esteem in which he was held during the +Augustan age. Ovid expresses the grounds of that esteem when he +characterizes him as + + "Ingenio maximus, arte rudis." + +A sentence of Quintilian expresses the feeling of reverence for his +genius and character, mixed with distaste for his rude workmanship, with +which the Romans of the early empire regarded him: "Let us revere Ennius +as we revere the sacred groves, hallowed by antiquity, whose massive and +venerable oak trees are not so remarkable for beauty as for the +religious awe which they inspire" (_Inst. or._ x. 1. 88). + + Editions of the fragments by L. Muller (1884), L. Valmaggi (1900, with + notes), J. Vahlen (1903); monographs by L. Muller (1884 and 1893), C. + Pascal, _Studi sugli scrittori Latini_ (1900); see also Mommsen, + _History of Rome_, bk. iii. ch. 14. On Virgil's indebtedness to Ennius + see V. Crivellari, _Quae praecipue hausit Vergilius ex Naevio et + Ennio_ (1889). + + + + +ENNODIUS, MAGNUS FELIX (A.D. 474-521), bishop of Pavia, Latin +rhetorician and poet. He was born at Arelate (Arles) and belonged to a +distinguished but impecunious family. Having lost his parents at an +early age, he was brought up by an aunt at Ticinum (Pavia); according to +some, at Mediolanum (Milan). After her death he was received into the +family of a pious and wealthy young lady, to whom he was betrothed. It +is not certain whether he actually married this lady; she seems to have +lost her money and retired to a convent, whereupon Ennodius entered the +Church, and was ordained deacon (about 493) by Epiphanius, bishop of +Pavia. From Pavia he went to Milan, where he continued to reside until +his elevation to the see of Pavia about 515. During his stay at Milan he +visited Rome and other places, where he gained a reputation as a teacher +of rhetoric. As bishop of Pavia he played a considerable part in +ecclesiastical affairs. On two occasions (in 515 and 517) he was sent to +Constantinople by Theodoric on an embassy to the emperor Anastasius, to +endeavour to bring about a reconciliation between the Eastern and +Western churches. He died on the 17th of July 521; his epitaph still +exists in the basilica of St Michael at Pavia (_Corpus Inscriptionum +Latinarum_, v. pt. ii. No. 6464). + +Ennodius is one of the best representatives of the twofold (pagan and +Christian) tendency of 5th-century literature, and of the Gallo-Roman +clergy who upheld the cause of civilization and classical literature +against the inroads of barbarism. But his anxiety not to fall behind his +classical models--the chief of whom was Virgil--his striving after +elegance and grammatical correctness, and a desire to avoid the +commonplace have produced a turgid and affected style, which, aggravated +by rhetorical exaggerations and popular barbarisms, makes his works +difficult to understand. It has been remarked that his poetry is less +unintelligible than his prose. + + The numerous writings of this versatile ecclesiastic may be divided + into (1) letters, (2) miscellanies, (3) discourses, (4) poems. The + letters on a variety of subjects, addressed to high church and state + officials, are valuable for the religious and political history of the + period. Of the miscellanies, the most important are: _The Panegyric of + Theodoric_, written to thank the Arian prince for his tolerance of + Catholicism and support of Pope Symmachus (probably delivered before + the king on the occasion of his entry into Ravenna or Milan); like all + similar works, it is full of flattery and exaggeration, but if used + with caution is a valuable authority; _The Life of St Epiphanius_, + bishop of Pavia, the best written and perhaps the most important of + all his writings, an interesting picture of the political activity and + influence of the church; _Eucharisticon de Vita Sua_, a sort of + "confessions," after the manner of St Augustine; the description of + the enfranchisement of a slave with religious formalities in the + presence of a bishop; _Paraenesis didascalica_, an educational guide, + in which the claims of grammar as a preparation for the study of + rhetoric, the mother of all the sciences, are strongly insisted on. + The discourses (_Dictiones_) are sacred, scholastic, controversial and + ethical. The discourse on the anniversary of Laurentius, bishop of + Milan, is the chief authority for the life of that prelate; the + scholastic discourses, rhetorical exercises for the schools, contain + eulogies of classical learning, distinguished professors and pupils; + the controversial deal with imaginary charges, the subjects being + chiefly borrowed from the _Controversiae_ of the elder Seneca; the + ethical harangues are put into the mouth of mythological personages + (e.g. the speech of Thetis over the body of Achilles). Amongst the + poems mention may be made of two _Itineraria_, descriptions of a + journey from Milan to Brigantium (Briancon) and of a trip on the Po; + an apology for the study of profane literature; an epithalamium, in + which Love is introduced as execrating Christianity; a dozen hymns, + after the manner of St Ambrose, probably intended for church use; + epigrams on various subjects, some being epigrams proper--inscriptions + for tombs, basilicas, baptisteries--others imitations of Martial, + satiric pieces and descriptions of scenery. + + There are two excellent editions of Ennodius by G. Hartel (vol. vi. of + _Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum_, Vienna, 1882) and F. + Vogel (vol. vii. of _Monumenta Germaniae historica_, 1885, with + exhaustive prolegomena). On Ennodius generally consult M. Fertig, + _Ennodius und seine Zeit_ (1855-1860); A. Dubois, _La Latinite + d'Ennodius_ (1903); F. Magani, _Ennodio_ (Pavia, 1886); A. Ebert, + _Allgemeine Geschichte der Litt. des Mittelalters im Abendlande_, i. + (1889); M. Manitius, Geschichte der christlich-lateinischen Poesie + (1891); Teuffel, _Hist. of Roman Literature_, S 479 (Eng. tr., 1892). + French translation by the abbe S. Leglise (Paris, 1906 foll.). + + + + +ENNS, a town of Austria, in upper Austria, 11 m. by rail S.E. of Linz. +Pop. (1900) 4371. It is situated on the Enns near its confluence with +the Danube and possesses a 15th-century castle, an old Gothic church, +and a town hall erected in 1565. Three miles to the S.W. lies the +Augustinian monastery of St Florian, one of the oldest and largest +religious houses of Austria. Founded in the 7th century, it was occupied +by the Benedictines till the middle of the 11th century. It was +established on a firm basis in 1071, when it passed into the hands of +the Augustinians. The actual buildings, which are among the most +magnificent in Austria, were constructed between 1686 and 1745. Its +library, with over 70,000 volumes, contains valuable manuscripts and +also a fine collection of coins. Enns is one of the oldest towns in +Austria, and stands near the site of the Roman _Laureacum_. The nucleus +of the actual town was formed by a castle, called Anasiburg or Anesburg, +erected in 900 by the Bavarians as a post against the incursions of the +Hungarians. It soon attained commercial prosperity, and by a charter of +1212 was made a free town. In 1275 it passed into the hands of Rudolph +of Habsburg. An encounter between the French and the Austrian troops +took place here on the 5th of November 1805. + + + + +ENOCH ([Hebrew: hanockh, hanockh], Hanokh, Teaching or Dedication). (1) +In Gen. iv. 17, 18 (J), the eldest son of Cain, born while Cain was +building a city, which he named after Enoch; nothing is known of the +city. (2) In Gen. v. 24, &c. (P), _seventh_ in descent from Adam in the +line of Seth; he "walked with God," and after 365 years "was not for God +took him." [(1) and (2) are often regarded as both corruptions of the +_seventh_ primitive king Evedorachos (Enmeduranki in cuneiform +inscriptions), the two genealogies, Gen. iv. 16-24, v. 12-17, being +variant forms of the Babylonian list of primitive kings. Enmeduranki is +the favourite of the sun-god, cf. Enoch's 365 years.[1]] Heb. xi. 5 says +Enoch "was not found, because God _translated_ him." Later Jewish +legends represented him as receiving revelations on astronomy, &c., and +as the first author; apparently following the Babylonian account which +makes Enmeduranki receive instruction in all wisdom from the sun-god.[1] +Two apocryphal works written in the name of Enoch are extant, the _Book +of Enoch_, compiled from documents written 200-50 B.C., quoted as the +work of Enoch, Jude 14 and 15; and the _Book of the Secrets of Enoch_, +A.D. 1-50. Cf. 1 Chron. i. 3; Luke iii. 37; Wisdom iv. 7-14; Ecclus. +xliv. 16, xlix. 14. (3) Son, i.e. clan, of Midian, in Gen. xxv. 4; 1 +Chron. i. 33. (4) Son, i.e. clan, of Reuben, E.V. _Hanoch_, _Henoch_, in +Gen. xlvi. 9; Exod. vi. 14; Num. xxvi. 5; 1 Chron. v. 3. There may have +been some historical connexion between these two clans with identical +names. + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] Eberhard Schrader, _Die Keilinschriften und das A.T._, 3rd ed., + pp. 540 f. + + + + +ENOCH, BOOK OF. The _Book of Enoch_, or, as it is sometimes called, the +_Ethiopic Book of Enoch_, in contradistinction to the _Slavonic Book of +Enoch_ (see later), is perhaps the most important of all the apocryphal +or pseudapocryphal Biblical writings for the history of religious +thought. It is not the work of a single author, but rather a +conglomerate of literary fragments which once circulated under the names +of Enoch, Noah and possibly Methuselah. In the _Book of the Secrets of +Enoch_ we have additional portions of this literature. As the former +work is derived from a variety of Pharisaic writers in Palestine, so the +latter in its present form was written for the most part by Hellenistic +Jews in Egypt. + +The _Book of Enoch_ was written in the second and first centuries B.C. +It was well known to many of the writers of the New Testament, and in +many instances influenced their thought and diction. Thus it is quoted +by name as a genuine production of Enoch in the Epistle of Jude, 14 sq., +and it lies at the base of Matt. xix. 28 and John v. 22, 27, and many +other passages. It had also a vast indirect influence on the Palestinian +literature of the 1st century of our era. Like the Pentateuch, the +Psalms, the Megilloth, the Pirke Aboth, this work was divided into five +parts, with the critical discussion of which we shall deal below. With +the earlier Fathers and Apologists it had all the weight of a canonical +book, but towards the close of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th +century it began to be discredited, and finally fell under the ban of +the Church. Almost the latest reference to it in the early church is +made by George Syncellus in his Chronography about A.D. 800. The book +was then lost sight of till 1773, when Bruce discovered the Ethiopic +version in Abyssinia. + +_Original Language._--That the _Book of Enoch_ was written in Semitic is +now accepted on all hands, but scholars are divided as to whether the +Semitic language in question was Hebrew or Aramaic. Only one valuable +contribution on this question has been made, and that by Halevy in the +_Journal Asiatique_, Avril-Mai 1867, pp. 352-395. This scholar is of +opinion that the entire work was written in Hebrew. Since this +publication, however, fresh evidence bearing on the question has been +discovered in the Greek fragment (i.-xxxii.) found in Egypt. Since this +fragment contains three Aramaic words transliterated in the Greek, some +scholars, and among them Schurer, Levi and N. Schmidt, have concluded +that not only are chapters i.-xxxvi. derived from an Aramaic original, +but also the remainder of the book. In support of the latter statement +no evidence has yet been offered by these or any other scholars, nor yet +has there been any attempt to meet the positive arguments of Halevy for +a Hebrew original of xxxvii.-civ., whose Hebrew reconstructions of the +text have been and must be adopted in many cases by every editor and +translator of the book. A prolonged study of the text, which has brought +to light a multitude of fresh passages the majority of which can be +explained by retranslation into Hebrew, has convinced the present +writer[1] that, whilst the evidence on the whole is in favour of an +Aramaic original of vi.-xxxvi., it is just as conclusive on behalf of +the Hebrew original of the greater part of the rest of the book. + +_Versions--Greek, Latin and Ethiopic._--The Semitic original was +translated into Greek. It is not improbable that there were two distinct +Greek versions. Of the one, several fragments have been preserved in +Syncellus (A.D. 800), vi.-x. 14, viii. 4-ix. 4, xv. 8-xvi. 1; of the +other, i.-xxxii. in the Giza Greek fragment discovered in Egypt and +published by Bouriant (_Fragments grecs du livre d'Enoch_); in 1892, and +subsequently by Lods, Dillmann, Charles (_Book of Enoch_, 318 sqq.), +Swete, and finally by Radermacher and Charles (_Ethiopic Text_, 3-75). +In addition to these fragments there is that of lxxxix. 42-49 (see +Gildemeister in the _ZDMG_, 1855, pp. 621-624, and Charles, _Ethiopic +Text_, pp. 175-177). Of the Latin version only i. 9 survives, being +preserved in the Pseudo-Cyprian's _Ad Novatianum_, and cvi. 1-18 +discovered by James in an 8th-century MS. of the British Museum (see +James, _Apoc. anecdota_, 146-150; Charles, _op. cit._ 219-222). This +version is made from the Greek. + +The Ethiopic version, which alone preserves the entire text, is a very +faithful translation of the Greek. Twenty-eight MSS. of this version are +in the different libraries of Europe, of which fifteen are to be found +in England. This version was made from an ancestor of the Greek fragment +discovered at Giza. Some of the utterly unintelligible passages in this +fragment are literally reproduced in the Ethiopic. The same wrong order +of the text in vii.-viii. is common to both. In order to recover the +original text, it is from time to time necessary to retranslate the +Ethiopic into Greek, and the latter in turn into Aramaic or Hebrew. By +this means we are able to detect dittographies in the Greek and variants +in the original Semitic. The original was written to a large extent in +verse. The discovery of this fact is most helpful in the criticism of +the text. This version was first edited by Laurence in 1838 from one +MS., in 1851 by Dillmann from five, in 1902 by Flemming from fifteen +MSS., and in 1906 by the present writer from twenty-three. + + _Translations and Commentaries._--Laurence, _The Book of Enoch_ + (Oxford, 1821); Dillmann, _Das Buch Henoch_ (1853); Schodde, _The Book + of Enoch_ (1882); Charles, _The Book of Enoch_ (1893); Beer, "Das Buch + Henoch," in Kautzsch's _Apok. u. Pseud. des A.T._ (1900), ii. 217-310; + Flemming and Radermacher, _Das Buch Henoch_ (1901); Martin, _Le Livre + d'Henoch_ (1906). _Critical Inquiries._--The bibliography will be + found in Schurer, _Gesch. d. judischen Volkes_^3, iii. 207-209, and a + short critical account of the most important of these in Charles, _op. + cit._ pp. 9-21. + +_The different Elements in the Book, with their respective +Characteristics and Dates._--We have remarked above that the _Book of +Enoch_ is divided into five parts--i.-xxxvi., xxxvii.-lxxi., +lxxii.-lxxxii., lxxxiii.-xc., xci-cviii. Some of these parts constituted +originally separate treatises. In the course of their reduction and +incorporation into a single work they suffered much mutilation and loss. +From an early date the compositeness of this work was recognized. +Scholars have varied greatly in their critical analyses of the work (see +Charles, _op. cit._ 6-21, 309-311). The analysis which gained most +acceptation was that of Dillmann (Herzog's _Realencyk._^2 xii. +350-352), according to whom the present books consist of--(1) the +groundwork, i.e. i.-xxxvi., lxxii.-cv., written in the time of John +Hyrcanus; (2) xxxvii.-lxxi., xvii.-xix., before 64 B.C.; (3) the Noachic +fragments, vi. 3-8, viii. 1-3, ix. 7, x. 1, 11, xx., xxxix. 1, 2a, +liv. 7-lv. 2, lx., lxv.-lxix. 25, cvi.-cvii.; and (4) cviii., from a +later hand. With much of this analysis there is no reason to disagree. +The similitudes are undoubtedly of different authorship from the rest of +the book, and certain portions of the book are derived from the _Book of +Noah_. On the other hand, the so-called groundwork has no existence +unless in the minds of earlier critics and some of their belated +followers in the present. It springs from at least four hands, and may +be roughly divided into four parts, corresponding to the present actual +divisions of the book. + +A new critical analysis of the book based on this view was given by +Charles (_op. cit._ pp. 24-33), and further developed by Clemen and +Beer. The analysis of the latter (see Herzog, _Realencyk._^3 xiv. 240) +is very complex. The book, according to this scholar, is composed of the +following separate elements from the Enoch tradition:--(1) Ch. i.-v.; +(2) xii-xvi.; (3) xvii.-xix.; (4) xx.-xxxvi.; (5) xxxvii.-lxix. (from +diverse sources); (6) lxx.-lxxi.; (7) lxxii.-lxxxii.; (8) +lxxxiii.-lxxxiv.; (9) lxxxv.-xc.; (10) xciii., cxi. 12-17; (11) xci. +1-11, 18, 19, xcii., xciv.-cv.; (12) cviii., and from the Noah +tradition; (13) vi.-xi.; (14) xxxix. 1-2a, liv. 7-lv. 2, lx., +lxv.-lxix. 25; (15) cvi.-cvii. Thus while Clemen finds eleven separate +sources, Beer finds fifteen. A fresh study from the hand of Appel (_Die +Composition des athiopischen Henochbuchs_, 1906) seeks to reach a final +analysis of our book. But though it evinces considerable insight, it +cannot escape the charge of extravagance. The original book or +ground-work of Enoch consisted of i.-xvi., xx.-xxxvi. This work called +forth a host of imitators, and a number of their writings, together with +the groundwork, were edited as a Book of Methuselah, i.e. lxxii.-cv. +Then came the final redactor, who interpolated the groundwork and the +Methuselah sections, adding two others from his own pen. The Similitudes +he worked up from a series of later sources, and gave them the second +place in the final work authenticating them with the name of Noah. The +date of the publication of the entire work Appel assigns to the years +immediately following the death of Herod. + + We shall now give an analysis of the book, with the dates of the + various sections where possible. Of these we shall deal with the + easiest first. _Chap. lxxii.-lxxxii._ constitutes a work in itself, + the writer of which had very different objects before him from the + writers of the rest of the book. His sole aim is to give the law of + the heavenly bodies. His work has suffered disarrangements and + interpolations at the hands of the editor of the whole work. Thus + lxxvi.-lxxvii., which are concerned with the winds, the quarters of + the heaven, and certain geographical matters, and lxxxi., which is + concerned wholly with ethical matters, are foreign to a work which + professes in its title (lxxii. 1) to deal only with the luminaries of + the heaven and their laws. Finally, lxxxii. should stand before + lxxix.; for the opening words of the latter suppose it to be already + read. The date of this section can be partially established, for it + was known to the author of Jubilees, and was therefore written before + the last third of the 2nd century B.C. + + _Chaps. lxxxiii.-xc._--This section was written before 161 B.C., for + "the great horn," who is Judas the Maccabee, was still warring when + the author was writing. (Dillmann, Schurer and others take the great + horn to be John Hyrcanus, but this interpretation does violence to the + text.) These chapters recount three visions: the first two deal with + the first-world judgment; the third with the entire history of the + world till the final judgment. An eternal Messianic kingdom at the + close of the judgment is to be established under the Messiah, with its + centre in the New Jerusalem set up by God Himself. + + _Chaps. xci.-civ._--In the preceding section the Maccabees were the + religious champions of the nation and the friends of the Hasidim. Here + they are leagued with the Sadducees, and are the declared foes of the + Pharisaic party. This section was written therefore after 134 B.C., + when the breach between John Hyrcanus and the Pharisees took place and + before the savage massacres of the latter by Jannaeus (95 B.C.); for + it is not likely that in a book dealing with the sufferings of the + Pharisees such a reference would be omitted. These chapters indicate a + revolution in the religious hopes of the nation. An eternal Messianic + kingdom is no longer anticipated, but only a temporary one, at the + close of which the final judgment will ensue. The righteous dead rise + not to this kingdom but to spiritual blessedness in heaven itself--to + an immortality of the soul. This section also has suffered at the + hands of the final editor. Thus xci. 12-17, which describe the last + three weeks of the Ten-Weeks Apocalypse, should be read immediately + after xciii. 1-10, which recount the first seven weeks of the same + apocalypse. But, furthermore, the section obviously begins with xcii. + "Written by Enoch the scribe," &c. Then comes xci. 1-10 as a natural + sequel. The Ten-Weeks Apocalypse, xciii. 1-10, xci. 12-17, if it came + from the same hand, followed, and then xciv. The attempt (by Clemen + and Beer) to place the Ten-Weeks Apocalypse before 167, because it + makes no reference to the Maccabees, is not successful; for where the + history of mankind from Adam to the final judgment is despatched in + sixteen verses, such an omission need cause little embarrassment, and + still less if the author is the determined foe of the Maccabees, whom + he would probably have stigmatized as apostates, if he had mentioned + them at all, just as he similarly brands all the Sadducean priesthood + that preceded them to the time of the captivity. This Ten-Weeks + Apocalypse, therefore, we take to be the work of the writer of the + rest of xci.-civ. + + _Chaps. i.-xxxvi._--This is the most difficult section of the book. It + is very composite. Chaps. vi.-xi. is apparently an independent + fragment of the Enoch Saga. It is itself compounded of the Semjaza and + Azazel myths, and in its present composite form is already presupposed + by lxxxviii.-lxxxix. 1; hence its present form is earlier than 166 + B.C. It represents a primitive and very sensuous view of the eternal + Messianic kingdom on earth, seeing that the righteous beget 1000 + children before they die. These chapters appear to be from the Book of + Noah; for they never refer to Enoch but to Noah only (x. 1). Moreover, + when the author of Jubilees is clearly drawing on the Book of Noah, + his subject-matter (vii. 21-25) agrees most closely with that of these + chapters in Enoch (see Charles' edition of Jubilees, pp. lxxi. sq. + 264). xii.-xvi., on the other hand, belong to the Book of Enoch. These + represent for the most part what Enoch saw in a vision. Now whereas + vi.-xvi. deal with the fall of the angels, their destruction of + mankind, and the condemnation of the fallen angels, the subject-matter + now suddenly changes and xvii.-xxxvi. treat of Enoch's journeyings + through earth and heaven escorted by angels. Here undoubtedly we have + a series of doublets; for xvii.-xix. stand in this relation to + xx.-xxxvi., since both sections deal with the same subjects. Thus + xvii. 4 = xxiii.; xvii. 6 = xxii.; xviii. 1 = xxxiv.-xxxvi.; xviii. + 6-9 = xxiv.-xxv., xxxii. 1-2; xviii. 11, xix. = xxi. 7-10; xviii. + 12-16 = xxi. 1-6. They belong to the same cycle of tradition and + cannot be independent of each other. Chap. xx. appears to show that + xx.-xxxvi. is fragmentary, since only four of the seven angels + mentioned in xx. have anything to do in xxi.-xxxvi. Finally, i.-v. + seems to be of a different date and authorship from the rest. + + _Chaps. xxxvii.-lxxi._--These constitute the well-known Similitudes. + They were written before 64 B.C., for Rome was not yet known to the + writer, and after 95 B.C., for the slaying of the righteous, of which + the writer complains, was not perpetrated by the Maccabean princes + before that date. This section consists of three + similitudes--xxxviii.-xliv., xlv.-lvii., lviii.-lxix. These are + introduced and concluded by xxxvii. and lxx. There are many + interpolations--lx., lxv.-lxix. 25 confessedly from the Book of Noah; + most probably also liv. 7-lv. 2. Whence others, such as xxxix. 1, + 2a, xli. 3-8, xliii. sq., spring is doubtful. Chaps. 1, lvi. 5-lvii. + 3a are likewise insertions. + + In R.H. Charles's edition of Enoch, lxxi. was bracketed as an + interpolation. The writer now sees that it belongs to the text of the + Similitudes though it is dislocated from its original context. It + presents two visits of Enoch to heaven in lxxi. 1-4 and lxxi. 5-17. + The extraordinary statement in lxxi. 14, according to which Enoch is + addressed as "the Son of Man," is seen, as Appel points out, on + examination of the context to have arisen from the loss of a portion + of the text after verse 13, in which Enoch saw a heavenly being with + the Head of Days and asked the angel who accompanied him who this + being was. Then comes ver. 14, which, owing to the loss of this + passage, has assumed the form of an address to Enoch: "Thou art the + Son of Man," but which stood originally as the angel's reply to Enoch: + "This is the Son of Man," &c. Ver. 15, then, gives the message sent to + Enoch by the Son of Man. In the next verse the second person should be + changed into the third. Thus we recover the original text of this + difficult chapter. The Messianic doctrine and eschatology of this + section is unique. The Messiah is here for the first time described as + the pre-existent Son of Man (xlviii. 2), who sits on the throne of God + (xlv. 3; xlvii. 3), possesses universal dominion (lxii. 6), and is the + Judge of all mankind (lxix. 27). After the judgment there will be a + new heaven and a new earth, which will be the abode of the blessed. + +THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS OR ENOCH, or _Slavonic Enoch_. This new fragment +of the Enochic literature has only recently come to light through five +MSS. discovered in Russia and Servia. Since about A.D. 500 it has been +lost sight of. It is cited without acknowledgment in the _Book of Adam +and Eve_, the _Apocalypses of Moses and Paul_, the _Sibylline Oracles_, +the _Ascension of Isaiah_, the _Epistle of Barnabas_, and referred to by +Origen and Irenaeus (see Charles, _The Book of the Secrets of Enoch_, +1895, pp. xvii-xxiv). For Charles's _editio princeps_ of this work, in +1895, Professor Morfill translated two of the best MSS., as well as +Sokolov's text, which is founded on these and other MSS. In 1896 +Bonwetsch issued his _Das slavische Henochbuch_, in which a German +translation of the above two MSS. is given side by side, preceded by a +short introduction. + + _Analysis._--Chaps. i.-ii. Introduction: life of Enoch: his dream, in + which he is told that he will be taken up to heaven: his admonitions + to his sons. iii.-xxxvi. What Enoch saw in heaven. iii.-vi. The first + heaven: the rulers of the stars: the great sea and the treasures of + snow, &c. vii. The second heaven: the fallen angels. viii.-x. The + third heaven: Paradise and place of punishment. xi.-xvii. The fourth + heaven: courses of the sun and moon: phoenixes. xviii. The fifth + heaven: the watchers mourning for their fallen brethren. xix. The + sixth heaven: seven bands of angels arrange and study the courses of + the stars, &c.: others set over the years, the fruits of the earth, + the souls of men. xx.-xxxvi. The seventh heaven. The Lord sitting on + His throne with the ten chief orders of angels. Enoch is clothed by + Michael in the raiment of God's glory and instructed in the secrets of + nature and of man, which he wrote down in 366 books. God reveals to + Enoch the history of the creation of the earth and the seven planets + and circles of the heaven and of man, the story of the fallen angels, + the duration of the world through 7000 years, and its millennium of + rest. xxxviii.-lxvi. Enoch returns to earth, admonishes his sons: + instructs them on what he had seen in the heavens, gives them his + books. Bids them not to swear at all nor to expect any intercession of + the departed saints for sinners. lvi.-lxiii. Methuselah asks Enoch's + blessing before he departs, and to all his sons and their families + Enoch gives fresh instruction. lxiv.-lxvi. Enoch addressed the + assembled people at Achuszan. lxvii.-lxviii. Enoch's translation. + Rejoicings of the people on behalf of the revelation given them + through Enoch. + +_Language and Place of Writing._--A large part of this book was written +for the first time in Greek. This may be inferred from such statements +as (1) xxx. 13, "And I gave him a name (i.e. Adam) from the four +substances: the East, the West, the North and the South." Thus Adam's +name is here derived from the initial letters of the four quarters: +[Greek: anatole, dusis, arktos, mesembria]. This derivation is +impossible in Semitic. This context is found elsewhere in the Sibyllines +iii. 24 sqq. and other Greek writings. (2) Again our author uses the +chronology of the Septuagint and in 1, 4 follows the Septuagint text of +Deuteronomy xxxii. 35 against the Hebrew. On the other hand, some +sections may wholly or in part go back to Hebrew originals. There is a +Hebrew Book of Enoch attributed to R. Ishmael ben Elisha who lived at +the close of the 1st century and the beginning of the 2nd century B.C. +This book is very closely related to the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, +or rather, to a large extent dependent upon it. Did Ishmael ben Elisha +use the Book of the Secrets of Enoch in its Greek form, or did he find +portions of it in Hebrew? At all events, extensive quotations from a +Book of Enoch are found in the rabbinical literature of the middle ages, +and the provenance of these has not yet been determined. See _Jewish +Encyc._ i. 676 seq. + +But there is a stronger argument for a Hebrew original of certain +sections to be found in the fact that the Testaments of the XII. +Patriarchs appears to quote xxxiv. 2, 3 of our author in T. Napth. iv. +1, T. Benj. ix. + +The book in its present form was written in Egypt. This may be inferred +(1) from the variety of speculations which it holds in common with Philo +and writings of a Hellenistic character that circulated mainly in Egypt. +(2) The Phoenixes are Chalkydries (ch. xii.)--monstrous serpents with +the heads of crocodiles--are natural products of the Egyptian +imagination. (3) The syncretistic character of the creation account +(xxv.-xxvi.) betrays Egyptian elements. + +_Relation to Jewish and Christian Literature._--The existence of a +kindred literature in Neo-Hebrew has been already pointed out. We might +note besides that it is quoted in the Book of Adam and Eve, the +Apocalypse of Moses, the Apocalypse of Paul, the anonymous work _De +montibus Sina et Sion_, the Sibylline Oracles ii. 75, Origen, _De +princip._ i. 3, 2. The authors of the Ascension of Isaiah, the Apoc. of +Baruch and the Epistle of Barnabas were probably acquainted with it. In +the New Testament the similarity of matter and diction is sufficiently +strong to establish a close connexion, if not a literary dependence. +Thus with Matt. v. 9, "Blessed are the peacemakers," cf. lii. 11, +"Blessed is he who establishes peace": with Matt. v. 34, 35, 37, "Swear +not at all," cf. xlix. 1, "I will not swear by a single oath, neither by +heaven, nor by earth, nor by any other creature which God made--if there +is no truth in man, let them swear by a word yea, yea, or nay, nay." + +_Date and Authorship._--The book was probably written between 30 B.C. +and A.D. 70. It was written after 30 B.C., for it makes use of Sirach, +the (Ethiopic) Book of Enoch and the Book of Wisdom. It was written +before A.D. 70; for the temple is still standing: see lix. 2. + +The author was an orthodox Hellenistic Jew who lived in Egypt. He +believed in the value of sacrifices (xlii. 6; lix. 1, 2, &c), but is +careful to enforce enlightened views regarding them (xlv. 3, 4; lxi. 4, +5.) in the law, lii. 8, 9; in a blessed immortality, I. 2; lxv. 6, 8-10, +in which the righteous should be clothed in "the raiment of God's +glory," xxii. 8. In questions relating to cosmology, sin, death, &c, he +is an eclectic, and allows himself the most unrestricted freedom, and +readily incorporates Platonic (xxx. 16), Egyptian (xxv. 2) and Zend +(lviii. 4-6) elements into his system of thought. + +_Anthropological Views._--All the souls of men were created before the +foundation of the world (xxiii. 5) and likewise their future abodes in +heaven or hell (xlix. 2, lviii. 5). Man's name was derived, as we have +already seen, from the four quarters of the world, and his body was +compounded from seven substances (xxx. 8). He was created originally +good: freewill was bestowed upon him with instruction in the two ways of +light and darkness, and then he was left to mould his own destiny (xxx. +15). But his preferences through the bias of the flesh took an evil +direction, and death followed as the wages of sin (xxx. 16). + + LITERATURE.--Morfill and Charles, _The Book of the Secrets of Enoch_ + (Oxford, 1896); Bonwetsch, "Das slavische Henochbuch," in the + _Abhandlungen der koniglichen gelehrten Gesellschaft zu Gottingen_ + (1896). See also Schurer _in loc._ and the Bible Dictionaries. + (R. H. C.) + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] The evidence is given at length in R.H. Charles' _Ethiopic Text + of Enoch_, pp. xxvii-xxxiii. + + + + +ENOMOTO, BUYO, VISCOUNT (1839-1909), Japanese vice-admiral, was born in +Tokyo. He was the first officer sent by the Tokugawa government to study +naval science in Europe, and after going through a course of instruction +in Holland he returned in command of the frigate "Kaiyo Maru," built at +Amsterdam to order of the Yedo administration. The salient episode of +his career was an attempt to establish a republic at Hakodate. Finding +himself in command of a squadron which represented practically the whole +of Japan's naval forces, he refused to acquiesce in the deposition of +the Shogun, his liege lord, and, steaming off to Yezo (1867), proclaimed +a republic and fortified Hakodate. But he was soon compelled to +surrender. The newly organized government of the empire, however, +instead of inflicting the death penalty on him and his principal +followers, as would have been the inevitable sequel of such a drama in +previous times, punished them with imprisonment only, and four years +after the Hakodate episode, Enomoto received an important post in +Hokkaido, the very scene of his wild attempt. Subsequently (1874), as +his country's representative in St Petersburg, he concluded the treaty +by which Japan exchanged the southern half of Saghalien for the Kuriles. +He received the title of viscount in 1885, and afterwards held the +portfolios of communications, education and foreign affairs. He died at +Tokyo in 1909. + + + + +ENOS (anc. _Aenos_), a town of European Turkey, in the vilayet of +Adrianople; on the southern shore of the river Maritza, where its +estuary broadens to meet the Aegean Sea in the Gulf of Enos. Pop. (1905) +about 8000. Enos occupies a ridge of rock surrounded by broad marshes. +It is the seat of a Greek bishop, and the population is mainly Greek. It +long possessed a valuable export trade, owing to its position at the +mouth of the Maritza, the great natural waterway from Adrianople to the +sea. But its commerce has declined, owing to the unhealthiness of its +climate, to the accumulation of sandbanks in its harbour, which now only +admits small coasters and fishing-vessels, and to the rivalry of +Dedeagatch, a neighbouring seaport connected with Adrianople by rail. + + + + +ENRIQUEZ GOMEZ, ANTONIO (c. 1601-c. 1661), Spanish dramatist, poet and +novelist of Portuguese-Jewish origin, was known in the early part of his +career as Enrique Enriquez de Paz. Born at Segovia, he entered the army, +obtained a captaincy, was suspected of heresy, fled to France about +1636, assumed the name of Antonio Enriquez Gomez, and became majordomo +to Louis XIII., to whom he dedicated _Luis dado de Dios a Anna_ (Paris, +1645). Some twelve years later he removed to Amsterdam, avowed his +conversion to Judaism, and was burned in effigy at Seville on the 14th +of April 1660. He is supposed to have returned to France, and to have +died there in the following year. Three of his plays, _El Gran Cardenal +de Espana_, _don Gil de Albornoz_, and the two parts of _Fernan Mendez +Pinto_ were received with great applause at Madrid about 1629; in 1635 +he contributed a sonnet to Montalban's collection of posthumous +panegyrics on Lope de Vega, to whose dramatic school Enriquez Gomez +belonged. The _Academias morales de las Musas_, consisting of four plays +(including _A lo que obliga el honor_, which recalls Calderon's _Medico +de su honra_), was published at Bordeaux in 1642; _La Torre de +Babilonia_, containing the two parts of _Fernan Mendez Pinto_, appeared +at Rouen in 1647; and in the preface to his poem, _El Samson Nazareno_ +(Rouen, 1656), Enriquez Gomez gives the titles of sixteen other plays +issued, as he alleges, at Seville. There is no foundation for the theory +that he wrote the plays ascribed to Fernando de Zarate. His dramatic +works, though effective on the stage, are disfigured by extravagant +incidents and preciosity of diction. The latter defect is likewise +observable in the mingled prose and verse of _La Culpa del primer +peregrino_ (Rouen, 1644) and the dialogues entitled _Politica Angelica_ +(Rouen, 1647). Enriquez Gomez is best represented by _El Siglo +Pitagorico y Vida de don Gregorio Guadana_ (Rouen, 1644), a striking +picaresque novel in prose and verse which is still reprinted. + + + + +ENSCHEDE, a town in the province of Overysel, Holland, near the +Prussian frontier, and a junction station 5 m. by rail S.E. of Hengelo. +Pop. (1900) 23,141. It is important as the centre of the flourishing +cotton-spinning and weaving industries of the Twente district; while by +the railway via Gronau and Koesfeld to Dortmund it is in direct +communication with the Westphalian coalfields. Enschede possesses +several churches, an industrial trade school, and a large park intended +for the benefit of the working classes. About two-thirds of the town was +burnt down in 1862. + + + + +ENSENADA, CENON DE SOMODEVILLA, MARQUES DE LA (1702-1781), Spanish +statesman, was born at Alesanco near Logrono on the 2nd of June 1702. +When he had risen to high office it was said that his pedigree was +distinguished, but nothing is known of his parents--Francisco de +Somodevilla and his wife Francisca de Bengoechea,--nor is anything known +of his own life before he entered the civil administration of the +Spanish navy as a clerk in 1720. He served in administrative capacities +at the relief of Ceuta in that year and in the reoccupation of Oran in +1731. His ability was recognized by Don Jose Patinos, the chief minister +of King Philip V. Somodevilla was much employed during the various +expeditions undertaken by the Spanish government to put the king's sons +by his second marriage with Elizabeth Farnese, Charles and Philip, on +the thrones of Naples and Parma. In 1736 Charles, afterwards King +Charles III. of Spain, conferred on him the Neapolitan title of Marques +de la Ensenada. The name can be resolved into the three Spanish words +"en se nada," meaning "in himself nothing." The courtly flattery of the +time, and the envy of the nobles who disliked the rise of men of +Ensenada's class, seized upon this poor play on words; an _Ensenada_ is, +however, a roadstead or small bay. In 1742 he became secretary of state +and war to Philip, duke of Parma. In the following year (11th of April +1743), on the death of Patinos's successor Campillo, he was chosen by +Philip V. as minister of finance, war, the navy and the Indies (i.e. the +Colonies). Ensenada met the nomination with a becoming _nolo +episcopari_, professing that he was incapable of filling the four posts +at once. His reluctance was overborne by the king, and he became in fact +prime minister at the age of forty-one. During the remainder of the +king's reign, which lasted till the 11th of July 1746, and under his +successor Ferdinand VI. until 1754, Ensenada was the effective prime +minister. His administration is notable in Spanish history for the +vigour of his policy of internal reform. The reports on the finances and +general condition of the country, which he drew up for the new king on +his accession, and again after peace was made with England at +Aix-la-Chapelle on the 18th of October 1748, are very able and +clear-sighted. Under his direction the despotism of the Bourbon kings +became paternal. Public works were undertaken, shipping was encouraged, +trade was fostered, numbers of young Spaniards were sent abroad for +education. Many of them abused their opportunity, but on the whole the +prosperity of the country revived, and the way was cleared for the more +sweeping innovations of the following reign. Ensenada was a strong +partizan of a French alliance and of a policy hostile to England. Sir B. +Keene, the English minister, supported the Spanish court party opposed +to him, and succeeded in preventing him from adding the foreign office +to others which he held. Ensenada would probably have fallen sooner but +for the support he received from the Portuguese queen, Barbara. In 1754 +he offended her by opposing an exchange of Spanish and Portuguese +colonial possessions in America which she favoured. On the 20th of July +of that year he was arrested by the king's order, and sent into mild +confinement at Granada, which he was afterwards allowed to exchange for +Puerto de Santa Maria. On the accession of Charles III. in 1759, he was +released from arrest and allowed to return to Madrid. The new king named +him as member of a commission appointed to reform the system of +taxation. Ensenada could not renounce the hope of again becoming +minister, and entered into intrigues which offended the king. On the +18th of April 1766 he was again exiled from court, and ordered to go to +Medina del Campo. He had no further share in public life, and died on +the 2nd of December 1781. Ensenada acquired wealth in office, but he was +never accused of corruption. Though, like most of his countrymen, he +suffered from the mania for grandeur, and was too fond of imposing +schemes out of all proportion with the resources of the state, he was +undoubtedly an able and patriotic man, whose administration was +beneficial to Spain. + + For his administration see W. Coxe, _Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of + the House of Bourbon_ (London, 1815), but the only complete account of + Ensenada is by Don Antonio Rodriguez Villa, _Don Cenon de Somodevilla, + Marques de la Ensenada_ (Madrid, 1878). (D. H.) + + + + +ENSIGN (through the Fr. _enseigne_ from the Latin plural _insignia_), a +distinguishing token, emblem or badge such as symbols of office, or in +heraldry, the ornament or sign, such as the crown, coronet or mitre +borne above the charge or arms. The word is more particularly used of a +military or naval standard or banner. In the British navy, ensign has a +specific meaning, and is the name of a flag having a red, white or blue +ground, with the Union Jack in the upper corner next the staff. The +white ensign (which is sometimes further distinguished by having the St +George's Cross quartered upon it) is only used in the royal navy and the +royal yacht squadron, while the blue and red ensigns are the badges of +the naval reserve, some privileged companies, and the merchant service +respectively (see FLAG). Until 1871 the lowest grade of commissioned +officers in infantry regiments of the British army had the title of +ensign (now replaced by that of second lieutenant). It is the duty of +the officers of this rank to carry the colours of the regiment (see +COLOURS, MILITARY). In the 16th century ensign was corrupted into +"ancient," and was used in the two senses of a banner and the bearer of +the banner. In the United States navy, the title ensign superseded in +1862 that of _passed midshipman_. It designates an officer ranking with +second lieutenant in the army. + + + + +ENSILAGE, the process of preserving green food for cattle in an undried +condition in a silo (from Gr. [Greek: siros], Lat. _sirus_, a pit for +holding grain), i.e. a pit, an erection above ground, or stack, from +which air has been as far as possible excluded. The fodder which is the +result of the process is called silage. In various parts of Germany a +method of preserving green fodder precisely similar to that used in the +case of _Sauerkraut_ has prevailed for upwards of a century. Special +attention was first directed to the practice of ensilage by a French +agriculturist, Auguste Goffart of the district of Sologne, near Orleans, +who in 1877 published a work (_Manuel de la culture et de l'ensilage des +mais et autres fourrages verts_) detailing the experiences of many years +in preserving green crops in silos. An English translation of Goffart's +book by J.B. Brown was published in New York in 1879, and, as various +experiments had been previously made in the United States in the way of +preserving green crops in pits, Goffart's experience attracted +considerable attention. The conditions of American dairy farming proved +eminently suitable for the ensiling of green maize fodder; and the +success of the method was soon indisputably demonstrated among the New +England farmers. The favourable results obtained in America led to much +discussion and to the introduction of the system in the United Kingdom, +where, with different conditions, success has been more qualified. + +It has been abundantly proved that ensilage forms a wholesome and +nutritious food for cattle. It can be substituted for root crops with +advantage, because it is succulent and digestible; milk resulting from +it is good in quality and taste; it can be secured largely irrespective +of weather; it carries over grass from the period of great abundance and +waste to times when none would otherwise be available; and a larger +number of cattle can be supported on a given area by the use of ensilage +than is possible by the use of green crops. + +Early silos were made of stone or concrete either above or below +ground, but it is recognized that air may be sufficiently excluded in a +tightly pressed stack, though in this case a few inches of the fodder +round the sides is generally useless owing to mildew. In America round +erections made of wood and 35 or 40 ft. in depth are most commonly used. +The crops suitable for ensilage are the ordinary grasses, clovers, +lucerne, vetches, oats, rye and maize, the latter being the most +important silage crop in America; various weeds may also be stored in +silos with good results, notably spurrey (_Spergula arvensis_), a most +troublesome plant in poor light soils. As a rule the crop should be mown +when in full flower, and deposited in the silo on the day of its +cutting. Maize is cut a few days before it is ripe and is shredded +before being elevated into the silo. Fair, dry weather is not essential; +but it is found that when moisture, natural and extraneous, exceeds 75% +of the whole, good results are not obtained. The material is spread in +uniform layers over the floor of the silo, and closely packed and +trodden down. If possible, not more than a foot or two should be added +daily, so as to allow the mass to settle down closely, and to heat +uniformly throughout. When the silo is filled or the stack built, a +layer of straw or some other dry porous substance may be spread over the +surface. In the silo the pressure of the material, when chaffed, +excludes air from all but the top layer; in the case of the stack extra +pressure is applied by means of planks or other weighty objects in order +to prevent excessive heating. + +The closeness with which the fodder is packed determines the nature of +the resulting silage by regulating the chemical changes which occur in +the stack. When closely packed, the supply of oxygen is limited; and the +attendant acid fermentation brings about the decomposition of the +carbohydrates present into acetic, butyric and lactic acids. This +product is named "sour silage." If, on the other hand, the fodder be +unchaffed and loosely packed, or the silo be built gradually, oxidation +proceeds more rapidly and the temperature rises; if the mass be +compressed when the temperature is 140 deg.-160 deg. F., the action +ceases and "sweet silage" results. The nitrogenous ingredients of the +fodder also suffer change: in making sour silage as much as one-third of +the albuminoids may be converted into amino and ammonium compounds; +while in making "sweet silage" a less proportion is changed, but they +become less digestible. In extreme cases, sour silage acquires a most +disagreeable odour. On the other hand it keeps better than sweet silage +when removed from the silo. + + + + +ENSTATITE, a rock-forming mineral belonging to the group of orthorhombic +pyroxenes. It is a magnesium metasilicate, MgSiO3, often with a little +iron replacing the magnesium: as the iron increases in amount there is a +transition to bronzite (q.v.), and with still more iron to hypersthene +(q.v.). Bronzite and hypersthene were known long before enstatite, which +was first described by G.A. Kenngott in 1855, and named from [Greek: +enstates], "an opponent," because the mineral is almost infusible before +the blowpipe: the material he described consisted of imperfect prismatic +crystals, previously thought to be scapolite, from the serpentine of +Mount Zdjar near Schonberg in Moravia. Crystals suitable for goniometric +measurement were later found in the meteorite which fell at Breitenbach +in the Erzgebirge, Bohemia. Large crystals, a foot in length and mostly +altered to steatite, were found in 1874 in the apatite veins traversing +mica-schist and hornblende-schist at the apatite mine of Kjorrestad, +near Brevig in southern Norway. Isolated crystals are of rare +occurrence, the mineral being usually found as an essential constituent +of igneous rocks; either as irregular masses in plutonic rocks (norite, +peridotite, pyroxenite, &c.) and the serpentines which have resulted by +their alteration, or as small idiormorphic crystals in volcanic rocks +(trachyte, andesite). It is also a common constituent of meteoric +stones, forming with olivine the bulk of the material: here it often +forms small spherical masses, or chondrules, with an internal radiated +structure. + +Enstatite and the other orthorhombic pyroxenes are distinguished from +those of the monoclinic series by their optical characters, viz. +straight extinction, much weaker double refraction and stronger +pleochroism: they have prismatic cleavages (with an angle of 88 deg. +16') as well as planes of parting parallel to the planes of symmetry in +the prism-zone. Enstatite is white, greenish or brown in colour; its +hardness is 5-1/2, and sp. gr. 3.2-3.3. (L. J. S.) + + + + +ENTABLATURE (Lat. _in_, and _tabula_, a tablet), the architectural term +for the superstructure carried by the columns in the classic orders +(q.v.). It usually consists of three members, the architrave (the +supporting member carried from column to column, pier or wall); the +frieze (the decorative member); and the cornice (the projecting and +protective member). Sometimes the frieze is omitted, as in the +entablature of the portico of the caryatides of the Erechtheum. There is +every reason to believe that the frieze did not exist in the archaic +temple of Diana at Ephesus; and it is not found in the Lycian tombs, +which are reproductions in the rock of timber structures based on early +Ionian work. + + + + +ENTADA, in botany, a woody climber belonging to the family _Leguminosae_ +and common throughout the tropics. The best-known species is _Entada +scandens_, the sword-bean, so called from its large woody pod, 2 to 4 +ft. in length and 3 to 4 in. broad, which contains large flat hard +polished chestnut-coloured seeds or "beans." The seeds are often made +into snuff-boxes or match-boxes, and a preparation from the kernel is +used as a drug by the natives in India. The seeds will float for a long +time in water, and are often thrown up on the north-western coasts of +Europe, having been carried by the Gulf-stream from the West Indies; +they retain their vitality, and under favourable conditions will +germinate. Linnaeus records the germination of a seed on the coast of +Norway. + + + + +ENTAIL (from Fr. _tailler_, to cut; the old derivation from _tales +haeredes_ is now abandoned), in law, a limited form of succession +(q.v.). In architecture, the term "entail" denotes an ornamental device +sunk in the ground of stone or brass, and subsequently filled in with +marble, mosaic or enamel. + + + + +ENTASIS (from Gr. [Greek: enteinein], to stretch a line or bend a bow), +in architecture, the increment given to the column (q.v.), to correct +the optical illusion which produces an apparent hollowness in an +extended straight line. It was referred to by Vitruvius (iii. 3), and +was first noticed in the columns of the Doric orders in Greek temples by +Allason in 1814, and afterwards measured and verified by Penrose. It +varies in different temples, and is not found in some: it is most +pronounced in the temple of Jupiter Olympius, most delicate in the +Erechtheum. The entasis is almost invariably introduced in the spires of +English churches. + + + + +ENTERITIS (Gr. [Greek: enteron], intestine), a general medical term for +inflammation of the bowels. According to the anatomical part specially +attacked, it is subdivided into duodenitis, jejunitis, ileitis, +typhlitis, appendicitis, colitis, proctitis. The chief symptom is +diarrhoea. The term "enteric fever" has recently come into use instead +of "typhoid" for the latter disease; but see TYPHOID FEVER. + + + + +ENTHUSIASM, a word originally meaning inspiration by a divine afflatus +or by the presence of a god. The Gr. [Greek: enthousiasmos], from which +the word is adapted, is formed from the verb [Greek: enthousiazein], to +be [Greek: entheos], possessed by a god [Greek: theos]. Applied by the +Greeks to manifestations of divine "possession," by Apollo, as in the +case of the Pythia, or by Dionysus, as in the case of the Bacchantes and +Maenads, it was also used in a transferred or figurative sense; thus +Socrates speaks of the inspiration of poets as a form of enthusiasm +(Plato, _Apol. Soc._ 22 C). Its uses, in a religious sense, are confined +to an exaggerated or wrongful belief in religious inspiration, or to +intense religious fervour or emotion. Thus a Syrian sect of the 4th +century was known as "the Enthusiasts"; they believed that by perpetual +prayer, ascetic practices and contemplation, man could become inspired +by the Holy Spirit, in spite of the ruling evil spirit, which the fall +had given to him. From their belief in the efficacy of prayer [Greek: +euche], they were also known as Euchites. In ordinary usage, +"enthusiasm" has lost its peculiar religious significance, and means a +whole-hearted devotion to an ideal, cause, study or pursuit; sometimes, +in a depreciatory sense, it implies a devotion which is partisan and is +blind to difficulties and objections. (See further INSPIRATION, for a +comparison of the religious meanings of "enthusiasm," "ecstasy" and +"fanaticism.") + + + + +ENTHYMEME (Gr. [Greek: en, thymos]), in formal logic, the technical +name of a syllogistic argument which is incompletely stated. Any one of +the premises may be omitted, but in general it is that one which is most +obvious or most naturally present to the mind. In point of fact the full +formal statement of a syllogism is rare, especially in rhetorical +language, when the deliberate omission of one of the premises has a +dramatic effect. Thus the suppression of the conclusion may have the +effect of emphasizing the idea which necessarily follows from the +premises. Far commoner is the omission of one of the premises which is +either too clear to need statement or of a character which makes its +omission desirable. A famous instance quoted in the _Port Royal Logic_, +pt. iii. ch. xiv., is Medea's remark to Jason in Ovid's _Medea_, +"Servare potui, perdere an possim rogas?" where the major premise "Qui +servare, perdere possunt" is understood. This use of the word enthymeme +differs from Aristotle's original application of it to a syllogism based +on probabilities or signs ([Greek: ex eikoton e semeion]), i.e. on +propositions which are generally valid ([Greek: eikota]) or on +particular facts which may be held to justify a general principle or +another particular fact (_Anal. prior._ [beta] xxvii. 70 a 10). + + See beside text-books on logic, Sir W. Hamilton's _Discussions_ + (1547); Mansel's ed. of Aldrich, Appendix F; H.W.B. Joseph, _Introd. + to Logic_, chap. xvi. + + + + +ENTOMOLOGY (Gr. [Greek: entoma,] insects, and [Greek: logos], a +discourse), the science that treats of insects, i.e. of the animals +included in the class Hexapoda of the great phylum (or sub-phylum) +Arthropoda. The term, however, is somewhat elastic in its current use, +and students of centipedes and spiders are often reckoned among the +entomologists. As the number of species of insects is believed to exceed +that of all other animals taken together, it is no wonder that their +study should form a special division of zoology with a distinctive name. + +Beetles (Scarabaei) are the subjects of some of the oldest sculptured +works of the Egyptians, and references to locusts, bees and ants are +familiar to all readers of the Hebrew scriptures. The interest of +insects to the eastern races was, however, economic, religious or moral. +The science of insects began with Aristotle, who included in a class +"Entoma" the true insects, the arachnids and the myriapods, the +Crustacea forming another class ("Malacostraca") of the "Anaema" or +"bloodless animals." For nearly 2000 years the few writers who dealt +with zoological subjects followed Aristotle's leading. + +In the history of the science, various lines of progress have to be +traced. While some observers have studied in detail the structure and +life-history of a few selected types (insect anatomy and development), +others have made a more superficial examination of large series of +insects to classify them and determine their relationships (systematic +entomology), while others again have investigated the habits and +life-relations of insects (insect bionomics). During recent years the +study of fossil insects (palaeoentomology) has attracted much attention. + +The foundations of modern entomology were laid by a series of wonderful +memoirs on anatomy and development published in the 17th and 18th +centuries. Of these the most famous are M. Malpighi's treatise on the +silkworm (1669) and J. Swammerdam's _Biblia naturae_, issued in 1737, +fifty years after its author's death, and containing observations on the +structure and life-history of a series of insect types. Aristotle and +Harvey (_De generatione animalium_, 1651) had considered the insect larva +as a prematurely hatched embryo and the pupa as a second egg. Swammerdam, +however, showed the presence under the larval cuticle of the pupal +structures. His only unfortunate contribution to entomology--indeed to +zoology generally--was his theory of pre-formation, which taught the +presence within the egg of a perfectly formed but miniature adult. A year +before Malpighi's great work appeared, another Italian naturalist, F. +Redi, had disproved by experiment the spontaneous generation of maggots +from putrid flesh, and had shown that they can only develop from the eggs +of flies. + +Meanwhile the English naturalist, John Ray, was studying the +classification of animals; he published, in 1705, his _Methodus +insectorum_, in which the nature of the metamorphosis received due +weight. Ray's "Insects" comprised the Arachnids, Crustacea, Myriapoda +and Annelida, in addition to the Hexapods. Ray was the first to +formulate that definite conception of the species which was adopted by +Linnaeus and emphasized by his binominal nomenclature. In 1735 appeared +the first edition of the _Systema naturae_ of Linnaeus, in which the +"Insecta" form a group equivalent to the Arthropoda of modern +zoologists, and are divided into seven orders, whose names--Coleoptera, +Diptera, Lepidoptera, &c., founded on the nature of the wings--have +become firmly established. The fascinating subjects of insect bionomics +and life-history were dealt with in the classical memoirs (1734-1742) of +the Frenchman R.A.F. de Reaumur, and (1752-1778) of the Swede C. de +Geer. The freshness, the air of leisure, the enthusiasm of discovery +that mark the work of these old writers have lessons for the modern +professional zoologist, who at times feels burdened with the accumulated +knowledge of a century and a half. From the end of the 18th century +until the present day, it is only possible to enumerate the outstanding +features in the progress of entomology. In the realm of classification, +the work of Linnaeus was continued in Denmark by J.C. Fabricius +(_Systema entomologica_, 1775), and extended in France by G.P.B. Lamarck +(_Animaux sans vertebres_, 1801) and G. Cuvier (_Lecons d'anatomie +comparee_, 1800-1805), and in England by W.E. Leach (_Trans. Linn. Soc._ +xi., 1815). These three authors definitely separated the Arachnida, +Crustacea and Myriapoda as classes distinct from the Insecta (see +HEXAPODA). The work of J.O. Westwood (_Modern Classification of +Insects_, 1839-1840) connects these older writers with their successors +of to-day. + +In the anatomical field the work of Malpighi and Swammerdam was at first +continued most energetically by French students. P. Lyonnet had +published in 1760 his elaborate monograph on the goat-moth caterpillar, +and H.E. Strauss-Durckheim in 1828 issued his great treatise on the +cockchafer. But the name of J.C.L. de Savigny, who (_Mem. sur les +animaux sans vertebres_, 1816) established the homology of the jaws of +all insects whether biting or sucking, deserves especial honour. Many +anatomical and developmental details were carefully worked out by L. +Dufour (in a long series of memoirs from 1811 to 1860) in France, by G. +Newport ("Insecta" in _Encyc. Anat. and Physiol._, 1839) in England, and +by H. Burmeister (_Handbuch der Entomologie_, 1832) in Germany. Through +the 19th century, as knowledge increased, the work of investigation +became necessarily more and more specialized. Anatomists like F. Leydig, +F. Muller, B.T. Lowne and V. Graber turned their attention to the +detailed investigation of some one species or to special points in the +structure of some particular organs, using for the elucidation of their +subject the ever-improving microscopical methods of research. + +Societies for the discussion and publication of papers on entomology +were naturally established as the number of students increased. The +Societe Entomologique de France was founded in 1832, the Entomological +Society of London in 1834. Few branches of zoology have been more +valuable as a meeting-ground for professional and amateur naturalists +than entomology, and not seldom has the amateur--as in the case of +Westwood--developed into a professor. During the pre-Linnaean period, +the beauty of insects--especially the Lepidoptera--had attracted a +number of collectors; and these "Aurelians"--regarded as harmless +lunatics by most of their friends--were the forerunners of the +systematic students of later times. While the insect fauna of European +countries was investigated by local naturalists, the spread of +geographical exploration brought ever-increasing stores of exotic +material to the great museums, and specialization--either in the fauna +of a small district or in the world-wide study of an order or a group of +families--became constantly more marked in systematic work. As examples +may be instanced the studies of A.H. Haliday and H. Loew on the European +Diptera, of John Curtis on British insects, of H.T. Stainton and O. +Staudinger on the European Lepidoptera, of R. M'Lachlan on the European +and of H.A. Hagen on the North American Neuroptera, of D. Sharp on the +_Dyticidae_ and other families of Coleoptera of the whole world. + +The embryology of insects is entirely a study of the last century. C. +Bonnet indeed observed in 1745 the virgin-reproduction of Aphids, but it +was not until 1842 that R.A. von Kolliker described the formation of the +blastoderm in the egg of the midge _Chironomus_. Later A. Weismann +(1863-1864) traced details of the growth of embryo and of pupa among the +Diptera, and A. Kovalevsky in 1871 first described the formation of the +germinal layers in insects. Most of the recent work on the embryology of +insects has been done in Germany or the United States, and among +numerous students V. Graber, K. Heider, W.M. Wheeler and R. Heymons may +be especially mentioned. + +The work of de Reaumur and de Geer on the bionomics and life-history of +insects has been continued by numerous observers, among whom may be +especially mentioned in France J.H. Fabre and C. Janet, in England W. +Kirby and W. Spence, J. Lubbock (Lord Avebury) and L.C. Miall, and in +the United States C.V. Riley. The last-named may be considered the +founder of the strong company of entomological workers now labouring in +America. Though Riley was especially interested in the bearings of +insect life on agriculture and industry--economic entomology (q.v.)--he +and his followers have laid the science generally under a deep +obligation by their researches. + +After the publication of C. Darwin's _Origin of Species_ (1859) a fresh +impetus was given to entomology as to all branches of zoology, and it +became generally recognized that insects form a group convenient and +hopeful for the elucidation of certain problems of animal evolution. The +writings of Darwin himself and of A.R. Wallace (both at one time active +entomological collectors) contain much evidence drawn from insects in +favour of descent with modification. The phylogeny of insects has since +been discussed by F. Brauer, A.S. Packard and many others; mimicry and +allied problems by H.W. Bates, F. Muller, E.B. Poulton and M.C. Piepers; +the bearing of insect habits on theories of selection and +use-inheritance by A. Weismann, G.W. and E. Peckham, G.H.T. Eimer and +Herbert Spencer; variation by W. Bateson and M. Standfuss. + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--References to the works of the above authors, and to + many others, will be found under HEXAPODA and the special articles on + various insect orders. Valuable summaries of the labours of Malpighi, + Swammerdam and other early entomologists are given in L.C. Miall and + A. Denny's _Cockroach_ (London, 1886), and L. Henneguy's _Les + Insectes_ (Paris, 1904). (G. H. C.) + + + + +ENTOMOSTRACA. This zoological term, as now restricted, includes the +Branchiopoda, Ostracoda and Copepoda. The Ostracoda have the body +enclosed in a bivalve shell-covering, and normally unsegmented. The +Branchiopoda have a very variable number of body-segments, with or +without a shield, simple or bivalved, and some of the postoral +appendages normally branchial. The Copepoda have normally a segmented +body, not enclosed in a bivalved shell-covering, the segments not +exceeding eleven, the limbs not branchial. + +Under the heading CRUSTACEA the Entomostraca have already been +distinguished not only from the Thyrostraca or Cirripedes, but also from +the Malacostraca, and an intermediate group of which the true position +is still disputed. The choice is open to maintain the last as an +independent subclass, and to follow Claus in calling it the Leptostraca, +or to introduce it among the Malacostraca as the Nebaliacea, or with +Packard and Sars to make it an entomostracan subdivision under the title +Phyllocarida. At present it comprises the single family _Nebaliidae_. +The bivalved carapace has a jointed rostrum, and covers only the front +part of the body, to which it is only attached quite in front, the +valve-like sides being under control of an adductor muscle. The eyes are +stalked and movable. The first antennae have a lamellar appendage at the +end of the peduncle, a decidedly non-entomostracan feature. The second +antennae, mandibles and two pairs of maxillae may also be claimed as of +malacostracan type. To these succeed eight pairs of foliaceous branchial +appendages on the front division of the body, followed on the hind +division by four pairs of powerful bifurcate swimming feet and two +rudimentary pairs, the number, though not the nature, of these +appendages being malacostracan. On the other hand, the two limbless +segments that precede the caudal furca are decidedly non-malacostracan. +The family was long limited to the single genus _Nebalia_ (Leach), and +the single species _N. bipes_ (O. Fabricius). Recently Sars has added a +Norwegian species, _N. typhlops_, not blind but weak-eyed. There are +also now two more genera, _Paranebalia_ (Claus, 1880), in which the +branchial feet are much longer than in _Nebalia_, and _Nebaliopsis_ +(Sars, 1887), in which they are much shorter. All the species are +marine. + +BRANCHIOPODA.--In this order, exclusion of the Phyllocarida will leave +three suborders of very unequal extent, the Phyllopoda, Cladocera, +Branchiura. The constituents of the last have often been classed as +Copepoda, and among the Branchiopods must be regarded as aberrant, since +the "branchial tail" implied in the name has no feet, and the actual +feet are by no means obviously branchial. + +_Phyllopoda._--This "leaf-footed" suborder has the appendages which +follow the second maxillae variable in number, but all foliaceous and +branchial. The development begins with a free nauplius stage. In the +outward appearance of the adults there is great want of uniformity, one +set having their limbs sheltered by no carapace, another having a broad +shield over most of them, and a third having a bivalved shell-cover +within which the whole body can be enclosed. In accord with these +differences the sections may be named Gymnophylla, Notophylla, +Conchophylla. The equivalent terms applied by Sars are Anostraca, +Notostraca, Conchostraca, involving a termination already appropriated +to higher divisions of the Crustacean class, for which it ought to be +reserved. + + 1. Gymnophylla.--These singular crustaceans have long soft flexible + bodies, the eyes stalked and movable, the first antennae small and + filiform, the second lamellar in the female, in the male prehensile; + this last character gives rise to some very fanciful developments. + There are three families, two of which form companies rather severely + limited. Thus the _Polyartemiidae_, which compensate themselves for + their stumpy little tails by having nineteen instead of the normal + eleven pairs of branchial feet, consist exclusively of _Polyartemia + forcipata_ (Fischer, 1851). This species from the high north of Europe + and Asia carries green eggs, and above them a bright pattern in + ultramarine (Sars, 1896, 1897). The _Thamnocephalidae_ have likewise + but a single species, _Thamnocephalus platyurus_ (Packard, 1877), + which justifies its title "bushy-head of the broad tail" by a + singularity at each end. Forward from the head extends a long ramified + appendage described as the "frontal shrub," backward from the fourth + abdominal segment of the male spreads a fin-like expansion which is + unique. In the ravines of Kansas, pools supplied by torrential rains + give birth to these and many other phyllopods, and in turn "millions + of them perish by the drying up of the pools in July" (Packard). The + remaining family, the _Branchipodidae_, includes eight genera. In the + long familiar _Branchipus_, _Chirocephalus_ and _Streptocephalus_ the + males have frontal appendages, but these are wanting in the + "brine-shrimp" _Artemia_, and the same want helps to distinguish + _Branchinecta_ (Verrill, 1869) from the old genus _Branchipus_. Of + _Branchiopsyllus_ (Sars, 1897) the male is not yet known, but in his + genera of the same date, the Siberian _Artemiopsis_ and the South + African _Branchipodopsis_ (1898), there is no such appendage. Of the + last genus the type species _B. hodgsoni_ belongs to Cape Colony, but + the specimens described were born and bred and observed in Norway. For + the study of fresh-water Entomostraca large possibilities are now + opened to the naturalist. A parcel of dried mud, coming for example + from Palestine or Queensland, and after an indefinite interval of time + put into water in England or elsewhere, may yield him living forms, + both new and old, in the most agreeable variety. Some caution should + be used against confounding accidentally introduced indigenous species + with those reared from the imported eggs. Those, too, who send or + bring the foreign soil should exercise a little thought in the choice + of it, since dry earth that has never had any Entomostraca near it at + home will not become fertile in them by the mere fact of exportation. + + 2. Notophylla.--In this division the body is partly covered by a broad + shield, united in front with the head; the eyes are sessile, the first + antennae are small, the second rudimentary or wanting; of the numerous + feet, sometimes sixty-three pairs, exceeding the number of segments to + which they are attached, the first pair are more or less unlike the + rest, and in the female the eleventh have the epipod and exopod + (flabellum and sub-apical lobe of Lankester) modified to form an + ovisac. Development begins with a nauplius stage. Males are very rare. + The single family _Apodidae_ contains only two genera, _Apus_ and its + very near neighbour _Lepidurus_. _Apus australiensis_ (Spencer and + Hall, 1896) may rank as the largest of the Entomostraca, reaching in + the male, from front of shield to end of telson, a length of 70 mm., + in the female of 64 mm. In a few days, or at most a fortnight, after a + rainfall numberless specimens of these sizes were found swimming + about, "and as not a single one was to be found in the water-pools + prior to the rain, these must have been developed from the egg." + Similarly, in Northern India _Apus himalayanus_ was "collected from a + stagnant pool in a jungle four days after a shower of rain had + fallen," following a drought of four months (Packard). + + 3. Conchophylla.--Though concealed within the bivalved shell-cover, + the mouth-parts are nearly as in the Gymnophylla, but the flexing of + the caudal part is in contrast, and the biramous second antennae + correspond with what is only a larval character in the other + phyllopods. In the male the first one or two pairs of feet are + modified into grasping organs. The small ova are crowded beneath the + dorsal part of the valves. The development usually begins with a + nauplius stage (Sars, 1896, 1900). There are four families: (a) The + _Limnadiidae_, with feet from 18 to 32 pairs, comprise four (or five) + genera. Of these _Limnadella_ (Girard, 1855) has a single eye. It + remains rather obscure, though the type species originally "was + discovered in great abundance in a roadside puddle subject to + desiccation." _Limnadia_ (Brongniart, 1820) is supposed to consist of + species exclusively parthenogenetic. But when asked to believe that + males never occur among these amazons, one cannot but remember how + hard it is to prove a negative. (b) The _Lynceidae_, with not more + than twelve pairs of feet. This family is limited to the species, + widely distributed, of the single genus _Lynceus_, established by O.F. + Muller in 1776 and 1781, and first restricted by Leach in 1816 in the + _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (art. "Annulosa," of that edition). Leach + there assigns to it the single species _L. brachyurus_ (Muller), and + as this is included in the genus _Limnetis_ (Loven, 1846), that genus + must be a synonym of _Lynceus_ as restricted. (c) _Leptestheriidae_. + _Estheria_ (Ruppell, 1837) was instituted for the species + _dahalacensis_, which Sars includes in his genus _Leptestheria_ + (1898); but _Estheria_ was already appropriated, and of its synonyms + _Cyzicus_ (Audouin, 1837) is lost for vagueness, while _Isaura_ (Joly, + 1842) is also appropriated, so that _Leptestheria_ becomes the name of + the typical genus, and determines the name of the family. (d) + _Cyclestheriidae_. This family consists of the single species + _Cyclestheria hislopi_ (Baird), reported from India, Ceylon, Celebes, + Australia, East Africa and Brazil. Sars (1887) having had the + opportunity of raising it from dried Australian mud, found that, + unlike other phyllopods, but like the Cladocera, the parent keeps its + brood within the shell until their full development. + +_Cladocera._--In this suborder the head is more or less distinct, the +rest of the body being in general laterally compressed and covered by a +bivalved test. The title "branching horns" alludes to the second +antennae, which are two-branched except in the females of _Holopedium_, +with each branch setiferous, composed of only two to four joints. The +mandibles are without palp. The pairs of feet are four to six. The eye +is single, and in addition to the eye there is often an "eye-spot," +_Monospilus_ being unique in having the eye-spot alone and no eye, while +_Leydigiopsis_ (Sars, 1901) has an eye with an eye-spot equal to it or +larger. The heart has a pair of venous ostia, often blending into one, +and an anterior arterial aorta. Respiration is conducted by the general +surface, by the branchial lamina (external branch) of the feet, and the +vesicular appendage (when present) at the base of this branch. The +"abdomen," behind the limbs, is usually very short, occasionally very +long. The "postabdomen," marked off by the two postabdominal setae, +usually has teeth or spines, and ends in two denticulate or ciliate +claws, or it may be rudimentary, as in _Polyphemus_. Many species have a +special glandular organ at the back of the head, which _Sida +crystallina_ uses for attaching itself to various objects. The Leydigian +or nuchal organ is supposed to be auditory and to contain an otolith. +The female lays two kinds of eggs--"summer-eggs," which develop without +fertilization, and "winter-eggs" or resting eggs, which require to be +fertilized. The latter in the _Daphniidae_ are enclosed in a modified +part of the mother's shell, called the ephippium from its resemblance to +a saddle in shape and position. In other families a less elaborate case +has been observed, for which Scourfield has proposed the term +protoephippium. In _Leydigia_ he has recently found a structure almost +as complex as that of the _Daphniidae_. In some families the resting +eggs escape into the water without special covering. Only the embryos of +_Leptodora_ are known to hatch out in the nauplius stage. _Penilia_ +(Dana, 1849) is perhaps the only exclusively marine genus. The great +majority of the Cladocera belong to fresh water, but their adaptability +is large, since _Moina rectirostris_ (O.F. Muller) can equally enjoy a +pond at Blackheath, and near Odessa live in water twice as salt as that +of the ocean. In point of size a Cladoceran of 5 mm. is spoken of as +colossal. + + Dr Jules Richard in his revision (1895) retains the sections proposed + by Sars in 1865, Calyptomera and Gymnomera. The former, with the feet + for the most part concealed by the carapace, is subdivided into two + tribes, the Ctenopoda, or "comb-feet," in which the six pairs of + similar feet, all branchial and nonprehensile, are furnished with + setae arranged like the teeth of a comb, and the Anomopoda, or + "variety-feet," in which the front feet differ from the rest by being + more or less prehensile, without branchial laminae. + + The Ctenopoda comprise two families: (a) the _Holopediidae_, with a + solitary species, _Holopedium gibberum_ (Zaddach), queerly clothed in + a large gelatinous involucre, and found in mountain tarns all over + Europe, in large lakes of N. America, and also in shallow ponds and + waters at sea-level; (b) the _Sididae_, with no such involucre, but + with seven genera, and rather more than twice as many species. Of + _Diaphanosoma modiglianii_ Richard says that at different points of + Lake Toba in Sumatra millions of specimens were obtained, among which + he had not met with a single male. + + The Anomopoda are arranged in four families, all but one very + extensive. (a) _Daphniidae_. Of the seven genera, the cosmopolitan + _Daphnia_ contains about 100 species and varieties, of which Thomas + Scott (1899) observes that "scarcely any of the several characters + that have at one time or another been selected as affording a means + for discriminating between the different forms can be relied on as + satisfactory." Though this may dishearten the systematist, Scourfield + (1900) reminds us that "It was in a water-flea that Metschnikoff first + saw the leucocytes (or phagocytes) trying to get rid of disease germs + by swallowing them, and was so led to his epoch-making discovery of + the part played by these minute amoeboid corpuscles in the animal + body." For _Scapholeberis mucronata_ (O.F. Muller), Scourfield has + shown how it is adapted for movement back downwards in the water along + the underside of the surface film, which to many small crustaceans is + a dangerously disabling trap. (b) _Bosminidae_. To _Bosmina_ (Baird, + 1845) Richard added _Bosminopsis_ in 1895. (c) _Macrotrichidae._ In + this family _Macrothrix_ (Baird, 1843) is the earliest genus, among + the latest being _Grimaldina_ (Richard, 1892) and _Jheringula_ (Sars, + 1900). Dried mud and vegetable debris from S. Paulo in Brazil supplied + Sars with representatives of all the three in his Norwegian aquaria, + in some of which the little _Macrothrix elegans_ "multiplied to such + an extraordinary extent as at last to fill up the water with immense + shoals of individuals." "The appearance of male specimens was always + contemporary with the first ephippial formation in the females." For + _Streblocerus pygmaeus_, grown under the same conditions, Sars + observes: "This is perhaps the smallest of the Cladocera known, and is + hardly more than visible to the naked eye," the adult female scarcely + exceeding 0.25 mm. Yet in the next family _Alonella nana_ (Baird) + disputes the palm and claims to be the smallest of all known + Arthropoda. (d) _Chydoridae._ This family, so commonly called + _Lynceidae_, contains a large number of genera, among which one may + usually search in vain, and rightly so, for the genus _Lynceus_. The + key to the riddle is to be found in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_ for + 1816. There, as above explained, Leach began the subdivision of + Muller's too comprehensive genus, the result being that _Lynceus_ + belongs to the Phyllopoda, and _Chydorus_ (Leach, 1816) properly gives + its name to the present family, in which the doubly convoluted + intestine is so remarkable. Of its many genera, _Leydigia_, + _Leydigiopsis_, _Monospilus_ have been already mentioned. _Dadaya + macrops_ (Sars, 1901), from South America and Ceylon, has a very large + eye and an eye-spot fully as large, but it is a very small creature, + odd in its behaviour, moving by jumps at the very surface of the + water. "To the naked eye it looked like a little black atom darting + about in a most wonderful manner." + + [Illustration: FIG. 1.--_Dolops ranarum_ (Stuhlmann).] + + The Gymnomera, with a carapace too small to cover the feet, which are + all prehensile, are divided also into two tribes, the Onychopoda, in + which the four pairs of feet have a toothed maxillary process at the + base, and the Haplopoda, in which there are six pairs of feet, without + such a process. To the _Polyphemidae_, the well-known family of the + former tribe, Sars in 1897 added two remarkable genera, _Cercopagis_, + meaning "tail with a sling," and _Apagis_, "without a sling," for + seven species from the Sea of Azov. The Haplopoda likewise have but a + single family, the _Leptodoridae_, and this has but the single genus + _Leptodora_ (Lilljeborg, 1861). Dr Richard (1895, 1896) gives a + Cladoceran bibliography of 601 references. + +_Branchiura._--This term was introduced by Thorell in 1864 for the +_Argulidae_, a family which had been transferred to the Branchiopoda by +Zenker in 1854, though sometimes before and since united with the +parasitic Copepoda. Though the animals have an oral siphon, they do not +carry ovisacs like the siphonostomous copepods, but glue their eggs in +rows to extraneous objects. Their lateral, compound, feebly movable eyes +agree with those of the Phyllopoda. The family are described by Claus as +"intermittent parasites," because when gorged they leave their hosts, +fishes or frogs, and swim about in freedom for a considerable period. +The long-known _Argulus_ (O.F. Muller) has the second maxillae +transformed into suckers, but in _Dolops_ (Audouin, 1837) (fig. 1), the +name of which supersedes the more familiar _Gyropeltis_ (Heller, 1857), +these effect attachment by ending in strong hooks (Bouvier, 1897). A +third genus, _Chonopeltis_ (Thiele, 1900), has suckers, but has lost its +first antennae, at least in the female. + +OSTRACODA.--The body, seldom in any way segmented, is wholly encased in +a bivalved shell, the caudal part strongly inflexed, and almost always +ending in a furca. The limbs, including antennae and mouth organs, never +exceed seven definite pairs. The first antennae never have more than +eight joints. The young usually pass through several stages of +development after leaving the egg, and this commonly after, even long +after, the egg has left the maternal shell. Parthenogenesis is frequent. + +The four tribes instituted by Sars in 1865 were reduced to two by G.W. +Muller in 1894, the Myodocopa, which almost always have a heart, and the +Podocopa, which have none. + + _Myodocopa._--These have the furcal branches broad, lamellar, with at + least three pairs of strong spines or ungues. Almost always the shell + has a rostral sinus. Muller divides the tribe into three families, + _Cypridinidae, Halocypridae_, and the heartless _Polycopidae_, which + constituted the tribe Cladocopa of Sars. From the first of these Brady + and Norman distinguish the Asteropidae (fig. 3), remarkable for seven + pairs of long branchial leaves which fold over the hinder extremity of + the animal, and the _Sarsiellidae_, still somewhat obscure, besides + adding the _Rutidermatidae_, knowledge of which is based on skilful + maceration of minute and long-dried specimens. The _Halocypridae_ are + destitute of compound lateral eyes, and have the sexual orifice + unsymmetrically placed. + + _Podocopa._--In these the furcal branches are linear or rudimentary, + the shell is without rostral sinus, and, besides distinguishing + characters of the second antennae, they have always a branchial plate + well developed on the first maxillae, which is inconstant in the other + tribe. There are five families: (a) _Cyprididae_ (? including + _Cypridopsidae_ of Brady and Norman). In some of the genera + parthenogenetic propagation is carried to such an extent that of the + familiar _Cypris_ it is said, "until quite lately males in this genus + were unknown; and up to the present time no male has been found in the + British Islands" (Brady and Norman, 1896). On the other hand, the + ejaculatory duct with its verticillate sac in the male of _Cypris_ and + other genera is a feature scarcely less remarkable. (b) _Bairdiidae_, + which have the valves smooth, with the hinge untoothed. (c) + _Cytheridae_ (? including _Paradoxostomatidae_ of Brady and Norman), + in which the valves are usually sculptured, with toothed hinge. Of + this family the members are almost exclusively marine, but + _Limnicythere_ is found in fresh water, and _Xestoleberis bromeliarum_ + (Fritz Muller) lives in the water that collects among the leaves of + Bromelias, plants allied to the pine-apples. (d) _Darwinulidae_, + including the single species _Darwinula stevensoni_, Brady and + Robertson, described as "perhaps the most characteristic Entomostracan + of the East Anglian Fen District." (e) _Cytherellidae_, which, unlike + the Ostracoda in general, have the hinder part of the body segmented, + at least ten segments being distinguishable in the female. They have + the valves broad at both ends, and were placed by Sars in a separate + tribe, called Platycopa. + +The range in time of the Ostracoda is so extended that, in G.W. +Muller's opinion, their separation into the families now living may have +already taken place in the Cambrian period. Their range in space, +including carriage by birds, may be coextensive with the distribution of +water, but it is not known what height of temperature or how much +chemical adulteration of the water they can sustain, how far they can +penetrate underground, nor what are the limits of their activity between +the floor and the surface of aquatic expanses, fresh or saline. In +individual size they have never been important, and of living forms the +largest is one of recent discovery, _Crossophorus africanus_, a +Cypridinid about three-fifths of an inch (15.5 mm.) long; but a length +of one or two millimetres is more common, and it may descend to the +seventy-fifth of an inch. By multitude they have been, and still are, +extremely important. + + Though the exterior is more uniform than in most groups of Crustacea, + the bivalved shell or carapace may be strongly calcified and diversely + sculptured (fig. 2), or membranaceous and polished, hairy or smooth, + oval or round or bean-shaped, or of some less simple pattern; the + valves may fit neatly, or one overlap the other, their hinge may have + teeth or be edentulous, and their front part may be excavated for the + protrusion of the antennae or have no such "rostral sinus." By various + modifications of their valves and appendages the creatures have become + adapted for swimming, creeping, burrowing, or climbing, some of them + combining two or more of these activities, for which their structure + seems at the first glance little adapted. Considering the imprisonment + of the ostracod body within the valves, it is more surprising that the + _Asteropidae_ and _Cypridinidae_ should have a pair of compound and + sometimes large eyes, in addition to the median organ at the base of + the "frontal tentacle," than that other members of the group should be + limited to that median organ of sight, or have no eyes at all. The + median eye when present may have or not have a lens, and its three + pigment-cups may be close together or wide apart and the middle one + rudimentary. As might be expected, in thickened and highly embossed + valves thin spaces occur over the visual organ. The frontal organ + varies in form and apparently in function, and is sometimes absent. + The first antennae, according to the family, may assist in walking, + swimming, burrowing, climbing, grasping, and besides they carry + sensory setae, and sometimes they have suckers on their setae (see + Brady and Norman on _Cypridina norvegica_). The second antennae are + usually the chief motor-organs for swimming, walking and climbing. The + mandibles are normally five-jointed, with remnants of an outer branch + on the second joint, the biting edge varying from strong development + to evanescence, the terminal joints or "palp" giving the organ a + leg-like appearance and function, which disappears in suctorial genera + such as _Paracytherois_. The variable first maxillae are seldom + pediform, their function being concerned chiefly with nutrition, + sensation and respiration. The variability in form and function of the + second maxillae is sufficiently shown by the fact that G.W. Muller, + our leading authority, adopts the confusing plan of calling them + second maxillae in the _Cypridinidae_ (including _Asteropidae_), + maxillipeds in the _Halocypridae_ and _Cyprididae_, and first legs in + the _Bairdiidae_, _Cytheridae_, _Polycopidae_ and _Cytherellidae_, so + that in his fine monograph he uses the term first leg in two quite + different senses. The first legs, meaning thereby the sixth pair of + appendages, are generally pediform and locomotive, but sometimes + unjointed, acting as a kind of brushes to cleanse the furca, while in + the _Polycopidae_ they are entirely wanting. The second legs are + sometimes wanting, sometimes pediform and locomotive, sometimes + strangely metamorphosed into the "vermiform organ," generally long, + many-jointed, and distally armed with retroverted spines, its function + being that of an extremely mobile cleansing foot, which can insert + itself among the eggs in the brood-space, between the branchial leaves + of _Asterope_ (fig. 3), and even range over the external surface of + the valves. The "brush-formed" organs of the Podocopa are medially + placed, and, in spite of their sometimes forward situation, Muller + believes among other possibilities that they and the penis in the + _Cypridinidae_ may be alike remnants of a third pair of legs, not + homologous with the penis of other Ostracoda (Podocopa included). The + furca is, as a rule, a powerful motor-organ, and has its laminae edged + with strong teeth (ungues) or setae or both. The young, though born + with valves, have at first a nauplian body, and pass through various + stages to maturity. + + [Illustration: FIG. 2.--_Cythereis ornata_ (G.W. Muller). One + eye-space is shown above on the left.] + + [Illustration: FIG. 3.--_Asterope arthuri_. Left valve removed. + + M, End of adductor muscle. + OC, Eye. + AI, Second antenna. + MX. 1, First maxilla. + MX. 2, Second maxilla. + P. 1, First foot. + V. O, Vermiform organ. + BR, Seven branchial leaves. + F, Projecting ungues of the furca.] + + Brady and Norman, in their _Monograph of the Ostracoda of the North + Atlantic and North-Western Europe_ (1889), give a bibliography of 125 + titles, and in the second part (1896) they give 55 more. The lists are + not meant to be exhaustive, any more than G.W. Muller's literature + list of 125 titles in 1894. They do not refer to Latreille, 1802, with + whom the term Ostracoda originates. + +COPEPODA.--The body is not encased in a bivalved shell; its articulated +segments are at most eleven, those behind the genital segment being +without trace of limbs, but the last almost always carrying a furca. +Sexes separate, fertilization by spermatophores. Ova in single or double +or rarely several packets, attached as ovisacs or egg-strings to the +genital openings, or enclosed in a dorsal marsupium, or deposited singly +or occasionally in bundles. The youngest larvae are typical nauplii. The +next, the copepodid or cyclopid, stage is characterized by a cylindrical +segmented body, with fore- and hind-body distinct, and by having at most +six cephalic limbs and two pairs of swimming feet. + +The order thus defined (see Giesbrecht and Schmeil, _Das Tierreich_, +1898), with far over a thousand species (Hansen, 1900), embraces forms +of extreme diversity, although, when species are known in all their +phases and both sexes, they constantly tend to prove that there are no +sharply dividing lines between the free-living, the semi-parasitic, and +those which in adult life are wholly parasitic and then sometimes +grotesquely unlike the normal standard. Giesbrecht and Hansen have shown +that the mouth-organs consist of mandibles, first and second maxillae +and maxillipeds; and Claus himself relinquished his long-maintained +hypothesis that the last two pairs were the separated exopods and +endopods of a single pair of appendages. Thorell's classification (1859) +of Gnathostoma, Poecilostoma, Siphonostoma, based on the mouth-organs, +was long followed, though almost at the outset shown by Claus to depend +on the erroneous supposition that the Poecilostoma were devoid of +mandibles. Brady added a new section, Choniostomata, in 1894, and +another, Leptostomata, in 1900, each for a single species. Canu in 1892 +proposed two groups, Monoporodelphya and Diporodelphya, the copulatory +openings of the female being paired in the latter, unpaired in the +former. It may be questioned whether this distinction, however important +in itself, would lead to a satisfactory grouping of families. In the +same year Giesbrecht proposed his division of the order into Gymnoplea +and Podoplea. + +In appearance an ordinary Copepod is divided into fore- and hind-body, +of its eleven segments the composite first being the head, the next five +constituting the thorax, and the last five the abdomen. The coalescence +of segments, though frequent, does not after a little experience +materially confuse the counting. But there is this peculiarity, that the +middle segment is sometimes continuous with the broader fore-body, +sometimes with the narrower hind-body. In the former case the hind-body, +consisting only of the abdomen, forms a pleon or tail-part devoid of +feet, and the species so constructed are Gymnoplea, those of the naked +or footless pleon. In the latter case the middle segment almost always +carries with it to the hind-body a pair of rudimentary limbs, whence the +term Podoplea, meaning species that have a pleon with feet. It may be +objected that hereby the term pleon is used in two different senses, +first applying to the abdomen alone and then to the abdomen plus the +last thoracic segment. Even this verbal flaw would be obviated if +Giesbrecht could prove his tentative hypothesis, that the Gymnoplea may +have lost a pre-genital segment of the abdomen, and the Podoplea may +have lost the last segment of the thorax. The classification is worked +out as follows:-- + + 1. _Gymnoplea._--First segment of hind-body footless, bearing the + orifices of the genital organs (in the male unsymmetrically placed); + last foot of the fore-body in the male a copulatory organ; neither, or + only one, of the first pair of antennae in the male geniculating; + cephalic limbs abundantly articulated and provided with many plumose + setae; heart generally present. Animals usually free-living, pelagic + (Giesbrecht and Schmeil). + + This group, with 65 genera and four or five hundred species, is + divided by Giesbrecht into tribes: (a) Amphaskandria. In this tribe + the males have both antennae of the first pair as sensory organs. + There is but one family, the _Calanidae_, but this is a very large + one, with 26 genera and more than 100 species. Among them is the + cosmopolitan _Calanus finmarchicus_, the earliest described (by Bishop + Gunner in 1770) of all the marine free-swimming Copepoda. Among them + also is the peacock Calanid, _Calocalanus pavo_ (Dana), with its + highly ornamented antennae and gorgeous tail, the most beautiful + species of the whole order (fig. 4). (b) Heterarthrandria. Here the + males have one or the other of the first pair of antennae modified + into a grasping organ for holding the female. There are four families, + the _Diaptomidae_ with 27 genera, the _Pontellidae_ with 10, the + _Pseudocyclopidae_ and _Candaciidae_ each with one genus. The first of + these families is often called _Centropagidae_, but, as Sars has + pointed out, _Diaptomus_ (Westwood, 1836) is the oldest genus in it. + Of 177 species valid in the family Giesbrecht and Schmeil assign 67 to + _Diaptomus_. In regard to one of its species Dr Brady says: "In one + instance, at least (Talkin Tarn, Cumberland) I have seen the net come + up from a depth of 6 or 8 ft. below the surface with a dense mass + consisting almost entirely of _D. gracilis_." The length of this + net-filling species is about a twentieth of an inch. + + [Illustration: FIG. 4.--_Calocalanus pavo_ (Dana).] + + 2. _Podoplea._--The first segment of the hind-body almost always with + rudimentary pair of feet; orifices of the genital organs + (symmetrically placed in both sexes) in the following segment; neither + the last foot of the fore-body nor the rudimentary feet just mentioned + acting as a copulatory organ in the male; both or neither of the first + pair of antennae in the male geniculating; cephalic limbs less + abundantly articulated and with fewer plumose setae or none, but with + hooks and clasping setae. Heart almost always wanting. Free-living + (rarely pelagic) or parasitic (Giesbrecht and Schmeil). + + This group is also divided by Giesbrecht into two tribes, + Ampharthrandria and Isokerandria. In 1892 he distinguished the former + as those in which the first antennae of the male have both members + modified for holding the female, and the genital openings of the + female have a ventral position, sometimes in close proximity, + sometimes strongly lateral; the latter as those in which the first + antennae of the male are similar to those of the female, the function + of holding her being transferred to the male maxillipeds, while the + genital openings of the female are dorsal, though at times strongly + lateral. In 1899, with a view to the many modifications exhibited by + parasitic and semi-parasitic species, the definitions, stripped of a + too hampering precision, took a different form: (a) Ampharthrandria. + "Swimming Podoplea with geniculating first antennae in the male sex, + and descendants of such; first antennae in female and male almost + always differently articulated." The families occupy fresh water as + well as the sea. Naturally "descendants" which have lost the + characteristic feature of the definition cannot be recognized without + some further assistance than the definition supplies. Of the families + comprised, the _Mormonillidae_ consist only of _Mormonilla_ + (Giesbrecht), and are not mentioned by Giesbrecht in 1899 in the + grouping of this section. The _Thaumatoessidae_ include _Thaumatoessa_ + (Kroyer), established earlier than its synonym _Thaumaleus_ (Kroyer), + or than _Monstrilla_ (Dana, 1849). The species are imperfectly known. + The defect of mouth-organs probably does not apply to the period of + youth, which some of them spend parasitically in the body-cavity of + worms (Giard, 1896). To the _Cyclopidae_ six genera are allotted by + Giesbrecht in 1900. _Cyclops_ (O.F. Muller, 1776), though greatly + restricted since Muller's time, still has several scores of species + abundantly peopling inland waters of every kind and situation, without + one that can be relied on as exclusively marine like the species of + _Oithona_ (Baird). The _Misophriidae_ are now limited to _Misophria_ + (Boeck). The presence of a heart in this genus helps to make it a link + between the Podoplea and Gymnoplea, though in various other respects + it approaches the next family. The _Harpacticidae_ owe their name to + the genus _Arpacticus_ (Milne-Edwards, 1840). Brady in 1880 assigns to + this family 33 genera and 81 species. Canu (1892) distinguishes eight + sub-families, _Longipediinae_, _Peltidiinae_, _Tachidiinae_, + _Amymoninae_, _Harpacticinae_, _Idyinae_, _Canthocamptinae_ (for which + _Canthocampinae_ should be read), and _Nannopinae_, adding + _Stenheliinae_ (Brady) without distinctive characters for it. The + _Ascidicolidae_ have variable characters, showing a gradual adaptation + to parasitic life in Tunicates. Giesbrecht (1900) considers Canu quite + right in grouping together in this single family those parasites of + ascidians, simple and compound, which had been previously distributed + among families with the more or less significant names + _Notodelphyidae_, _Doropygidae_, _Buproridae_, _Schizoproctidae_, + _Kossmechtridae_, _Enterocolidae_, _Enteropsidae_. Further, he + includes in it his own _Enterognathus comatulae_, not from an + ascidian, but from the intestine of the beautiful starfish _Antedon + rosaceus_. The _Asterocheridae_, which have a good swimming capacity, + except in the case of _Cancerilla tubulata_ (Dalyell), lead a + semi-parasitic life on echinoderms, sponges, &c., imbibing their food. + Giesbrecht, displacing the older name _Ascomyzontidae_, assigns to + this family 21 genera in five subfamilies, and suggests that the + long-known but still puzzling _Nicothoe_ from the gills of the lobster + might be placed in an additional subfamily, or be made the + representative of a closely related family. The _Dichelestiidae_, on + account of their sometimes many-jointed first antennae, are referred + also to this tribe by Giesbrecht. (b) Isokerandria. "Swimming Podoplea + without genicullating first antennae in the male sex, and descendants + of such. First antennae of male and female almost always articulated + alike." To this tribe Giesbrecht assigns the families _Clausidiidae_, + _Corycaeidae_, _Oncaeidae_, _Lichomolgidae_, _Ergasilidae_, + _Bomolochidae_, _Clausiidae_, _Nereicolidae_. Here also must for the + time be placed the _Caligidae_, _Philichthyidae_ (_Philichthydae_ of + Vogt, Carus, Claus), _Lernaeidae_, _Chondracanthidae_, + _Sphaeronellidae_ (better known as _Choniostomatidae_, from H.J. + Hansen's remarkable study of the group), _Lernaeopodidae_, + _Herpyllobiidae_, _Entomolepidae_. For the distinguishing marks of all + these, the number of their genera and species, their habits and + transformations and dwellings, the reader must be referred to the + writings of specialists. Sars (1901) proposed seven + suborders--Calanoida, Harpacticoida, Cyclopoida, Notodelphoida, + Monstrilloida, Caligoida, Lernaeoida. + + AUTHORITIES.--(The earlier memoirs of importance are cited in + Giesbrecht's _Monograph of Naples_, 1892); Canu, "Hersiliidae," _Bull. + Sci. France belgique_, ser. 3, vol. i. p. 402 (1888); and _Les + Copepodes du Boulonnais_ (1892); Cuenot, _Rev. biol. Nord France_, + vol. v. (1892); Giesbrecht, "Pelag. Copepoden." _F. u. fl. des Golfes + von Neapel_ (Mon. 19, 1892); Hansen, _Entomol. Med._ vol. iii. pt. 5 + (1892); I.C. Thompson, "Copepoda of Liverpool Bay," _Trans. Liv. Biol. + Soc._ vol. vii. (1893); Schmeil, "Deutschlands Copepoden," + _Bibliotheca zoologica_ (1892-1897); Brady, _Journ. R. Micr. Soc._ p. + 168 (1894); T. Scott, "Entomostraca from the Gulf of Guinea," _Trans. + Linn. Soc. London_, vol. vi. pt. 1 (1894); Giesbrecht, _Mitteil. Zool. + Stat. Neapel_, vol. xi. p. 631; vol. xii. p. 217 (1895); T. and A. + Scott, _Trans. Linn. Soc. London_, ser. 2, vol. vi. p. 419 (1896); + Hansen "Choniostomatidae" (1897); Sars, _Proc. Mus. Zool. St + Petersburg_, "Caspian Entomostraca" (1897); Giesbrecht and Schmeil, + "Copepoda gymnoplea," _Das Tierreich_ (1898); Giesbrecht, + "Asterocheriden," _F. u. fl. Neapel_ (Mon. 25, 1899); Bassett-Smith, + "Copepoda on Fishes," _Proc. Zool. Soc. London_, p. 438 (1899); Brady, + _Trans. Zool. Soc. London_, vol. xv. pt. 2, p. 31 (1899); Sars, _Arch. + Naturv._ vol. xxi. No. 2 (1899); Giesbrecht, _Mitteil. Zool. Stat. + Neapel_, vol. xiv. p. 39 (1900); Scott, "Fish Parasites," _Scottish + Fishery Board_, 18th Ann. Rep. p. 144 (1900); Stebbing, _Willey's + Zool. Results_, pt. 5, p. 664 (1900); Embleton, _Journ. Linn. Soc. + London_, vol. xxviii. p. 211 (1901); Sars, _Crustacea of Norway_, vol. + iv. (1901). (T. R. R. S.) + + + + +ENTRAGUES, CATHERINE HENRIETTE DE BALZAC D' (1579-1633), marquise de +Verneuil, mistress of Henry IV., king of France, was the daughter of +Charles Balzac d'Entragues and of Marie Touchet, mistress of Charles IX. +Ambitious and intriguing, she succeeded in inducing Henry IV. to promise +to marry her after the death of Gabrielle d'Estrees, a promise which led +to bitter scenes at court when shortly afterwards Henry married Marie +de' Medici. She carried her spite so far as to be deeply compromised in +the conspiracy of Marshal Biron against the king in 1606, but escaped +with a slight punishment, and in 1608 Henry actually took her back into +favour again. She seems then to have been involved in the Spanish +intrigues which preceded the death of the king in 1610. + + See H. de la Ferriere, _Henri IV. le roi, l'amoureux_ (Paris, 1890). + + + + +ENTRECASTEAUX, JOSEPH-ANTOINE BRUNI D' (1739-1793), French navigator, +was born at Aix in 1739. At the age of fifteen he entered the navy. In +the war of 1778 he commanded a frigate of thirty-two guns, and by his +clever seamanship was successful in convoying a fleet of merchant +vessels from Marseilles to the Levant, although they were attacked by +two pirate vessels, each of which was larger than his own ship. In 1785 +he was appointed to the command of the French fleet in the East Indies, +and two years later he was named governor of the Mauritius and the Isle +of Bourbon. While in command of the East India fleet he made a voyage to +China, an achievement which, in 1791, led the French government to +select him to command an expedition which it was sending out to seek +some tidings of the unfortunate La Perouse, of whom nothing had been +heard since February 1788. Rear-admiral d'Entrecasteaux's expedition +comprised the "Recherche" and "L'Esperance," with Captain Huon de +Kermadec as second in command. No tidings were obtained of the missing +navigator, but in the course of his search Entrecasteaux made important +geographical discoveries. He traced the outlines of the eastern coast of +New Caledonia, made extensive surveys round the Tasmanian coast, and +touched at several places on the south coast of New Holland. The two +ships entered Storm Bay, Tasmania, on the 21st of April 1792, and +remained there until the 16th of May, surveying and naming the +d'Entrecasteaux Channel, the entrances to the Huon and Derwent rivers, +Bruni Island, Recherche Bay, Port Esperance and various other +localities. Excepting the name of the river Derwent (originally called +Riviere du Nord by its French discoverers), these foregoing appellations +have been retained. Leaving Tasmania the expedition sailed northward for +the East Indies, and while coasting near the island of Java, +Entrecasteaux was attacked by scurvy and died on the 20th of July 1793. + + + + +ENTRE MINHO E DOURO (popularly called _Minho_), a former province of +Northern Portugal; bounded on the N. by Galicia in Spain, E. by +Traz-os-Montes, S. by Beira and W. by the Atlantic Ocean. Pop. (1900) +1,170,361; area 2790 sq. m. Though no longer officially recognized, the +old provincial name remains in common use. The coast-line of Entre Minho +e Douro is level and unbroken except by the estuaries of the main +rivers; inland, the elevation gradually increases towards the north and +east, where several mountain ranges mark the frontier. Of these, the +most important are the Serra da Peneda (4728 ft.), between the rivers +Minho and Limia; the Serra do Gerez (4357 ft.), on the Galician border; +the Serra da Cabreira (4021 ft.), immediately to the south; and the +Serra de Marao (4642 ft.), in the extreme south-east. As its name +implies, the province is bounded by two great rivers, the Douro (q.v.) +on the south, and the Minho (Spanish _Mino_) on the north; but a small +tract of land south of the Douro estuary is included also within the +provincial boundary. There are three other large rivers which, like the +Minho, flow west-south-west into the Atlantic. The Limia or Antela +(Spanish _Linia_) rises in Galicia, and reaches the sea at Vianna do +Castello; the Cavado springs from the southern foot hills of La Raya +Seca, on the northern frontier of Traz-os-Montes, and forms, at its +mouth, the small harbour of Espozende; and the Ave descends from its +sources in the Serra da Cabreira to Villa do Conde, where it enters the +Atlantic. A large right-hand tributary of the Douro, the Tamega, rises +in Galicia, and skirts the western slopes of the Serra de Marao. + +The climate is mild, except among the mountains, and such plants as +heliotrope, fuchsias, palms, and aloes thrive in the open throughout the +year. Wheat and maize are grown on the plains, and other important +products are wine, fruit, olives and chestnuts. Fish abound along the +coast and in the main rivers; timber is obtained from the mountain +forests, and dairy-farming and the breeding of pigs and cattle are +carried on in all parts. As the province is occupied by a hardy and +industrious peasantry, and the density of population (419.5 per sq. m.) +is more than twice that of any other province on the Portuguese +mainland, the soil is very closely cultivated. The methods and +implements of the farmers are, however, most primitive, and at the +beginning of the 20th century it was not unusual to see a mule, or even +a woman, harnessed with the team of oxen to an old-fashioned wooden +plough. Small quantities of coal, iron, antimony, lead and gold are +mined; granite and slate are quarried; and there are mineral springs at +Moncao (pop. 2283) on the Minho. The Oporto-Corunna railway traverses +the western districts and crosses the Spanish frontier at Tuy; its +branch lines give access to Braga, Guimaraes and Povoa de Varzim; and +the Oporto-Salamanca railway passes up the Douro valley. The greater +part of the north and west can only be reached by road, and even the +chief highways are ill-kept. In these regions the principal means of +transport is the springless wooden cart, drawn by one or more of the +tawny and under-sized but powerful oxen, with immense horns and +elaborately carved yoke, which are characteristic of northern Portugal. +For administrative purposes the province is divided into three +districts: Vianna do Castello in the north, Braga in the centre, Oporto +in the south. The chief towns are separately described; they include +Oporto (167,955), one of the greatest wine-producing cities in the +world; Braga (24,202), the seat of an archbishop who is primate of +Portugal; the seaports of Povoa de Varzim (12,623) and Vianna do +Castello (9990); and Guimaraes (9104), a place of considerable +historical interest. + + + + +ENTREPOT (a French word, from the Lat. _interpositum_, that which is +placed between), a storehouse or magazine for the temporary storage of +goods, provisions, &c.; also a place where goods, which are not allowed +to pass into a country duty free, are stored under the superintendence +of the custom house authorities till they are re-exported. In a looser +sense, any town which has a considerable distributive trade is called an +_entrepot_. The word is also used attributively to indicate the kind of +trade carried on in such towns. + + + + +ENTRE RIOS (Span. "between rivers"), a province of the eastern Argentine +Republic, forming the southern part of a region sometimes described as +the Argentine Mesopotamia, bounded N. by Corrientes, E. by Uruguay with +the Uruguay river as the boundary line, S. by Buenos Aires and W. by +Santa Fe, the Parana river forming the boundary line with these two +provinces. Pop. (1895) 292,019; (1905, est.) 376,600. The province has +an area of 28,784 sq. m., consisting for the most part of an undulating, +well-watered and partly-wooded plain, terminating in a low, swampy +district of limited extent in the angle between the two great rivers. +The great forest of Monteil occupies an extensive region in the N., +estimated at nearly one-fifth the area of the province. Its soil is +exceptionally fertile and its climate is mild and healthy. The province +is sometimes called the "garden of Argentina," which would probably be +sufficiently correct had its population devoted as much energy to +agriculture as they have to political conflict and civil war. Its +principal industry is that of stock-raising, exporting live cattle, +horses, hides, jerked beef, tinned and salted meats, beef extract, +mutton and wool. Its agricultural products are also important, including +wheat, Indian corn, barley and fruits. Lime, gypsum and firewood are +also profitable items in its export trade. The Parana and Uruguay rivers +provide exceptional facilities for the shipment of produce and the Entre +Rios railways, consisting of a trunk line running E. and W. across the +province from Parana to Concepcion del Uruguay and several tributary +branches, afford ample transportation facilities to the ports. Another +railway line follows the Uruguay from Concordia northward into +Corrientes. Entre Rios has been one of the most turbulent of the +Argentine provinces, and has suffered severely from political disorder +and civil war. Comparative quiet reigned from 1842 to 1870 under the +autocratic rule of Gen. J.J. Urquiza. After his assassination in 1870 +these partizan conflicts were renewed for two or three years, and then +the province settled down to a life of comparative peace, followed by an +extraordinary development in her pastoral and agricultural industries. +Among these is the slaughtering and packing of beef, the exportation of +which has reached large proportions. The capital is Parana, though the +seat of government was originally located at Concepcion del Uruguay, and +was again transferred to that town during Urquiza's domination. +Concepcion del Uruguay, or Concepcion (founded 1778), is a flourishing +town and port on the Uruguay, connected by railway with an extensive +producing region which gives it an important export trade, and is the +seat of a national college and normal school. Its population was +estimated at 9000 in 1905. Other large towns are Gualeguay and +Gualeguaychu. + + + + +ENVOY (Fr. _envoye_, "sent"), a diplomatic agent of the second rank. The +word _envoye_ comes first into general use in this connexion in the 17th +century, as a translation of the Lat. _ablegatus_ or _missus_ (see +DIPLOMACY). Hence the word envoy is commonly used of any one sent on a +mission of any sort. + + + + +ENZIO (c. 1220-1272), king of Sardinia, was a natural son of the +emperor Frederick II. His mother was probably a German, and his name, +Enzio, is a diminutive form of the German _Heinrich_. His father had a +great affection for him, and he was probably present at the battle of +Cortenuova in 1237. In 1238 he was married, in defiance of the wishes of +Pope Gregory IX., to Adelasia, widow of Ubaldo Visconti and heiress of +Torres and Gallura in Sardinia. Enzio took at once the title of king of +Torres and Gallura, and in 1243 that of king of Sardinia, but he only +spent a few months in the island, and his sovereignty existed in name +alone. In July 1239 he was appointed imperial vicegerent in Italy, and +sharing in his father's excommunication in the same year, took a +prominent part in the war which broke out between the emperor and the +pope. He commenced his campaign by subduing the march of Ancona, and in +May 1241 was in command of the forces which defeated the Genoese fleet +at Meloria, where he seized a large amount of booty and captured a +number of ecclesiastics who were proceeding to a council summoned by +Gregory to Rome. Later he fought in Lombardy. In 1248 he assisted +Frederick in his vain attempt to take Parma, but was wounded and taken +prisoner by the Bolognese at Fossalta on the 26th of May 1249. His +captivity was a severe blow to the Hohenstaufen cause in Italy, and was +soon followed by the death of the emperor. He seems to have been well +treated by the people of Bologna, where he remained a captive until his +death on the 14th of March 1272. He was apparently granted a magnificent +funeral, and was buried in the church of St Dominic at Bologna. During +his imprisonment Enzio is said to have been loved by Lucia da Viadagola, +a well-born lady of Bologna, who shared his captivity and attempted to +procure his release. Some doubt has, however, been cast upon this story, +and the same remark applies to another which tells how two friends had +almost succeeded in freeing him from prison concealed in a wine-cask, +when he was recognized by a lock of his golden hair. His marriage with +Adelasia had been declared void by the pope in 1243, and he left one +legitimate, and probably two illegitimate daughters. Enzio forms the +subject of a drama by E.B.S. Raupach and of an opera by A.F.B. Dulk. + + See F.W. Grossman, _Konig Enzio_ (Gottingen, 1883); and H. Blasius, + _Konig Enzio_ (Breslau, 1884). + + + + +ENZYME (Gr. [Greek: enzymos], leavened, from [Greek: en], in, and +[Greek: zyme], leaven), a term, first suggested by Kuhne, for an +unorganized ferment (see FERMENTATION), a group of substances, in the +constitution of plants and animals, which decompose certain carbon +compounds occurring in association with them. See also PLANTS: +_Physiology_; NUTRITION, &c. + + + + +EOCENE (Gr. [Greek: eos], dawn, [Greek: kainos], recent), in geology, +the name suggested by Sir C. Lyell in 1833 for the lower subdivision of +the rocks of the Tertiary Era. The term was intended to convey the idea +that this was the period which saw the dawn of the recent or existing +forms of life, because it was estimated that among the fossils of this +period only 3-1/2% of the species are still living. Since Lyell's time +much has been learned about the fauna and flora of the period, and many +palaeontologists doubt if any of the Eocene _species_ are still extant, +unless it be some of the lowest forms of life. Nevertheless the name is +a convenient one and is in general use. The Eocene as originally defined +was not long left intact, for E. Beyrich in 1854 proposed the term +"Oligocene" for the upper portion, and later, in 1874, K. Schimper +suggested "Paleocene" as a separate appellation for the lower portion. +The Oligocene division has been generally accepted as a distinct period, +but "Paleocene" is not so widely used. + +In north-western Europe the close of the Cretaceous period was marked +by an extensive emergence of the land, accompanied, in many places, by +considerable erosion of the Mesozoic rocks; a prolonged interval elapsed +before a relative depression of the land set in and the first Eocene +deposits were formed. The early Eocene formations of the +London-Paris-Belgian basin were of fresh-water and brackish origin; +towards the middle of the period they had become marine, while later +they reverted to the original type. In southern and eastern Europe +changes of sea-level were less pronounced in character; here the late +Cretaceous seas were followed without much modification by those of the +Eocene period, so rich in foraminiferal life. In many other regions, the +great gap which separates the Tertiary from the Mesozoic rocks in the +neighbourhood of London and Paris does not exist, and the boundary line +is difficult to draw. Eocene strata succeed Cretaceous rocks without +serious unconformity in the Libyan area, parts of Denmark, S.E. Alps, +India, New Zealand and central N. America. The unconformity is marked in +England, parts of Egypt, on the Atlantic coastal plain and in the +eastern gulf region of N. America, as well as in the marine Eocene of +western Oregon. The clastic Flysch formation of the Carpathians and +northern Alps appears to be of Eocene age in the upper and Cretaceous in +the lower part. The Eocene sea covered at various times a strip of the +Atlantic coast from New Jersey southward and sent a great tongue or bay +up the Mississippi valley; similar epicontinental seas spread over parts +of the Pacific border, but the plains of the interior with the mountains +on the west were meanwhile being filled with terrestrial and lacustrine +deposits which attained an enormous development. This great extension of +non-marine formations in the Eocene of different countries has +introduced difficulties in the way of exact correlation; it is safer, +therefore, in the present state of knowledge, to make no attempt to find +in the Eocene strata of America and India, &c., the precise equivalent +of subdivisions that have been determined with more or less exactitude +in the London-Paris-Belgian area. + +[Illustration: Distribution of Eocene Rocks.] + +It is possible that in Eocene times there existed a greater continuity +of the northern land masses than obtains to-day. Europe at that time was +probably united with N. America through Iceland and Greenland; while on +the other side, America may have joined Asia by the way of Alaska. On +the other hand, the great central, mediterranean sea which stretched +across the Eurasian continents sent an arm northward somewhere just east +of the Ural mountains, and thus divided the northern land mass in that +region. S. America, Australia and perhaps Africa _may_ have been +connected more or less directly with the Antarctic continent. + +Associated, no doubt, with the crustal movements which closed the +Cretaceous and inaugurated the Eocene period, there were local and +intermittent manifestations of volcanic activity throughout the period. +Diabases, gabbros, serpentines, soda-potash granites, &c., are found in +the Eocene of the central and northern Apennines. Tuffs occur in the +Veronese and Vicentin Alps--Ronca and Spelecco schists. Tuffs, basalts +and other igneous rocks appear also in Montana, Wyoming, California, +Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Colorado; also in Central America, the +Antillean region and S. America. + +It has been very generally assumed by geologists, mainly upon the +evidence of plant remains, that the Eocene period opened with a +temperate climate in northern latitudes; later, as indicated by the +London Clay, Alum Bay and Bournemouth beds, &c., the temperature appears +to have been at least subtropical. But it should be observed that the +frequent admixture of temperate forms with what are now tropical species +makes it difficult to speak with certainty as to the degree of warmth +experienced. The occurrence of lignites in the Eocene of the Paris +basin, Tirol and N. America is worthy of consideration in this +connexion. On the other hand, the coarse boulder beds in the lower +Flysch have been regarded as evidence of local glaciation; this would +not be inconsistent with a period of widespread geniality of climate, as +is indicated by the large size of the nummulites and the dispersion of +the marine Mollusca, but the evidence for glaciation is not yet +conclusive. + + _Eocene Stratigraphy._--In Britain, with the exception of the Bovey + beds (q.v.) and the leaf-bearing beds of Antrim and Mull, Eocene rocks + are confined to the south-eastern portion of England. They lie in the + two well-marked synclinal basins of London and Hampshire which are + conterminous in the western area (Hampshire, Berkshire), but are + separated towards the east by the denuded anticline of the Weald. The + strata in these two basins have been grouped in the following manner:-- + + _London Basin._ _Hampshire Basin._ + + Upper Upper Bagshot Sands. Headon Hill and Barton Sands. + + / Middle Bagshot Beds and Bracklesham Beds and leaf + Middle < part of Lower Bagshot beds of Bournemouth and + \ Beds. Alum Bay. + + / Part of Lower Bagshot + | Beds, London Clay, + | Blackheath and Oldhaven London Clay and the equivalent + Lower < Beds, Woolwich and Bognor Beds, Woolwich + | Reading Beds, Thanet and Reading Beds. + \ Sands. + + The Thanet sands have not been recognized in the Hampshire basin; they + are usually pale yellow and greenish sands with streaks of clay and at + the base; resting on an evenly denuded surface of chalk is a very + constant layer of green-coated, well-rounded chalk flint pebbles. It + is a marine formation, but fossils are scarce except in E. Kent, where + it attains its most complete development. The Woolwich and Reading + beds (see READING BEDS) contain both marine and estuarine fossils. In + western Kent, between the Woolwich beds and the London Clay are the + Oldhaven beds or Blackheath pebbles, 20 to 40 ft., made up almost + entirely of well-rounded flint pebbles set in sand; the fossils are + marine and estuarine. The London Clay, 500 ft. thick, is a marine + deposit consisting of blue or brown clay with sandy layers and + septarian nodules; its equivalent in the Hampshire area is sometimes + called the Bognor Clay, well exposed on the coast of Sussex. The + Bagshot, Bracklesham and Barton beds will be found briefly described + under those heads. + + Crossing the English Channel, we find in northern France and Belgium a + series of deposits identified in their general characters with those + of England. The anticlinal ridge of the English Weald is prolonged + south-eastwards on to the continent, and separates the Belgian from + the French Eocene areas much as it separates the areas of London and + Hampshire; and it is clear that at the time of deposition all four + regions were intimately related and subject to similar variations of + marine and estuarine conditions. With a series of strata so variable + from point to point it is natural that many purely local phases should + have received distinctive names; in the Upper Eocene of the Paris + basin the more important formations are the highly fossiliferous + marine sands known as the "Sands of Beauchamp" and the local + fresh-water limestone, the "Calcaire de St Ouen." The Middle Eocene is + represented by the well-known "Calcaire grossier," about 90 ft. thick. + The beds in this series vary a good deal lithologically, some being + sandy, others marly or glauconitic; fossils are abundant. The Upper + Calcaire grossier or "Caillasses" is a fresh-water formation; the + middle division is marine; while the lower one is partly marine, + partly of fresh-water origin. The numerous quarries and mines for + building stone in the neighbourhood of Paris have made it possible to + acquire a very precise knowledge of this division, and many of the + beds have received trade names, such as "Rochette," "Roche," "Banc + franc," "Banc vert," "Cliquart," "Saint Nom;" the two last named are + dolomitic. Below these limestones are the nummulitic sands of Cuise + and Soissons. The Lower Eocene contains the lignitic plastic clay + (_argile plastique_) of Soissons and elsewhere; the limestones of + Rilly and Sezanne and the greenish glauconitic sands of Bracheux. The + relative position of the above formations with respect to those of + Belgium and England will be seen from the table of Eocene strata. The + Eocene deposits of southern Europe differ in a marked manner from + those of the Anglo-Parisian basin. The most important feature is the + great development of nummulitic limestone with thin marls and + nummulitic sandstones. The sea in which the nummulitic limestones were + formed occupied the site of an enlarged Mediterranean communicating + with similar waters right round the world, for these rocks are found + not only in southern Europe, including all the Alpine tracts, Greece + and Turkey and southern Russia, but they are well developed in + northern Africa, Asia Minor, Palestine, and they may be followed + through Persia, Baluchistan, India, into China, Tibet, Japan, Sumatra, + Borneo and the Philippines. The nummulitic limestones are frequently + hard and crystalline, especially where they have been subjected to + elevation and compression as in the Alpine region, 10,000 ft. above + the sea, or from 16,000, to 20,000 ft., in the central Asian plateau. + Besides being a widespread formation the nummulitic limestone is + locally several thousand feet thick. + + While the foraminiferal limestones were being formed over most of + southern Europe, a series of clastic beds were in course of formation + in the Carpathians and the northern Alpine region, viz. the Flysch and + the Vienna sandstone. Some portions of this Alpine Eocene are coarsely + conglomeratic, and in places there are boulders of non-local rocks of + enormous dimensions included in the argillaceous or sandy matrix. The + occurrence of these large boulders together with the scarceness of + fossils has suggested a glacial origin for the formation; but the + evidence hitherto collected is not conclusive. C.W. von Gumbel has + classified the Eocene of the northern Alps (Bavaria, &c.) as follows:-- + + Upper Eocene, Flysch and Vienna sandstone, with younger nummulitic + beds and Haring group. + + Middle " Kressenberg Beds, with older nummulitic beds. + + Lower " Burberg Beds, Greensands with small nummulites. + + The Haring group of northern Tirol contains lignite beds of some + importance. In the southern and S.E. Alps the following divisions are + recognized. + + Upper Eocene, Macigno or Tassello--Vienna Sandstone, conglomerates, + marls and shales. + + Middle " Nummulitic limestones, three subdivisions. + + Lower " Liburnian stage (or Proteocene), foraminiferal + limestones with fresh-water intercalations at the top + and bottom, the _Cosina_ beds, fresh-water in the + middle of the series. + + In the central and northern Apennines the Eocene strata have been + subdivided by Prof. F. Sacco into an upper Bartonian, a middle + Parisian and a lower Suessonian series. In the middle member are the + representatives of the Flysch and the Macigno. These Eocene strata are + upwards of 5500 ft. thick. In northern Africa the nummulitic + limestones and sandstones are widely spread; the lower portions + comprise the Libyan group and the shales of Esneh on the Nile + (Flandrien), the _Alveolina_ beds of Sokotra and others; the Mokattam + stage of Egypt is a representative of the later Eocene. Much of the N. + African Eocene contains phosphatic beds. In India strata of Eocene age + are extensively developed; in Sind the marine Ranikot beds, 1500 to + 2000 ft., consisting of clays with gypsum and lignite, shales and + sandstones; these beds have, side by side with Eocene nummulites, a + few fossils of Cretaceous affinities. Above the Ranikot beds are the + massive nummulitic limestones and sandstones of the Kirthar group; + these are succeeded by the nummulitic limestones and shales at the + base of the Nari group. In the southern Himalayan region the + nummulitic phase of Eocene deposit is well developed, but there are + difficulties in fixing the line of demarcation between this and the + younger formations. The lower part of the Sirmur series of the Simla + district may belong to this period; it is subdivided into the Kasauli + group and the Dagshai group with the Subathu group at the base. + Beneath the thick nummulitic Eocene limestone of the Salt Range are + shales and marls with a few coal seams. The marine Eocene rocks of N. + America are most extensively developed round the coast of the Gulf of + Mexico, whence they spread into the valley of the Mississippi and, as + a comparatively narrow strip, along the Atlantic coastal plain to New + Jersey. + + The series in Alabama, which may be taken as typical of the Gulf coast + Eocene, is as follows:-- + + Upper Jacksonian, White limestone of Alabama (and Vicksburg?). + + Middle Claibornian, Claiborne series. + Buhrstone series. + + Lower, Chickasawan Sands and lignites. + Midwayan or Clayton formation, limestones. + + The above succession is not fully represented in the Atlantic coast + states. + + On the Pacific coast marine formations are found in California and + Oregon; such are the Tejon series with lignite and oil; the Escondido + series of S. California (7000 ft.), part of the Pascadero series of + the Santa Cruz Mountains; the Pulaski, Tyee, Arago and Coaledo + beds--with coals--in Oregon. In the Puget formation of Washington we + have a great series of sediments, largely of brackish water origin, + and in parts coal-bearing. The total thickness of this formation has + been estimated at 20,000 ft. (it may prove to be less than this), but + it is probable that only the lower portion is of Eocene age. The most + interesting of the N. American Eocene deposits are those of the Rocky + Mountains and the adjacent western plains, in Wyoming, Nevada, + Nebraska, Colorado, &c.; they are of terrestrial, lacustrine or + aeolian origin, and on this account and because they were not strictly + synchronous, there is considerable difficulty in placing them in their + true position in the time-scale. The main divisions or groups are + generally recognized as follows:-- + + Mammalian + Zonal Forms. + + Upper [1] Uinta Group, 800 ft. (? = Jacksonian) _Diplacodon._ + _Telmatotherium._ + + Middle[2] Bridger Group, 2000 ft. (? = Claibornian) _Uintatherium._ + + Lower [3] Wind River Group, 800 ft. _Bathyopsis._ + [4] Wasatch Group, 2000 ft. (? = Chickasawan) _Coryphodon._ + + Basal [5] Torrejon Group, 300 ft. _Pantolambda._ + [6] Puerco Group, 500 to 1000 ft. _Polymastodon._ + + [1] South of the Uinta Mts. in Utah. + [2] Fort Bridger Basin. + [3] Wind river in Wyoming. + [4] Wasatch Mts. in Utah. + [5] Torrejon in New Mexico. + [6] Puerco river, New Mexico. + + The Fort Union beds of Canada and parts of Montana and N. Dakota are + probably the oldest Eocene strata of the Western Interior; they are + some 2000 ft. thick and possibly are equivalent to the Midwayan group. + But in these beds, as in those known as Arapahoe, Livingston, Denver, + Ohio and Ruby, which are now often classed as belonging to the upper + Laramie formation, it is safer to regard them as a transitional series + between the Mesozoic and Tertiary systems. There is, however, a marked + unconformity between the Eocene Telluride or San Miguel and Poison + Canyon formations of Colorado and the underlying Laramie rocks. + + Many local aspects of Eocene rocks have received special names, but + too little is known about them to enable them to be correctly placed + in the Eocene series. Such are the Clarno formation (late Eocene) of + the John Day basin, Oregon, the Pinyon conglomerate of Yellowstone + Park, the Sphinx conglomerate of Montana, the Whitetail conglomerate + of Arizona, the Manti shales of Utah, the Mojave formation of S. + California and the Amyzon formation of Nevada. + + Of the Eocene of other countries little is known in detail. Strata of + this age occur in Central and S. America (Patagonia-Megellanian + series--Brazil, Chile, Argentina), in S. Australia (and in the Great + Australian Bight), New Zealand, in Seymour Island near Graham Land in + the Antarctic Regions, Japan, Java, Borneo, New Guinea, Moluccas, + Philippines, New Caledonia, also in Greenland, Bear Island, + Spitzbergen and Siberia. + +_Organic Life of the Eocene Period._--As it has been observed above, the +name Eocene was given to this period on the ground that in its fauna +only a small percentage of _living_ species were present; this estimation +was founded upon the assemblage of invertebrate remains in which, from +the commencement of this period until the present day, there has been +comparatively little change. The real biological interest of the period +centres around the higher vertebrate types. In the marine mollusca the +most noteworthy change is the entire absence of ammonoids, the group +which throughout the Mesozoic era had taken so prominent a place, but +disappeared completely with the close of the Cretaceous. Nautiloids were +more abundant than they are at present, but as a whole the Cephalopods +took a more subordinate part than they had done in previous periods. On +the other hand, Gasteropods and Pelecypods found in the numerous shallow +seas a very suitable environment and flourished exceedingly, and their +shells are often preserved in a state of great perfection and in +enormous numbers. Of the Gasteropod genera _Cerithium_ with its +estuarine and lagoonal forms _Potamides_, _Potamidopsis_, &c., is very +characteristic; _Rostellaria_, _Voluta_, _Fusus_, _Pleurotoma_, _Conus_, +_Typhis_, may also be cited. _Cardium_, _Venericardia_, _Crassatella_, +_Corbulomya_, _Cytherea_, _Lucina_, _Anomia_, _Ostrea_ are a few of the +many Pelecypod genera. Echinoderms were represented by abundant +sea-urchins, _Echinolampas_, _Linthia_, _Conoclypeus_, &c. Corals +flourished on the numerous reefs and approximated to modern forms +(_Trochosmilia_, _Dendrophyllia_). But by far the most abundant marine +organisms were the foraminifera which flourished in the warm seas in +countless myriads. Foremost among these are the _Nummulites_, which by +their extraordinary numerical development and great size, as well as by +their wide distribution, demand special recognition. Many other genera +of almost equal importance as rock builders, lived at the same time: +_Orthophragma_, _Operculina_, _Assilina_, _Orbitolites_, _Miliola_, +_Alveolina_. Crustacea were fairly abundant (_Xanthopsis_, _Portunus_), +and most of the orders and many families of modern insects were +represented. + +When we turn to the higher forms of life, the reptiles and mammals, +we find a remarkable contrast between the fauna of the Eocene and those +periods which preceded and succeeded it. The great group of Saurian +reptiles, whose members had held dominion on land and sea during most of +the Mesozoic time, had completely disappeared by the beginning of the +Eocene; in their place placental mammals made their appearance and +rapidly became the dominant group. Among the early Eocene mammals no +trace can be found of the numerous and clearly-marked orders with which +we are familiar to-day; instead we find obscurely differentiated forms, +which cannot be fitted without violence into any of the modern orders. +The early placental mammals were generalized types (with certain +non-placental characters) with potentialities for rapid divergence and +development in the direction of the more specialized modern orders. +Thus, the Creodonta foreshadowed the Carnivora, the Condylarthra +presaged the herbivorous groups; but before the close of this period, so +favourable were the conditions of life to a rapid evolution of types, +that most of the great _orders_ had been clearly defined, though none of +the Eocene _genera_ are still extant. Among the early carnivores were +_Arctocyon_, _Palaeonictis_, _Amblyctonus_, _Hyaenodon_, _Cynodon_, +_Provivera_, _Patriofelis_. The primitive dog-like forms did not appear +until late in the period, in Europe; and true cats did not arrive until +later, though they were represented by _Eusmilus_ in the Upper Eocene of +France. The primitive ungulates (Condylarths) were generalized forms +with five effective toes, exemplified in _Phenacodus_. The gross +Amblypoda, with five-toed stumpy feet (_Coryphodon_), were prominent in +the early Eocene; particularly striking forms were the _Dinoceratidae_, +_Dinoceras_, with three pairs of horns or protuberances on its massive +skull and a pair of huge canine teeth projecting downwards; _Tinoceras_, +_Uintatherium_, _Loxophodon_, &c.; these elephantine creatures, whose +remains are so abundant in the Eocene deposits of western America, died +out before the close of the period. The divergence of the hoofed mammals +into the two prominent divisions, the odd-toed and even-toed, began in +this period, but the former did not get beyond the three-toed stage. The +least differentiated of the odd-toed group were the Lophiodonts: tapirs +were foreshadowed by _Systemodon_ and similar forms (_Palaeotherium_, +_Paloplotherium_); the peccary-like _Hyracotherium_ was a forerunner of +the horse, _Hyrochinus_ was a primitive rhinoceros. The evolution of the +horse through such forms as _Hyracotherium_, _Pachynolophus_, +_Eohippus_, &c., appears to have proceeded along parallel lines in +Eurasia and America, but the true horse did not arrive until later. +Ancestral deer were represented by _Dichobune_, _Amphitragulus_ and +others, while many small hog-like forms existed (_Diplopus_, _Eohyus_, +_Hyopotamus_, _Homacodon_). The primitive stock of the camel group +developed in N. America in late Eocene time and sent branches into S. +America and Eurasia. The edentates were very generalized forms at this +period (Ganodonta); the rodents (Tillodontia) attained a large size for +members of this group, e.g. _Tillotherium_. The Insectivores had Eocene +forerunners, and the Lemuroids--probable ancestors of the apes--were +forms of great interest, _Anaptomorphus_, _Microsyops_, _Heterohyus_, +_Microchaerus_, _Coenopithecus_; even the Cetaceans were well +represented by _Zeuglodon_ and others. + + +--------------+-------------------------+----------------------+-------------------+---------------+------------------+------------------+ + | | | | | Mediterranean | | | + | | | | | regions and | Flysch | | + | Stages. | Paris Basin. | England. | Belgian Basin. | Great Central | Phase. | North America. | + | | | | | sea. | | | + +--------------+-------------------------+----------------------+-------------------+---------------+------------------+------------------+ + | Bartonien.[1]| Limestone of Saint-Ouen.| Barton beds. | | | | Unita Group and | + | | Sands of Mortefontaine. | | Sands of Lede. | | | Jacksonian. | + | | Sands of Beauchamp. | Upper Bagshot sands. | | | | | + | | Sands of Auvers. | | | | | | + +--------------+-------------------------+----------------------+-------------------+ | | | + | | | Bracklesham and | Laekenien. | | | Bridger Group | + | Lutetien. | Calcaire grossier. | Bournemouth beds. | Bruxellien. | | | and | + | | | Lower Bagshot sands. | Paniselien. | | Upper part of the| Claibornian. | + +--------------+-------------------------+----------------------+-------------------+ | Alpine Flysch | | + | Ypresien. | Nummulitic sands of | Alum Bay leaf beds. | Sands of Mons en | | and Vienna and | Wind River Group.| + | | Soissons and Sands of | | Pevele. | Nummulitic | Carpathian | Wasatch Group | + | | Cuise and Aizy. | | Flanders Clay. | limestones, | sandstones. | and | + | | | | | sandstones | | | + +---+----------+ | +-------------------+ and shales. | | | + | | | | London Clay. | | | Macigno of the | | + | L | | | Oldhaven beds. | Upper Landenien | | Apennines and | | + | a | Sparna- | | | sands. | | Maritime Alps. | Chickasawan. | + | n | cien. | Plastic Clay and lignite| Woolwich and Reading | | | | | + | d | | beds. | beds. | Sands of | | | | + | e |----------+-------------------------+----------------------+ Ostricourt. | | | Torrejon Group | + | n | | Limestones of Rilly and | | | | | and | + | i | | Sezanne. | Thanet sands. | Landenien tuffeau.| | | Midwayan. | + | e |Thanetien.| Sands of Rilly and | | | | | | + | n | | Bracheux. | | Marls of Gelinden.| | | Puerco Group. | + | | | | | | | | | + +---+----------+-------------------------+----------------------+-------------------+---------------+------------------+------------------+ + +The non-placental mammals although abundant were taking a secondary +place; _Didelphys_, the primitive opossum, is noteworthy on account of +its wide geographical range. + +Among the birds, the large flightless forms, _Eupterornis_, _Gastornis_, +were prominent, and many others were present, such as the ancestral +forms of our modern gulls, albatrosses, herons, buzzards, eagles, owls, +quails, plovers. Reptiles were poorly represented, with the exception of +crocodilians, tortoises, turtles and some large snakes. + +The flora of the Eocene period, although full of interest, does not +convey the impression of newness that is afforded by the fauna of the +period. The reason for this difference is this: the newer flora had been +introduced and had developed to a considerable extent in the Cretaceous +period, and there is no sharp break between the flora of the earlier and +that of the later period; in both we find a mixed assemblage--what we +should now regard as tropical palms, growing side by side with +mild-temperate trees. Early Eocene plants in N. Europe, oaks, willows, +chestnuts (Castanea), laurels, indicate a more temperate climate than +existed in Middle Eocene when in the Isle of Wight, Hampshire and the +adjacent portions of the continent, palms, figs, cinnamon flourished +along with the cactus, magnolia, sequoia, cypress and ferns. The late +Eocene flora of Europe was very similar to its descendant in modern +Australasia. + + See A. de Lapparent, _Traite de geologie_, vol. iii. (5th ed., 1906), + which contains a good general account of the period, with numerous + references to original papers. Also R.B. Newton, _Systematic List of + the Frederick E. Edwards Collection of British Oligocene and Eocene + Mollusca in the British Museum_ (_Natural History_) (1891), pp. + 299-325; G.D. Harris, "A Revision of our Lower Eocenes," _Proc. + Geologists' Assoc._ x., 1887-1888; W.B. Clark, "Correlation Papers: + Eocene" (1891), _U.S. Geol. Survey Bull. No. 83._ For more recent + literature consult _Geological Literature added to the Geological + Society's Library_, published annually by the society. (J. A. H.) + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] + Bartonien from Barton, England. + Lutetien " Lutetia = Paris. + Ypresien " Ypres, Flanders. + Landenien " Landen, Belgium. + Thanetien " The Isle of Thanet. + Sparnacien " Sparnacum = Epernay. + Laekenien " Laeken, Belgium. + Bruxellien " Brussels. + Paniselien " Mont Panisel, near Mons. + + Other names that have been applied to subdivisions of the Eocene not + included in the table are Parisien and Suessonien (Soissons); Ludien + (Ludes in the Paris basin) and Priabonien (Priabona in the Vicentine + Alps); Heersien (Heer near Maastricht) and Wemmelien (Wemmel, + Belgium); very many more might be mentioned. + + + + +EON DE BEAUMONT, CHARLES GENEVIEVE LOUISE AUGUSTE ANDRE TIMOTHEE D' +(1728-1810), commonly known as the CHEVALIER D'EON, French political +adventurer, famous for the supposed mystery of his sex, was born near +Tonnerre in Burgundy, on the 7th of October 1728. He was the son of an +advocate of good position, and after a distinguished course of study at +the College Mazarin he became a doctor of law by special dispensation +before the usual age, and adopted his father's profession. He began +literary work as a contributor to Freron's _Annee litteraire_, and +attracted notice as a political writer by two works on financial and +administrative questions, which he published in his twenty-fifth year. +His reputation increased so rapidly that in 1755 he was, on the +recommendation of Louis Francois, prince of Conti, entrusted by Louis +XV. (who had originally started his "secret" foreign policy--i.e. by +undisclosed agents behind the backs of his ministers--in favour of the +prince of Conti's ambition to be king of Poland) with a secret mission +to the court of Russia. It was on this occasion that he is said for the +first time to have assumed the dress of a woman, with the connivance, it +is supposed, of the French court.[1] In this disguise he obtained the +appointment of reader to the empress Elizabeth, and won her over +entirely to the views of his royal master, with whom he maintained a +secret correspondence during the whole of his diplomatic career. After a +year's absence he returned to Paris to be immediately charged with a +second mission to St Petersburg, in which he figured in his true sex, +and as brother of the reader who had been at the Russian court the year +before. He played an important part in the negotiations between the +courts of Russia, Austria and France during the Seven Years' War. For +these diplomatic services he was rewarded with the decoration of the +grand cross of St Louis. In 1759 he served with the French army on the +Rhine as aide-de-camp to the marshal de Broglie, and was wounded during +the campaign. He had held for some years previously a commission in a +regiment of dragoons, and was distinguished for his skill in military +exercises, particularly in fencing. In 1762, on the return of the duc de +Nivernais, d'Eon, who had been secretary to his embassy, was appointed +his successor, first as resident agent and then as minister +plenipotentiary at the court of Great Britain. He had not been long in +this position when he lost the favour of his sovereign, chiefly, +according to his own account, through the adverse influence of Madame de +Pompadour, who was jealous of him as a secret correspondent of the king. +Superseded by count de Guerchy, d'Eon showed his irritation by denying +the genuineness of the letter of appointment, and by raising an action +against Guerchy for an attempt to poison him. Guerchy, on the other +hand, had previously commenced an action against d'Eon for libel, +founded on the publication by the latter of certain state documents of +which he had possession in his official capacity. Both parties succeeded +in so far as a true bill was found against Guerchy for the attempt to +murder, though by pleading his privilege as ambassador he escaped a +trial, and d'Eon was found guilty of the libel. Failing to come up for +judgment when called on, he was outlawed. For some years afterwards he +lived in obscurity, appearing in public chiefly at fencing matches. +During this period rumours as to the sex of d'Eon, originating probably +in the story of his first residence at St Petersburg as a female, began +to excite public interest. In 1774 he published at Amsterdam a book +called _Les Loisirs du Chevalier d'Eon_, which stimulated gossip. Bets +were frequently laid on the subject, and an action raised before Lord +Mansfield in 1777 for the recovery of one of these bets brought the +question to a judicial decision, by which d'Eon was declared a female. A +month after the trial he returned to France, having received permission +to do so as the result of negotiations in which Beaumarchais was +employed as agent. The conditions were that he was to deliver up certain +state documents in his possession, and to wear the dress of a female. +The reason for the latter of these stipulations has never been clearly +explained, but he complied with it to the close of his life. In 1784 he +received permission to visit London for the purpose of bringing back his +library and other property. He did not, however, return to France, +though after the Revolution he sent a letter, using the name of Madame +d'Eon, in which he offered to serve in the republican army. He continued +to dress as a lady, and took part in fencing matches with success, +though at last in 1796 he was badly hurt in one. He died in London on +the 22nd of May 1810. During the closing years of his life he is said to +have enjoyed a small pension from George III. A post-mortem examination +of the body conclusively established the fact that d'Eon was a man. + + The best modern accounts are in the duc de Broglie's _Le Secret du + roi_ (1888); Captain J. Buchan Telfer's _Strange Career of the + Chevalier d'Eon_ (1888); Octave Homberg and Fernand Jousselin, _Le + Chevalier d'Eon_ (1904); and A. Lang's _Historical Mysteries_ (1904). + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] But see Lang's _Historical Mysteries_, pp. 241-242, where this + traditional account is discussed and rejected. + + + + +EOTVOS, JOZSEF, BARON (1813-1871), Hungarian writer and statesman, the +son of Baron Ignacz Eotvos and the baroness Lilian, was born at Buda on +the 13th of September 1813. After an excellent education he entered the +civil service as a vice-notary, and was early introduced to political +life by his father. He also spent many years in western Europe, +assimilating the new ideas both literary and political, and making the +acquaintance of the leaders of the Romantic school. On his return to +Hungary he wrote his first political work, _Prison Reform_; and at the +diet of 1839-1840 he made a great impression by his eloquence and +learning. One of his first speeches (published, with additional matter, +in 1841) warmly advocated Jewish emancipation. Subsequently, in the +columns of the _Pesti Hirlap_, Eotvos disseminated his progressive ideas +farther afield, his standpoint being that the necessary reforms could +only be carried out administratively by a responsible and purely +national government. The same sentiments pervade his novel _The Village +Notary_ (1844-1846), one of the classics of the Magyar literature, as +well as in the less notable romance _Hungary in 1514_, and the comedy +_Long live Equality!_ In 1842 he married Anna Rosty, but his happy +domestic life did not interfere with his public career. He was now +generally regarded as one of the leading writers and politicians of +Hungary, while the charm of his oratory was such that, whenever the +archduke palatine Joseph desired to have a full attendance in the House +of Magnates, he called upon Eotvos to address it. The February +revolution of 1848 was the complete triumph of Eotvos' ideas, and he +held the portfolio of public worship and instruction in the first +responsible Hungarian ministry. But his influence extended far beyond +his own department. Eotvos, Deak and Szechenyi represented the pacific, +moderating influence in the council of ministers, but when the premier, +Batthyany, resigned, Eotvos, in despair, retired for a time to Munich. +Yet, though withdrawn from the tempests of the War of Independence, he +continued to serve his country with his pen. His _Influence of the +Ruling Ideas of the 19th Century on the State_ (Pest, 1851-1854, German +editions at Vienna and Leipzig the same year) profoundly influenced +literature and public opinion in Hungary. On his return home, in 1851, +he kept resolutely aloof from all political movements. In 1859 he +published _The Guarantees of the Power and Unity of Austria_ (Ger. ed. +Leipzig, same year), in which he tried to arrive at a compromise between +personal union and ministerial responsibility on the one hand and +centralization on the other. After the Italian war, however, such a +halting-place was regarded as inadequate by the majority of the nation. +In the diet of 1861 Eotvos was one of the most loyal followers of Deak, +and his speech in favour of the "Address" (see DEAK, FRANCIS) made a +great impression at Vienna. The enforced calm which prevailed during the +next few years enabled him to devote himself once more to literature, +and, in 1866, he was elected president of the Hungarian academy. In the +diets of 1865 and 1867 he fought zealously by the side of Deak, with +whose policy he now completely associated himself. On the formation of +the Andrassy cabinet (Feb. 1867) he once more accepted the portfolio of +public worship and education, being the only one of the ministers of +1848 who thus returned to office. He had now, at last, the opportunity +of realizing the ideals of a lifetime. That very year the diet passed +his bill for the emancipation of the Jews; though his further efforts in +the direction of religious liberty were less successful, owing to the +opposition of the Catholics. But his greatest achievement was the +National Schools Act, the most complete system of education provided for +Hungary since the days of Maria Theresa. Good Catholic though he was (in +matters of religion he had been the friend and was the disciple of +Montalembert), Eotvos looked with disfavour on the dogma of papal +infallibility, promulgated in 1870, and when the bishop of Fehervar +proclaimed it, Eotvos cited him to appear at the capital _ad audiendum +verbum regium_. He was a constant defender of the composition with +Austria (_Ausgleich_), and during the absence of Andrassy used to +preside over the council of ministers; but the labours of the last few +years were too much for his failing health, and he died at Pest on the +2nd of February 1871. On the 3rd of May 1879 a statue was erected to him +at Pest in the square which bears his name. + +Eotvos occupied as prominent a place in Hungarian literature as in +Hungarian politics. His peculiarity, both as a politician and as a +statesman, lies in the fact that he was a true philosopher, a +philosopher at heart as well as in theory; and in his poems and novels +he clothed in artistic forms all the great ideas for which he contended +in social and political life. The best of his verses are to be found in +his ballads, but his poems are insignificant compared with his romances. +It was _The Carthusians_, written on the occasion of the floods at Pest +in 1838, that first took the public by storm. The Magyar novel was then +in its infancy, being chiefly represented by the historico-epics of +Josika. Eotvos first modernized it, giving prominence in his pages to +current social problems and political aspirations. The famous _Village +Notary_ came still nearer to actual life, while _Hungary in 1514_, in +which the terrible Dozsa _Jacquerie_ (see DOZSA) is so vividly +described, is especially interesting because it rightly attributes the +great national catastrophe of Mohacs to the blind selfishness of the +Magyar nobility and the intense sufferings of the people. Yet, as +already stated, all these books are written with a moral purpose, and +their somewhat involved and difficult style is, nowadays at any rate, a +trial to those who are acquainted with the easy, brilliant and lively +novels of Jokai. + + The best edition of Eotvos' collected works is that of 1891, in 17 + vols. Comparatively few of his writings have been translated, but + there are a good English version (London, 1850) and numerous German + versions of _The Village Notary_, while _The Emancipation of the Jews_ + has been translated into Italian and German (Pest, 1841-1842), and a + German translation of _Hungary in 1514_, under the title of _Der + Bauernkrieg in Ungarn_ was published at Pest in 1850. + + See A. Ban, _Life and Art of Baron Joseph Eotvos_ (Hung.) (Budapest, + 1902); Zoltan Ferenczi _Baron Joseph Eotvos_ (Hung.) (Budapest, 1903) + [this is the best biography]; and M. Berkovics, _Baron Joseph Eotvos + and the French Literature_ (Hung.) (Budapest, 1904). (R. N. B.) + + + + +EPAMINONDAS (c. 418-362), Theban general and statesman, born about 418 +B.C. of a noble but impoverished family. For his education he was +chiefly indebted to Lysis of Tarentum, a Pythagorean exile who had found +refuge with his father Polymnis. He first comes into notice in the +attack upon Mantineia in 385, when he fought on the Spartan side and +saved the life of his future colleague Pelopidas. In his youth +Epaminondas took little part in public affairs; he held aloof from the +political assassinations which preceded the Theban insurrection of 379. +But in the following campaigns against Sparta he rendered good service +in organizing the Theban defence. In 371 he represented Thebes at the +congress in Sparta, and by his refusal to surrender the Boeotian cities +under Theban control prevented the conclusion of a general peace. In the +ensuing campaign he commanded the Boeotian army which met the +Peloponnesian levy at Leuctra, and by a brilliant victory on this site, +due mainly to his daring innovations in the tactics of the heavy +infantry, established at once the predominance of Thebes among the +land-powers of Greece and his own fame as the greatest and most original +of Greek generals. At the instigation of the Peloponnesian states which +armed against Sparta in consequence of this battle, Epaminondas in 370 +led a large host into Laconia; though unable to capture Sparta he +ravaged its territory and dealt a lasting blow at Sparta's predominance +in Peloponnesus by liberating the Messenians and rebuilding their +capital at Messene. Accused on his return to Thebes of having exceeded +the term of his command, he made good his defence and was re-elected +boeotarch. In 369 he forced the Isthmus lines and secured Sicyon for +Thebes, but gained no considerable successes. In the following year he +served as a common soldier in Thessaly, and upon being reinstated in +command contrived the safe retreat of the Theban army from a difficult +position. Returning to Thessaly next year at the head of an army he +procured the liberation of Pelopidas from the tyrant Alexander of Pherae +without striking a blow. In his third expedition (366) to Peloponnesus, +Epaminondas again eluded the Isthmus garrison and won over the Achaeans +to the Theban alliance. Turning his attention to the growing maritime +power of Athens, Epaminondas next equipped a fleet of 100 triremes, and +during a cruise to the Propontis detached several states from the +Athenian confederacy. When subsequent complications threatened the +position of Thebes in Peloponnesus he again mustered a large army in +order to crush the newly formed Spartan league (362). After some +masterly operations between Sparta and Mantineia, by which he nearly +captured both these towns, he engaged in a decisive battle on the latter +site, and by his vigorous shock tactics gained a complete victory over +his opponents (see MANTINEIA). Epaminondas himself received a severe +wound during the combat, and died soon after the issue was decided. + +His title to fame rests mainly on his brilliant qualities both as a +strategist and as a tactician; his influence on military art in Greece +was of the greatest. For the purity and uprightness of his character he +likewise stood in high repute; his culture and eloquence equalled the +highest Attic standard. In politics his chief achievement was the final +overthrow of Sparta's predominance in the Peloponnese; as a constructive +statesman he displayed no special talent, and the lofty pan-Hellenic +ambitions which are imputed to him at any rate never found a practical +expression. + + Cornelius Nepos, _Vita Epaminondae_; Diodorus xv. 52-88; Xenophon, + _Hellenica_, vii.; L. Pomtow, _Das Leben des Epaminondas_ (Berlin, + 1870); von Stein, _Geschichte der spartanischen und thebanischen + Hegemonie_ (Dorpat, 1884), pp. 123 sqq.; H. Swoboda in Pauly-Wissowa, + _Realencyclopadie_, v. pt. 2 (Stuttgart, 1905), pp. 2674-2707; also + ARMY: _History_, S 6. (M. O. B. C.) + + + + +EPARCH, an official, a governor of a province of Roman Greece, [Greek: +eparchos], whose title was equivalent to, or represented that of the +Roman _praefectus_. The area of his administration was called an eparchy +([Greek: eparchia]). The term survives as one of the administrative +units of modern Greece, the country being divided into nomarchies, +subdivided into eparchies, again subdivided into demarchies (see GREECE: +_Local Administration_). "Eparch" and "eparchy" are also used in the +Russian Orthodox Church for a bishop and his diocese respectively. + + + + +EPAULETTE (a French word, from _epaule_, a shoulder), properly a +shoulder-piece, and so applied to the shoulder-knot of ribbon to which a +scapulary was attached, worn by members of a religious order. The +military usage was probably derived from the metal plate (_epauliere_) +which protected the shoulder in the defensive armour of the 16th +century. It was first used merely as a shoulder knot to fasten the +baldric, and the application of it to mark distinctive grades of rank +was begun in France at the suggestion, it is said, of Charles Louis +Auguste Fouquet, duc de Belle-Isle, in 1759. In modern times it always +appears as a shoulder ornament for military and naval uniforms. At first +it consisted merely of a fringe hanging from the end of the +shoulder-strap or cord over the sleeve, but towards the end of the 18th +century it became a solid ornament, consisting of a flat shoulder-piece, +extended beyond the point of the shoulder into an oval plate, from the +edge of which hangs a thick fringe, in the case of officers of gold or +silver. The epaulette is worn in the British navy by officers above the +rank of sub-lieutenant; in the army it ceased to be worn about 1855. It +is worn by officers in the United States navy above the rank of ensign; +since 1872 it is only worn by general officers in the army. In most +other countries epaulettes are worn by officers, and in the French army +by the men also, with a fringe of worsted, various distinctions of shape +and colour being observed between ranks, corps and arms of the service. +The "scale" is similar to the epaulette, but has no fringe. + + + + +EPEE, CHARLES-MICHEL, ABBE DE L' (1712-1789), celebrated for his +labours in behalf of the deaf and dumb, was born at Paris on the 25th of +November 1712, being the son of the king's architect. He studied for the +church, but having declined to sign a religious formula opposed to the +doctrines of the Jansenists, he was denied ordination by the bishop of +his diocese. He then devoted himself to the study of law; but about the +time of his admission to the bar of Paris, the bishop of Troyes granted +him ordination, and offered him a canonry in his cathedral. This bishop +died soon after, and the abbe, coming to Paris, was, on account of his +relations with Soanen, the famous Jansenist, deprived of his +ecclesiastical functions by the archbishop of Beaumont. About the same +time it happened that he heard of two deaf mutes whom a priest lately +dead had been endeavouring to instruct, and he offered to take his +place. The Spaniard Pereira was then in Paris, exhibiting the results he +had obtained in the education of deaf mutes; and it has been affirmed +that it was from him that Epee obtained his manual alphabet. The abbe, +however, affirmed that he knew nothing of Pereira's method; and whether +he did or not, there can be no doubt that he attained far greater +success than Pereira or any of his predecessors, and that the whole +system now followed in the instruction of deaf mutes virtually owes its +origin to his intelligence and devotion. In 1755 he founded, for this +beneficent purpose, a school which he supported at his own expense until +his death, and which afterwards was succeeded by the "Institution +Nationale des Sourds Muets a Paris," founded by the National Assembly in +1791. He died on the 23rd of December 1789. In 1838 a bronze monument +was erected over his grave in the church of Saint Roch. He published +various books on his method of instruction, but that published in 1784 +virtually supersedes all others. It is entitled _La Veritable Maniere +d'instruire les sourds et muets, confirmee par une longue experience_. +He also began a _Dictionnaire general des signes_, which was completed +by his successor, the abbe Sicard. + + + + +EPEE-DE-COMBAT, a weapon still used in France for duelling, and there +and elsewhere (blunted, of course) for exercise and amusement in fencing +(q.v.). It has a sharp-pointed blade, about 35 in. long, without any +cutting edge, and the guard, or shell, is bowl-shaped, having its +convexity towards the point. The _epee_ is the modern representative of +the small-sword, and both are distinguished from the older rapier, +mainly by being several inches shorter and much lighter in weight. The +small-sword (called thus in opposition to the heavy cavalry broadsword), +was worn by gentlemen in full dress throughout the 18th century, and it +still survives in the modern English court costume. + +Fencing practice was originally carried on without the protection of any +mask for the face. Wire masks were not invented till near 1780 by a +famous fencing-master, La Boessiere the elder, and did not come into +general use until much later. Consequently, in order to avoid dangerous +accidents to the face, and especially the eyes, it was long the rigorous +etiquette of the fencing-room that the point should always be kept low. + +In the 17th century a Scottish nobleman, who had procured the +assassination of a fencing-master in revenge for having had one of his +eyes destroyed by the latter at sword-play, pleaded on his trial for +murder that it was the custom to "spare the face." + +Rowlandson's well-known drawing of a fencing bout, dated 1787, shows two +accomplished amateurs making a foil assault without masks, while in the +background a less practised one is having a wire mask tied on. + +For greater safety the convention was very early arrived at that no hits +should count in a fencing-bout except those landing on the breast. Thus +sword-play soon became so unpractical as to lose much of its value as a +training for war or the duel. For, hits with "sharps" take effect +wherever they are made, and many an expert fencer of the old school has +been seriously wounded, or lost his life in a duel, through forgetting +that very simple fact. + +Strangely enough, when masks began to be generally worn, and the +_fleuret_ (_anglice_, "foil," a cheap and light substitute for the real +epee) was invented, fencing practice became gradually even more +conventional than before. No one seems to have understood that with +masks all the conventions could be safely done away with, root and +branch, and sword-practice might assume all the semblance of reality. +Nevertheless it should be clearly recognized that the basis of modern +foil-fencing was laid with the epee or small-sword alone, in and before +the days of Angelo, of Danet, and the famous chevalier de St George, who +were among the first to adopt the fleuret also. All the illustrious +French professors who came after them, such as La Boessiere the younger, +Lafaugere, Jean Louis, Cordelois, Grisier, Bertrand and Robert, with +amateurs like the baron d'Ezpeleta, were foil-players pure and simple, +whose reputations were gained before the modern epee play had any +recognized status. It was reserved for Jacob, a Parisian fencing-master, +to establish in the last quarter of the 19th century a definite method +of the epee, which differed essentially from all its forerunners. He was +soon followed by Baudry, Spinnewyn, Laurent and Ayat. The methods of the +four first-named, not differing much _inter se_, are based on the +perception that in the real sword fight, where hits are effective on all +parts of the person, the "classical" bent-arm guard, with the foil +inclining upwards, is hopelessly bad. It offers a tempting mark in the +exposed sword-arm itself, while the point requires a movement to bring +it in line for the attack, which involves a fatal loss of time. The epee +is really in the nature of a short lance held in one hand, and for both +rapidity and precision of attack, as well as for the defence of the +sword-arm and the body behind it, a position of guard _with the arm +almost fully extended, and epee in line with the forearm_, is far the +safest. Against this guard the direct lunge at the body is impossible, +except at the risk of a mutual or double hit (_le coup des deux +veuves_). No safe attack at the face or body can be made without first +binding or beating, opposing or evading the adverse blade, and such an +attack usually involves an initial forward movement. Beats and binds of +the blade, with retreats of the body, or counter attacks with +opposition, replace the old foil-parries in most instances, except at +close quarters. And much of the offensive is reduced to thrusts at the +wrist or forearm, intended to disable without seriously wounding the +adversary. The direct lunge (_coup-droit_) at the body often succeeds in +tournaments, but usually at the cost of a counter hit, which, though +later in time, would be fatal with sharp weapons. + +Ayat's method, as might be expected from a first-class foil-player, is +less simple. Indeed for years, too great simplicity marked the most +successful epee-play, because it usually gained its most conspicuous +victories over those who attempted a foil defence, and whose practice +gave them no safe strokes for an attack upon the extended blade. But by +degrees the epeists themselves discovered new ways of attacking with +comparative safety, and at the present day a complete epee-player is +master of a large variety of attractive as well as scientific movements, +both of attack and defence. + +It was mainly by amateurs that this development was achieved. Perhaps +the most conspicuous representative of the new school is J. +Joseph-Renaud, a consummate swordsman, who has also been a champion +foil-player. Lucien Gaudin, Alibert and Edmond Wallace may be also +mentioned as among the most skilful amateurs, Albert Ayat and L. Bouche +as professors--all of Paris. Belgium, Italy and England have also +produced epeists quite of the first rank. + +The epee lends itself to competition far better than the foil, and the +revival of the small-sword soon gave rise in France to "pools" and +"tournaments" in which there was the keenest rivalry between all comers. + +In considering the epee from a British point of view, it may be +mentioned that it was first introduced publicly in London by C. +Newton-Robinson at an important assault-at-arms held in the Steinway +Hall on the 4th May 1900. Professor Spinnewyn was the principal +demonstrator, with his pupil, the late Willy Sulzbacher. The next day +was held at the Inns of Court R. V. School of Arms, Lincoln's Inn, the +first English open epee tournament for amateurs. It was won by W. +Sulzbacher, C. Newton-Robinson being second, and Paul Ettlinger, a +French resident in London, third. This was immediately followed by the +institution of the Epee Club of London, which, under the successive +residencies of a veteran swordsman, Sir Edward Jenkinson, and of Lord +Desborough, subsequently held annual open international tournaments. The +winners were: in 1901, Willy Sulzbacher; 1902, Robert Montgomerie; 1903, +the marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat; 1904, J.J. Renaud; 1905, R. +Montgomerie. In 1906 the Amateur Fencing Association for the first time +recognized the best-placed Englishman, Edgar Seligman (who was the +actual winner), as the English epee champion. In 1907 R. Montgomerie was +again the winner, in 1908 C.L. Daniell, in 1909 R. Montgomerie. + +Among the most active of the English amateurs who were the earliest to +perceive the wonderful possibilities of epee-play, it is right to +mention Captain Hutton, Lord Desborough, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, Bart., +Sir Charles Dilke, Bart., Lord Howard de Walden, Egerton Castle, A.S. +Cope, R.A., W.H.C. Staveley, C.F. Clay, Lord Morpeth, Evan James, Paul +King, J.B. Cunliffe, John Norbury, Jr., Theodore A. Cook, John +Jenkinson, R. Montgomerie, S. Martineau, E.B. Milnes, H.J. Law, R. +Merivale, the Marquis of Dufferin, Hugh Pollock, R.W. Doyne, A.G. Ross, +the Hon. Ivor Guest and Henry Balfour. + +Among foreign amateurs who did most to promote the use of the epee in +England were Messrs P. Ettlinger, Anatole Paroissien, J. Joseph-Renaud, +W. Sulzbacher, Rene Lacroix, H.G. Berger and the Marquis de +Chasseloup-Laubat. + +Epee practice became popular among Belgian and Dutch fencers about the +same time as in England, and this made it possible to set on foot +international team-contests for amateurs, which have done much to +promote good feeling and acquaintanceship among swordsmen of several +countries. In 1903 a series of international matches between teams of +six was inaugurated in Paris. Up to 1909 the French team uniformly won +the first place, with Belgium or England second. + +English fencers who were members of these international teams were Lord +Desborough, Theodore A. Cook, Bowden, Cecil Haig, J. Norbury, Jr., R. +Montgomerie, John Jenkinson, F. Townsend, W.H.C. Staveley, S. Martineau, +C.L. Daniell, W. Godden, Captain Haig, M.D.V. Holt, Edgar Seligman, C. +Newton-Robinson, A.V. Buckland, P.M. Davson, E.M. Amphlett and L.V. +Fildes. In 1906 a British epee team of four, consisting of Lord +Desborough, Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, Bart., Edgar Seligman and C. +Newton-Robinson, with Lord Howard de Walden and Theodore Cook as +reserves (the latter acting as captain of the team), went to Athens to +compete in the international match at the Olympic games. After defeating +the Germans rather easily, the team opposed and worsted the Belgians. It +thus found itself matched against the French in the final, the Greek +team having been beaten by the French and the Dutch eliminated by the +Belgians. After a very close fight the result was officially declared a +tie. This was the first occasion upon which an English fencing team had +encountered a French one of the first rank upon even terms. In fighting +off the tie, however, the French were awarded the first prize and the +Englishmen the second. + +In the Olympic games of London, 1908, the Epee International Individual +Tournament was won by Alibert (France), but Montgomerie, Haig and Holt +(England) took the 4th, 5th, and 8th places in the final pool. The +result of the International Team competition was also very creditable to +the English representatives, Daniell, Haig, Holt, Montgomerie and +Amphlett, who by defeating the Dutch, Germans, Danes and Belgians took +second place to the French. Egerton Castle was captain of the English +team. + +In open International Tournaments on the Continent, English epeists have +also been coming to the front. None had won such a competition up to +1909 outright, but the following had reached the final pool: C. +Newton-Robinson, Brussels, 1901 (10th), Etretat, 1904 (6th); E. +Seligman, Copenhagen, 1907 (2nd), and Paris, 1909 (12th); R. +Montgomerie, Paris, 1909 (5th); and E.M. Amphlett, Paris, 1909 (10th). + +The method of ascertaining the victor in epee "tournaments" is by +dividing the competitors into "pools," usually of six or eight fencers. +Each of these fights an assault for first hit only, with every other +member of the same pool, and he who is least often hit, or not at all, +is returned the winner. If the competitors are numerous, fresh pools are +formed out of the first two, three or four in each pool of the +preliminary round, and so on, until a small number are left in for a +final pool, the winner of which is the victor of the tournament. + +Epee fencing can be, and often is, conducted indoors, but one of its +attractions consists in its fitness for open-air practice in pleasant +gardens. + +In the use of the epee the most essential points are (1) the position of +the sword-arm, which, whether fully extended or not, should always be so +placed as to ensure the protection of the wrist, forearm and elbow from +direct thrusts, by the intervention of the guard or shell; (2) readiness +of the legs for _instant_ advance or retreat; and (3) the way in which +the weapon is held, the best position (though hard to acquire and +maintain) being that adopted by J.J. Renaud with the fingers _over_ the +grip, so that a downward beat does not easily disarm. + +The play of individuals is determined by their respective temperaments +and physical powers. But every fencer should be always ready to deliver +a well-aimed, swift, direct thrust at any exposed part of the +antagonist's arm, his mask or thigh. Very tall men, who are usually not +particularly quick on their legs, should not as a rule attack, otherwise +than by direct thrusts, when matched against shorter men. For if they +merely extend their sword-arm in response to a simple attack, their +longer reach will ward it off with a stop or counter-thrust. Short men +can only attack them safely by beating, binding, grazing, pressing or +evading the blade, and the taller fencers must be prepared with all the +well-known parries and counters to such offensive movements, as well as +with the stop-thrust to be made either with advancing opposition or with +a retreat. Fencers of small stature must be exceedingly quick on their +feet, unless they possess the art of parrying to perfection, and even +then, if slow to shift ground, they will continually be in danger. With +plenty of room, the quick mover can always choose the moment when he +will be within distance, for an attack which his slower opponent will be +always fearing and unable to prevent or anticipate. + +It is desirable to put on record the modern form of the weapon. An +average epee weighs, complete, about a pound and a half, while a foil +weighs approximately one-third less. The epee blade is exactly like that +of the old small-sword after the abandonment of the "_colichemarde_" +form, in which the "_forte_" of the blade was greatly thickened. In +length from guard or shell to point it measures about 35 in., and in +width at the shell about 13/16ths of an inch. From this it gradually and +regularly tapers to the point. There is no cutting edge. The side of the +epee which is usually held uppermost is slightly concave, the other is +strengthened with a midrib, nearly equal in thickness and similar in +shape to either half of the true blade. The material is tempered steel. +There is a haft or tang about 8 in. long, which is pushed through a +circular guard or shell ("_coquille_") of convex form, the diameter of +which is normally 5 in. and the convexity 1-3/4 in. The shell is of +steel or aluminium, and if of the latter metal, sometimes fortified at +the centre with a disk of steel the size of a crown piece. The insertion +of the haft or tang through the shell may be either central or excentric +to the extent of about 1 in., for the better protection of the outside +of the forearm. + +After passing through the shell, the haft of the blade is inserted in a +grip or handle ("_poignet_"), averaging 7 in. in length and of +quadrangular section, which is made of tough wood covered with leather, +india-rubber, wound cord or other strong material with a rough surface. +The grip is somewhat wider than its vertical thickness when held in the +usual way, and it diminishes gradually from shell to pommel for +convenience of holding. It should have a slight lateral curvature, so +that in executing circular movements the pommel is kept clear of the +wrist. The pommel, usually of steel, is roughly spherical or +eight-sided, and serves as a counterbalance. The end of the haft is +riveted through it, except in the case of "_epees demontables_," which +are the most convenient, as a blade may be changed by simply unscrewing +or unlocking the pommel. + +An epee is well balanced and light in hand when, on poising the blade +across the forefinger, about 1 in. in advance of the shell, it is in +equilibrium. + +For practice, the point is blunted to resemble the flat head of a nail, +and is made still more incapable of penetration by winding around it a +small ball of waxed thread, such as cobblers use. This is called the +"button." In competitions various forms of "_boutons marqueurs_," all of +which are unsatisfactory, are occasionally used. The "_pointe d'arret_," +like a small tin-tack placed head downwards on the flattened point of +the epee, and fastened on by means of the waxed thread, is, on the +contrary, most useful, by fixing in the clothes, to show where and when +a good hit has been made. The point need only protrude about 1/16th of +an inch from the button. There are several kinds of pointes d'arret. The +best is called, after its inventor, the "Leon Sazie," and has three +blunt points of hardened steel each slightly excentric. The single point +is sometimes prevented by the thickness of the button from scoring a +good hit. + +A mask of wire netting is used to protect the face, and a stout glove on +the sword hand. It is necessary to wear strong clothes and to pad the +jacket and trousers at the most exposed parts, in case the blade should +break unnoticed. A vulnerable spot, which ought to be specially padded, +is just under the sword-arm. + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Among the older works on the history and practice of + the small-sword, or epee, are the following:--_The Scots + Fencing-Master, or Compleat Small-swordsman_, by W.H. Gent (Sir + William Hope, afterwards baronet) (Edinburgh, 1687), and several other + works by the same author, of later date, for which see _Schools and + Masters of Fence_, by Egerton Castle; _Nouveau traite de la perfection + sur le fait des armes_, by P.G.F. Girard (Paris, 1736); _L'Ecole des + armes_, by M. Angelo (London, 1763); _L'Art des armes_, by M. Danet (2 + vols., Paris, 1766-1767); _Nouveau traite de l'art des armes_, by + Nicolas Demeuse (Liege, 1778). + + More modern are: _Traite de l'art des armes_, by la Boessiere, Jr. + (Paris, 1818); _Les Armes et le duel_, by A. Grisier (2nd ed., Paris, + 1847); _Les Secrets de l'epee_, by the baron de Bazancourt (Paris, + 1862); _Schools and Masters of Fence_, by Egerton Castle (London, + 1885); _Le Jeu de l'epee_, by J. Jacob and Emil Andre (Paris, 1887); + _L'Escrime pratique au XIX^e siecle_, by Ambroise Baudry (Paris); + L'Escrime a l'epee, by A. Spinnewyn and Paul Manonry (Paris, 1898); + _The Sword and the Centuries_, by Captain Hutton (London,1901); "The + Revival of the Small-sword," by C. Newton-Robinson, in the _Nineteenth + Century and After_ (London, January 1905); _Nouveau Traite de l'epee_, + by Dr Edom, privately published (Paris, 1908); and, most important of + all, _Methode d'escrime a l'epee_, by J. Joseph-Renaud, privately + published (Paris, 1909). (C. E. N. R.) + + + + +EPERJES, a town of Hungary, capital of the county of Saros, 190 m. N.E. +of Budapest by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,098. It is situated on the left bank +of the river Tarcza, an affluent of the Theiss, and has been almost +completely rebuilt since a great fire in 1887. Eperjes is one of the +oldest towns of Hungary, and is still partly surrounded by its old +walls. It is the seat of a Greek-Catholic bishop, and possesses a +beautiful cathedral built in the 18th century in late Gothic style. It +possesses manufactures of cloth, table-linen and earthenware, and has an +active trade in wine, linen, cattle and grain. About 2 m. to the south +is Sovar with important salt-works. + +In the same county, 28 m. by rail N. of Eperjes, is situated the old +town of _Bartfa_ (pop. 6098), which possesses a Gothic church from the +14th century, and an interesting town-hall, dating from the 15th +century, and containing very valuable archives. In its neighbourhood, +surrounded by pine forests, are the baths of Bartfa, with twelve mineral +springs--iodate, ferruginous and alkaline--used for bathing and +drinking. + +About 6 m. N.W. of Eperjes is situated the village of Vorosvagas, which +contains the only opal mine in Europe. The opal was mined here 800 years +ago, and the largest piece hitherto found, weighing 2940 carats and +estimated to have a value of L175,000, is preserved in the Court Museum +at Vienna. + +Eperjes was founded about the middle of the 12th century by a German +colony, and was elevated to the rank of a royal free town in 1347 by +Louis I. (the Great). It was afterwards fortified and received special +privileges. The Reformation found many early adherents here, and the +town played an important part during the religious wars of the 17th +century. It became famous by the so-called "butchery of Eperjes," a +tribunal instituted by the Austrian general Caraffa in 1687, which +condemned to death and confiscated the property of a great number of +citizens accused of Protestantism. During the 16th and the 17th +centuries its German educational establishments enjoyed a wide +reputation. + + + + +EPERNAY, a town of northern France, capital of an arrondissement in the +department of Marne, 88 m. E.N.E. of Paris on the main line of the +Eastern railway to Chalons-sur-Marne. Pop. (1906) 20,291. The town is +situated on the left bank of the Marne at the extremity of the pretty +valley of the Cubry, by which it is traversed. In the central and oldest +quarter the streets are narrow and irregular; the surrounding suburbs +are modern and more spacious, and that of La Folie, on the east, +contains many handsome villas belonging to rich wine merchants. The town +has also extended to the right bank of the Marne. One of its churches +preserves a portal and stained-glass windows of the 16th century, but +the other public buildings are modern. Epernay is best known as the +principal _entrepot_ of the Champagne wines, which are bottled and kept +in extensive vaults in the chalk rock on which the town is built. The +manufacture of the apparatus and material used in the champagne industry +occupies many hands, and the Eastern Railway Company has important +workshops here. Brewing, and the manufacture of sugar and of hats and +caps, are also carried on. Epernay is the seat of a sub-prefect and has +tribunals of first instance and of commerce, and communal colleges for +girls and boys. + +Epernay (_Sparnacum_) belonged to the archbishops of Reims from the 5th +to the 10th century, at which period it came into the possession of the +counts of Champagne. It suffered severely during the Hundred Years' War, +and was burned by Francis I. in 1544. It resisted Henry of Navarre in +1592, and Marshal Biron fell in the attack which preceded its capture. +In 1642 it was, along with Chateau-Thierry, erected into a duchy and +assigned to the duke of Bouillon. + + + + +EPERNON, a town of northern France in the department of Eure-et-Loir, at +the confluence of the Drouette and the Guesle, 17 m. N.E. of Chartres by +rail. Pop. (1906) 2370. It belonged originally to the counts of +Montfort, who, in the 11th century, built a castle here of which the +ruins are still left, and granted a charter to the town. In the 13th +century it became an independent lordship, which remained attached to +the crown of Navarre till, in the 16th century, it was sold by King +Henry (afterwards King Henry IV. of France) to Jean Louis de Nogaret, +for whom it was raised to the rank of a duchy in 1581. The new duke of +Epernon was one of the favourites of Henry III., who were called _les +Mignons_; the king showered favours upon him, giving him the posts of +colonel-general in the infantry and of admiral of France. Under the +reign of Henry IV. he made himself practically independent in his +government of Provence. He was instrumental in giving the regency to +Marie de' Medici in 1610, and as a result exercised a considerable +influence upon the government. During his governorship of Guienne in +1622 he had some scandalous scenes with the parlement and the archbishop +of Bordeaux. He died in 1642. His eldest son, Henri de Nogaret de la +Valette, duke of Candale, served under Richelieu, in the armies of +Guienne, of Picardy and of Italy. The second son of Jean Louis de +Nogaret, Bernard, who was born in 1592, and died in 1661, was, like his +father, duke of Epernon, colonel-general in the infantry and governor of +Guienne. After his death, the title of duke of Epernon was borne by the +families of Goth and of Pardaillan. + + + + +EPHEBEUM (from Gr. [Greek: ephebos], a young man), in architecture, a +large hall in the ancient Palaestra furnished with seats (Vitruvius v. +11), the length of which should be a third larger than the width. It +served for the exercises of youths of from sixteen to eighteen years of +age. + + + + +EPHEBI (Gr. [Greek: epi], and [Greek: hebe], i.e. "those who have +reached puberty"), a name specially given, in Athens and other Greek +towns, to a class of young men from eighteen to twenty years of age, who +formed a sort of college under state control. On the completion of his +seventeenth year the Athenian youth attained his civil majority, and, +provided he belonged to the first three property classes and passed the +scrutiny ([Greek: dokimasia]) as to age, civic descent and physical +capability, was enrolled on the register of his deme ([Greek: +lexiarchikon grammateion]). He thereby at once became liable to the +military training and duties, which, at least in the earliest times, +were the main object of the Ephebia. In the time of Aristotle the names +of the enrolled ephebi were engraved on a bronze pillar (formerly on +wooden tablets) in front of the council-chamber. After admission to the +college, the ephebus took the oath of allegiance, recorded in Pollux and +Stobaeus (but not in Aristotle), in the temple of Aglaurus, and was sent +to Munychia or Acte to form one of the garrison. At the end of the first +year of training, the ephebi were reviewed, and, if their performance +was satisfactory, were provided by the state with a spear and a shield, +which, together with the _chlamys_ (cloak) and _petasus_ (broad-brimmed +hat), made up their equipment. In their second year they were +transferred to other garrisons in Attica, patrolled the frontiers, and +on occasion took an active part in war. During these two years they were +free from taxation, and were not allowed (except in certain cases) to +appear in the law courts as plaintiffs or defendants. The ephebi took +part in some of the most important Athenian festivals. Thus during the +Eleusinia they were told off to fetch the sacred objects from Eleusis +and to escort the image of Iacchus on the sacred way. They also +performed police duty at the meetings of the ecclesia. + +After the end of the 4th century B.C. the institution underwent a +radical change. Enrolment ceased to be obligatory, lasted only for a +year, and the limit of age was dispensed with. Inscriptions attest a +continually decreasing number of ephebi, and with the admission of +foreigners the college lost its representative national character. This +was mainly due to the weakening of the military spirit and the progress +of intellectual culture. The military element was no longer +all-important, and the ephebia became a sort of university for +well-to-do young men of good family, whose social position has been +compared with that of the Athenian "knights" of earlier times. The +institution lasted till the end of the 3rd century A.D. + +It is probable that the ephebia was in existence in the 5th century +B.C., and controlled by the Areopagus and strategus as its moral and +military supervisors. In the 4th century their place was taken by ten +_sophronistae_ (one for each tribe), who, as the name implies, took +special interest in the morals of those under them, their military +training being in the hands of experts, of whom the chief were the +_hoplomachus_, the _acontistes_, the _toxotes_ and the _aphetes_ +(instructors respectively in the use of arms, javelin-throwing, archery +and the use of artillery engines). Later, the _sophronistae_ were +superseded by a single official called _cosmetes_, elected for a year by +the people, who appointed the instructors. When the ephebia instead of a +military college became a university, the military instructors were +replaced by philosophers, rhetoricians, grammarians and artists. In +Roman imperial times several new officials were introduced, one of +special importance being the director of the Diogeneion, where youths +under age were trained for the ephebia. At this period the college of +ephebi was a miniature city; its members called themselves "citizens," +and it possessed an archon, strategus, herald and other officials, after +the model of ancient Athens. + + There is an extensive class of inscriptions, ranging from the 3rd + century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D., containing decrees relating to + the ephebi, their officers and instructors, and lists of the same, and + a whole chapter (42) of the Aristotelian _Constitution of Athens_ is + devoted to the subject. The most important treatises on the subject + are: W. Dittenberger, _De ephebis Atticis_ (Gottingen, 1863); A. + Dumont, _Essai sur l'ephebie attique_ (1875-1876); L. Grasberger, + _Erziehung und Unterricht im klassichen Altertum_, iii. (Wurzburg, + 1881); J.P. Mahaffy, _Old Greek Education_ (1881); P. Girard, + _L'Education athenienne au V_^e _et IV_^e _siecle avant J.-C._ (2nd + ed., 1891), and article in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dictionnaire des + antiquites_ which contains further bibliographical references; G. + Gilbert, _The Constitutional Antiquities of Athens_ (Eng. tr., 1895); + G. Busolt, _Die griechischen Staats- und Rechtsaltertumer_ (1892); T. + Thalheim and J. Ohler in Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopadie der + classischen Altertumswissenschaft_, v. pt. 2 (1905); W.W. Capes, + _University Life in Ancient Athens_ (1877). + + + + +EPHEMERIS (Greek for a "diary"), a table giving for stated times the +apparent position and other numerical particulars relating to a heavenly +body. The _Astronomical Ephemeris_, familiarly known as the "Nautical +Almanac," is a national annual publication containing ephemerides of the +principal or more conspicuous heavenly bodies, elements and other data +of eclipses, and other matter useful to the astronomer and navigator. +The governments of the United Kingdom, United States, France, Germany +and Spain publish such annals. + + + + +EPHESIANS, EPISTLE TO THE. This book of the New Testament, the most +general and least occasional and polemic of all the Pauline epistles, a +large section of which seems almost like the literary elaboration of a +theological topic, may best be described as a solemn oration, addressed +to absent hearers, and intended not primarily to clarify their minds but +to stir their emotions. It is thus a true letter, but in the grand +style, verging on the nature not of an essay but a poem. _Ephesians_ has +been called "the crown of St Paul's writings," and whether it be +measured by its theological or its literary interest and importance, it +can fairly dispute with _Romans_ the claim to be his greatest epistle. +In the public and private use of Christians some parts of _Ephesians_ +have been among the most favourite of all New Testament passages. Like +its sister Epistle to the Colossians, it represents, whoever wrote it, +deep experience and bold use of reflection on the meaning of that +experience; if it be from the pen of the Apostle Paul, it reveals to us +a distinct and important phase of his thought. + +To the nature of the epistle correspond well the facts of its title and +address. The title "To the Ephesians" is found in the Muratorian canon, +in Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, as well as in all the +earliest MSS. and versions. Marcion, however (c. A.D. 150), used and +recommended copies with the title "To the Laodiceans." This would be +inexplicable if Eph. i. 1 had read in Marcion's copies, as it does in +most ancient authorities, "To the saints which are at Ephesus"; but in +fact the words [Greek: en Epheso] of verse 1 were probably absent. They +were not contained in the text used by Origen (d. 253); Basil (d. 379) +says that "ancient copies" omitted the words; and they are actually +omitted by Codices B (Vaticanus, 4th century) and [Hebrew: alef] +(Sinaiticus, 4th century), together with Codex 67 (11th century). The +words "in Ephesus" were thus probably originally lacking in the address, +and were inserted from the suggestion of the title. Either the address +was general ("to the saints who are also faithful") or else a blank was +left. In the latter case the name may have been intended to be supplied +orally, in communicating the letter, or a different name may have been +written in each of the individual copies. Under any of these hypotheses +the address would indicate that we have a circular letter, written to a +group of churches, doubtless in Asia Minor. This would account for the +general character of the epistle, as well as for the entire and striking +absence of personal greetings and of concrete allusions to existing +circumstances among the readers. It appears to have drawn its title, "To +the Ephesians," from one of the churches for which it was intended, +perhaps the one from which a copy was secured when Paul's epistles were +collected, shortly before or after the year 100. That our epistle is the +one referred to in Col. iv. 16, which was to be had by the Colossians +from Laodicea, is not unlikely. Such an identification doubtless led +Marcion to alter the title in his copies. + +The structure of _Ephesians_ is epistolary; it opens with the usual +salutation (i. 1-2) and closes with a brief personal note and formal +farewell (vi. 21-24). In the intervening body of the epistle the writer +also follows the regular form of a letter. In an ordinary Greek letter +(as the papyri show) we should find the salutation followed by an +expression of gratification over the correspondent's good health and of +prayer for its continuance. Paul habitually expanded and deepened this, +and, in this case, that paragraph is enormously enlarged, so that it may +be regarded as including chapters i.-iii., and as carrying the main +thought of the epistle. Chapters iv.-vi. merely make application of the +main ideas worked out in chapters i.-iii. Throughout the epistle we have +a singular combination of the seemingly desultory method of a letter, +turning aside at a word and straying wherever the mood of the moment +leads, with the firm, forward march of earnest and mature thought. In +this combination resides the doubtless unconscious but nevertheless real +literary art of the composition. + +The fundamental theme of the epistle is _The Unity of Mankind in +Christ_, and hence the Unity and Divinity of the Church of Christ. God's +purpose from eternity was to unite mankind in Christ, and so to bring +human history to its goal, the New Man, the measure of the stature of +the fulness of Christ. Those who have believed in Christ are the present +representatives and result of this purpose; and a clear knowledge of the +purpose itself, the secret of the ages, has now been revealed to men. +This theme is not formally discussed, as in a theological treatise, but +is rather, as it were, celebrated in lofty eulogy and application. +First, in chapters i.-iii., under the mask of a conventional +congratulatory paragraph, the writer declares at length the privileges +which this great fact confers upon those who by faith receive the gift +of God, and he is thus able to touch on the various aspects of his +subject. Then, in chapters iv.-vi., he turns, with a characteristic and +impressive "therefore," to set forth the obligations which correspond to +the privileges he has just expounded. This author is indeed interested +to prosecute vigorous and substantial thinking, but the mainspring of +his interest is the conviction that such thought is significant for +inner and outer life. + +The relationship, both literary and theological, between the epistle to +the _Ephesians_ and that to _the Colossians_ (q.v.) is very close. It is +to be seen in many of the prominent ideas of the two writings, +especially in the developed view of the central position of Christ in +the whole universe; in the conception of the Church as Christ's body, of +which He is the head; in the thought of the great Mystery, once secret, +now revealed. There is further resemblance in the formal moral code, +arranged by classes of persons, and having much the same contents in the +two epistles (Eph. v. 22-vi. 9; Col. iii. 18-iv. 1). In both, also, +Tychicus carries the letter, and in almost identical language the +readers are told that he will by word of mouth give fuller information +about the apostle's affairs (Eph. vi. 21-22; Col. iv. 7-8). Moreover, in +a great number of characteristic phrases and even whole verses the two +are alike. Compare, for instance, Eph. i. 7, Col. i. 14; Eph. i. 10, +Col. i. 20; Eph. i. 21, Col. i. 16; Eph. i. 22, 23, Col. i. 18, 19; Eph. +ii. 5, Col. ii. 13; Eph. ii. 11, Col. ii. 11; Eph: ii. 16, Col. i. 20; +Eph. iii. 2, 3, Col. i. 25, 26, and many other parallels. Only a +comparison in detail will give a true impression of the extraordinary +degree of resemblance. Yet the two epistles do not follow the same +course of thought, and their contents cannot be successfully exhibited +in a common synoptical abstract. Each has its independent occasion, +purpose, character and method; but they draw largely on a common store +of thought and use common means of expression. + +The question of the authorship of _Ephesians_ is less important to the +student of the history of Christian thought than in the case of most of +the Pauline epistles, because of the generalness of tone and the lack of +specific allusion in the work. It purports to be by Paul, and was held +to be his by Marcion and in the Muratorian canon, and by Irenaeus, +Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria, all writing at the end of the 2nd +century. No doubt of the Pauline authorship was expressed in ancient +times; nor is there any lack of early use by writers who make no direct +quotation, to raise doubts as to the genuineness of the epistle. The +influence of its language is probably to be seen in Ignatius, Polycarp +and Hermas, less certainly in the epistle of Barnabas. Some resemblances +of expression in Clement of Rome and in Second Clement may have +significance. There is here abundant proof that the epistle was in +existence, and was highly valued and influential with leaders of +Christian thought, about the year 100, when persons who had known Paul +well were still living. + +To the evidence given above may be added the use of _Ephesians_ in the +First Epistle of Peter. If the latter epistle could be finally +established as genuine, or its date fixed, it would give important +evidence with regard to _Ephesians_; but in the present state of +discussion we must confine ourselves to pointing out the fact. Some of +the more striking points of contact are the following: Eph. i. 3, 1 +Peter i. 3; Eph. i. 20, 21, 1 Peter iii. 22; Eph. ii. 2, 3, iv. 17, 1 +Peter iv. 3; Eph. ii. 21, 22, 1 Peter ii. 5; Eph. v. 22, 1 Peter iii. 1, +2; Eph. v. 25, 1 Peter iii. 7, 8; Eph. vi. 5, 1 Peter ii. 18, 19. A +similar relation exists between _Romans_ and _1 Peter_. In both cases +the dependence is clearly on the part of _1 Peter_; for ideas and +phrases that in _Ephesians_ and _Romans_ have their firm place in +closely wrought sequences, are found in _1 Peter_ with less profound +significance and transformed into smooth and pointed maxims and +apophthegmatic sentences. + +Objections to the genuineness of _Ephesians_ have been urged since the +early part of the 19th century. The influence of Schleiermacher, whose +pupil Leonhard Usteri in his _Entwickelung der paulinischen +Lehrbegriffs_ (1824) expressed strong doubts as to _Ephesians_, carried +weight. He held that Tychicus was the author. De Wette first (1826) +doubted, then (1843) denied that the epistle was by Paul. The chief +attack came, however, from Baur (1845) and his colleagues of the +Tubingen school. Against the genuineness have appeared Ewald, Renan, +Hausrath, Hilgenfeld, Ritschl, Pfleiderer, Weizsacker, Holtzmann, von +Soden, Schmiedel, von Dobschutz and many others. On the other hand, the +epistle has been defended by Bleek, Neander, Reuss, B. Weiss, Meyer, +Sabatier, Lightfoot, Hort, Sanday, Bacon, Julicher, Harnack, Zahn and +many others. In recent years a tendency has been apparent among critics +to accept _Ephesians_ as a genuine work of Paul. This has followed the +somewhat stronger reaction in favour of _Colossians_. + +Before speaking of the more fundamental grounds urged for the rejection +of _Ephesians_, we may look at various points of detail which are of +less significance. + +(1) The style has unquestionably a slow and lumbering movement, in +marked contrast with the quick effectiveness of _Romans_ and +_Galatians_. The sentences are much longer and less vivacious, as any +one can see by a superficial examination. But nevertheless there are +parts of the earlier epistles where the same tendency appears (e.g. Rom. +iii. 23-26), and on the whole the style shows Paul's familiar traits. +(2) The vocabulary is said to be peculiar. But it can be shown to be no +more so than that of _Galatians_ (Zahn, _Einleitung_, i. pp. 365 ff.). +On the other hand, some words characteristic of Paul's use appear +(notably [Greek: dio], five times), and the most recent and careful +investigation of Paul's vocabulary (Nageli, _Wortschatz der paulinischen +Briefe_, 1905) concludes that the evidence speaks for Pauline +authorship. (3) Certain phrases have aroused suspicion, for instance, +"the devil" (vi. 11, instead of Paul's usual term "Satan"); "his holy +apostles and prophets" (iii. 5, as smacking of later fulsomeness); "I +Paul" (iii. 1); "unto me, who am less than the least of all the saints" +(iii. 8, as exaggerated). But these cases, when properly understood and +calmly viewed, do not carry conviction against the epistle. (4) The +relation of _Ephesians_ to _Colossians_ would be a serious difficulty +only if _Colossians_ were held to be not by Paul. Those who hold to the +genuineness of _Colossians_ find it easier to explain the resemblances +as the product of the free working of the same mind, than as due to a +deliberate imitator. Holtzmann's elaborate and very ingenious theory +(1872) that _Colossians_ has been expanded, on the basis of a shorter +letter of Paul, by the same later hand which had previously written the +whole of _Ephesians_, has not met with favour from recent scholars. + +But the more serious difficulties which to many minds still stand in the +way of the acceptance of the epistle have come from the developed phase +of Pauline theology which it shows, and from the general background and +atmosphere of the underlying system of thought, in which the absence of +the well-known earlier controversies is remarkable, while some things +suggest the thought of John and a later age. Among the most important +points in which the ideas and implications of _Ephesians_ suggest an +authorship and a period other than that of Paul are the following: + +(a) The union of Gentiles and Jews in one body is already accomplished. +(b) The Christology is more advanced, uses Alexandrian terms, and +suggests the ideas of the Gospel of John. (c) The conception of the +Church as the body of Christ is new. (d) There is said to be a general +softening of Pauline thought in the direction of the Christianity of the +2nd century, while very many characteristic ideas of the earlier +epistles are absent. + +With regard to the changed state of affairs in the Church, it must be +said that this can be a conclusive argument only to one who holds the +view of the Tubingen scholars, that the Apostolic Age was all of a piece +and was dominated solely by one controversy. The change in the situation +is surely not greater than can be imagined within the lifetime of Paul. +That the epistle implies as already existent a developed system of +Gnostic thought such as only came into being in the 2nd century is not +true, and such a date is excluded by the external evidence. As to the +other points, the question is, whether the admittedly new phase of +Paul's theological thought is so different from his earlier system as to +be incompatible with it. In answering this question different minds will +differ. But it must remain possible that contact with new scenes and +persons, and especially such controversial necessities as are +exemplified in _Colossians_, stimulated Paul to work out more fully, +under the influence of Alexandrian categories, lines of thought of which +the germs and origins must be admitted to have been present in earlier +epistles. It cannot be maintained that the ideas of _Ephesians_ directly +contradict either in formulation or in tendency the thought of the +earlier epistles. Moreover, if _Colossians_ be accepted as Pauline (and +among other strong reasons the unquestionable genuineness of the epistle +to Philemon renders it extremely difficult not to accept it), the chief +matters of this more advanced Christian thought are fully legitimated +for Paul. + +On the other hand, the characteristics of the thought in _Ephesians_ +give some strong evidence confirmatory of the epistle's own claim to be +by Paul. (a) The writer of Eph. ii. 11-22 was a Jew, not less proud of +his race than was the writer of Rom. ix.-xi. or of Phil. iii. 4 ff. (b) +The centre in all the theology of the epistle is the idea of redemption. +The use of Alexandrian categories is wholly governed by this interest. +(c) The epistle shows the same panoramic, pictorial, dramatic conception +of Christian truth which is everywhere characteristic of Paul. (d) The +most fundamental elements in the system of thought do not differ from +those of the earlier epistles. + +The view which denies the Pauline authorship of _Ephesians_ has to +suppose the existence of a great literary artist and profound +theologian, able to write an epistle worthy of Paul at his best, who, +without betraying any recognizable motive, presented to the world in the +name of Paul an imitation of _Colossians_, incredibly laborious and yet +superior to the original in literary workmanship and power of thought, +and bearing every appearance of earnest sincerity. It must further be +supposed that the name and the very existence of this genius were +totally forgotten in Christian circles fifty years after he wrote. The +balance of evidence seems to lie on the side of the genuineness of the +Epistle. + +If _Ephesians_ was written by Paul, it was during the period of his +imprisonment, either at Caesarea or at Rome (iii. 1, iv. 1, vi. 20). At +very nearly the same time he must have written _Colossians_ and +_Philemon_; all three were sent by Tychicus. There is no strong reason +for holding that the three were written from Caesarea. For Rome speaks +the greater probability of the metropolis as the place in which a +fugitive slave would try to hide himself, the impression given in +_Colossians_ of possible opportunity for active mission work (Col. iv. +3, 4; cf. Acts xxviii. 30, 31), the fact that _Philippians_, which in a +measure belongs to the same group, was pretty certainly written from +Rome. As to the Christians addressed, they are evidently converts from +heathenism (ii. 1, 11-13, 17 f., iii. 1, iv. 17); but they are not +merely Gentile Christians at large, for Tychicus carries the letter to +them, Paul has some knowledge of their special circumstances (i. 15), +and they are explicitly distinguished from "all the saints" (iii. 18, +vi. 18). We may most naturally think of them as the members of the +churches of Asia. The letter is very likely referred to in Col. iv. 16, +although this theory is not wholly free from difficulties. + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--The best commentaries on _Ephesians_ are by C.J. + Ellicott (1855, 4th ed. 1868), H.A.W. Meyer (4th ed., 1867), (Eng. + trans. 1880), T.K. Abbott (1897), J.A. Robinson (1903, 2nd ed. 1904); + in German by H. von Soden (in _Hand-Commentar_) (1891, 2nd ed. 1893), + E. Haupt (in Meyer's _Kommentar_) (8th ed., 1902). J.B. Lightfoot's + commentary on _Colossians_ (1875, 3rd ed. 1879) is important for + _Ephesians_ also. On the English text see H.C.G. Moule (in Cambridge + Bible for Schools) (1887). R.W. Dale, _Epistle to the Ephesians; its + Doctrine and Ethics_ (1882), is a valuable series of expository + discourses. + + Questions of genuineness, purpose, &c., are discussed in the New + Testament _Introductions_ of H. Holtzmann (1885, 3rd ed. 1892); B. + Weiss (1886, 3rd ed. 1897, Eng. trans. 1887); G. Salmon (1887, 8th ed. + 1897); A. Julicher (1894, 5th and 6th ed. 1906, Eng. trans. 1904); T. + Zahn (1897-1899, 2nd ed. 1900); and in the thorough investigations of + H. Holtzmann, _Kritik der Epheser- und Kolosserbriefe_ (1872), and + F.J.A. Hort, _Prolegomena to St Paul's Epistles to the Romans and the + Ephesians_ (1895). See also the works on the _Apostolic Age_ of C. + Weizsacker (1886, 2nd ed. 1892, Eng. trans. 1894-1895); O. Pfleiderer + (_Das Urchristenthum_) (1887, 2nd ed. 1902, Eng. trans. 1906); and + A.C. McGiffert (1897). + + On early attestation see A.H. Charteris, _Canonicity_ (1880) and the + _New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers_ (Oxford, 1905). + + The theological ideas of Ephesians are also discussed in some of the + works on Paul's theology; see especially F.C. Baur, _Paulus_ (1845, + 2nd ed. 1866-1867, Eng. trans. 1873-1874); O. Pfleiderer, _Der + Paulinismus_ (1873, 2nd ed. 1890, Eng. trans. 1877); and in the works + on New Testament theology by B. Weiss (1868, 7th ed. 1903, Eng. trans. + 1882-1883); H. Holtzmann (1897), and G.B. Stevens (1899). See also + Somerville, _St Paul's Conception of Christ_ (1897). + + For a guide to other literature see W. Lock, art. "Ephesians, Epistle + to," in Hastings's _Dictionary of the Bible_, the various works of + Holtzmann above referred to, and T.K. Abbott's _Commentary_, pp. + 35-40. (J. H. Rs.) + + + + +EPHESUS, an ancient Ionian city on the west coast of Asia Minor. In +historic times it was situate on the lower slopes of the hills, Coressus +and Prion, which rise out of a fertile plain near the mouth of the river +Cayster, while the temple and precinct of Artemis or Diana, to the fame +of which the town owed much of its celebrity, were in the plain itself, +E.N.E. at a distance of about a mile. But there is reason to think both +town and shrine had different sites in pre-Ionian times, and that both +lay farther south among the foot-hills of Mt. Solmissus. The situation +of the city was such as at all times to command a great commerce. Of the +three great river basins of Ionia and Lydia, those of the Hermus, +Cayster and Maeander, it commanded the second, and had already access by +easy passes to the other two. + +The earliest inhabitants assigned to Ephesus by Greek writers are the +"Amazons," with whom we hear of Leleges, Carians and Pelasgi. In the +11th century B.C., according to tradition (the date is probably too +early), Androclus, son of the Athenian king Codrus, landed on the spot +with his Ionians and a mixed body of colonists; and from his conquest +dates the history of the Greek Ephesus. The deity of the city was +Artemis; but we must guard against misconception when we use that name, +remembering that she bore close relation to the primitive Asiatic +goddess of nature, whose cult existed before the Ionian migration at the +neighbouring Ortygia, and that she always remained the virgin-mother of +all life and especially wild life, and an embodiment of the fertility +and productive power of the earth. The well-known monstrous +representation of her, as a figure with many breasts, swathed below the +waist in grave-clothes, was probably of late and alien origin. In early +Ionian times she seems to have been represented as a natural matronly +figure, sometimes accompanied by a child, and to have been a more +typically Hellenic goddess than she became in the Hellenistic and Roman +periods. + +Twice in the period 700-500 B.C. the city owed its preservation to the +interference of the goddess; once when the swarms of the Cimmerians +overran Asia Minor in the 7th century and burnt the Artemision itself; +and once when Croesus besieged the town in the century succeeding, and +only retired after it had solemnly dedicated itself to Artemis, the sign +of such dedication being the stretching of a rope from city to +sanctuary. Croesus was eager in every way to propitiate the goddess, and +since about this time her temple was being restored on an enlarged +scale, he presented most of the columns required for the building as +well as some cows of gold. That is to say, these gifts were probably +paid for out of the proceeds of the sequestration of the property of a +rich Lydian merchant, Sadyattes, which Croesus presented to Ephesus +(Nic. Damasc. fr. 65). To counteract, perhaps, the growing Lydian +influence, Athens, the mother-city of Ephesus, despatched one of her +noblest citizens, Aristarchus, to restore law on the basis of the +Solonian constitution. The labours of Aristarchus seem to have borne +fruit. It was an Ephesian follower of his, Hermodorus, who aided the +Decemviri at Rome in their compilation of a system of law. And in the +same generation Heraclitus, probably a descendant of Codrus, quitted his +hereditary magistracy in order to devote himself to philosophy, in which +his name became almost as great as that of any Greek. Poetry had long +flourished at Ephesus. From very early times the Homeric poems found a +home and admirers there; and to Ephesus belong the earliest elegiac +poems of Greece, the war songs of Callinus, who flourished in the 7th +century B.C. and was the model of Tyrtaeus. The city seems to have been +more than once under tyrannical rule in the early Ionian period; and it +fell thereafter first to Croesus of Lydia, and then to Cyrus, the +Persian, and when the Ionian revolt against Persia broke out in the year +500 B.C. under the lead of Miletus, the city remained submissive to +Persian rule. When Xerxes returned from the march against Greece, he +honoured the temple of Artemis, although he sacked other Ionian shrines, +and even left his children behind at Ephesus for safety's sake. We hear +again of Persian respect for the temple in the time of Tissaphernes (411 +B.C.). After the final Persian defeat at the Eurymedon (466 B.C.), +Ephesus for a time paid tribute to Athens, with the other cities of the +coast, and Lysander first and Agesilaus afterwards made it their +headquarters. To the latter fact we owe a contemporary description of it +by Xenophon. In the early part of the 4th century it fell again under +Persian influence, and was administered by an oligarchy. + +Alexander was received by the Ephesians in 334, and established +democratic government. Soon after his death the city fell into the hands +of Lysimachus, who introduced fresh Greek colonists from Lebedus and +Colophon and, it is said, by means of an artificial inundation compelled +those who still dwelt in the plain by the temple to migrate to the city +on the hills, which he surrounded by a solid wall. He renamed the city +after his wife Arsinoe, but the old name was soon resumed. Ephesus was +very prosperous during the Hellenistic period, and is conspicuous both +then and later for the abundance of its coinage, which gives us a more +complete list of magistrates' names than we have for any other Ionian +city. The Roman coinage is remarkable for the great variety and +importance of its types. After the defeat of Antiochus the Great, king +of Syria, by the Romans, Ephesus was handed over by the conquerors to +Eumenes, king of Pergamum, whose successor, Attalus Philadelphus, +unintentionally worked the city irremediable harm. Thinking that the +shallowness of the harbour was due to the width of its mouth, he built a +mole part-way across the latter; the result, however, was that the +silting up of the harbour proceeded more rapidly than before. The third +Attalus of Pergamum bequeathed Ephesus with the rest of his possessions +to the Roman people, and it became for a while the chief city, and for +longer the first port, of the province of Asia, the richest in the +empire. Henceforth Ephesus remained subject to the Romans, save for a +short period, when, at the instigation of Mithradates Eupator of Pontus, +the cities of Asia Minor revolted and massacred their Roman residents. +The Ephesians even dragged out and slew those Romans who had fled to the +precinct of Artemis for protection, notwithstanding which sacrilege they +soon returned from their new to their former masters, and even had the +effrontery to state, in an inscription preserved to this day, that their +defection to Mithradates was a mere yielding to superior force. Sulla, +after his victory over Mithradates, brushed away their pretexts, and +inflicting a very heavy fine told them that the punishment fell far +short of their deserts. In the civil wars of the 1st century B.C. the +Ephesians twice supported the unsuccessful party, giving shelter to, or +being made use of by, first, Brutus and Cassius, and afterwards Antony, +for which partisanship or weakness they paid very heavily in fines. + +All this time the city was gradually growing in wealth and in devotion +to the service of Artemis. The story of St Paul's doings there +illustrates this fact, and the sequel is very suggestive,--the burning, +namely, of books of sorcery of great value. Addiction to the practice of +occult arts had evidently become general in the now semi-orientalized +city. The Christian Church which Paul planted there was governed by +Timothy and John, and is famous in Christian tradition as a nurse of +saints and martyrs. According to local belief, Ephesus was also the last +home of the Virgin, who was lodged near the city by St John and there +died. But to judge from the Apocalyptic Letter to this Church (as shown +by Sir W.M. Ramsay), the latter showed a dangerous tendency to lightness +and reaction, and later events show that the pagan tradition of Artemis +continued very strong and perhaps never became quite extinct in the +Ephesian district. It was, indeed, long before the spread of +Christianity threatened the old local cult. The city was proud to be +termed _neocorus_ or servant of the goddess. Roman emperors vied with +wealthy natives in lavish gifts, one Vibius Salutaris among the latter +presenting a quantity of gold and silver images to be carried annually +in procession. Ephesus contested stoutly with Smyrna and Pergamum the +honour of being called the first city of Asia; each city appealed to +Rome, and we still possess rescripts in which the emperors endeavoured +to mitigate the bitterness of the rivalry. One privilege Ephesus +secured; the Roman governor of Asia always landed and first assumed +office there: and it was long the provincial centre of the official cult +of the emperor, and seat of the Asiarch. The Goths destroyed both city +and temple in the year A.D. 262, and although the city revived and the +cult of Artemis continued, neither ever recovered its former splendour. +A general council of the Christian Church was held there in 431 in the +great double church of St Mary, which is still to be seen. On this +occasion Nestorius was condemned, and the honour of the Virgin +established as _Theotokus_, amid great popular rejoicing, due, +doubtless, in some measure to the hold which the cult of the virgin +Artemis still had on the city. (On this council see below.) Thereafter +Ephesus seems to have been gradually deserted owing to its malaria; and +life transferred itself to another and higher site near the Artemision, +the name of which, Ayassoluk (written by early Arab geographers +_Ayathulukh_), is now known to be a corruption of the title of St John +_Theologos_, given to a great cathedral built on a rocky hill near the +present railway station, in the time of Justinian I. This church was +visited by Ibn Batuta in A.D. 1333; but few traces are now visible. The +ruins of the Artemision, after serving as a quarry to local builders, +were finally covered deep with mud by the river Cayster, or one of its +left bank tributaries, the Selinus, and the true site remained +unsuspected until 1869. + +_Excavations._--The first light thrown on the topography of Ephesus was +due to the excavations conducted by the architect, J.T. Wood, on behalf +of the trustees of the British Museum, during the years 1863-1874. He +first explored the Odeum and the Great Theatre situate in the city +itself, and in the latter place had the good fortune to find an +inscription which indicated to him in what direction to search for the +Artemision; for it stated that processions came to the city from the +temple by the Magnesian gate and returned by the Coressian. These two +gates were next identified, and following up that road which issued from +the Magnesian gate, Wood lighted first on a ruin which he believed to be +the tomb of Androclus, and afterwards on an angle of the peribolus wall +of the time of Augustus. After further tentative explorations, he struck +the actual pavement of the Artemision on the last day of 1869. + +_The Artemision._--Wood removed the whole stratum of superficial +deposit, nearly 20 ft. deep, which overlay the huge area of the temple, +and exposed to view not only the scanty remains of the latest edifice, +built after 350 B.C., but the platform of an earlier temple, now known +to be that of the 6th century to which Croesus contributed. Below this +he did not find any remains. He discovered and sent to England parts of +several sculptured drums (_columnae caelatae_) of the latest temple, and +archaic sculptures from the drums and parapet of the earlier building. +He also made accurate measurements and a plan of the Hellenistic temple, +found many inscriptions and a few miscellaneous antiquities, and had +begun to explore the Precinct, when the great expense and other +considerations induced the trustees of the British Museum to suspend his +operations in 1874. Wood made two subsequent attempts to resume work, +but failed; and the site lay desolate till 1904, when the trustees, +wishing to have further information about the earlier strata and the +Precinct, sent D.G. Hogarth to re-examine the remains. As a result of +six months' work, Wood's "earliest temple" was re-cleared and planned, +remains of three earlier shrines were found beneath it, a rich deposit +of offerings, &c., belonging to the earliest shrine was discovered, and +tentative explorations were made in the Precinct. This deep digging, +however, which reached the sand of the original marsh, released much +ground water and resulted in the permanent flooding of the site. + +[Illustration: Ground plan of the 6th Century ("Croesus") Temple at +Ephesus, conjecturally restored by A.E. Henderson.] + +The history of the Artemision, as far as it can be inferred from the +remains, is as follows. (1) There was no temple on the plain previous to +the Ionian occupation, the primeval seat of the nature-goddess having +been in the southern hills, at Ortygia (near mod. _Arvalia_). Towards +the end of the 8th century B.C. a small shrine came into existence on +the plain. This was little more than a small platform of green schist +with a sacred tree and an altar, and perhaps later a wooden icon +(image), the whole enclosed in a _temenos_: but, as is proved by a great +treasure of objects in precious and other metals, ivory, bone, crystal, +paste, glass, terra-cotta and other materials, found in 1904-1905, +partly within the platform on which the cult-statue stood and partly +outside, in the lowest stratum of deposit, this early shrine was +presently enriched by Greeks with many and splendid offerings of +Hellenic workmanship. A large number of electron coins, found among +these offerings, and in style the earliest of their class known, combine +with other evidence to date the whole treasure to a period considerably +anterior to the reign of Croesus. This treasure is now divided between +the museums of Constantinople and London. (2) Within a short time, +perhaps after the Cimmerian sack (? 650 B.C.), this shrine was restored, +slightly enlarged, and raised in level, but not altered in character. +(3) About the close of the century, for some reason not known, but +possibly owing to collapse brought about by the marshy nature of the +site, this was replaced by a temple of regular Hellenic form. The latter +was built in relation to the earlier central statue-base but at a higher +level than either of its predecessors, doubtless for dryness' sake. Very +little but its foundations was spared by later builders, and there is +now no certain evidence of its architectural character; but it is very +probable that it was the early temple in which the Ionic order is said +to have been first used, after the colonists had made use of Doric in +their earlier constructions (e.g. in the _Panionion_); and that it was +the work of the Cnossian Chersiphron and his son, Metagenes, always +regarded afterwards as the first builders of a regular Artemision. Their +temple is said by Strabo to have been made bigger by another architect. +(4) The latter's work must have been the much larger temple, exposed by +Wood, and usually known as the Archaic or Croesus temple. This overlies +the remains of No. 3, at a level higher by about a metre, and the area +of its _cella_ alone contains the whole of the earlier shrines. Its +central point, however, was still the primitive statue-base, now +enlarged and heightened. About half its pavement, parts of the _cella_ +walls and of three columns of the peristyle, and the foundations of +nearly all the platform, are still in position. The visible work was all +of very fine white marble, quarried about 7 m. N.E., near the modern Kos +Bunar. Fragments of relief-sculptures belonging to the parapet and +columns, and of fluted drums and capitals, cornices and other +architectural members have been recovered, showing that the workmanship +and Ionic style were of the highest excellence, and that the building +presented a variety of ornament, rare among Hellenic temples. The whole +ground-plan covered about 80,000 sq. ft. The height of the temple is +doubtful, the measurements of columns given us by later authority having +reference probably to its successor, the height of which was considered +abnormal and marvellous. Judged by the diameter of the drums, the +columns of the Croesus temple were not two-thirds of the height of those +of the Hellenistic temple. This fourth temple is, beyond question, that +to which Croesus contributed, and it was, therefore, in process of +building about 540 B.C. Our authorities seem to be referring to it when +they tell us that the Artemision was raised by common contribution of +the great cities of Asia, and took 120 years to complete. It was +dedicated with great ceremony, probably between 430 and 420 B.C., and +the famous Timotheus, son of Thersander, carried off the magnificent +prize for a lyric ode against all comers. Its original architects were, +probably, Paeonius of Ephesus, and Demetrius, a [Greek: hieros] of the +shrine itself: but it has been suggested that the latter may have been +rather the actual contracting builder than the architect. Of this temple +Herodotus speaks as existing in his day; and unless weight be given to +an isolated statement of Eusebius, that it was burned about 395 B.C., we +must assume that it survived until the night when one Herostratus, +desirous of acquiring eternal fame if only by a great crime, set it +alight. This is said to have happened in 356 B.C. on the October night +on which Alexander the Great came into the world, and, as Hegesias said, +the goddess herself was absent, assisting at the birth; but the +exactness of this portentous synchronism makes the date suspect. (5) It +was succeeded by what is called the Hellenistic temple, begun almost +immediately after the catastrophe, according to plans drawn by the +famous Dinocrates the architect of Alexandria. The platform was once +more raised to a higher level, some 7 ft. above that of the Archaic, by +means of huge foundation blocks bedded upon the earlier structures; and +this increase of elevation necessitated a slight expansion of the area +all round, and ten steps in place of three. The new columns were of +greater diameter than the old and over 60 ft. high; and from its great +height the whole structure was regarded as a marvel, and accounted one +of the wonders of the world. Since, however, other Greek temples had +colonnades hardly less high, and were of equal or greater area, it has +been suggested that the Ephesian temple had some distinct element of +grandiosity, no longer known to us--perhaps a lofty sculptured parapet +or some imposing form of _podium_. Bede, in his treatise _De sept. mir. +mundi_, describes a stupendous erection of several storeys; but his +other descriptions are so fantastic that no credence can be attached to +this. The fifth temple was once more of Ionic order, but the finish and +style of its details as attested by existing remains were inferior to +those of its predecessor. The great sculptured drums and pedestals, now +in the British Museum, belong to the lower part of certain of its +columns: but nothing of its frieze or pediments (if it had any) has been +recovered. Begun probably before 350 B.C., it was in building when +Alexander came to Ephesus in 334 and offered to bear the cost of its +completion. It was probably finished by the end of the century; for +Pliny the Elder states that its cypress-wood doors had been in existence +for 400 years up to his time. It stood intact, except for very partial +restorations, till A.D. 262 when it was sacked and burned by the Goths: +but it appears to have been to some extent restored afterwards, and its +cult no doubt survived till the Edict of Theodosius closed the pagan +temples. Its material was then quarried extensively for the construction +of the great cathedral of St John Theologos on the neighbouring hill +(Ayassoluk), and a large Byzantine building (a church?) came into +existence on the central part of its denuded site, but did not last +long. Before the Ottoman conquest its remains were already buried under +several feet of silt. + +The organization of the temple hierarchy, and its customs and +privileges, retained throughout an Asiatic character. The priestesses of +the goddess were [Greek: parthenoi] (i.e. unwedded), and her priests +were compelled to celibacy. The chief among the latter, who bore the +Persian name of Megabyzus and the Greek title Neocorus, was doubtless a +power in the state as well as a dignitary of religion. His official +dress and spadonic appearance are probably revealed to us by a small +ivory statuette found by D.G. Hogarth in 1905. Besides these there was a +vast throng of dependents who lived by the temple and its +services--_theologi_, who may have expounded sacred legends, _hymnodi_, +who composed hymns in honour of the deity, and others, together with a +great crowd of _hieroi_ who performed more menial offices. The making of +shrines and images of the goddess occupied many hands. To support this +greedy mob, offerings flowed in in a constant stream from votaries and +from visitors, who contributed sometimes money, sometimes statues and +works of art. These latter so accumulated that the temple became a rich +museum, among the chief treasures of which were the figures of Amazons +sculptured in competition by Pheidias, Polyclitus, Cresilas and +Phradmon, and the painting by Apelles of Alexander holding a +thunderbolt. The temple was also richly endowed with lands, and +possessed the fishery of the Selinusian lakes, with other large +revenues. But perhaps the most important of all the privileges possessed +by the goddess and her priests was that of _asylum_. Fugitives from +justice or vengeance who reached her precincts were perfectly safe from +all pursuit and arrest. The boundaries of the space possessing such +virtue were from time to time enlarged. Mithradates extended them to a +bowshot from the temple in all directions, and Mark Antony imprudently +allowed them to take in part of the city, which part thus became free of +all law, and a haunt of thieves and villains. Augustus, while leaving +the right of asylum untouched, diminished the space to which the +privilege belonged, and built round it a wall, which still surrounds the +ruins of the temple at the distance of about a quarter of a mile, +bearing an inscription in Greek and Latin, which states that it was +erected in the proconsulship of Asinius Gallus, out of the revenues of +the temple. The right of asylum, however, had once more to be defended +by a deputation sent to the emperor Tiberius. Besides being a place of +worship, a museum and a sanctuary, the Ephesian temple was a great bank. +Nowhere in Asia could money be more safely bestowed, and both kings and +private persons placed their treasures under the guardianship of the +goddess. + +_The City._--After Wood's superficial explorations, the city remained +desolate till 1894, when the Austrian Archaeological Institute obtained +a concession for excavation and began systematic work. This has +continued regularly ever since, but has been carried down no farther +than the imperial stratum. The main areas of operation have been: (1) +The _Great Theatre_. The stage buildings, orchestra and lower parts of +the _cavea_ have been cleared. In the process considerable additions +were made to Wood's find of sculptures in marble and bronze, and of +inscriptions, including missing parts of the Vibius Salutaris texts. +This theatre has a peculiar interest as the scene of the tumult aroused +by the mission of St Paul; but the existing remains represent a +reconstruction carried out after his time. (2) The _Hellenistic Agora_, +a huge square, surrounded by porticoes, lying S.W. of the theatre and +having fine public halls on the S. It has yielded to the Austrians fine +sculpture in marble and bronze and many inscriptions. (3) _The Roman +Agora_, with its large halls, lying N.W. of the theatre. Here were found +many inscriptions of Roman date and some statuary. (4) A street running +from the S.E. angle of the Hellenic Agora towards the Magnesian gate. +This was found to be lined with pedestals of honorific statues and to +have on the west side a remarkable building, stated in an inscription to +have been a library. The tomb of the founder, T. Julius Celsus, is hard +by, and some fine Roman reliefs, which once decorated it, have been sent +to Vienna. (5) A street running direct to the port from the theatre. +This is of great breadth, and had a Horologion half-way down and fine +porticoes and shops. It was known as the Arcadiane after having been +restored at a higher level than formerly by the emperor Arcadius (A.D. +395). It leaves on the right the great _Thermae_ of Constantine, of +which the Austrians have cleared out the south-east part. This huge pile +used to be taken for the Artemision by early visitors to Ephesus. Part +of the quays and buildings round the port were exposed, after measures +had been taken to drain the upper part of the marsh. (6) The Double +Church of the Virgin "Deipara" in the N.W. of the city, wherein the +council of 431 was held. Here interesting inscriptions and Byzantine +architectural remains were found. Besides these excavated monuments, the +Stadion; the _enceinte_ of fortifications erected by Lysimachus, which +runs from the tower called the "Prison of St Paul" and right along the +crests of the Bulbul (Prion) and Panajir hills; the round monument +miscalled the "Tomb of St Luke"; and the Opistholeprian gymnasium near +the Magnesian gate, are worthy of attention. + +The work done by the Austrians enables a good idea to be obtained of the +appearance presented by a great Graeco-Roman city of Asia in the last +days of its prosperity. It may be realized better there than anywhere +how much architectural splendour was concentrated in the public +quarters. But the restriction of the clearance to the upper stratum of +deposit has prevented the acquisition of much further knowledge. Both +the Hellenistic and, still more, the original Ionian cities remain for +the most part unexplored. It should, however, be added that very +valuable topographical exploration has been carried out in the environs +of Ephesus by members of the Austrian expedition, and that the Ephesian +district is now mapped more satisfactorily than any other district of +ancient interest in Asia Minor. + +The Turkish village of Ayassoluk (the modern representative of Ephesus), +more than a mile N.E. of the ancient city, has revived somewhat of +recent years owing to the development of its fig gardens by the Aidin +railway, which passes through the upper part of the plain. It is +noteworthy for a splendid ruined mosque built by the Seljuk, Isa Bey +II., of Aidin, in 1375, which contains magnificent columns: for a +castle, near which lie remains of the pendentives from the cupola of the +great cathedral of St John, now deeply buried in its own ruins: and for +an aqueduct, Turkish baths and mosque-tombs. There is a fair inn managed +by the Aidin Railway Company. + + BIBLIOGRAPHY.--E. Guhl, _Ephesiaca_ (1843); E. Curtius, _Ephesos_ + (1874); C. Zimmermann, _Ephesos im ersten christlichen Jahrhundert_ + (1874); J.T. Wood, _Discoveries at Ephesus_ (1877); E.L. Hicks, _Anc. + Greek Inscr. in the Brit. Museum_, iii. 2 (1890); B.V. Head, "Coinage + of Ephesus" (_Numism. Chron._, 1880); J. Menadier, _Qua condicione + Ephesii usi sint_, &c. (1880); Sir W.M. Ramsay, _Letters to the Seven + Churches_ (1904); O. Benndorf, R. Heberdey, &c., _Forschungen in + Ephesos_, vol. i. (1906) (Austrian Arch. Institute); D.G. Hogarth, + _Excavations at Ephesus: the Archaic Artemisia_ (2 vols., 1908), with + chapters by C.H. Smith, A. Hamilton Smith, B.V. Head, and A.E. + Henderson. (D. G. H.) + + + + +EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF. This Church council was convened in 431 for the +purpose of taking authoritative action concerning the doctrine of the +person of Christ. The councils of Nicaea and Constantinople had asserted +the full divinity and real humanity of Christ, without, however, +defining the manner of their union. The attempt to solve the apparent +incongruity of a perfect union of two complete and distinct natures in +one person produced first Apollinarianism, which substituted the divine +Logos for the human [Greek: nous] or [Greek: pneuma] of Jesus, thereby +detracting from the completeness of his humanity; and then Nestorianism, +which destroyed the unity of Christ's person by affirming that the +divine Logos dwelt in the man Jesus as in a temple, and that the union +of the two was in respect of dignity, and furthermore that, inasmuch as +the Logos could not have been born, to call Mary [Greek: theotokos], +"Godbearer," was absurd and blasphemous. The Alexandrians, led by Cyril, +stood for the doctrine of the perfect union of two complete natures in +one person, and made [Greek: theotokos] the shibboleth of orthodoxy. The +theological controversy was intensified by the rivalry of the two +patriarchates, Alexandria and Constantinople, for the primacy of the +East. As bishop of Constantinople Nestorius naturally looked to the +emperor for support, while Cyril turned to Rome. A Roman synod in 430 +found Nestorius heretical and decreed his excommunication unless he +should recant. Shortly afterwards an Alexandrian synod condemned his +doctrines in twelve anathemas, which only provoked counter-anathemas. +The emperor now intervened and summoned a council, which met at Ephesus +on the 22nd of June 431. Nestorius was present with an armed escort, but +refused to attend the council on the ground that the patriarch of +Antioch (his friend) had not arrived. The council, nevertheless, +proceeded to declare him excommunicate and deposed. When the Roman +legates appeared they "examined and approved" the acts of the council, +whether as if thereby giving them validity, or as if concurring with the +council, is a question not easy to answer from the records. Cyril, the +president, apparently regarded the subscription of the legates as the +acknowledgment of "canonical agreement" with the synod. + +The disturbances that followed the arrival of John, the patriarch of +Antioch, are sufficiently described in the article NESTORIUS. + +The emperor finally interposed to terminate that scandalous strife, +banished Nestorius and dissolved the council. Ultimately he gave +decision in favour of the orthodox. The council was generally received +as ecumenical, even by the Antiochenes, and the differences between +Cyril and John were adjusted (433) by a "Union Creed," which, however, +did not prevent a recrudescence of theological controversy. + + See Mansi iv. pp. 567-1482, v. pp. 1-1023; Hardouin i. pp. 1271-1722; + Hefele (2nd ed.) ii. pp. 141-247 (Eng. trans. iii. pp. 1-114); + Peltanus, _SS. Magni et Ecumen. Conc. Ephesini primi Acta omnia_ ... + (Ingolstadt, 1576); Wilhelm Kraetz, _Koptische Akten zum Ephes. + Konzil_ ... (Leipzig, 1904); also the articles NESTORIUS; CYRIL; + THEODORE OF MOPSUESTIA. + +The so-called "Robber Synod" of Ephesus (_Latrocinium Ephesinum_) of +449, although wholly irregular and promptly repudiated by the church, +may, nevertheless, not improperly be treated here. The archimandrite +Eutyches (q.v.) having been deposed by his bishop, Flavianus of +Constantinople, on account of his heterodox doctrine of the person of +Christ, had appealed to Dioscurus, the successor of Cyril in the see of +Alexandria, who restored him and moved the emperor Theodosius II. to +summon a council, which should "utterly destroy Nestorianism." Rome +recognizing that she had more to fear from Alexandria, departed from her +traditional policy and sided with Constantinople. The council of 130 +bishops, which convened on the 8th of August 449, was completely +dominated by Dioscurus. Eutyches was acquitted of heresy and reinstated, +Flavianus and other bishops deposed, the Roman legates insulted, and all +opposition was overborne by intimidation or actual violence. The death +of Flavianus, which soon followed, was attributed to injuries received +in this synod; but the proof of the charge leaves something to be +desired. + +The emperor confirmed the synod, but the Eastern Church was divided +upon the question of accepting it, and Leo I. of Rome excommunicated +Dioscurus, refused to recognize the successor of Flavianus and demanded +a new and greater council. The death of Theodosius II. removed the main +support of Dioscurus, and cleared the way for the council of Chalcedon +(q.v.), which deposed the Alexandrian and condemned Eutychianism. + + See Mansi vi. pp. 503 sqq., 606 sqq.; Hardouin ii. 71 sqq.; Hefele + (2nd ed.) ii. pp. 349 sqq. (Eng. trans. iii. pp. 221 sqq.); S.G.F. + Perry, _The Second Synod of Ephesus_ (Dartford, 1881); l'Abbe Martin, + _Actes du brigandage d'Ephese_ (Amiens, 1874) and _Le Pseudo-synode + connu dans l'histoire sous le nom de brigandage d'Ephese_ (Paris, + 1875). (T. F. C.) + + + + +EPHOD, a Hebrew word (_ephod_) of uncertain meaning, retained by the +translators of the Old Testament. In the post-exilic priestly writings +(5th century B.C. and later) the ephod forms part of the gorgeous +ceremonial dress of the high-priest (see Ex. xxix. 5 sq. and especially +Ecclus. xlv. 7-13). It was a very richly decorated object of coloured +threads interwoven with gold, worn outside the luxurious mantle or robe; +it was kept in place by a girdle, and by shoulder-pieces (?), to which +were attached brooches of onyx (fastened to the robe) and golden rings +from which hung the "breastplate" (or rather pouch) containing the +sacred lots, Urim and Thummim. The somewhat involved description in Ex. +xxviii. 6 sqq., xxxix. 2 sqq. (see V. Ryssel's ed. of Dillmann's +commentary on Ex.-Lev.) leaves it uncertain whether it covered the back, +encircling the body like a kind of waistcoat, or only the front; at all +events it was not a garment in the ordinary sense, and its association +with the sacred lots indicates that the ephod was used for divination +(cf. Num. xxvii. 21), and had become the distinguishing feature of the +leading priestly line (cf. 1 Sam. ii. 28).[1] But from other passages it +seems that the ephod had been a familiar object whose use was by no +means so restricted. Like the teraphim (q.v.) it was part of the common +stock of Hebrew cult; it is borne (rather than worn) by persons acting +in a priestly character (Samuel at Shiloh, priests of Nob, David), it is +part of the worship of individuals (Gideon at Ophrah), and is found in a +private shrine with a lay attendant (Micah; Judg. xvii. 5; see, however, +vv. 10-13).[2] Nevertheless, while the prophetical teaching came to +regard the ephod as contrary to the true worship of Yahweh, the priestly +doctrine of the post-exilic age (when worship was withdrawn from the +community at large to the recognized priesthood of Jerusalem) has +retained it along with other remains of earlier usage, legalizing it, as +it were, by confining it exclusively to the Aaronites. + + An intricate historical problem is involved at the outset in the + famous ephod, which the priest Abiathar brought in his hand when he + fled to David after the massacre of the priests of Nob. It is + evidently regarded as the one which had been in Nob (1 Sam. xxi. 9), + and the presence of the priests at Nob is no less clearly regarded as + the sequel of the fall of Shiloh. The ostensible intention is to + narrate the transference of the sacred objects to David (cf. 2 Sam. i. + 10), and henceforth he regularly inquires of Yahweh in his movements + (1 Sam. xxiii. 9-12, xxx. 7 sq.; cf. xxiii. 2, 4; 2 Sam. ii. 1, v. + 19-23). It is possible that the writer (or writers) desired to trace + the earlier history of the ephod through the line of Eli and Abiathar + to the time when the Zadokite priests gained the supremacy (see + LEVITES); but elsewhere Abiathar is said to have borne the ark (1 + Kings ii. 26; cf. 2 Sam. vii. 6), and this fluctuation is noteworthy + by reason of the present confusion in the text of 1 Sam. xiv. 3, 18 + (see commentaries). + + On one view, the ark in Kirjath-jearim was in non-Israelite hands (1 + Sam. vii. 1 sq.); on the other, Saul's position as king necessitates + the presumption that his sway extended over Judah and Israel, + including those cities which otherwise appear to have been in the + hands of aliens (1 Sam. xiv. 47 sq.; cf. xvii. 54, &c.). There are + some fundamental divergencies in the representations of the traditions + of both David and Saul (qq.v.), and there is indirect and independent + evidence which makes 1 Kings ii. 26 not entirely isolated. Here it + must suffice to remark that the ark, too, was also an object for + ascertaining the divine will (especially Judg. xx. 26-28; cf. 18, 23), + and it is far from certain that the later records of the ark (which + was too heavy to be borne by one), like those of the ephod, are valid + for earlier times. + +For the form of the earlier ephod the classic passage is 2 Sam. vi. 14, +where David girt in (or with) a linen ephod dances before the ark at its +entry into Jerusalem and incurs the unqualified contempt of his wife +Michal, the daughter of Saul. Relying upon the known custom of +performing certain observances in a practically, or even entirely, nude +condition, it seems plausible to infer that the ephod was a scanty +wrapping, perhaps a loin-cloth, and this view has found weighty support. +On the other hand, the idea of contempt at the exposure of the person, +to whatever extent, may not have been so prominent, especially if the +custom were not unfamiliar, and it is possible that the sequel refers +more particularly to grosser practices attending outbursts of religious +enthusiasm.[3] + +The favourite view that the ephod was also an image rests partly upon 1 +Sam. xxi. 9, where Goliath's sword is wrapped in a cloth in the +sanctuary of Nob _behind the ephod_. But it is equally natural to +suppose that it hung on a nail in the wall, and apart from the omission +of the significant words in the original Septuagint, the possibility +that the text read "ark" cannot be wholly ignored (see above; also G.F. +Moore, _Ency. Bib._ col. 1307, n. 2). Again, in the story of Micah's +shrine and the removal of the sacred objects and the Levite priest by +the Danites, parallel narratives have been used: the graven and molten +images of Judg. xvii. 2-4 corresponding to the ephod and teraphim of +ver. 5. Throughout there is confusion in the use of these terms, and the +finale refers only to the graven image of Dan (xviii. 30 sq., see 1 +Kings xii. 28 sq.). But the combination of ephod and teraphim (as in +Hos. iii. 4) is noteworthy, since the fact that the latter were images +(1 Sam. xix. 13; Gen. xxxi. 34) could be urged against the view that the +former were of a similar character. Finally, according to Judg. viii. +27, Gideon made an ephod of gold, about 70 lb. in weight, and "put" it +in Ophrah. It is regarded as a departure from the worship of Yahweh, +although the writer of ver. 33 (cf. also ver. 23) hardly shared this +feeling; it was probably something once harmlessly associated with the +cult of Yahweh (cf. CALF, GOLDEN), and the term "ephod" may be due to a +later hand under the influence of the prophetical teaching referred to +above. The present passage is the only one which appears to prove that +the ephod was an image, and several writers, including Lotz (_Realencyk. +f. prot. Theol._ vol. v., s.v.), T.C. Foote (pp. 13-18) and A. +Maecklenburg (_Zeit. f. wissens. Theol._, 1906, pp. 433 sqq.) find this +interpretation unnecessary. + +Archaeological evidence for objects of divination (see, e.g., the +interesting details in Ohnefalsch-Richter, _Kypros, the Bible and +Homer_, i. 447 sq.), and parallels from the Oriental area, can be +readily cited in support of any of the explanations of the ephod which +have been offered, but naturally cannot prove the form which it actually +took in Palestine. Since images were clothed, it could be supposed that +the diviner put on the god's apparel (cf. _Ency. Bib._ col. 1141); but +they were also plated, and in either case the transference from a +covering to the object covered is intelligible. If the ephod was a +loin-cloth, its use as a receptacle and the known evolution of the +article find useful analogies (Foote, p. 43 sq., and _Ency. Bib._ col. +1734 [1]). Finally, if there is no decisive evidence for the view that +it was an image (Judg. viii. 27), or that as a wrapping it formed the +sole covering of the officiating agent (2 Sam. vi.), all that can safely +be said is that it was certainly used in divination and presumably did +not differ radically from the ephod of the post-exilic age. + + See further, in addition to the monographs already cited, the articles + in Hastings's _Dict. Bible_ (by S.R. Driver), _Ency. Bib._ (by G.F. + Moore), and _Jew. Encyc._ (L. Ginsburg), and E. Sellin, in _Oriental. + Studien: Theodor Noldeke_ (ed. Bezold, 1906), pp. 699 sqq. + (S. A. C.) + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Cf. the phrase "ephod of prophecy" (_Testament of Levi_, viii. + 2). The priestly apparatus of the post-exilic age retains several + traces of old mythological symbolism and earlier cult, the meaning of + which had not altogether been forgotten. With the dress one may + perhaps compare the apparel of the gods Marduk and Adad, for which + see A. Jeremias, _Das Alte Test. im Lichte des Alten Orients_, 2nd + ed., figs. 33, 46, and pp. 162, 449. + + [2] The ordinary interpretation "_linen_ ephod" (1 Sam. ii. 18, xxii. + 18; 2 Sam. vi. 14) is questioned by T.C. Foote in his useful + monograph, _Journ. Bibl. Lit._ xxi., 1902, pp. 3, 47. This writer + also aptly compares the infant Samuel with the child who drew the + lots at the temple of Fortuna at Praeneste (Cicero, _De divin._ ii. + 41, 86), and with the modern practice of employing innocent + instruments of chance in lotteries (_op. cit._ pp. 22, 27). + + [3] It is not stated that the linen ephod was David's sole covering, + and it is difficult to account for the text in the parallel passage 1 + Chron. xv. 27 (where he is clothed with a robe); "girt," too, is + ambiguous, since the verb is even used of a sword. On the question of + nudity (cf. 1 Sam. xix. 24) see Robertson Smith, _Rel. Sem._^2 pp. + 161, 450 sq.; _Ency. Bib._ s.vv. "girdle," "sackcloth"; and M. + Jastrow, _Journ. Am. Or. Soc._ xx. 144, xxi. 23. The significant + terms "uncover," "play" (2 Sam. vi. 20 sq.), have other meanings + intelligible to those acquainted with the excesses practised in + Oriental cults. + + + + +EPHOR (Gr. [Greek: ephoros]), the title of the highest magistrates of +the ancient Spartan state. It is uncertain when the office was created +and what was its original character. That it owed its institution to +Lycurgus (Herod. i. 65; cf. Xen. _Respub. Lacedaem._ viii. 3) is very +improbable, and we may either regard it as an immemorial Dorian +institution (with C.O. Muller, H. Gabriel, H.K. Stein, Ed. Meyer and +others), or accept the tradition that it was founded during the first +Messenian War, which necessitated a prolonged absence from Sparta on the +part of both kings (Plato, _Laws_, iii. 692 a; Aristotle, _Politics_, v. +9. 1 = p. 1313 a 26; Plut. _Cleomenes_, 10; so G. Dum, G. Gilbert, +A.H.J. Greenidge). There is no evidence for the theory that originally +the ephors were market inspectors; they seem rather to have had from the +outset judicial or police functions. Gradually they extended their +powers, aided by the jealousy between the royal houses, which made it +almost impossible for the two kings to co-operate heartily, and from the +5th to the 3rd century they exercised a growing despotism which Plato +justly calls a _tyrannis_ (_Laws_, 692). Cleomenes III. restored the +royal power by murdering four of the ephors and abolishing the office, +and though it was revived by Antigonus Doson after the battle of +Sellasia, and existed at least down to Hadrian's reign (_Sparta Museum +Catalogue_, Introd. p. 10), it never regained its former power. + +In historical times the ephors were five in number, the first of them +giving his name to the year, like the eponymous archon at Athens. Where +opinions were divided the majority prevailed. The ephors were elected +annually, originally no doubt by the kings, later by the people; their +term of office began with the new moon after the autumnal equinox, and +they had an official residence ([Greek: ephoreion]) in the Agora. Every +full citizen was eligible and no property qualification was required. + +The ephors summoned and presided over meetings of the Gerousia and +Apella, and formed the executive committee responsible for carrying out +decrees. In their dealings with the kings they represented the supremacy +of the people. There was a monthly exchange of oaths, the kings swearing +to rule according to the laws, the ephors undertaking on this condition +to maintain the royal authority (Xen. _Resp. Laced._ 15. 7). They alone +might remain seated in a king's presence, and had power to try and even +to imprison a king, who must appear before them at the third summons. +Two of them accompanied the army in the field, not interfering with the +king's conduct of the campaign, but prepared, if need be, to bring him +to trial on his return. The ephors, again, exercised a general +guardianship of law and custom and superintended the training of the +young. They shared the criminal jurisdiction of the Gerousia and decided +civil suits. The administration of taxation, the distribution of booty, +and the regulation of the calendar also devolved upon them. They could +actually put _perioeci_ to death without trial, if we may believe +Isocrates (xii. 181), and were responsible for protecting the state +against the helots, against whom they formally declared war on entering +office, so as to be able to kill any whom they regarded as dangerous +without violating religious scruples. Finally, the ephors were supreme +in questions of foreign policy. They enforced, when necessary, the alien +acts ([Greek: xenelasia]), negotiated with foreign ambassadors, +instructed generals, sent out expeditions and were the guiding spirits +of the Spartan confederacy. + + See the constitutional histories of G. Gilbert (Eng. trans.), pp. 16, + 52-59; G. Busolt, p. 84 ff., V. Thumser, p. 241 ff., G.F. Schomann + (Eng. trans.), p. 236 ff., A.H.J. Greenidge, p. 102 ff.; Szanto's + article "Ephoroi" in Pauly-Wissowa, _Realencyclopadie_, v. 2860 ff.; + Ed. Meyer, _Forschungen zur alten Geschichte_, i. 244 ff.; C.O. + Muller, _Dorians_, bk. iii. ch. vii.; G. Grote, _History of Greece_, + pt. ii. ch. vi.; G. Busolt, _Griechische Geschichte_, i.^2 555 ff.; B. + Niese, _Historische Zeitschrift_, lxii. 58 ff. Of the many monographs + dealing with this subject the following are specially useful: G. Dum, + _Entstehung und Entwicklung des spartan_. _Ephorats_ (Innsbruck, + 1878); H.K. Stein, _Das spartan_. _Ephorat bis auf Cheilon_ + (Paderborn, 1870); K. Kuchtner, _Entstehung und ursprungliche + Bedeutung des spartan_. _Ephorats_ (Munich, 1897); C. Frick, _De + ephoris Spartanis_ (Gottingen, 1872); A. Schaefer, _De ephoris + Lacedaemoniis_ (Greifswald, 1863); E. von Stern, _Zur Entstehung und + ursprunglichen Bedeutung des Ephorats in Sparta_ (Berlin, 1894). + (M. N. T.) + + + + +EPHORUS (c. 400-330 B.C.), of Cyme in Aeolis, in Asia Minor, Greek +historian. Together with the historian Theopompus he was a pupil of +Isocrates, in whose school he attended two courses of rhetoric. But he +does not seem to have made much progress in the art, and it is said to +have been at the suggestion of Isocrates himself that he took up +literary composition and the study of history. The fruit of his labours +was his [Greek: Historiai] in 29 books, the first universal history, +beginning with the return of the Heraclidae to Peloponnesus, as the +first well-attested historical event. The whole work was edited by his +son Demophilus, who added a 30th book, containing a summary description +of the Social War and ending with the taking of Perinthus (340) by +Philip of Macedon (cf. Diod. Sic. xvi. 14 with xvi. 76). Each book was +complete in itself, and had a separate title and preface. It is clear +that Ephorus made critical use of the best authorities, and his work, +highly praised and much read, was freely drawn upon by Diodorus +Siculus[1] and other compilers. Strabo (viii. p. 332) attaches much +importance to his geographical investigations, and praises him for being +the first to separate the historical from the merely geographical +element. Polybius (xii. 25 g) while crediting him with a knowledge of +the conditions of naval warfare, ridicules his description of the +battles of Leuctra and Mantineia as showing ignorance of the nature of +land operations. He was further to be commended for drawing (though not +always) a sharp line of demarcation between the mythical and historical +(Strabo ix. p. 423); he even recognized that a profusion of detail, +though lending corroborative force to accounts of recent events, is +ground for suspicion in reports of far-distant history. His style was +high-flown and artificial, as was natural considering his early +training, and he frequently sacrificed truth to rhetoric effect; but, +according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, he and Theopompus were the only +historical writers whose language was accurate and finished. Other works +attributed to him were:--_A Treatise on Discoveries; Respecting Good and +Evil Things; On Remarkable Things in Various Countries_ (it is doubtful +whether these were separate works, or merely extracts from the +_Histories_); _A Treatise on my Country_, on the history and antiquities +of Cyme, and an essay _On Style_, his only rhetorical work, which is +occasionally mentioned by the rhetorician Theon. Nothing is known of his +life, except the statement in Plutarch that he declined to visit the +court of Alexander the Great. + + Fragments in C.W. Muller, _Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum_, i., with + critical introduction on the life and writings of Ephorus; see J.A. + Klugmann, _De Ephoro historico_ (1860); C.A. Volquardsen, + _Untersuchungen uber die Quellen der griechischen und sicilischen + Geschichten bei Diodor_. _xi.-xvi._ (1868); and specially J.B. Bury, + _Ancient Greek Historians_ (1909); E. Schwartz, in Pauly-Wissowa, + _Realencyc._ s.v.; and article GREECE: _History_: Ancient Authorities. + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] It is now generally recognized, thanks to Volquardsen and others, + that Ephorus is the principal authority followed by Diodorus, except + in the chapters relating to Sicilian history. + + + + +EPHRAEM SYRUS (Ephraim the Syrian), a saint who lived in Mesopotamia +during the first three quarters of the 4th century A.D. He is perhaps +the most influential of all Syriac authors; and his fame as a poet, +commentator, preacher and defender of orthodoxy has spread throughout +all branches of the Christian Church. This reputation he owes partly to +the vast fertility of his pen--according to the historian Sozomen he was +credited with having written altogether 3,000,000 lines--partly to the +elegance of his style and a certain measure of poetic inspiration, more +perhaps to the strength and consistency of his personal character, and +his ardour in defence of the creed formulated at Nicaea. + +An anonymous life of Ephraim was written not long after his death in +373. The biography has come down to us in two recensions. But in neither +form is it free from later interpolation; and its untrustworthiness is +shown by its conflicting with data supplied by his own works, as well as +by the manner in which it is overloaded with miraculous events. The +following is a probable outline of the main facts of Ephraim's life. He +was born in the reign of Constantine (perhaps in 306) at or near +Nisibis. His father was a pagan, the priest of an idol called Abnil or +Abizal.[1] During his boyhood Ephraim showed a repugnance towards +heathen worship, and was eventually driven by his father from the home. +He became a ward and disciple of the famous Jacob--the same who attended +the Council of Nicaea as bishop of Nisibis, and died in 338. At his +hands Ephraim seems to have received baptism at the age of 18 or of 28 +(the two recensions differ on this point), and remained at Nisibis till +its surrender to the Persians by Jovian in 363. Probably in the course +of these years he was ordained a deacon, but from his humble estimate of +his own worth refused advancement to any higher degree in the church. He +seems to have played an important part in guiding the fortunes of the +city during the war begun by Shapur II. in 337, in the course of which +Nisibis was thrice unsuccessfully besieged by the Persians (in 338, 346 +and 350). The statements of his biographer to this effect accord with +the impression we derive from his own poems (_Carmina Nisibena_, 1-21). +His intimate relations with Bishop Jacob were continued with the three +succeeding bishops--Babu (338-?349), Vologaeses (?349-361), and +Abraham--on all of whom he wrote encomia. The surrender of the city in +363 to the Persians resulted in a general exodus of the Christians, and +Ephraim left with the rest. After visiting Amid (Diarbekr) he proceeded +to Edessa, and there settled and spent the last ten years of his life. +He seems to have lived mainly as a hermit outside the city: his time was +devoted to study, writing, teaching and the refutation of heresies. It +is possible that during these years he paid a visit to Basil at +Caesarea. Near the end of his life he rendered great public service by +distributing provisions in the city during a famine. The best attested +date for his death is the 9th of June 373. It is clear that this +chronology leaves no room for the visit to Egypt, and the eight years +spent there in refuting Arianism, which are alleged by his biographer. +Perhaps, as has been surmised, there may be confusion with another +Ephraim. Nor can he have written the funeral panegyric on Basil who +survived him by three months. But with all necessary deductions the +biography is valuable as witnessing to the immense reputation for +sanctity and for theological acumen which Ephraim had gained in his +lifetime, or at least soon after he died. His biographer's statement as +to his habits and appearance is worth quoting, and is probably +true:--"From the time he became a monk to the end of his life his only +food was barley bread and sometimes pulse and vegetables: his drink was +water. And his flesh was dried upon his bones, like a potter's sherd. +His clothes were of many pieces patched together, the colour of dirt. In +stature he was little; his countenance was always sad, and he never +condescended to laughter. And he was bald and beardless." + +The statement in his Life that Ephraim miraculously learned Coptic falls +to the ground with the narrative of his Egyptian visit: and the story of +his suddenly learning to speak Greek through the prayer of St Basil is +equally unworthy of credence. He probably wrote only in Syriac, though +he may have possessed some knowledge of Greek and possibly of Hebrew. +But many of his works must have been early translated into other +languages; and we possess in MSS. versions into Greek, Armenian, Coptic, +Arabic and Ethiopic. The Greek versions occupy three entire volumes of +the Roman folio edition, and the extant Armenian versions (mainly of +N.T. commentaries) were published at Venice in four volumes in 1836. + +It was primarily as a sacred poet that Ephraim impressed himself on his +fellow-countrymen. With the exception of his commentaries on scripture, +nearly all his extant Syriac works are composed in metre. In many cases +the metrical structure is of the simplest, consisting only in the +arrangement of the discourse in lines of uniform length--usually +heptasyllabic (Ephraim's favourite metre) or pentasyllabic. A more +complicated arrangement is found in other poems, such as the _Carmina +Nisibena_: these are made up of strophes, each consisting of lines of +different lengths according to a settled scheme, with a recurring +refrain. T.J. Lamy has estimated that, in this class of poems, there are +as many as 66 different varieties of metres to be found in the works of +Ephraim. These strophic poems were set to music, and sung by alternating +choirs of girls. According to Ephraim's biographer, his main motive for +providing these hymns set to music was his desire to counteract the +baneful effects produced by the heretical hymns of Bardaisan and his son +Harmonius, which had enjoyed popularity and been sung among the +Edessenes for a century and a half. + +The subject-matter of Ephraim's poems covers all departments of +theology. Thus the Roman edition contains (of metrical works) exegetical +discourses, hymns on the Nativity of Christ, 65 hymns against heretics, +85 on the Faith against sceptics, a discourse against the Jews, 85 +funeral hymns, 4 on freewill, 76 exhortations to repentance, 12 hymns on +paradise, and 12 on miscellaneous subjects. The edition of Lamy has +added many other poems, largely connected with church festivals. It must +be confessed that, judged by Western standards, the poems of Ephraim are +prolix and wearisome in the extreme, and are distinguished by few +striking poetic beauties. And so far as they are made the vehicle of +reasoning, their efficiency is seriously hampered by their poetic form. +On the other hand, it is fair to remember that the taste of Ephraim's +countrymen in poetry was very different from ours. As Duval remarks: +"quant a la prolixite de saint Ephrem que nous trouvons parfois +fastidieuse, on ne peut la condamner sans tenir compte du gout des +Syriens qui aimaient les repetitions et les developpements de la meme +pensee, et voyaient des qualites la ou nous trouvons des defauts" +(_Litter. syriaque_, p. 19). He is no worse in these respects than the +best of the Syriac writers who succeeded him. And he surpasses almost +all of them in the richness of his diction, and his skill in the use of +metaphors and illustrations. + +Of Ephraim as a commentator on Scripture we have only imperfect means of +judging. His commentaries on the O.T. are at present accessible to us +only in the form they had assumed in the _Catena Patrum_ of Severus +(compiled in 861), and to some extent in quotations by later Syriac +commentators. His commentary on the Gospels is of great importance in +connexion with the textual history of the N.T., for the text on which he +composed it was that of the Diatessaron. The Syriac original is lost: +but the ancient Armenian version survives, and was published at Venice +in 1836 along with Ephraim's commentary on the Pauline epistles (also +only extant in Armenian) and some other works. A Latin version of the +Armenian Diatessaron commentary has been made by Aucher and Mosinger +(Venice, 1876). Using this version as a clue, J.R. Harris[2] has been +able to identify a number of Syriac quotations from or references to +this commentary in the works of Isho'dadh, Bar-Kepha (Severus), +Bar-salibi and Barhebraeus. Although, as Harris points out, it is +unlikely that the original text of the Diatessaron had come down +unchanged through the two centuries to Ephraim's day, the text on which +he comments was in the main unaffected by the revision which produced +the Peshitta. Side by side with this conclusion may be placed the result +of F.C. Burkitt's[3] careful examination of the quotations from the +Gospels in the other works of Ephraim; he shows conclusively that in all +the undoubtedly genuine works the quotations are from a pre-Peshitta +text. + +As a theologian, Ephraim shows himself a stout defender of Nicaean +orthodoxy, with no leanings in the direction of either the Nestorian or +the Monophysite heresies which arose after his time. He regarded it as +his special task to combat the views of Marcion, of Bardaisan and of +Mani. + +To the modern historian Ephraim's main contribution is in the material +supplied by the 72 hymns[4] known as _Carmina Nisibena_ and published by +G. Bickell in 1866. The first 20 poems were written at Nisibis between +350 and 363 during the Persian invasions; the remaining 52 at Edessa +between 363 and 373. The former tell us much of the incidents of the +frontier war, and particularly enable us to reconstruct in detail the +history of the third siege of Nisibis in 350. + + Of the many editions of Ephraim's works a full list is given by Nestle + in _Realenk. f. protest. Theol. und Kirche_ (3rd ed.). For modern + students the most important are: (1) the great folio edition in 6 + volumes (3 of works in Greek and 3 in Syriac), in which the text is + throughout accompanied by a Latin version (Rome, 1732-1746); on the + unsatisfactory character of this edition (which includes many works + that are not Ephraim's) and especially of the Latin version, see + Burkitt, _Ephraim's Quotations_, pp. 4 sqq.; (2) _Carmina Nisibena_, + edited with a Latin translation by G. Bickell (Leipzig, 1866); (3) + _Hymni et sermones_, edited with a Latin translation by T.J. Lamy (4 + vols., Malines, 1882-1902). Many selected homilies have been edited or + translated by Overbeck, Zingerle and others (cf. Wright, _Short + History_, pp. 35 sqq.); a selection of the _Hymns_ was translated by + H. Burgess, _Select Metrical Hymns of Ephrem Syrus_ (1853). Of the two + recensions of Ephraim's biography, one was edited in part by J.S. + Assemani (B.O. i. 26 sqq.) and in full by S.E. Assemani in the Roman + edition (iii. pp. xxiii.-lxiii.); the other by Lamy (ii. 5-90) and + Bedjan (_Acta mart. et sanct._ iii. 621-665). The long poem on the + history of Joseph, twice edited by Bedjan (Paris, 1887 and 1891) and + by him attributed to Ephraim, is more probably the work of Balai. + (N. M.) + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] It is true that in the _Confession_ attributed to him and printed + among his Greek works in the first volume of the Roman edition he + speaks (p. 129) of his parents as having become martyrs for the + Christian faith. But this document is of very doubtful authenticity. + + [2] _Fragments of the Commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon the + Diatessaron_ (London, 1895). + + [3] "Ephraim's Quotations from the Gospel," in _Texts and Studies_, + vol. vii. (Cambridge, 1901). + + [4] There were originally 77, but 5 have perished. + + + + +EPHRAIM, a tribe of Israel, called after the younger son of Joseph, who +in his benediction exalted Ephraim over the elder brother Manasseh (Gen. +xlviii.). These two divisions were often known as the "house of Joseph" +(Josh. xvii. 14 sqq.; Judg. i. 22; 2 Sam. xix. 20; 1 Kings xi. 28). The +relations between them are obscure; conflicts are referred to in Is. ix. +21,[1] and Ephraim's proud and ambitious character is indicated in its +demands as narrated in Josh. xvii. 14; Judg. viii. 1-3, xii. 1-6. +throughout, Ephraim played a distinctive and prominent part; it probably +excelled Manasseh in numerical strength, and the name became a synonym +for the northern kingdom of Israel. Originally the name may have been a +geographical term for the central portion of Palestine. Regarded as a +tribe, it lay to the north of Benjamin, which traditionally belongs to +it; but whether the young "brother" (see BENJAMIN) sprang from it, or +grew up separately, is uncertain. Northwards, Ephraim lost itself in +Manasseh, even if it did not actually include it (Judg. i. 27; 1 Chron. +vii. 29); the boundaries between them can hardly be recovered. Ephraim's +strength lay in the possession of famous sites: Shechem, with the tomb +of the tribal ancestor, also one of the capitals; Shiloh, at one period +the home of the ark; Timnath-Serah (or Heres), the burial-place of +Joshua; and Samaria, whose name was afterwards extended to the whole +district (see SAMARIA). + +Shechem itself was visited by Abraham and Jacob, and the latter bought +from the sons of Hamor a burial-place (Gen. xxxiii. 19). The story of +Dinah may imply some early settlement of tribes in its vicinity (but see +SIMEON), and the reference in Gen. xlviii. 22 (see R.V. marg.) alludes +to its having been forcibly captured. But how this part of Palestine +came into the hands of the Israelites is not definitely related in the +story of the invasion (see JOSHUA). + +A careful discussion of the Biblical data referring to Ephraim is given +by H.W. Hogg, _Ency. Bib._, s.v. On the characteristic narratives which +appear to have originated in Ephraim (viz. the Ephraimite or Elohist +source, E), see GENESIS and BIBLE: _Old Testament Criticism._ See +further ABIMELECH; GIDEON; MANASSEH; and JEWS: _History_. + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] Inter-tribal feuds during the period of the monarchy may underlie + the events mentioned in 1 Kings xvi. 9 sq., 21 sq.; 2 Kings xv. 10, + 14. + + + + +EPHTHALITES, or WHITE HUNS. This many-named and enigmatical tribe was +of considerable importance in the history of India and Persia in the 5th +and 6th centuries, and was known to the Byzantine writers, who call them +[Greek: Ephthalitoi, Euthagitoi,] [Greek: Nephthalitoi] or [Greek: +Abdeloi]. The last of these is an independent attempt to render the +original name, which was probably something like Aptal or Haptal, but +the initial [Nu] of the third is believed to be a clerical error. They +were also called [Greek: Leukoi Ounnoi] or [Greek: Chounoi], White (that +is fair-skinned) Huns. In Arabic and Persian they are known as Haital +and in Armenian as Haithal, Idal or Hepthal. The Chinese name Yetha +seems an attempt to represent the same sound. In India they were called +Hunas. Ephthalite is the usual orthography, but Hephthalite is perhaps +more correct. + +Our earliest information about the Ephthalites comes from the Chinese +chronicles, in which it is stated that they were originally a tribe of +the great Yue-Chi (q.v.), living to the north of the Great Wall, and in +subjection to the Jwen-Jwen, as were also the Turks at one time. Their +original name was Hoa or Hoa-tun; subsequently they styled themselves +Ye-tha-i-li-to after the name of their royal family, or more briefly +Ye-tha. Before the 5th century A.D. they began to move westwards, for +about 420 we find them in Transoxiana, and for the next 130 years they +were a menace to Persia, which they continually and successfully +invaded, though they never held it as a conquest. The Sassanid king, +Bahram V., fought several campaigns with them and succeeded in keeping +them at bay, but they defeated and killed Peroz (Firuz), A.D. 484. His +son Kavadh I. (Kobad), being driven out of Persia, took refuge with the +Ephthalites, and recovered his throne with the assistance of their khan, +whose daughter he had married, but subsequently he engaged in prolonged +hostilities with them. The Persians were not quit of the Ephthalites +until 557 when Chosroes Anushirwan destroyed their power with the +assistance of the Turks, who now make their first appearance in western +Asia. + +The Huns who invaded India appear to have belonged to the same stock as +those who molested Persia. The headquarters of the horde were at Bamian +and at Balkh, and from these points they raided south-east and +south-west. Skandagupta repelled an invasion in 455, but the defeat of +the Persians in 484 probably stimulated their activity, and at the end +of the 5th century their chief Toromana penetrated to Malwa in central +India and succeeded in holding it for some time. His son Mihiragula (c. +510-540) made Sakala in the Punjab his Indian capital, but the cruelty +of his rule provoked the Indian princes to form a confederation and +revolt against him about 528. He was not, however, killed, but took +refuge in Kashmir, where after a few years he seized the throne and then +attacked the neighbouring kingdom of Gandhara, perpetrating terrible +massacres. About a year after this he died (c. 540), and shortly +afterwards the Ephthalites collapsed under the attacks of the Turks. +They do not appear to have moved on to another sphere, as these nomadic +tribes often did when defeated, and were probably gradually absorbed in +the surrounding populations. Their political power perhaps continued in +the Gurjara empire, which at one time extended to Bengal in the east and +the Nerbudda in the south, and continued in a diminished form until A.D. +1040. These Gurjaras appear to have entered India in connexion with the +Hunnish invasions. + +Our knowledge of the Indian Hunas is chiefly derived from coins, from a +few inscriptions distributed from the Punjab to central India, and from +the account of the Chinese pilgrim Hsuan Tsang, who visited the country +just a century after the death of Mihiragula. The Greek monk Cosmas +Indicopleustes, who visited India about 530, describes the ruler of the +country, whom he calls Gollas, as a White Hun king, who exacted an +oppressive tribute with the help of a large army of cavalry and war +elephants. Gollas no doubt represents the last part of the name +Mihiragula or Mihirakula. + +The accounts of the Ephthalites, especially those of the Indian Hunas, +dwell on their ferocity and cruelty. They are represented as delighting +in massacres and torture, and it is said that popular tradition in India +still retains the story that Mihiragula used to amuse himself by rolling +elephants down a precipice and watching their agonies. Their invasions +shook Indian society and institutions to the foundations, but, unlike +the earlier Kushans, they do not seem to have introduced new ideas into +India or have acted as other than a destructive force, although they may +perhaps have kept up some communication between India and Persia. The +first part of Mihiragula seems to be the name of the Persian deity +Mithra, but his patron deity was Siva, and he left behind him the +reputation of a ferocious persecutor of Buddhism. Many of his coins bear +the Nandi bull (Siva's emblem), and the king's name is preceded by the +title _sahi_ (shah), which had previously been used by the Kushan +dynasty. Toramana's coins are found plentifully in Kashmir, which, +therefore, probably formed part of the Huna dominions before +Mihiragula's time, so that when he fled there after his defeat he was +taking refuge, if not with his own subjects, at least with a kindred +clan. + +Greek writers give a more flattering account of the Ephthalites, which +may perhaps be due to the fact that they were useful to the East Roman +empire as enemies of Persia and also not dangerously near. Procopius +says that they were far more civilized than the Huns of Attila, and the +Turkish ambassador who was received by Justin is said to have described +them as [Greek: astikoi], which may merely mean that they lived in the +cities which they conquered. The Chinese writers say that their customs +were like those of the Turks; that they had no cities, lived in felt +tents, were ignorant of writing and practised polyandry. Nothing +whatever is known of their language, but some scholars explain the names +Toramana and Jauvla as Turkish. + +For the possible connexion between the Ephthalites and the European Huns +see HUNS. The Chinese statement that the Hoa or Ye-tha were a section of +the great Yue-Chi, and that their customs resembled those of the Turks +(Tu-Kiue), is probably correct, but does not amount to much, for the +relationship did not prevent them from fighting with the Yue-Chi and +Turks, and means little more than that they belonged to the warlike and +energetic section of central Asian nomads, which is in any case certain. +They appear to have been more ferocious and less assimilative than the +other conquering tribes. This may, however, be due to the fact that +their contact with civilization was so short; the Yue-Chi and Turks had +had some commerce with more advanced races before they played any part +in political history, but the Ephthalites appear as raw barbarians, and +were annihilated as a nation in little more than a hundred years. Like +the Yue-Chi they have probably contributed to form some of the physical +types of the Indian population, and it is noticeable that polyandry is a +recognized institution among many Himalayan tribes, and is also said to +be practised secretly by the Jats and other races of the plains. + + Among original authorities may be consulted Procopius, Menander + Protector, Cosmas Indicopleustes (trans. McCrindle, Hakluyt Society, + 1897), the Kashmir chronicle _Rajatarangini_ (trans. Stein, 1900, and + Yuan Chwang). See also A. Stein, _White Huns and Kindred Tribes_ + (1905); O. Franke, _Beitrage aus chinesischen Quellen zur Kenntnis der + Turkvolker und Skythen_ (1904); Ujfalvy, _Memoire sur les Huns Blancs_ + (1898); Drouin, _Memoire sur les Huns Ephthalites_ (1895); and various + articles by Vincent Smith, Specht, Drouin, and E.H. Parker in the + _Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society_, _Journal asiatique_, _Revue + numismatique_, _Asiatic Quarterly_, &c. (C. El.) + + + + +EPI, the French architectural term for a light finial, generally of +metal, but sometimes of terra-cotta, forming the termination of a spire +or the angle of a roof. + + + + +EPICENE (from the Gr. [Greek: epikoinos], common), a term in Greek and +Latin grammar denoting nouns which, possessing but one gender, are used +to describe animals of either sex. In English grammar there are no true +epicene nouns, but the term is sometimes used instead of _common +gender_. In figurative and literary language, epicene is an adjective +applied to persons having the characteristics of both sexes, and hence +is occasionally used as a synonym of "effeminate." + + + + +EPICHARMUS (c. 540-450 B.C.), Greek comic poet, was born in the island +of Cos. Early in life he went to Megara in Sicily, and after its +destruction by Gelo (484) removed to Syracuse, where he spent the rest +of his life at the court of Hiero, and died at the age of ninety or +(according to a statement in Lucian, _Macrobii_, 25) ninety-seven. A +brazen statue was set up in his honour by the inhabitants, for which +Theocritus composed an inscription (_Epigr._ 17). Epicharmus was the +chief representative of the Sicilian or Dorian comedy. Of his works 35 +titles and a few fragments have survived. In the city of tyrants it +would have been dangerous to present comedies like those of the Athenian +stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities. Accordingly, the +comedies of Epicharmus are of two kinds, neither of them calculated to +give offence to the ruler. They are either mythological travesties +(resembling the satyric drama of Athens) or character comedies. To the +first class belong the _Busiris_, in which Heracles is represented as a +voracious glutton; the _Marriage of Hebe_, remarkable for a lengthy list +of dainties. The second class dealt with different classes of the +population (the sailor, the prophet, the boor, the parasite). Some of +the plays seem to have bordered on the political, as _The Plunderings_, +describing the devastation of Sicily in the time of the poet. A short +fragment has been discovered (in the Rainer papyri) from the [Greek: +Odysseus automolos], which told how Odysseus got inside Troy in the +disguise of a beggar and obtained valuable information. Another feature +of his works was the large number of excellent sentiments expressed in a +brief proverbial form; the Pythagoreans claimed him as a member of their +school, who had forsaken the study of philosophy for the writing of +comedy. Plato (_Theaetetus_, 152 E) puts him at the head of the masters +of comedy, coupling his name with Homer and, according to a remark in +Diogenes Laertius, Plato was indebted to Epicharmus for much of his +philosophy. Ennius called his didactic poem on natural philosophy +_Epicharmus_ after the comic poet. The metres employed by Epicharmus +were iambic trimeter, and especially trochaic and anapaestic tetrameter. +The plot of the plays was simple, the action lively and rapid; hence +they were classed among the _fabulae motoriae_ (stirring, bustling), as +indicated in the well-known line of Horace (_Epistles_, ii. 1. 58): + + "Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi." + + Epicharmus is the subject of articles in Suidas and Diogenes Laertius + (viii. 3). See A.O. Lorenz, _Leben und Schriften des Koers E._ (with + account of the Doric drama and fragments, 1864); J. Girard, _Etudes + sur la poesie grecque_ (1884); Kaibel in Pauly-Wissowa's + _Realencyclopadie_, according to whom Epicharmus was a Siceliot; for + the papyrus fragment, Blass in _Jahrbucher fur Philologie_, cxxxix., + 1889. + + + + +EPIC POETRY, or EPOS (from the Gr. [Greek: epos], a story, and [Greek: +epikos], pertaining to a story), the names given to the most dignified +and elaborate forms of narrative poetry. The word _epopee_ is also, but +more rarely, employed to designate the same thing, [Greek: epopoios] in +Greek being a maker of epic poetry, and [Greek: epopoiia] what he makes. + +It is to Greece, where the earliest literary monuments which we possess +are of an epical character, that we turn for a definition of these vast +heroic compositions, and we gather that their subject-matter was not +confined, as Voltaire and the critics of the 18th century supposed, to +"narratives in verse of warlike adventures." When we first discover the +epos, hexameter verse has already been selected for its vehicle. In this +form epic poems were composed not merely dealing with war and personal +romance, but carrying out a didactic purpose, or celebrating the +mysteries of religion. These three divisions, to which are severally +attached the more or less mythical names of Homer, Hesiod and Orpheus +seem to have marked the earliest literary movement of the Greeks. But, +even here, we must be warned that what we possess is not primitive; +there had been unwritten epics, probably in hexameters, long before the +composition of any now-surviving fragment. The saga of the Greek nation, +the catalogue of its arts and possessions, the rites and beliefs of its +priesthood, must have been circulated, by word of mouth, long before any +historical poet was born. We look upon Homer and Hesiod as records of +primitive thought, but Professor Gilbert Murray reminds us that "our +_Iliad, Odyssey_, _Erga_ and _Theogony_ are not the first, nor the +second, nor the twelfth of such embodiments." The early epic poets, +Lesches, Linus, Orpheus, Arctinus, Eugammon are the veriest shadows, +whose names often betray their symbolic and fabulous character. It is +now believed that there was a class of minstrels, the Rhapsodists or +Homeridae, whose business it was to recite poetry at feasts and other +solemn occasions. "The real bards of early Greece were all nameless and +impersonal." When our tradition begins to be preserved, we find +everything of a saga-character attributed to Homer, a blind man and an +inhabitant of Chios. This gradually crystallized until we find Aristotle +definitely treating Homer as a person, and attributing to him the +composition of three great poems, the _Iliad_, the _Odyssey_ and the +_Margites_, now lost (see HOMER). The first two of these have been +preserved and form for us the type of the ancient epic; when we speak of +epic poetry, we unconsciously measure it by the example of the _Iliad_ +and the _Odyssey_. It is quite certain, however, that these poems had +not merely been preceded by a vast number of revisions of the mythical +history of the country, but were accompanied by innumerable poems of a +similar character, now entirely lost. That antiquity did not regard +these other epics as equal in beauty to the _Iliad_ seems to be certain; +but such poems as _Cypria_, _Iliou Persis_ (Sack of Ilion) and +_Aethiopis_ can hardly but have exhibited other sides of the epic +tradition. Did we possess them, it is almost certain that we could speak +with more assurance as to the scope of epic poetry in the days of oral +tradition, and could understand more clearly what sort of ballads in +hexameter it was which rhapsodes took round from court to court. In the +4th century B.C. it seems that people began to write down what was not +yet forgotten of all this oral poetry. Unfortunately, the earliest +critic who describes this process is Proclus, a Byzantine neo-Platonist, +who did not write until some 800 years later, when the whole tradition +had become hopelessly corrupted. When we pass from Homer and Hesiod, +about whose actual existence critics will be eternally divided, we reach +in the 7th century a poet, Peisander of Rhodes, who wrote an epic poem, +the _Heracleia_, of which fragments remain. Other epic writers, who +appear to be undoubtedly historic, are Antimachus of Colophon, who wrote +a _Thebais_; Panyasis, who, like Peisander, celebrated the feats of +Heracles; Choerilus of Samos; and Anyte, of whom we only know that she +was an epic poetess, and was called "The female Homer." In the 6th and +5th centuries B.C. there was a distinct school of philosophical epic, +and we distinguish the names of Xenophanes, Parmenides and Empedocles as +the leaders of it. + +From the dawn of Latin literature epic poetry seems to have been +cultivated in Italy. A Greek exile, named Livius Andronicus, translated +the _Odyssey_ into Latin during the first Punic War, but the earliest +original epic of Rome was the lost _Bellum Punicum_ of Naevius, a work +to which Virgil was indebted. A little later, Ennius composed, about 172 +B.C., in 18 books, an historical epic of the _Annales_, dealing with the +whole chronicle of Rome. This was the foremost Latin poem, until the +appearance of the _Aeneid_; it was not imitated, remaining, for a +hundred years, as Mr Mackail has said, "not only the unique, but the +satisfying achievement in this kind of poetry." Virgil began the most +famous of Roman epics in the year 30 B.C., and when he died, nine years +later, he desired that the MS. of the _Aeneid_ should be burned, as it +required three years' work to complete it. Nevertheless, it seems to us, +and seemed to the ancient world, almost perfect, and a priceless +monument of art; it is written, like the great Greek poems on which it +is patently modelled, in hexameters. In the next generation, the +_Pharsalia_ of Lucan, of which Cato, as the type of the republican +spirit, is the hero, was the principal example of Latin epic. Statius, +under the Flavian emperors, wrote several epic poems, of which the +_Thebaid_ survives. In the 1st century A.D. Valerius Flaccus wrote the +_Argonautica_ in 8 books, and Silius Italicus the _Punic War_, in 17 +books; these authors show a great decline in taste and merit, even in +comparison with Statius, and Silius Italicus, in particular, is as +purely imitative as the worst of the epic writers of modern Europe. At +the close of the 4th century the style revived with Claudian, who +produced five or six elaborate historical and mythological epics of +which the _Rape of Proserpine_ was probably the most remarkable; in his +interesting poetry we have a valuable link between the Silver Age in +Rome and the Italian Renaissance. With Claudian the history of epic +poetry among the ancients closes. + +In medieval times there existed a large body of narrative poetry to +which the general title of Epic has usually been given. Three principal +schools are recognized, the French, the Teutonic and the Icelandic. +Teutonic epic poetry deals, as a rule, with legends founded on the +history of Germany in the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, and in particular +with such heroes as Ermanaric, Attila and Theodoric. But there is also +an important group in it which deals with English themes, and among +these _Beowulf_, _Waldere_, _The Lay of Maldon_ and _Finnesburh_ are +pre-eminent. To this group is allied the purely German poem of +_Hildebrand_, attributed to c. 800. Among these _Beowulf_ is the only +one which exists in anything like complete form, and it is of all +examples of Teutonic epic the most important. With all its trivialities +and incongruities, which belong to a barbarous age, _Beowulf_ is yet a +solid and comprehensive example of native epic poetry. It is written, +like all old Teutonic work of the kind, in alliterative unrhymed rhythm. +In Iceland, a new heroic literature was invented in the middle ages, and +to this we owe the Sagas, which are, in fact, a reduction to prose of +the epics of the warlike history of the North. These Sagas took the +place of a group of archaic Icelandic epics, the series of which seems +to have closed with the noble poem of _Atlamal_, the principal surviving +specimen of epic poetry as it was cultivated in the primitive literature +of Iceland. The surviving epical fragments of Icelandic composition are +found thrown together in the _Codex Regius_, under the title of _The +Elder Edda_, a most precious MS. discovered in the 17th century. The +Icelandic epics seem to have been shorter and more episodical in +character than the lost Teutonic specimens; both kinds were written in +alliterative verse. It is not probable that either possessed the organic +unity and vitality of spirit which make the Sagas so delightful. The +French medieval epics (see CHANSONS DE GESTE) are late in comparison +with those of England, Germany and Iceland. They form a curious +transitional link between primitive and modern poetry; the literature of +civilized Europe may be said to begin with them. There is a great +increase of simplicity, a great broadening of the scene of action. The +Teutonic epics were obscure and intense, the French _chansons de geste_ +are lucid and easy. The existing masterpiece of this kind, the +magnificent _Roland_, is doubtless the most interesting and pleasing of +all the epics of medieval Europe. Professor Ker's analysis of its merits +may be taken as typical of all that is best in the vast body of epic +which comes between the antique models, which were unknown to the +medieval poets, and the artificial epics of a later time which were +founded on vast ideal themes, in imitation of the ancients. "There is +something lyrical in _Roland_, but the poem is not governed by lyrical +principles; it requires the deliberation and the freedom of epic; it +must have room to move in before it can come up to the height of its +argument. The abruptness of its periods is not really an interruption of +its even flight; it is an abruptness of detail, like a broken sea with a +larger wave moving under it; it does not impair or disguise the grandeur +of the movement as a whole." Of the progress and decline of the chansons +de geste (q.v.) from the ideals of _Roland_ a fuller account is given +elsewhere. _To the Nibelungenlied_ (q.v.) also, detailed attention is +given in a separate article. + +What may be called the artificial or secondary epics of modern Europe, +founded upon an imitation of the _Iliad_ and the _Aeneid_, are more +numerous than the ordinary reader supposes, although but few of them +have preserved much vitality. In Italy the _Chanson de Roland_ inspired +romantic epics by Luigi Pulci (1432-1487), whose _Morgante Maggiore_ +appeared in 1481, and is a masterpiece of burlesque; by M.M. Boiardo +(1434-1494), whose _Orlando Innamorato_ was finished in 1486; by +Francesco Bello (1440?-1495), whose _Mambriano_ was published in 1497; +by Lodovico Ariosto (q.v.), whose _Orlando Furioso_, by far the greatest +of its class, was published in 1516, and by Luigi Dolce (1508-1568), as +well as by a great number of less illustrious poets. G.G. Trissino +(1478-1549) wrote a _Deliverance of Italy from the Goths_ in 1547, and +Bernardo Tasso (1493-1569) an _Amadigi_ in 1559; Berni remodelled the +epic of Boiardo in 1541, and Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544), ridiculed the +whole school in an _Orlandino_ of 1526. An extraordinary feat of +mock-heroic epic was _The Bucket_ (1622) of Alessandro Tassoni +(1565-1638). The most splendid of all the epics of Italy, however, was, +and remains, the _Jerusalem Delivered_ of Torquato Tasso (q.v.), +published originally in 1580, and afterwards rewritten as _The Conquest +of Jerusalem_, 1593. The fantastic _Adone_ (1623) of G.B. Marini +(1569-1625) and the long poems of Chiabrera, close the list of Italian +epics. Early Portuguese literature is rich in epic poetry. Luis Pereira +Brandao wrote an _Elegiada_ in 18 books, published in 1588; Jeronymo +Corte-Real (d. 1588) a _Shipwreck of Sepulveda_ and two other epics; +V.M. Quevedo, in 1601, an _Alphonso of Africa_, in 12 books; Sa de +Menezes (d. 1664) a _Conquest of Malacca_, 1634; but all these, and many +more, are obscured by the glory of Camoens (q.v.), whose magnificent +_Lusiads_ had been printed in 1572, and forms the summit of Portuguese +literature. In Spanish poetry, the _Poem of the Cid_ takes the first +place, as the great national epic of the middle ages; it is supposed to +have been written between 1135 and 1175. It was followed by the +_Rodrigo_, and the medieval school closes with the _Alphonso XI._ of +Rodrigo Yanez, probably written at the close of the 12th century. The +success of the Italian imitative epics of the 15th century led to some +imitation of their form in Spain. Juan de la Cueva (1550?-1606) +published a _Conquest of Betica_ in 1603; Cristobal de Virues +(1550-1610) a _Monserrate_, in 1588; Luis Barahona de Soto continued +Ariosto in a _Tears of Angelica_; Gutierrez wrote an _Austriada_ in +1584; but perhaps the finest modern epic in Spanish verse is the +_Araucana_ (1569-1590) of Alonso de Ercilla y Zuniga (1533-1595), "the +first literary work of merit," as Mr Fitzmaurice-Kelly remarks, +"composed in either American continent." In France, the epic never +flourished in modern times, and no real success attended the _Franciade_ +of Ronsard, the _Alaric_ of Scudery, the _Pucelle_ of Chapelain, the +_Divine Epopee_ of Soumet, or even the _Henriade_ of Voltaire. In +English literature _The Faery Queen_ of Spenser has the same claim as +the Italian poems mentioned above to bear the name of epic, and Milton, +who stands entirely apart, may be said, by his isolated _Paradise Lost_, +to take rank with Homer and Virgil, as one of the three types of the +mastery of epical composition. + + See Bossu, _Traite du poeme epique_ (1675); Voltaire, _Sur la poesie + epique_; Fauviel, _L'Origine de l'epopee chevaleresque_ (1832); W.P. + Ker, _Epic and Romance_ (1897), and _Essays in Medieval Literature_ + (1905); Gilbert Murray, _History of Ancient Greek Literature_ (1897); + W. von Christ, _Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur_ (1879); Gaston + Paris, _La Litterature francaise au moyen age_ (1890); Leon Gautier, + _Les Epopees francaises_ (1865-1868). For works on the Greek epics see + also GREEK LITERATURE and CYCLE. (E. G.) + + + + +EPICTETUS (born c. A.D. 60), Greek philosopher, was probably a native +of Hierapolis in south-west Phrygia. The name Epictetus is merely the +Greek for "acquired" (from [Greek: epiktasthai]); his original name is +not known. As a boy he was a slave in the house of Epaphroditus, a +freedman and courtier of the emperor Nero. He managed, however, to +attend the lectures of the Stoic Musonius Rufus, and subsequently became +a freedman. He was lame and of weakly health. In 90 he was expelled with +the other philosophers by Domitian, who was irritated by the support and +encouragement which the opposition to his tyranny found amongst the +adherents of Stoicism. For the rest of his life he settled at Nicopolis, +in southern Epirus, not far from the scene of the battle of Actium. +There for several years he lived, and taught by close earnest personal +address and conversation. According to some authorities he lived into +the time of Hadrian; he himself mentions the coinage of the emperor +Trajan. His contemporaries and the next generation held his character +and teaching in high honour. According to Lucian, the earthenware lamp +which had belonged to the sage was bought by an antiquarian for 3000 +drachmas. He was never married. He wrote nothing; but much of his +teaching was taken down with affectionate care by his pupil Flavius +Arrianus, the historian of Alexander the Great, and is preserved in two +treatises, of the larger of which, called the _Discourses of Epictetus_ +([Greek: Epiktetou Diatribai]), four books are still extant. The other +treatise is a shorter and more popular work, the _Encheiridion_ +("Handbook"). It contains in an aphoristic form the main doctrines of +the longer work. + +The philosophy of Epictetus is intensely practical, and exhibits a high +idealistic type of morality. He is an earnest, sometimes stern and +sometimes pathetic, preacher of righteousness, who despises the mere +graces of style and the subtleties of an abstruse logic. He has no +patience with mere antiquarian study of the Stoical writers. The problem +of how life is to be carried out well is the one question which throws +all other inquiries into the shade. True education lies in learning to +wish things to be as they actually are; it lies in learning to +distinguish what is our own from what does not belong to us. But there +is only one thing which is fully our own,--that is, our will or purpose. +God, acting as a good king and a true father, has given us a will which +cannot be restrained, compelled or thwarted. Nothing external, neither +death nor exile nor pain nor any such thing, can ever force us to act +against our will; if we are conquered, it is because we have willed to +be conquered. And thus, although we are not responsible for the ideas +that present themselves to our consciousness, we are absolutely and +without any modification responsible for the way in which we use them. +Nothing is ours besides our will. The divine law which bids us keep fast +what is our own forbids us to make any claim to what is not ours; and +while enjoining us to make use of whatever is given to us, it bids us +not long after what has not been given. "Two maxims," he says, "we must +ever bear in mind--that apart from the will there is nothing either good +or bad, and that we must not try to anticipate or direct events, but +merely accept them with intelligence." We must, in short, resign +ourselves to whatever fate and fortune bring to us, believing, as the +first article of our creed, that there is a god, whose thought directs +the universe, and that not merely in our acts, but even in our thoughts +and plans, we cannot escape his eye. In the world the true position of +man is that of member of a great system, which comprehends God and men. +Each human being is in the first instance a citizen of his own nation or +commonwealth; but he is also a member of the great city of gods and men, +whereof the city political is only a copy in miniature. All men are the +sons of God, and kindred in nature with the divinity. For man, though a +member in the system of the world, has also within him a principle which +can guide and understand the movement of all the members; he can enter +into the method of divine administration, and thus can learn--and it is +the acme of his learning--the will of God, which is the will of nature. +Man, said the Stoic, is a rational animal; and in virtue of that +rationality he is neither less nor worse than the gods, for the +magnitude of reason is estimated not by length nor by height but by its +judgments. Each man has within him a guardian spirit, a god within him, +who never sleeps; so that even in darkness and solitude we are never +alone, because God is within, our guardian spirit. The body which +accompanies us is not strictly speaking ours; it is a poor dead thing, +which belongs to the things outside us. But by reason we are the masters +of those ideas and appearances which present themselves from without; we +can combine them, and systematize, and can set up in ourselves an order +of ideas corresponding with the order of nature. + +The natural instinct of animated life, to which man also is originally +subject, is self-preservation and self-interest. But men are so ordered +and constituted that the individual cannot secure his own interests +unless he contribute to the common welfare. We are bound up by the law +of nature with the whole fabric of the world. The aim of the philosopher +therefore is to reach the position of a mind which embraces the whole +world in its view,--to grow into the mind of God and to make the will of +nature our own. Such a sage agrees in his thought with God; he no longer +blames either God or man; he fails of nothing which he purposes and +falls in with no misfortune unprepared; he indulges in neither anger nor +envy nor jealousy; he is leaving manhood for godhead, and in his dead +body his thoughts are concerned about his fellowship with God. + +The historical models to which Epictetus reverts are Diogenes and +Socrates. But he frequently describes an ideal character of a missionary +sage, the perfect Stoic--or, as he calls him, the Cynic. This missionary +has neither country nor home nor land nor slave; his bed is the ground; +he is without wife or child; his only mansion is the earth and sky and a +shabby cloak. He must suffer stripes, and must love those who beat him +as if he were a father or a brother. He must be perfectly unembarrassed +in the service of God, not bound by the common ties of life, nor +entangled by relationships, which if he transgresses he will lose the +character of a man of honour, while if he upholds them he will cease to +be the messenger, watchman and herald of the gods. The perfect man thus +described will not be angry with the wrong-doer; he will only pity his +erring brother; for anger in such a case would only betray that he too +thought the wrong-doer gained a substantial blessing by his wrongful +act, instead of being, as he is, utterly ruined. + + The best editions of the works of Epictetus are by J. Schweighauser (6 + vols., Leipzig, 1799-1800) and H. Schenkl (Leipzig, 1894, 1898). + English translations by Elizabeth Carter (London, 1758); G. Long + (London, 1848, ed. 1877, 1892, 1897); T.W. Higginson (Boston, 1865, + new ed. 1890); of the _Encheiridion_ alone by H. Talbot (London, + 1881); T.W.H. Rolleston (London, 1881). See A. Bonhoffer, _Epiktet und + die Stoa_ (Stuttgart, 1890) and _Die Ethik des Stoikers Epiktet_ + (1894): E.M. Schranka, _Der Stoiker Epiktet und seine Philosophie_ + (Frankfort, 1885); T. Zahn, _Der Stoiker Epiktet und sein Verhaltnis + zum Christentum_ (2nd ed. Erlangen, 1895). See also STOICS and works + quoted. (W. W.; X.) + + + + +EPICURUS (342-270 B.C.), Greek philosopher, was born in Samos in the end +of 342 or the beginning of 341 B.C., seven years after the death of +Plato. His father Neocles, a native of Gargettos, a small village of +Attica, had settled in Samos, not later than 352, as one of the cleruchs +sent out after the victory of Timotheus in 366-365. At the age of +eighteen he went to Athens, where the Platonic school was flourishing +under the lead of Xenocrates. A year later, however, Antipater banished +some 12,000 of the poorer citizens, and Epicurus joined his father, who +was now living at Colophon. It seems possible that he had listened to +the lectures of Nausiphanes, a Democritean philosopher, and Pamphilus +the Platonist, but he was probably, like his father, merely an ordinary +teacher. Stimulated, however, by the perusal of some writings of +Democritus, he began to formulate a doctrine of his own; and at +Mitylene, Colophon and Lampsacus, he gradually gathered round him +several enthusiastic disciples. In 307 he returned to Athens, which had +just been restored to a nominal independence by Demetrius Poliorcetes, +and there he lived for the rest of his life. The scene of his teaching +was a garden which he bought for about L300 (80 _minae_). There he +passed his days as the loved and venerated head of a remarkable, and up +to that time unique, society of men and women. Amongst the number were +Metrodorus (d. 277), his brother Timocrates, and his wife Leontion +(formerly a hetaera), Polyaenus, Hermarchus, who succeeded Epicurus as +chief of the school, Leonteus and his wife Themista, and Idomeneus, +whose wife was a sister of Metrodorus. It is possible that the relations +between the sexes--in this prototype of Rabelais's Abbey of +Theleme--were not entirely what is termed Platonic. But there is on the +other hand scarcely a doubt that the tales of licentiousness circulated +by opponents are groundless. The stories of the Stoics, who sought to +refute the views of Epicurus by an appeal to his alleged antecedents and +habits, were no doubt in the main, as Diogenes Laertius says, the +stories of maniacs. The general charges, which they endeavoured to +substantiate by forged letters, need not count for much, and in many +cases they only exaggerated what, if true, was not so heinous as they +suggested. Against them trustworthy authorities testified to his general +and remarkable considerateness, pointing to the statues which the city +had raised in his honour, and to the numbers of his friends, who were +many enough to fill whole cities. + +The mode of life in his community was plain. The general drink was +water and the food barley bread; half a pint of wine was held an ample +allowance. "Send me," says Epicurus to a correspondent, "send me some +Cythnian cheese, so that, should I choose, I may fare sumptuously." +There was no community of property, which, as Epicurus said, would imply +distrust of their own and others' good resolutions. The company was held +in unity by the charms of his personality, and by the free intercourse +which he inculcated and exemplified. Though he seems to have had a warm +affection for his countrymen, it was as human beings brought into +contact with him, and not as members of a political body, that he +preferred to regard them. He never entered public life. His kindliness +extended even to his slaves, one of whom, named Mouse, was a brother in +philosophy. + +Epicurus died of stone in 270 B.C. He left his property, consisting of +the garden ([Greek: Kepoi Epikourou]), a house in Melite (the south-west +quarter of Athens), and apparently some funds besides, to two trustees +on behalf of his society, and for the special interest of some youthful +members. The garden was set apart for the use of the school; the house +became the house of Hermarchus and his fellow-philosophers during his +lifetime. The surplus proceeds of the property were further to be +applied to maintain a yearly offering in commemoration of his departed +father, mother and brothers, to pay the expenses incurred in celebrating +his own birthday every year on the 7th of the month Gamelion, and for a +social gathering of the sect on the 20th of every month in honour of +himself and Metrodorus. Besides similar tributes in honour of his +brothers and Polyaenus, he directed the trustees to be guardians of the +son of Polyaenus and the son of Metrodorus; whilst the daughter of the +last mentioned was to be married by the guardians to some member of the +society who should be approved of by Hermarchus. His four slaves, three +men and one woman, were left their freedom. His books passed to +Hermarchus. + +_Philosophy._--The Epicurean philosophy is traditionally divided into +the three branches of logic, physics and ethics. It is, however, only as +a basis of facts and principles for his theory of life that logical and +physical inquiries find a place at all. Epicurus himself had not +apparently shared in any large or liberal culture, and his influence was +certainly thrown on the side of those who depreciated purely scientific +pursuits as one-sided and misleading. "Steer clear of all culture" was +his advice to a young disciple. In this aversion to a purely or mainly +intellectual training may be traced a recoil from the systematic +metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle, whose tendency was to subordinate +the practical man to the philosopher. Ethics had been based upon logic +and metaphysics. But experience showed that systematic knowledge of +truth is not synonymous with right action. Hence, in the second place, +Plato and Aristotle had assumed a perfect state with laws to guide the +individual aright. It was thus comparatively easy to show how the +individual could learn to apprehend and embody the moral law in his own +conduct. But experience had in the time of Epicurus shown the temporary +and artificial character of the civic form of social life. It was +necessary, therefore, for Epicurus to go back to nature to find a more +enduring and a wider foundation for ethical doctrine, to go back from +words to realities, to give up reasonings and get at feelings, to test +conceptions and arguments by a final reference to the only touchstone of +truth--to sensation. There, and there only, one seems to find a common +and a satisfactory ground, supposing always that all men's feelings give +the same answer. Logic must go, but so also must the state, as a +specially-privileged and eternal order of things, as anything more than +a contrivance serving certain purposes of general utility. + +To the Epicureans the elaborate logic of the Stoics was a superfluity. +In place of logic we find canonic, the theory of the three tests of truth +and reality. (1) The only ultimate canon of reality is sensation; +whatever we feel, whatever we perceive by any sense, that we know on the +most certain evidence we can have to be real, and in proportion as our +feeling is clear, distinct and vivid, in that proportion are we sure of +the reality of its object. But in what that vividness ([Greek: enargeia]) +consists is a question which Epicurus does not raise, and which he would +no doubt have deemed superfluous quibbling over a matter sufficiently +settled by common sense. (2) Besides our sensations, we learn truth and +reality by our preconceptions or ideas ([Greek: prolepseis]). These are +the fainter images produced by repeated sensations, the "ideas" resulting +from previous "impressions"--sensations at second-hand as it were, which +are stored up in memory, and which a general name serves to recall. These +bear witness to reality, not because we feel anything now, but because we +felt it once; they are sensations registered in language, and again, if +need be, translatable into immediate sensations or groups of sensation. +(3) Lastly, reality is vouched for by the imaginative apprehensions of +the mind ([Greek: phantastikai epibolai]), immediate feelings of which +the mind is conscious as produced by some action of its own. This last +canon, however, was of dubious validity. Epicureanism generally was +content to affirm that whatever we effectively feel in consciousness is +real; in which sense they allow reality to the fancies of the insane, the +dreams of a sleeper, and those feelings by which we imagine the existence +of beings of perfect blessedness and endless life. Similarly, just +because fear, hope and remembrance add to the intensity of consciousness, +the Epicurean can hold that bodily pain and pleasure is a less durable +and important thing than pain and pleasure of mind. Whatever we feel to +affect us does affect us, and is therefore real. Error can arise only +because we mix up our opinions and suppositions with what we actually +feel. The Epicurean canon is a rejection of logic; it sticks fast to the +one point that "sensation is sensation," and there is no more to be made +of it. Sensation, it says, is unreasoning ([Greek: alogos]); it must be +accepted, and not criticized. Reasoning can come in only to put +sensations together, and to point out how they severally contribute to +human welfare; it does not make them, and cannot alter them. + +_Physics._--In the Epicurean physics there are two parts--a general +metaphysic and psychology, and a special explanation of particular +phenomena of nature. The method of Epicurus is the argument of analogy. +It is an attempt to make the phenomena of nature intelligible to us by +regarding them as instances on a grand scale of that with which we are +already familiar on a small scale. This is what Epicurus calls +explaining what we do not see by what we do see. + +In physics Epicurus founded upon Democritus, and his chief object was to +abolish the dualism between mind and matter which is so essential a +point in the systems of Plato and Aristotle. All that exists, says +Epicurus, is corporeal ([Greek: to pan esti soma]); the intangible is +non-existent, or empty space. If a thing exists it must be felt, and to +be felt it must exert resistance. But not all things are intangible +which our senses are not subtle enough to detect. We must indeed accept +our feelings; but we must also believe much which is not directly +testified by sensation, if only it serves to explain phenomena and does +not contravene our sensations. The fundamental postulates of +Epicureanism are atoms and the void ([Greek: atoma kai kenon]). Space is +infinite, and there is an illimitable multitude of indestructible, +indivisible and absolutely compact atoms in perpetual motion in this +illimitable space. These atoms, differing only in size, figure and +weight, are perpetually moving with equal velocities, but at a rate far +surpassing our conceptions; as they move, they are for ever giving rise +to new worlds; and these worlds are perpetually tending towards +dissolution, and towards a fresh series of creations. This universe of +ours is only one section out of the innumerable worlds in infinite +space; other worlds may present systems very different from that of our +own. The soul of man is only a finer species of body, spread throughout +the whole aggregation which we term his bodily frame. Like a warm +breath, it pervades the human structure and works with it; nor could it +act as it does in perception unless it were corporeal. The various +processes of sense, notably vision, are explained on the principles of +materialism. From the surfaces of all objects there are continually +flowing thin filmy images exactly copying the solid body whence they +originate; and these images by direct impact on the organism produce (we +need not care to ask how) the phenomena of vision. Epicurus in this way +explains vision by substituting for the apparent action of a body at a +distance a direct contact of image and organ. But without following the +explanation into the details in which it revels, it may be enough to say +that the whole hypothesis is but an attempt to exclude the occult +conception of action at a distance, and substitute a familiar +phenomenon. + +_The Gods._--This aspect of the Epicurean physics becomes clearer when +we look at his mode of rendering particular phenomena intelligible. His +purpose is to eliminate the common idea of divine interference. That +there are gods Epicurus never dreams of denying. But these gods have not +on their shoulders the burden of upholding and governing the world. They +are themselves the products of the order of nature--a higher species +than humanity, but not the rulers of man, neither the makers nor the +upholders of the world. Man should worship them, but his worship is the +reverence due to the ideals of perfect blessedness; it ought not to be +inspired either by hope or by fear. To prevent all reference of the more +potent phenomena of nature to divine action Epicurus rationalizes the +processes of the cosmos. He imagines all possible plans or hypotheses, +not actually contradicted by our experience of familiar events, which +will represent in an intelligible way the processes of astronomy and +meteorology. When two or more modes of accounting for a phenomena are +equally admissible as not directly contradicted by known phenomena, it +seems to Epicurus almost a return to the old mythological habit of mind +when a savant asserts that the real cause is one and only one. +"Thunder," he says, "may be explained in many other ways; only let us +have no myths of divine action. To assign only a single cause for these +phenomena, when the facts familiar to us suggest several, is insane, and +is just the absurd conduct to be expected from people who dabble in the +vanities of astronomy." We need not be too curious to inquire how these +celestial phenomena actually do come about; we can learn how they might +have been produced, and to go further is to trench on ground beyond the +limits of human knowledge. + +Thus, if Epicurus objects to the doctrine of mythology, he objects no +less to the doctrine of an inevitable fate, a necessary order of things +unchangeable and supreme over the human will. The Stoic doctrine of +Fatalism seemed to Epicurus no less deadly a foe of man's true welfare +than popular superstition. Even in the movement of the atoms he +introduces a sudden change of direction, which is supposed to render +their aggregation easier, and to break the even law of destiny. So, in +the sphere of human action, Epicurus would allow of no absolutely +controlling necessity. In fact, it is only when we assume for man this +independence of the gods and of fatality that the Epicurean theory of +life becomes possible. It assumes that man can, like the gods, withdraw +himself out of reach of all external influences, and thus, as a sage, +"live like a god among men, seeing that the man is in no wise like a +mortal creature who lives in undying blessedness." And this present life +is the only one. With one consent Epicureanism preaches that the death +of the body is the end of everything for man, and hence the other world +has lost all its terrors as well as all its hopes. + +The attitude of Epicurus in this whole matter is antagonistic to +science. The idea of a systematic enchainment of phenomena, in which +each is conditioned by every other, and none can be taken in isolation +and explained apart from the rest, was foreign to his mind. So little +was the scientific conception of the solar system familiar to Epicurus +that he could reproach the astronomers, because their account of an +eclipse represented things otherwise than as they appear to the senses, +and could declare that the sun and stars were just as large as they +seemed to us. + +_Ethics._--The moral philosophy of Epicurus is a qualified hedonism, +the heir of the Cyrenaic doctrine that pleasure is the good thing in +life. Neither sect, it may be added, advocated sensuality pure and +unfeigned--the Epicurean least of all. By pleasure Epicurus meant both +more and less than the Cyrenaics. To the Cyrenaics pleasure was of +moments; to Epicurus it extended as a habit of mind through life. To the +Cyrenaics pleasure was something active and positive; to Epicurus it was +rather negative--tranquillity more than vigorous enjoyment. The test of +true pleasure, according to Epicurus, is the removal and absorption of +all that gives pain; it implies freedom from pain of body and from +trouble of mind. The happiness of the Epicurean was, it might almost +seem, a grave and solemn pleasure--a quiet unobtrusive ease of heart, +but not exuberance and excitement. The sage of Epicureanism is a +rational and reflective seeker for happiness, who balances the claims of +each pleasure against the evils that may possibly ensue, and treads the +path of enjoyment cautiously. Prudence is, therefore, the only real +guide to happiness; it is thus the chief excellence, and the foundation +of all the virtues. It is, in fact, says Epicurus--in language which +contrasts strongly with that of Aristotle on the same topic--"a more +precious power than philosophy." The reason or intellect is introduced +to balance possible pleasures and pains, and to construct a scheme in +which pleasures are the materials of a happy life. Feeling, which +Epicurus declared to be the means of determining what is good, is +subordinated to a reason which adjudicates between competing pleasures +with the view of securing tranquillity of mind and body. "We cannot live +pleasantly without living wisely and nobly and righteously." Virtue is +at least a means of happiness, though apart from that it is no good in +itself, any more than mere sensual enjoyments, which are good only +because they may sometimes serve to secure health of body and +tranquillity of mind. (See further ETHICS.) + +_The Epicurean School._--Even in the lifetime of Epicurus we hear of the +vast numbers of his friends, not merely in Greece, but in Asia and +Egypt. The crowds of Epicureans were a standing enigma to the adherents +of less popular sects. Cicero pondered over the fact; Arcesilaus +explained the secession to the Epicurean camp, compared with the fact +that no Epicurean was ever known to have abandoned his school, by saying +that, though it was possible for a man to be turned into a eunuch, no +eunuch could ever become a man. But the phenomenon was not obscure. The +doctrine has many truths, and is attractive to many in virtue of its +simplicity and its immediate relation to life. The dogmas of Epicurus +became to his followers a creed embodying the truths on which salvation +depended; and they passed on from one generation to another with +scarcely a change or addition. The immediate disciples of Epicurus have +been already mentioned, with the exception of Colotes of Lampsacus, a +great favourite of Epicurus, who wrote a work arguing "that it was +impossible even to live according to the doctrines of the other +philosophers." In the 2nd and 1st centuries B.C. Apollodorus, nicknamed +[Greek: kepotyrannos] ("Lord of the Garden"), and Zeno of Sidon (who +describes Socrates as "the Attic buffoon": Cic. _De nat. deor._ i, 21, +33, 34) taught at Athens. About 150 B.C. Epicureanism established itself +at Rome. Beginning with C. Amafinius or Amafanius (Cic. _Acad._ i. 2, +_Tusc._ iv. 3), we find the names of Phaedrus (who became scholarch at +Athens c. 70 B.C.) and Philodemus (originally of Gadara in Palestine) as +distinguished Epicureans in the time of Cicero. But the greatest of its +Roman names was Lucretius, whose _De rerum natura_ embodies the main +teaching of Epicurus with great exactness, and with a beauty which the +subject seemed scarcely to allow. Lucretius is a proof, if any were +needed, that Epicureanism is compatible with nobility of soul. In the +1st century of the Christian era, the nature of the time, with its +active political struggles, naturally called Stoicism more into the +foreground, yet Seneca, though nominally a Stoic, draws nearly all his +suavity and much of his paternal wisdom from the writings of Epicurus. +The position of Epicureanism as a recognized school in the 2nd century +is best seen in the fact that it was one of the four schools (the others +were the Stoic, Platonist, and Peripatetic) which were placed on a +footing of equal endowment when Marcus Aurelius founded chairs of +philosophy at Athens. The evidence of Diogenes proves that it still +subsisted as a school a century later, but its spirit lasted longer than +its formal organization as a school. A great deal of the best of the +Renaissance was founded on Epicureanism, and in more recent times a +great number of prominent thinkers have been Epicureans in a greater or +less degree. Among these may be mentioned Pierre Gassendi, who revived +and codified the doctrine in the 17th century; Moliere, the comte de +Gramont, Rousseau, Fontenelle and Voltaire. All those whose ethical +theory is in any degree hedonistic are to some extent the intellectual +descendants of Epicurus (see HEDONISM). + +_Works._--Epicurus was a voluminous writer ([Greek: polygraphotatos], +Diog. Laert. x. 26)--the author, it is said, of about 300 works. He had +a style and vocabulary of his own. His chief aim in writing was +plainness and intelligibility, but his want of order and logical +precision thwarted his purpose. He pretended to have read little, and to +be the original architect of his own system, and the claim was no doubt +on the whole true. But he had read Democritus, and, it is said, +Anaxagoras and Archelaus. His works, we learn, were full of repetition, +and critics speak of vulgarities of language and faults of style. None +the less his writings were committed to memory and remained the +text-books of Epicureanism to the last. His chief work was a treatise on +nature ([Greek: Peri physeos]), in thirty-seven books, of which +fragments from about nine books have been found in the rolls discovered +at Herculaneum, along with considerable treatises by several of his +followers, and most notably Philodemus. An epitome of his doctrine is +contained in three letters preserved by Diogenes. + + AUTHORITIES.--The chief ancient accounts of Epicurus are in the tenth + book of Diogenes Laertius, in Lucretius, and in several treatises of + Cicero and Plutarch. Gassendi, in his _De vita, moribus, et doctrina + Epicuri_ (Lyons, 1647), and his _Syntagma philosophiae Epicuri_, + systematized the doctrine. The _Volumina Herculanensia_ (1st and 2nd + series) contain fragments of treatises by Epicurus and members of his + school. See also H. Usener, _Epicurea_ (Leipzig, 1887) and _Epicuri + recogniti specimen_ (Bonn, 1880); _Epicuri physica et meteorologica_ + (ed. J.G. Schneider, Leipzig, 1813); Th. Gomperz in his _Herkulanische + Studien_, and in contributions to the Vienna Academy + (_Monatsberichte_), has tried to evolve from the fragments more + approximation to modern empiricism than they seem to contain. For + criticism see W. Wallace, _Epicureanism_ (London, 1880), and + _Epicurus; A Lecture_ (London, 1896); G. Trezza, _Epicuro e + l'Epicureismo_ (Florence, 1877; ed. Milan, 1885); E. Zeller, + _Philosophy of the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics_ (Eng. trans. O.J. + Reichel, 1870; ed. 1880); Sir James Mackintosh, _On the Progress of + Ethical Philosophy_ (4th ed.); J. Watson, _Hedonistic Theories_ + (Glasgow, 1895); J. Kreibig, _Epicurus_ (Vienna, 1886); A. + Goedeckemeyer, _Epikurs Verhaltnis zu Demokrit in der Naturphil._ + (Strassburg, 1897); Paul von Gizycki, _Uber das Leben und die + Moralphilos. des Epikur (Halle, 1879), and Einleitende Bemerkungen zu + einer Untersuchung uber den Werth der Naturphilos. des Epikur_ + (Berlin, 1884); P. Cassel, _Epikur der Philosoph_ (Berlin, 1892); M. + Guyau, _La Morale d'Epicure et ses rapports avec les doctrines + contemporaines_ (Paris, 1878; revised and enlarged, 1881); F. Picavet, + _De Epicuro novae religionis sectatore_ (Paris, 1889); H. Sidgwick, + _History of Ethics_ (5th ed., 1902). (W. W.; X.) + + + + +EPICYCLE (Gr. [Greek: epi], upon, and [Greek: kyklos], circle), in +ancient astronomy, a small circle the centre of which describes a larger +one. It was especially used to represent geometrically the periodic +apparent retrograde motion of the outer planets, Mars, Jupiter and +Saturn, which we now know to be due to the annual revolution of the +earth around the sun, but which in the Ptolemaic astronomy were taken to +be real. + + + + +EPICYCLOID, the curve traced out by a point on the circumference of a +circle rolling externally on another circle. If the moving circle rolls +internally on the fixed circle, a point on the circumference describes a +"hypocycloid" (from [Greek: hypo], under). The locus of any other +carried point is an "epitrochoid" when the circle rolls externally, and +a "hypotrochoid" when the circle rolls internally. The epicycloid was so +named by Ole Romer in 1674, who also demonstrated that cog-wheels having +epicycloidal teeth revolved with minimum friction (see MECHANICS: +_Applied_); this was also proved by Girard Desargues, Philippe de la +Hire and Charles Stephen Louis Camus. Epicycloids also received +attention at the hands of Edmund Halley, Sir Isaac Newton and others; +spherical epicycloids, in which the moving circle is inclined at a +constant angle to the plane of the fixed circle, were studied by the +Bernoullis, Pierre Louis M. de Maupertuis, Francois Nicole, Alexis +Claude Clairault and others. + + In the annexed figure, there are shown various examples of the curves + named above, when the radii of the rolling and fixed circles are in + the ratio of 1 to 3. Since the circumference of a circle is + proportional to its radius, it follows that if the ratio of the radii + be commensurable, the curve will consist of a finite number of cusps, + and ultimately return into itself. In the particular case when the + radii are in the ratio of 1 to 3 the epicycloid (curve a) will + consist of three cusps external to the circle and placed at equal + distances along its circumference. Similarly, the corresponding + epitrochoids will exhibit three loops or nodes (curve b), or assume + the form shown in the curve c. It is interesting to compare the + forms of these curves with the three forms of the cycloid (q.v.). The + hypocycloid derived from the same circles is shown as curve d, and + is seen to consist of three cusps arranged internally to the fixed + circle; the corresponding hypotrochoid consists of a three-foil and is + shown in curve e. The epicycloid shown is termed the "three-cusped + epicycloid" or the "epicycloid of Cremona." + + [Illustration] + + The cartesian equation to the epicycloid assumes the form + _____ + x = (a + b) cos[theta] - b cos(a + b / b)[theta], + _____ + y = (a + b) sin[theta] - b sin(a + b / b)[theta], + + when the centre of the fixed circle is the origin, and the axis of x + passes through the initial point of the curve (i.e. the original + position of the moving point on the fixed circle), a and b being the + radii of the fixed and rolling circles, and [theta] the angle through + which the line joining the centres of the two circles has passed. It + may be shown that if the distance of the carried point from the centre + of the rolling circle be mb, the equation to the epitrochoid is + _____ + x = (a + b) cos[theta] - mb cos(a + b / b)[theta], + _____ + y = (a + b) sin[theta] - mb sin(a + b / b)[theta]. + + The equations to the hypocycloid and its corresponding trochoidal + curves are derived from the two preceding equations by changing the + sign of b. Leonhard Euler (_Acta Petrop._ 1784) showed that the same + hypocycloid can be generated by circles having radii of 1/2(a [+-] b) + rolling on a circle of radius a; and also that the hypocycloid formed + when the radius of the rolling circle is greater than that of the + fixed circle is the same as the epicycloid formed by the rolling of a + circle whose radius is the difference of the original radii. These + propositions may be derived from the formulae given above, or proved + directly by purely geometrical methods. + + The tangential polar equation to the epicycloid, as given above, is + ______ + p = (a + 2b) sin(a / a + 2b)[psi], while the intrinsic equation is + ______ + s = 4(b/a)(a + b) cos(a / a + 2b)[psi] and the pedal equation is + _____ + r^2 = a^2 + (4b.a + b)p^2 / (a + 2b)^2. Therefore any epicycloid or + hypocycloid may be represented by the equations p = A sin B[psi] or p + = A cos B[psi], s = A sin B[psi] or s = A cos B[psi], or r^2 = A + + Bp^2, the constants A and B being readily determined by the above + considerations. + + If the radius of the rolling circle be one-half of the fixed circle, + the hypocycloid becomes a diameter of this circle; this may be + confirmed from the equation to the hypocycloid. If the ratio of the + radii be as 1 to 4, we obtain the four-cusped hypocycloid, which has + the simple cartesian equation x^(2/3) + y^(2/3) = a^(2/3). This curve + is the envelope of a line of constant length, which moves so that its + extremities are always on two fixed lines at right angles to each + other, i.e. of the line x/[alpha] + y/[beta] = 1, with the condition + [alpha]^2 + [beta]^2 = 1/a, a constant. The epicycloid when the radii + of the circles are equal is the cardioid (q.v.), and the corresponding + trochoidal curves are limacons (q.v.). Epicycloids are also examples + of certain caustics (q.v.). + + For the methods of determining the formulae and results stated above + see J. Edwards, _Differential Calculus_, and for geometrical + constructions see T.H. Eagles, _Plane Curves_. + + + + +EPIDAURUS, the name of two ancient cities of southern Greece. + +1. A maritime city situated on the eastern coast of Argolis, sometimes +distinguished as [Greek: he hiera Epidauros], or Epidaurus the Holy. It +stood on a small rocky peninsula with a natural harbour on the northern +side and an open but serviceable bay on the southern; and from this +position acquired the epithet of [Greek: distomos], or the two-mouthed. +Its narrow but fertile territory consisted of a plain shut in on all +sides except towards the sea by considerable elevations, among which the +most remarkable were Mount Arachnaeon and Titthion. The conterminous +states were Corinth, Argos, Troezen and Hermione. Its proximity to +Athens and the islands of the Saronic gulf, the commercial advantages of +its position, and the fame of its temple of Asclepius combined to make +Epidaurus a place of no small importance. Its origin was ascribed to a +Carian colony, whose memory was possibly preserved in Epicarus, the +earlier name of the city; it was afterwards occupied by Ionians, and +appears to have incorporated a body of Phlegyans from Thessaly. The +Ionians in turn succumbed to the Dorians of Argos, who, according to the +legend, were led by Deiphontes; and from that time the city continued to +preserve its Dorian character. It not only colonized the neighbouring +islands, and founded the city of Aegina, by which it was ultimately +outstripped in wealth and power, but also took part with the people of +Argos and Troezen in their settlements in the south of Asia Minor. The +monarchical government introduced by Deiphontes gave way to an +oligarchy, and the oligarchy degenerated into a despotism. When Procles +the tyrant was carried captive by Periander of Corinth, the oligarchy +was restored, and the people of Epidaurus continued ever afterwards +close allies of the Spartan power. The governing body consisted of 180 +members, chosen from certain influential families, and the executive was +entrusted to a select committee of _artynae_ (from [Greek: artynein], to +manage). The rural population, who had no share in the affairs of the +city, were called [Greek: konipodes] ("dusty-feet"). Among the objects +of interest described by Pausanias as extant in Epidaurus are the image +of Athena Cissaea in the Acropolis, the temple of Dionysus and Artemis, +a shrine of Aphrodite, statues of Asclepius and his wife Epione, and a +temple of Hera. The site of the last is identified with the chapel of St +Nicolas; a few portions of the outer walls of the city can be traced; +and the name Epidaurus is still preserved by the little village of +Nea-Epidavros, or Pidhavro. + +[Illustration: Map--Epidaurus Hieron of Asclepius.] + +The _Hieron_ (sacred precinct) of Asclepius, which lies inland about 8 +m. from the town of Epidaurus, has been thoroughly excavated by the +Greek Archaeological Society since the year 1881, under the direction of +M. Kavvadias. In addition to the sacred precinct, with its temples and +other buildings, the theatre and stadium have been cleared; and several +other extensive buildings, including baths, gymnasia, and a hospital for +invalids, have also been found. The sacred road from Epidaurus, which is +flanked by tombs, approaches the precinct through a gateway or +propylaea. The chief buildings are grouped together, and include temples +of Asclepius and Artemis, the Tholos, and the Abaton, or portico where +the patients slept. In addition to remains of architecture and +sculpture, some of them of high merit, there have been found many +inscriptions, throwing light on the cures attributed to the god. The +chief buildings outside the sacred precinct are the theatre and the +stadium. + +The temple of Asclepius, which contained the gold and ivory statue by +Thrasymedes of Paros, had six columns at the ends and eleven at the +sides; it was raised on stages and approached by a ramp at the eastern +front. An inscription has been found recording the contracts for +building this temple; it dates from about 460 B.C. The sculptor +Timotheus--one of those who collaborated in the Mausoleum--is mentioned +as undertaking to make the acroteria that stood on the ends of the +pediments, and also models for the sculpture that filled one of them. +Some of this sculpture has been found; the acroteria are Nereids mounted +on sea-horses, and one pediment contained a battle of Greeks and +Amazons. The great altar lay to the south of the temple, and a little to +the east of it are what appear to be the remains of an earlier altar, +built into the corner of a large square edifice of Roman date, perhaps a +house of the priests. Just to the south of this are the foundations of a +small temple of Artemis. The Tholos lay to the south-west of the temple +of Asclepius; it must, when perfect, have been one of the most beautiful +buildings in Greece; the exquisite carving of its mouldings is only +equalled by that of the Erechtheum at Athens. It consisted of a circular +chamber, surrounded on the outside by a Doric colonnade, and on the +inside by a Corinthian one. The architect was Polyclitus, probably to be +identified with the younger sculptor of that name. In the inscription +recording the contracts for its building it is called the Thymele; and +this name may give the clue to its purpose; it was probably the +idealized architectural representative of a primitive pit of sacrifice, +such as may still be seen in the Asclepianum at Athens. The foundations +now visible present a very curious appearance, consisting of a series of +concentric walls. Those in the middle are thin, having only the pavement +of the cella to support, and are provided with doors and partitions that +make a sort of subterranean labyrinth. There is no evidence for the +statement sometimes made that there was a well or spring below the +Tholos. North of the Tholos is the long portico described in +inscriptions as the Abaton; it is on two different levels, and the lower +or western portion of it had two storeys, of which the upper one was on +a level with the ground in the eastern portion. Here the invalids used +to sleep when consulting the god, and the inscriptions found here record +not only the method of consulting the god, but the manner of his cures. +Some of the inscriptions are contemporary dedications; but those which +give us most information are long lists of cases, evidently compiled by +the priests from the dedications in the sanctuary, or from tradition. +There is no reason to doubt that most of the records have at least a +basis of fact, for the cases are in accord with well-attested phenomena +of a similar nature at the present day; but there are others, such as +the miraculous mending of a broken vase, which suggest either invention +or trickery. + +In early times, though there is considerable variety in the cases +treated and the methods of cure, there are certain characteristics +common to the majority of the cases. The patient consulting the god +sleeps in the Abaton, sees certain visions, and, as a result, comes +forth cured the next morning. Sometimes there seem to be surgical cases, +like that of a man who had a spear-head extracted from his jaw, and +found it laid in his hands when he awoke in the morning, and there are +many examples resembling those known at the present day at Lourdes or +Tenos, where hysterical or other similar affections are cured by the +influence of imagination or sudden emotion. It is, however, difficult to +make any scientific use of the records, owing to the indiscriminate +manner in which genuine and apocryphal cases are mingled, and +circumstantial details are added. We learn the practice of later times +from some dedicated inscriptions. Apparently the old faith-healing had +lost its efficacy, and the priests substituted for it elaborate +prescriptions as to diet, baths and regimen which must have made +Epidaurus and its visitors resemble their counterparts in a modern spa. +At this time there were extensive buildings provided for the +accommodation of invalids, some of which have been discovered and +partially cleared; one was built by Antoninus Pius. They were in the +form of great courtyards surrounded by colonnades and chambers. + + Between the precinct and the theatre was a large gymnasium, which was + in later times converted to other purposes, a small odeum being built + in the middle of it. In a valley just to the south-west of the + precinct is the stadium, of which the seats and goal are well + preserved. There is a gutter round the level space of the stadium, + with basins at intervals for the use of spectators or competitors, and + a post at every hundred feet of the course, thus dividing it into six + portions. The goal, which is well preserved at the upper end, is + similar to that at Olympia; it consists of a sill of stone sunk level + with the ground, with parallel grooves for the feet of the runners at + starting, and sockets to hold the posts that separated the spaces + assigned to the various competitors, and served as guides to them in + running. For these were substituted later a set of stone columns + resembling those in the proscenium of a theatre. There was doubtless a + similar sill at the lower end for the start of the stadium, this upper + one being intended for the start of the diaulos and longer races. + + The theatre still deserves the praise given it by Pausanias as the + most beautiful in Greece. The auditorium is in remarkable + preservation, almost every seat being still _in situ_, except a few + where the supporting walls have given way on the wings. The whole plan + is drawn from three centres, the outer portion of the curves being + arcs of a larger circle than the one used for the central portion; the + complete circle of the orchestra is marked by a sill of white + limestone, and greatly enhances the effect of the whole. There are + benches with backs not only in the bottom row, but also above and + below the diazoma. The acoustic properties of the theatre are + extraordinarily good, a speaker in the orchestra being heard + throughout the auditorium without raising his voice. The stage + buildings are not preserved much above their foundations, and show + signs of later repairs; but their general character can be clearly + seen. They consist of a long rectangular building, with a proscenium + or column front which almost forms a tangent to the circle of the + orchestra; at the middle and at either end of this proscenium are + doors leading into the orchestra, those at the end set in projecting + wings; the top of the proscenium is approached by a ramp, of which the + lower part is still preserved, running parallel to the parodi, but + sloping up as they slope down. The proscenium was originally about 14 + ft. high and 12 ft. broad; so corresponding approximately to the Greek + stage as described by Vitruvius. M. Kavvadias, who excavated the + theatre, believes that the proscenium is contemporary with the rest of + the theatre, which, like the Tholos, was built by Polyclitus (the + younger); but Professor W. Dorpfeld maintains that it is a later + addition. In any case, the theatre at Epidaurus ranks as the most + typical of Greek theatres, both from the simplicity of its plan and + the beauty of its proportions. + + See Pausanias i. 29; _Expedition de la Moree_, ii.; Curtius, + _Peloponnesus_, ii.; _Transactions of Roy. Soc. of Lit._, 2nd series, + vol. ii.; Weclawski, _De rebus Epidauriorum_ (Posen, 1854). + + The excavations at the Hieron have been recorded as they went on in + the [Greek: Praktika] of the Greek Archaeological Society, especially + for 1881-1884 and 1889, and also in the [Greek: Ephemeris + Archaiologike], especially for 1883 and 1885; see also Kavvadias, Les + _Fouilles d'Epidaure_ and [Greek: To Hieron tou Asklepiou en Epidauro + kai he therapeia ton asthenon]; Defrasse and Lechat, _Epidaure_. A + museum was completed in 1910. + +2. A city of Peloponnesus on the east coast of Laconia, distinguished by +the epithet of Limera (either "The Well-havened" or "The Hungry"). It +was founded by the people of Epidaurus the Holy, and its principal +temples were those of Asclepius and Aphrodite. It was abandoned during +the middle ages; its inhabitants took possession of the promontory of +Minoa, turned it into an island, and built and fortified thereon the +city of Monembasia, which became the most flourishing of all the towns +in the Morea, and gave its name to the well-known Malmsey or Malvasia +wine. The ruins of Epidaurus are to be seen at the place now called +Palaea Monemvasia. + +A third Epidaurus was situated in Illyricum, on the site of the present +Ragusa Vecchia; but it is not mentioned till the time of the civil wars +of Pompey and Caesar, and has no special interest. (E. Gr.) + + + + +EPIDIORITE, in petrology, a typical member of a family of rocks +consisting essentially of hornblende and felspar, often with epidote, +garnet, sphene, biotite, or quartz, and having usually a foliated +structure. The term is to some extent synonymous with "amphibolite" and +"hornblende-schist." These rocks are metamorphic, and though having a +mineral constitution somewhat similar to that of diorite, they have been +produced really from rocks of more basic character, such as diabase, +dolerite and gabbro. They occur principally among the schists, slates +and gneisses of such districts as the Scottish Highlands, the north-west +of Ireland, Brittany, the Harz, the Alps, and the crystalline ranges of +eastern N. America. Their hornblende in microscopic section is usually +dark green, rarely brownish; their felspar may be clear and +recrystallized, but more frequently is converted into a turbid aggregate +of epidote, zoisite, quartz, sericite and albite. In the less complete +stages of alteration, ophitic structure may persist, and the original +augite of the rock may not have been entirely replaced by hornblende. +Pink or brownish garnets are common and may be an inch or two in +diameter. The iron oxides, originally ilmenite, are usually altered to +sphene. Biotite, if present, is brown; epidote is yellow or colourless; +rutile, apatite and quartz all occur with some frequency. The essential +minerals, hornblende and felspar, rarely show crystalline outlines, and +this is generally true also of the others. The rocks may be fine +grained, so that their constituents are hardly visible to the unaided +eye; or may show crystals of hornblende an inch in length. Their +prevalent colour is dark green and they weather with brown surfaces. In +many parts of the world epidiorites and the quartz veins which sometimes +occur in them have proved to be auriferous. As they are tough, hard +rocks, when fresh, they are well suited for use as road-mending stones. + (J. S. F.) + + + + +EPIDOSITE, in petrology, a typical member of a family of metamorphic +rocks composed mainly of epidote and quartz. In colour they are pale +yellow or greenish yellow, and they are hard and somewhat brittle. They +may occur in more than one way and are derived from several kinds of +rock. Some have been epidotic grits and sandstones; others are +limestones which have undergone contact-alteration; probably the +majority, however, are allied to epidiorite and amphibolite, and are +local modifications of rocks which were primarily basic intrusions or +lavas. The sedimentary epidosites occur with mica-schists, sheared grits +and granulitic gneisses; they often show, on minute examination, the +remains of clastic structures. The epidosites derived from limestones +may contain a great variety of minerals such as calcite, augite, garnet, +scapolite, &c., but their source may usually be inferred from their +close association with calc-silicate rocks in the field. The third group +of epidosites may form bands, veins, or irregular streaks and nodules in +masses of epidiorite and hornblende-schist. In microscopic section they +are often merely a granular mosaic of quartz and epidote with some iron +oxides and chlorite, but in other cases they retain much of the +structure of the original rock though there has been a complete +replacement of the former minerals by new ones. Epidosites when streaked +and variegated have been cut and polished as ornamental stones. They are +translucent and hard, and hence serve for brooch stones, and the simpler +kinds of jewelry. These rocks occasionally carry gold in visible yellow +specks. (J. S. F.) + + + + +EPIDOTE, a mineral species consisting of basic calcium, aluminium and +iron orthosilicate, Ca2(AlOH)(Al, Fe)2(SiO4)3, crystallizing in the +monoclinic system. Well-developed crystals are of frequent occurrence: +they are commonly prismatic in habit, the direction of elongation being +perpendicular to the single plane of symmetry. The faces lettered M, T +and r in the figure are often deeply striated in the same direction: M +is a direction of perfect cleavage, and T of imperfect cleavage: +crystals are often twinned on the face T. Many of the characters of the +mineral vary with the amount of iron present (Fe2O3, 5-17%), for +instance, the colour, the optical constants, and the specific gravity +(3.3-3.5). The hardness is 6-1/2. The colour is green, grey, brown or +nearly black, but usually a characteristic shade of yellowish-green or +pistachio-green. The pleochroism is strong, the pleochroic colours being +usually green, yellow and brown. The names thallite (from [Greek: +thallos], "a young shoot") and pistacite (from [Greek: pistakia], +"pistachio nut") have reference to the colour. The name epidote is one +of R.J. Hauy's crystallographic names, and is derived from [Greek: +epidosis], "increase," because the base of the primitive prism has one +side longer than the other. Several other names (achmatite, bucklandite, +escherite, puschkinite, &c.) have been applied to this species. +Withamite is a carmine-red to straw-yellow, strongly pleochroic variety +from Glencoe in Scotland. Fouqueite and clinozoisite are white or pale +rose-red varieties containing very little iron, thus having the same +chemical composition as the orthorhombic mineral zoisite (q.v.). + +[Illustration] + +Epidote is an abundant rock-forming mineral, but one of secondary +origin. It occurs in crystalline limestones and schistose rocks of +metamorphic origin; and is also a product of weathering of various +minerals (felspars, micas, pyroxenes, amphiboles, garnets, &c.) +composing igneous rocks. A rock composed of quartz and epidote is known +as epidosite. Well-developed crystals are found at many localities, of +which the following may be specially mentioned: Knappenwand, near the +Gross-Venediger in the Untersulzbachthal in Salzburg, as magnificent, +dark green crystals of long prismatic habit in cavities in +epidote-schist, with asbestos, adularia, calcite, and apatite; the Ala +valley and Traversella in Piedmont; Arendal in Norway (arendalite); Le +Bourg d'Oisans in Dauphine (oisanite and delphinite); Haddam in +Connecticut; Prince of Wales Island in Alaska, here as large, dark +green, tabular crystals with copper ores in metamorphosed limestone. + +The perfectly transparent, dark green crystals from the Knappenwand and +from Brazil have occasionally been cut as gem-stones. + +Belonging to the same isomorphous group with epidote are the species +piedmontite and allanite, which may be described as manganese and cerium +epidotes respectively. + +Piedmontite has the composition Ca2(AlOH)(Fe, Mn)2(SiO4)3; it occurs as +small, reddish-black, monoclinic crystals in the manganese mines at San +Marcel, near Ivrea in Piedmont, and in crystalline schists at several +places in Japan. The purple colour of the Egyptian _porfido rosso +antico_ is due to the presence of this mineral. + +Allanite has the same general formula R2"(R'"OH)R2'"(SiO4)3, where R" +represents calcium and ferrous iron, and R'" aluminium, ferric iron and +metals of the cerium group. In external appearance it differs widely +from epidote, being black or dark brown in colour, pitchy in lustre, and +opaque in the mass; further, there is little or no cleavage, and +well-developed crystals are rarely met with. The crystallographic and +optical characters are similar to those of epidote; the pleochroism is +strong with reddish-, yellowish-, and greenish-brown colours. Although +not a common mineral, allanite is of fairly wide distribution as a +primary accessory constituent of many crystalline rocks, e.g. gneiss, +granite, syenite, rhyolite, andesite, &c. It was first found in the +granite of east Greenland and described by Thomas Allan in 1808, after +whom the species was named. Allanite is a mineral readily altered by +hydration, becoming optically isotropic and amorphous: for this reason +several varieties have been distinguished, and many different names +applied. Orthite, from [Greek: orthos], "straight," was the name given +by J.J. Berzelius in 1818 to a hydrated form found as slender prismatic +crystals, sometimes a foot in length, at Finbo, near Falun in Sweden. + (L. J. S.) + + + + +EPIGONI ("descendants"), in Greek legend, the sons of the seven heroes +who fought against Thebes (see ADRASTUS). Ten years later, to avenge +their fathers, the Epigoni undertook a second expedition, which was +completely successful. Thebes was forced to surrender and razed to the +ground. In early times the war of the Epigoni was a favourite subject of +epic poetry. The term is also applied to the descendants of the +Diadochi, the successors of Alexander the Great. + + + + +EPIGONION (Gr. [Greek: epigoneion]), an ancient stringed instrument +mentioned in Athenaeus 183 C, probably a psaltery. The epigonion was +invented, or at least introduced into Greece, by Epigonus, a Greek +musician of Ambracia in Epirus, who was admitted to citizenship at +Sicyon as a recognition of his great musical ability and of his having +been the first to pluck the strings with his fingers, instead of using +the plectrum.[1] The instrument, which Epigonus named after himself, had +forty strings.[2] It was undoubtedly a kind of harp or psaltery, since +in an instrument of so many strings some must have been of different +lengths, for tension and thickness only could hardly have produced forty +different sounds, or even twenty, supposing that they were arranged in +pairs of unisons. Strings of varying lengths require a frame like that +of the harp, or of the Egyptian cithara which had one of the arms +supporting the cross bar or zugon shorter than the other,[3] or else +strings stretched over harp-shaped bridges on a sound-board in the case +of a psaltery. Juba II., king of Mauretania, who reigned from 30 B.C., +said (ap. Athen. l.c.) that Epigonus brought the instrument from +Alexandria and played upon it with the fingers of both hands, not only +using it as an accompaniment to the voice, but introducing chromatic +passages, and a chorus of other stringed instruments, probably citharas, +to accompany the voice. Epigonus was also a skilled citharist and played +with his bare hands without plectrum.[4] Unfortunately we have no record +of when Epigonus lived. Vincenzo Galilei[5] has given us a description +of the epigonion accompanied by an illustration, representing his +conception of the ancient instrument, an upright psaltery with the +outline of the clavicytherium (but no keyboard). (K. S.) + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Michael Praetorius, _Syntagma musicum_, tom. 1, c. 13, p. 380: + Salomon van Til, _Sing-Dicht und Spiel-Kunst_, p. 95. + + [2] Pollux, _Onomasticon_, lib. iv. cap. 9, 59. + + [3] For an illustration, see Kathleen Schlesinger, _Orchestral + Instruments_, part ii. "Precursors of the Violin Family," fig. 165, + p. 219. + + [4] Athenaeus, iv. p. 183 d. and xiv. p. 638 a. + + [5] _Dialogo della musica antica e moderna_, ed. 1602, p. 40. + + + + +EPIGRAM, properly speaking, anything that is inscribed. Nothing could be +more hopeless, however, than an attempt to discover or devise a +definition wide enough to include the vast multitude of little poems +which at one time or other have been honoured with the title of epigram, +and precise enough to exclude all others. Without taking account of its +evident misapplications, we find that the name has been given--first, in +strict accordance with its Greek etymology, to any actual inscription on +monument, statue or building; secondly, to verses never intended for +such a purpose, but assuming for artistic reasons the epigraphical form; +thirdly, to verses expressing with something of the terseness of an +inscription a striking or beautiful thought; and fourthly, by +unwarrantable restriction, to a little poem ending in a "point," +especially of the satirical kind. The last of these has obtained +considerable popularity from the well-known lines-- + + "The qualities rare in a bee that we meet + In an epigram never should fail; + The body should always be little and sweet, + And a sting should be left in its tail"-- + +which represent the older Latin of some unknown writer-- + + "Omne epigramma sit instar apis: sit aculeus illi; + Sint sua mella; sit et corporis exigui." + +Attempts not a few of a more elaborate kind have been made to state the +essential element of the epigram, and to classify existing specimens; +but, as every lover of epigrams must feel, most of them have been +attended with very partial success. Scaliger, in the third book of his +_Poetics_, gives a fivefold division, which displays a certain ingenuity +in the nomenclature but is very superficial: the first class takes its +name from _mel_, or honey, and consists of adulatory specimens; the +second from _fel_, or gall; the third from _acetum_, or vinegar; and the +fourth from _sal_, or salt; while the fifth is styled the condensed, or +multiplex. This classification is adopted by Nicolaus Mercerius in his +_De conscribendo epigrammate_ (Paris, 1653); but he supplemented it by +another of much more scientific value, based on the figures of the +ancient rhetoricians. Lessing, in the preface to his own epigrams, gives +an interesting treatment of the theory, his principal doctrine being +practically the same as that of several of his less eminent +predecessors, that there ought to be two parts more or less clearly +distinguished,--the first awakening the reader's attention in the same +way as an actual monument might do, and the other satisfying his +curiosity in some unexpected manner. An attempt was made by Herder to +increase the comprehensiveness and precision of the theory; but as he +himself confesses, his classification is rather vague--the expository, +the paradigmatic, the pictorial, the impassioned, the artfully turned, +the illusory, and the swift. After all, if the arrangement according to +authorship be rejected, the simplest and most satisfactory is according +to subjects. The epigram is one of the most catholic of literary forms, +and lends itself to the expression of almost any feeling or thought. It +may be an elegy, a satire, or a love-poem in miniature, an embodiment of +the wisdom of the ages, a bon-mot set off with a couple of rhymes. + + "I cannot tell thee who lies buried here; + No man that knew him followed by his bier; + The winds and waves conveyed him to this shore, + Then ask the winds and waves to tell thee more." + + ANONYMOUS. + + "Wherefore should I vainly try + To teach thee what my love will be + In after years, when thou and I + Have both grown old in company, + If words are vain to tell thee how, + Mary, I do love thee now?" + + ANONYMOUS. + + "O Bruscus, cease our aching ears to vex, + With thy loud railing at the softer sex; + No accusation worse than this could be, + That once a woman did give birth to thee." + + ACILIUS. + + "Treason doth never prosper. What's the reason? + For if it prospers none dare call it treason." + + HARRINGTON. + + "Ward has no heart they say, but I deny it; + He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it." + + ROGERS. + +From its very brevity there is no small danger of the epigram passing +into childish triviality: the paltriest pun, a senseless anagram, is +considered stuff enough and to spare. For proof of this there is +unfortunately no need to look far; but perhaps the reader could not find +a better collection ready to his hand than the second twenty-five of the +_Epigrammatum centuriae_ of Samuel Erichius; by the time he reaches No. +11 of the 47th century, he will be quite ready to grant the +appropriateness of the identity maintained between the German _Seele_, +or soul, and the German _Esel_, or ass. + +Of the epigram as cultivated by the Greeks an account is given in the +article ANTHOLOGY, discussing those wonderful collections which bid fair +to remain the richest of their kind. The delicacy and simplicity of so +much of what has been preserved is perhaps their most striking feature; +and one cannot but be surprised at the number of poets proved capable of +such work. In Latin literature, on the other hand, the epigrammatists +whose work has been preserved are comparatively few, and though several +of them, as Catullus and Martial, are men of high literary genius, too +much of what they have left behind is vitiated by brutality and +obscenity. On the subsequent history of the epigram, indeed, Martial has +exercised an influence as baneful as it is extensive, and he may fairly +be counted the far-off progenitor of a host of scurrilous verses. Nearly +all the learned Latinists of the 16th and 17th centuries may claim +admittance into the list of epigrammatists,--Bembo and Scaliger, +Buchanan and More, Stroza and Sannazaro. Melanchthon, who succeeded in +combining so much of Pagan culture with his Reformation Christianity, +has left us some graceful specimens, but his editor, Joannes Major +Joachimus, has so little idea of what an epigram is, that he includes in +his collection some translations from the Psalms. The Latin epigrams of +Etienne Pasquier were among the most admirable which the Renaissance +produced in France. John Owen, or, as he Latinized his name, Johannes +Audoenus, a Cambro-Briton, attained quite an unusual celebrity in this +department, and is regularly distinguished as Owen the Epigrammatist. +The tradition of the Latin epigram has been kept alive in England by +such men as Porson, Vincent Bourne and Walter Savage Landor. Happily +there is now little danger of any too personal epigrammatist suffering +the fate of Niccolo Franco, who paid the forfeit of his life for having +launched his venomous Latin against Pius V., though he may still incur +the milder penalty of having his name inserted in the _Index +Expurgatorius_, and find, like John Owen, that he consequently has lost +an inheritance. + +In English literature proper there is no writer like Martial in Latin +or Logau in German, whose fame is entirely due to his epigrams; but +several even of those whose names can perish never have not disdained +this diminutive form. The designation epigram, however, is used by +earlier English writers with excessive laxity, and given or withheld +without apparent reason. The epigrams of Robert Crowley (1550) and of +Henry Parrot (1613) are worthless so far as form goes. John Weever's +collection (1599) is of interest mainly because of its allusion to +Shakespeare. Ben Jonson furnishes a number of noble examples in his +_Underwoods_; and one or two of Spenser's little poems and a great many +of Herrick's are properly classed as epigrams. Cowley, Waller, Dryden, +Prior, Parnell, Swift, Addison, Johnson, Goldsmith and Young have all +been at times successful in their epigrammatical attempts; but perhaps +none of them has proved himself so much "to the manner born" as Pope, +whose name indeed is almost identified with the epigrammatical spirit in +English literature. Few English modern poets have followed in his +footsteps, and though nearly all might plead guilty to an epigram or +two, there is no one who has a distinct reputation as an epigrammatist. +Such a reputation might certainly have been Landor's, had he not chosen +to write the best of his minor poems in Latin, and thus made his readers +nearly as select as his language. + +The French are undoubtedly the most successful cultivators of the "salt" +and the "vinegar" epigram; and from the 16th century downwards many of +their principal authors have earned no small celebrity in this +department. The epigram was introduced into French literature by Mellin +de St Gelais and Clement Marot. It is enough to mention the names of +Boileau, J.B. Rousseau, Lebrun, Voltaire, Marmontel, Piron, Rulhiere, +and M.J. Chenier. In spite of Rapin's dictum that a man ought to be +content if he succeeded in writing one really good epigram, those of +Lebrun alone number upwards of 600, and a very fair proportion of them +would doubtless pass muster even with Rapin himself. If Piron was never +anything better, "pas meme academicien," he appears at any rate in +Grimm's phrase to have been "une machine a saillies, a epigrammes, et a +bons mots." Perhaps more than anywhere else the epigram has been +recognized in France as a regular weapon in literary and political +contests, and it might not be altogether a hopeless task to compile an +epigrammatical history from the Revolution to the present time. + +While any fair collection of German epigrams will furnish examples that +for keenness of wit would be quite in place in a French anthology, the +Teutonic tendency to the moral and didactic has given rise to a class +but sparingly represented in French. The very name of _Sinngedichte_ +bears witness to this peculiarity, which is exemplified equally by the +rude _priameln_ or _proeameln_, of the 13th and 14th centuries and the +polished lines of Goethe and Schiller. Logau published his _Deutsche +Sinngetichte Drey Tausend_ in 1654, and Wernicke no fewer than six +volumes of _Ueberschriften oder Epigrammata_ in 1697; Kastner's +_Sinngedichte_ appeared in 1782, and Haug and Weissen's _Epigrammatische +Anthologie_ in 1804. Kleist, Opitz, Gleim, Hagedorn, Klopstock and A.W. +Schlegel all possess some reputation as epigrammatists; Lessing is +_facile princeps_ in the satirical style; and Herder has the honour of +having enriched his language with much of what is best from Oriental and +classical sources. + +It is often by no means easy to trace the history of even a single +epigram, and the investigator soon learns to be cautious of +congratulating himself on the attainment of a genuine original. The same +point, refurbished and fitted anew to its tiny shaft, has been shot +again and again by laughing cupids or fierce-eyed furies in many a +frolic and many a fray. During the period when the epigram was the +favourite form in Germany, Gervinus tells us how the works, not only of +the Greek and Roman writers, but of Neo-Latinists, Spaniards, Dutchmen, +Frenchmen, Englishmen and Poles were ransacked and plundered; and the +same process of pillage has gone on in a more or less modified degree in +other times and countries. Very noticeable often are the modifications +of tone and expression occasioned by national and individual +characteristics; the simplicity of the prototype may become common-place +in the imitation, the sublime be distorted into the grotesque, the +pathetic degenerate into the absurdly sentimental; or on the other hand, +an unpromising _motif_ may be happily developed into unexpected beauty. +A good illustration of the variety with which the same epigram may be +translated and travestied is afforded by a little volume published in +Edinburgh in 1808, under the title of _Lucubrations on the Epigram--_ + + [Greek: Ei men en mathein a dei pathein, + kai me pathein, kalon en to mathein + ei de dei pathein a d' en mathein, + ti dei mathein; chre gar pathein.] + + The two collections of epigrams most accessible to the English reader + are Booth's _Epigrams, Ancient and Modern_ (1863) and Dodd's _The + Epigrammatists_ (1870). In the appendix to the latter is a pretty full + bibliography, to which the following list may serve as a + supplement:--Thomas Corraeus, _De toto eo poematis genere quod + epigramma dicitur_ (Venice, 1569; Bologna, 1590); Cottunius, _De + conficiendo epigrammate_ (Bologna, 1632); Vincentius Gallus, + _Opusculum de epigrammate_ (Milan, 1641); Vavassor, _De epigrammate + liber_ (Paris, 1669); _Gedanke von deutschen Epigrammatibus_ (Leipzig, + 1698); _Doctissimorum nostra aetate Italorum epigrammata; Flaminii + Moleae Naugerii, Cottae, Lampridii, Sadoleti, et aliorum, cura Jo. + Gagnaei_ (Paris, c. 1550); Brugiere de Barante, _Recueil des plus + belles epigrammes des poetes francais_ (2 vols., Paris, 1698); Chr. + Aug. Heumann, _Anthologia Latina: hoc est, epigrammata partim a + priscis partim junioribus a poetis_ (Hanover, 1721); Fayolle, + _Acontologie ou dictionnaire d'epigrammes_ (Paris, 1817); Geijsbeck, + _Epigrammatische Anthologie_, Sauvage, _Les Guepes gauloises: petit + encyclopedie des meilleurs epigrammes, &c., depuis Clement Marot + jusqu'aux poetes de nos jours_ (1859); _La Recreation et passe-temps + des tristes: recueil d'epigrammes et de petits contes en vers + reimprime sur l'edition de Rouen_ 1595, &c. (Paris, 1863). A large + number of epigrams and much miscellaneous information in regard to + their origin, application and translation is scattered through _Notes + and Queries_. + + See also an article in _The Quarterly Review_, No. 233. + + + + +EPIGRAPHY (Gr. [Greek: epi], on, and [Greek: graphein], to write), a +term used to denote (1) the study of inscriptions collectively, and (2) +the science connected with the classification and explanation of +inscriptions. It is sometimes employed, too, in a more contracted sense, +to denote the palaeography, in inscriptions. Generally, it is that part +of archaeology which has to do with inscriptions engraved on stone, +metal or other permanent material (not, however, coins, which come under +the heading NUMISMATICS). + + See INSCRIPTIONS; PALAEOGRAPHY. + + + + +EPILEPSY (Gr. [Greek: epi], upon, and [Greek: lambanein], to seize), or +FALLING SICKNESS, a term applied generally to a nervous disorder, +characterized by a fit of sudden loss of consciousness, attended with +convulsions. There may, however, exist manifestations of epilepsy much +less marked than this, yet equally characteristic of the disease; while, +on the other hand, it is to be borne in mind that many other attacks of +a convulsive nature have the term "epileptic" or "epileptiform" applied +to them. + +Epilepsy was well known in ancient times, and was regarded as a special +infliction of the gods, hence the names _morbus sacer_, _morbus divus_. +It was also termed _morbus Herculeus_, from Hercules having been +supposed to have been epileptic, and _morbus comitialis_, from the +circumstance that when any member of the forum was seized with an +epileptic fit the assembly was broken up. _Morbus caducus_, _morbus +lunaticus astralis_, _morbus demoniacus_, _morbus major_, were all terms +employed to designate epilepsy. + +There are three well-marked varieties of the epileptic seizure; to these +the terms _le grand mal_, _le petit mal_ and _Jacksonian epilepsy_ are +usually applied. Any of these may exist alone, but the two former may be +found to exist in the same individual. The first of these, if not the +more common, is at least that which attracts the most attention, being +what is generally known as an _epileptic fit_. + +Although in most instances such an attack comes on suddenly, it is in +many cases preceded by certain premonitory indications or warnings, +which may be present for a greater or less time previously. These are of +very varied character, and may be in the form of some temporary change +in the disposition, such as unusual depression or elevation of spirits, +or of some alteration in the look. Besides these general symptoms, there +are frequently peculiar sensations which immediately precede the onset +of the fit, and to such the name of _aura epileptica_ is applied. In its +strict sense this term refers to a feeling of a breath of air blowing +upon some part of the body, and passing upwards towards the head. This +sensation, however, is not a common one, and the term has now come to be +applied to any peculiar feeling which the patient experiences as a +precursor of the attack. The so-called _aura_ may be of mental +character, in the form of an agonizing feeling of momentary duration; of +sensorial character, in the form of pain in a limb or in some internal +organ, such as the stomach, or morbid feeling connected with the special +senses; or, further, of motorial character, in the form of contractions +or trembling in some of the muscles. When such sensations affect a limb, +the employment of firm compression by the hand or by a ligature +occasionally succeeds in warding off an attack. The aura may be so +distinct and of such duration as to enable the patient to lie down, or +seek a place of safety before the fit comes on. + +The seizure is usually preceded by a loud scream or cry, which is not to +be ascribed, as was at one time supposed, to terror or pain, but is due +to the convulsive action of the muscles of the larynx, and the expulsion +of a column of air through the narrowed glottis. If the patient is +standing he immediately falls, and often sustains serious injury. +Unconsciousness is complete, and the muscles generally are in a state of +stiffness or tonic contraction, which will usually be found to affect +those of one side of the body in particular. The head is turned by a +series of jerks towards one or other shoulder, the breathing is for the +moment arrested, the countenance first pale then livid, the pupils +dilated and the pulse rapid. This, the first stage of the fit, generally +lasts for about half a minute, and is followed by the state of clonic +(i.e. tumultuous) spasm of the muscles, in which the whole body is +thrown into violent agitation, occasionally so great that bones may be +fractured or dislocated. The eyes roll wildly, the teeth are gnashed +together, and the tongue and cheeks are often severely bitten. The +breathing is noisy and laborious, and foam (often tinged with blood) +issues from the mouth, while the contents of the bowels and bladder are +ejected. The aspect of the patient in this condition is shocking to +witness, and the sight has been known to induce a similar attack in an +onlooker. This stage lasts for a period varying from a few seconds to +several minutes, when the convulsive movements gradually subside, and +relaxation of the muscles takes place, together with partial return of +consciousness, the patient looking confusedly about him and attempting +to speak. This, however, is soon followed by drowsiness and stupor, +which may continue for several hours, when he awakes either apparently +quite recovered or fatigued and depressed, and occasionally in a state +of excitement which sometimes assumes the form of mania. + +Epileptic fits of this sort succeed each other with varying degrees of +frequency, and occasionally, though not frequently, with regular +periodicity. In some persons they only occur once in a lifetime, or once +in the course of many years, while in others they return every week or +two, or even are of daily occurrence, and occasionally there are +numerous attacks each day. According to Sir J.R. Reynolds, there are +four times as many epileptics who have their attacks more frequently +than once a month as there are of those whose attacks recur at longer +intervals. When the fit returns it is not uncommon for one seizure to be +followed by another within a few hours or days. Occasionally there +occurs a constant succession of attacks extending over many hours, and +with such rapidity that the patient appears as if he had never come out +of the one fit. The term _status epilepticus_ is applied to this +condition, which is sometimes followed with fatal results. In many +epileptics the fits occur during the night as well as during the day, +but in some instances they are entirely nocturnal, and it is well known +that in such cases the disease may long exist and yet remain +unrecognized either by the patient or the physician. + +The second manifestation of epilepsy, to which the names _epilepsia +mitior_ or _le petit mal_ are given, differs from that above described +in the absence of the convulsive spasms. It is also termed by some +authors _epileptic vertigo_ (giddiness), and consists essentially in the +sudden arrest of volition and consciousness, which is of but short +duration, and may be accompanied with staggering or some alteration in +position or motion, or may simply exhibit itself in a look of absence or +confusion, and should the patient happen to be engaged in conversation, +by an abrupt termination of the act. In general it lasts but a few +seconds, and the individual resumes his occupation without perhaps being +aware of anything having been the matter. In some instances there is a +degree of spasmodic action in certain muscles which may cause the +patient to make some unexpected movement, such as turning half round, or +walking abruptly aside, or may show itself by some unusual expression of +countenance, such as squinting or grinning. There may be some amount of +_aura_ preceding such attacks, and also of faintness following them. The +_petit mal_ most commonly co-exists with the _grand mal_, but has no +necessary connexion with it, as each may exist alone. According to +Armand Trousseau, the _petit mal_ in general precedes the manifestation +of the _grand mal_, but sometimes the reverse is the case. + +The third manifestation--_Jacksonian epilepsy_ or _partial epilepsy_--is +distinguished by the fact that consciousness is retained or lost late. +The patient is conscious throughout, and is able to watch the march of +the spasm. The attacks are usually the result of lesions in the motor +area of the brain, such being caused, in many instances, by depression +of the vault of the skull, due to trauma. + +Epilepsy appears to exert no necessarily injurious effect upon the +general health, and even where it exists in an aggravated form is quite +consistent with a high degree of bodily vigour. It is very different, +however, with regard to its influence upon the mind; and the question of +the relation of epilepsy to insanity is one of great and increasing +importance. Allusion has already been made to the occasional occurrence +of maniacal excitement as one of the results of the epileptic seizure. +Such attacks, to which the name of _furor epilepticus_ is applied, are +generally accompanied with violent acts on the part of the patient, +rendering him dangerous, and demanding prompt measures of restraint. +These attacks are by no means limited to the more severe form of +epilepsy, but appear to be even more frequently associated with the +milder form--the epileptic vertigo--where they either replace altogether +or immediately follow the short period of absence characteristic of this +form of the disease. Numerous cases are on record of persons known to be +epileptic being suddenly seized, either after or without apparent +spasmodic attack, with some sudden impulse, in which they have used +dangerous violence to those beside them, irrespective altogether of +malevolent intention, as appears from their retaining no recollection +whatever, after the short period of excitement, of anything that had +occurred; and there is reason to believe that crimes of heinous +character, for which the perpetrators have suffered punishment, have +been committed in a state of mind such as that now described. The +subject is obviously one of the greatest medico-legal interest and +importance in regard to the question of criminal responsibility. + +Apart, however, from such marked and comparatively rare instances of +what is termed epileptic insanity, the general mental condition of the +epileptic is in a large proportion of cases unfavourably affected by the +disease. There are doubtless examples (and their number according to +statistics is estimated at less than one-third) where, even among those +suffering from frequent and severe attacks, no departure from the normal +condition of mental integrity can be recognized. But in general there +exists some peculiarity, exhibiting itself either in the form of +defective memory, or diminishing intelligence, or what is perhaps as +frequent, in irregularities of temper, the patient being irritable or +perverse and eccentric. In not a few cases there is a steady mental +decline, which ends in dementia or idiocy. It is stated by some high +authorities that epileptic women suffer in regard to their mental +condition more than men. It also appears to be the case that the later +in life the disease shows itself the more likely is the mind to suffer. +Neither the frequency nor the severity of the seizures seem to have any +necessary influence in the matter; and the general opinion appears to be +that the milder form of the disease is that with which mental failure is +more apt to be associated. (For a consideration of the conditions of the +nervous system which result in epilepsy, see the article +NEUROPATHOLOGY.) + +The influence of hereditary predisposition in epilepsy is very marked. +It is necessary, however, to bear in mind the point so forcibly insisted +on by Trousseau in relation to epilepsy, that hereditary transmission +may be either direct or indirect, that is to say, that what is epilepsy +in one generation may be some other form of neurosis in the next, and +conversely, nervous diseases being remarkable for their tendency to +transformation in their descent in families. Where epilepsy is +hereditary, it generally manifests itself at an unusually early period +of life. A singular fact, which also bears to some extent upon the +pathology of this disease, was brought to light by Dr Brown Sequard in +his experiments, namely, that the young of animals which had been +artifically rendered epileptic were liable to similar seizures. In +connexion with the hereditary transmission of epilepsy it must be +observed that all authorities concur in the opinion that this disease is +one among the baneful effects that often follow marriages of +consanguinity. Further, there is reason to believe that intemperance, +apart altogether from its direct effect in favouring the occurrence of +epilepsy, has an evil influence in the hereditary transmission of this +as of other nervous diseases. A want of symmetry in the formation of the +skull and defective cerebral development are not infrequently observed +where epilepsy is hereditarily transmitted. + +Age is of importance in reference to the production of epilepsy. The +disease may come on at any period of life, but it appears from the +statistics of Reynolds and others, that it most frequently first +manifests itself between the ages of ten and twenty years, the period of +second dentition and puberty, and again at or about the age of forty. + +Among other causes which are influential in the development of epilepsy +may be mentioned sudden fright, prolonged mental anxiety, over-work and +debauchery. Epileptic fits also occur in connexion with a depraved stage +of the general health, and with irritations in distant organs, as seen +in the fits occurring in dentition, in kidney disease, and as a result +of worms in the intestines. The symptoms traceable to these causes are +sometimes termed _sympathetic_ or _eccentric epilepsy_; these are but +rarely _epileptic_ in the strictest sense of the word, but rather +epileptiform. + +Epilepsy is occasionally feigned for the purpose of extortion, but an +experienced medical practitioner will rarely be deceived; and when it is +stated that although many of the phenomena of an attack, particularly +the convulsive movements, can be readily simulated, yet that the +condition of the pupils, which are dilated during the fit, cannot be +feigned, and that the impostor seldom bites his tongue or injures +himself, deception is not likely to succeed even with non-medical +persons of intelligence. + +The _medical treatment_ of epilepsy can only be briefly alluded to here. +During the fit little can be done beyond preventing as far as possible +the patient from injuring himself while unconsciousness continues. Tight +clothing should be loosened, and a cork or pad inserted between the +teeth. When the fit is of long continuance, the dashing of cold water on +the face and chest, or the inhalation of chloroform, or of nitrite of +amyl, may be useful; in general, however, the fit terminates +independently of any such measures. When the fit is over the patient +should be allowed to sleep, and have the head and shoulders well raised. + +In the intervals of the attack, the general health of the patient is +one of the most important points to be attended to. The strictest +hygienic and dietetic rules should be observed, and all such causes as +have been referred to as favouring the development of the disease +should, as far as possible, be avoided. In the case of children, parents +must be made to realize that epilepsy is a chronic disease, and that +therefore the seizures must not be allowed to interfere unnecessarily +with the child's training. The patient must be treated as such only +during the attack; between times, though being carefully watched, must +be made to follow a child's normal pursuits, and no distinction must be +made from other children. The same applies to adults: it is far better +for them to have some definite occupation, preferably one that keeps +them in the open air. If such patients become irritable, then they +should be placed under supervision. As regards those who cannot be +looked after at home, colonies on a self-supporting basis have been +tried, and where the supervision has been intelligent the success has +been proved, a fairly high level of health and happiness being attained. + +The various bromides are the only medical drugs that have produced any +beneficial results. They require to be given in large doses which are +carefully regulated for every individual patient, as the quantities +required vary enormously. Children take far larger doses in proportion +than adults. They are best given in a very diluted form, and after +meals, to diminish the chances of gastric disturbance. Belladonna seems +also to have some influence on the disease, and forms a useful addition; +arsenic should also be prescribed at times, both as a tonic, and for the +sake of the improvement it effects in those patients who develop a +tendency to _acne_, which is one of the troublesome results of bromism. +The administration of the bromides should be maintained until three +years after the cessation of the fits. The occurrence of gastric pain, +palpitations and loss of the palate reflex are indications to stop, or +to decrease the quantity of the drug. In very severe cases opium may be +required. + +Surgical treatment for epilepsy is yet in its infancy, and it is too +early to judge of its results. This does not apply, however, to cases of +_Jacksonian epilepsy_, where a very large number have been operated on +with marked benefit. Here the lesion of the brain is, in a very large +percentage of the patients, caused by pressure from outside, from the +presence of a tumour or a depressed fracture; the removal of the one, or +the elevation of the other is the obvious procedure, and it is usually +followed by the complete disappearance of the seizures. + + + + +EPILOGUE. The appendix or supplement to a literary work, and in +particular to a drama in verse, is called an _epilogue_, from [Greek: +epilogos], the name given by the Greeks to the peroration of a speech. +As we read in Shakespeare's _Midsummer Night's Dream_, the epilogue was +generally treated as the apology for a play; it was a final appeal made +to encourage the good-nature of the audiences, and to deprecate attack. +The epilogue should form no part of the work to which it is attached, +but should be independent of it; it should be treated as a sort of +commentary. Sometimes it adds further information with regard to what +has been left imperfectly concluded in the work itself. For instance, in +the case of a play, the epilogue will occasionally tell us what became +of the characters after the action closed; but this is irregular and +unusual, and the epilogue is usually no more than a graceful way of +dismissing the audience. Among the ancients the form was not cultivated, +further than that the leader of the chorus or the last speaker advanced +and said "Vos valete, et plaudite, cives"--"Good-bye, citizens, and we +hope you are pleased." Sometimes this formula was reduced to the one +word, "Plaudite!" The epilogue as a literary species is almost entirely +confined to England, and it does not occur in the earliest English +plays. It is rare in Shakespeare, but Ben Jonson made it a particular +feature of his drama, and may almost be said to have invented the +tradition of its regular use. He employed the epilogue for two purposes, +either to assert the merit of the play or to deprecate censure of its +defects. In the former case, as in _Cynthia's Revels_ (1600), the actor +went off, and immediately came on again saying:-- + + "Gentles, be't known to you, since I went in + I am turned rhymer, and do thus begin:-- + The author (jealous how your sense doth take + His travails) hath enjoined me to make + Some short and ceremonious epilogue,"-- + +and then explained to the audience what an extremely interesting play it +had been. In the second case, when the author was less confident, his +epilogue took a humbler form, as in the comedy of _Volpone_ (1605), +where the actor said:-- + + "The seasoning of a play is the applause. + Now, as the Fox be punished by the laws, + He yet doth hope, there is no suffering due + For any fact which he hath done 'gainst _you_. + If there be, censure him; here he doubtful stands: + If not, fare jovially and clap your hands." + +Beaumont and Fletcher used the epilogue sparingly, but after their day +it came more and more into vogue, and the form was almost invariably +that which Ben Jonson had brought into fashion, namely, the short +complete piece in heroic couplets. The hey-day of the epilogue, however, +was the Restoration, and from 1660 to the decline of the drama in the +reign of Queen Anne scarcely a play, serious or comic, was produced on +the London stage without a prologue and an epilogue. These were almost +always in verse, even if the play itself was in the roughest prose, and +they were intended to impart a certain literary finish to the piece. +These Restoration epilogues were often very elaborate essays or satires, +and were by no means confined to the subject of the preceding play. They +dealt with fashions, or politics, or criticism. The prologues and +epilogues of Dryden are often brilliantly finished exercises in literary +polemic. It became the custom for playwrights to ask their friends to +write these poems for them, and the publishers would even come to a +prominent poet and ask him to supply one for a fee. It gives us an idea +of the seriousness with which the epilogue was treated that Dryden +originally published his valuable "Defence of the Epilogue; or An Essay +on the Dramatic Poetry of the Last Age" (1672) as a defence of the +epilogue which he had written for _The Conquest of Granada_. In France +the custom of reciting dramatic epilogues has never prevailed. French +criticism gives the name to such adieux to the public, at the close of a +non-dramatic work, as are reserved by La Fontaine for certain critical +points in the "Fables." (E. G.) + + + + +EPIMENIDES, poet and prophet of Crete, lived in the 6th century B.C. +Many fabulous stories are told of him, and even his existence is +doubted. While tending his father's sheep, he is said to have fallen +into a deep sleep in the Dictaean cave near Cnossus where he lived, from +which he did not awake for fifty-seven years (Diogenes Laertius i. +109-115). When the Athenians were visited by a pestilence in consequence +of the murder of Cylon, he was invited by Solon (596) to purify the +city. The only reward he would accept was a branch of the sacred olive, +and a promise of perpetual friendship between Athens and Cnossus +(Plutarch, _Solon_, 12; Aristotle, _Ath. Pol._ 1). He died in Crete at +an advanced age; according to his countrymen, who afterwards honoured +him as a god, he lived nearly three hundred years. According to another +story, he was taken prisoner in a war between the Spartans and +Cnossians, and put to death by his captors, because he refused to +prophesy favourably for them. A collection of oracles, a theogony, an +epic poem on the Argonautic expedition, prose works on purifications and +sacrifices, and a cosmogony, were attributed to him. Epimenides must be +reckoned with Melampus and Onomacritus as one of the founders of +Orphism. He is supposed to be the Cretan prophet alluded to in the +epistle to Titus (i. 12). + + See C. Schultess, _De Epimenide Cretensi_ (1877); O. Kern, _De Orphei, + Epimenidis ... Theogoniis_ (1888); G. Barone di Vincenzo, _E. di Creta + e le Credenze religiose de' suoi Tempi_ (1880); H. Demoulin, + _Epimenide de Crete_ (1901); H. Diels, _Die Fragmente der + Vorsokratiker_ (1903); O. Kern in Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_. + + + + +EPINAL, a town on the north-eastern frontier of France, capital of the +department of Vosges, 46 m. S.S.E. of Nancy on the Eastern railway +between that town and Belfort. Pop. (1906), town 21,296, commune +(including garrison) 29,058. The town proper--the Grande Ville--is +situated on the right bank of the Moselle, which at this point divides +into two arms forming an island whereon another quarter--the Petite +Ville--is built. The lesser of these two arms, which is canalized, +separates the island from the suburb of Hospice on its left bank. The +right bank of the Moselle is bordered for some distance by pleasant +promenades, and an extensive park surrounds the ruins of an old +stronghold which dominated the Grande Ville from an eminence on the +east. Apart from the church of St Goery (or St Maurice) rebuilt in the +13th century but preserving a tower of the 12th century, the public +buildings of Epinal offer little of architectural interest. The old +hospital on the island-quarter contains a museum with interesting +collections of paintings, Gallo-Roman antiquities, sculpture, &c. Close +by stands the library, which possesses many valuable MSS. + +The fortifications of Epinal are connected to the southward with +Belfort, Dijon and Besancon, by the fortified line of the Moselle, and +north of it lies the unfortified zone called the _Trouee d'Epinal_, a +gap designedly left open to the invaders between Epinal and Toul, +another great fortress which is itself connected by the Meuse _forts +d'arret_ with Verdun and the places of the north-east. Epinal therefore +is a fortress of the greatest possible importance to the defence of +France, and its works, all built since 1870, are formidable permanent +fortifications. The Moselle runs from S. to N. through the middle of the +girdle of forts; the fortifications of the right bank, beginning with +Fort de la Mouche, near the river 3 m. above Epinal, form a chain of +detached forts and batteries over 6 m. long from S. to N., and the +northernmost part of this line is immensely strengthened by numerous +advanced works between the villages of Dogneville and Longchamp. On the +left bank, a larger area of ground is included in the perimeter of +defence for the purposes of encampment, the most westerly of the forts, +Girancourt, being 7 m. distant from Epinal; from the lower Moselle to +Girancourt the works are grouped principally about Uxegney and Sarchey; +from Girancourt to the upper river and Fort de la Mouche a long ridge +extends in an arc, and on this south-western section the principal +defence is Fort Ticha and its annexes. The circle of forts, which has a +perimeter of nearly 30 m., was in 1895 reinforced by the construction of +sixteen new works, and the area of ground enclosed and otherwise +protected by the defences of Epinal is sufficiently extensive to +accommodate a large army. + +Epinal is the seat of a prefect and of a court of assizes and has +tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of +trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, training-colleges, a communal +college and industrial school, and exchange and a branch of the Bank of +France. The town, which is important as the centre of a cotton-spinning +region, carries on cotton-spinning, -weaving and -printing, brewing and +distilling, and the manufacture of machinery and iron goods, glucose, +embroidery, hats, wall-paper and tapioca. An industry peculiar to Epinal +is the production of cheap images, lithographs and engravings. There is +also trade in wine, grain, live-stock and starch products made in the +vicinity. Epinal is an important junction on the Eastern railway. + +Epinal originated towards the end of the 10th century with the founding +of a monastery by Theodoric (Dietrich) I., bishop of Metz, whose +successors ruled the town till 1444, when its inhabitants placed +themselves under the protection of King Charles VII. In 1466 it was +transferred to the duchy of Lorraine, and in 1766 it was, along with +that duchy, incorporated with France. It was occupied by the Germans on +the 12th of October 1870 after a short fight, and until the 15th was the +headquarters of General von Werder. + + + + +EPINAOS (Gr. [Greek: epi], after, and [Greek: naos], a temple), in +architecture, the open vestibule behind the nave. The term is not found +in any classic author, but is a modern coinage, originating in Germany, +to differentiate the feature from "opisthodomus," which in the Parthenon +was an enclosed chamber. + + + + +EPINAY, LOUISE FLORENCE PETRONILLE TARDIEU D'ESCLAVELLES D' +(1726-1783), French writer, was born at Valenciennes on the 11th of +March 1726. She is well known on account of her _liaisons_ with Rousseau +and Baron von Grimm, and her acquaintanceship with Diderot, D'Alembert, +D'Holbach and other French men of letters. Her father, Tardieu +d'Esclavelles, a brigadier of infantry, was killed in battle when she +was nineteen; and she married her cousin Denis Joseph de La Live +d'Epinay, who was made a collector-general of taxes. The marriage was an +unhappy one; and Louise d'Epinay believed that the prodigality, +dissipation and infidelities of her husband justified her in obtaining a +formal separation in 1749. She settled in the chateau of La Chevrette in +the valley of Montmorency, and there received a number of distinguished +visitors. Conceiving a strong attachment for J.J. Rousseau, she +furnished for him in 1756 in the valley of Montmorency a cottage which +she named the "Hermitage," and in this retreat he found for a time the +quiet and natural rural pleasures he praised so highly. Rousseau, in his +_Confessions_, affirmed that the inclination was all on her side; but +as, after her visit to Geneva, Rousseau became her bitter enemy, little +weight can be given to his statements on this point. Her intimacy with +Grimm, which began in 1755, marks a turning-point in her life, for under +his influence she escaped from the somewhat compromising conditions of +her life at La Chevrette. In 1757-1759 she paid a long visit to Geneva, +where she was a constant guest of Voltaire. In Grimm's absence from +France (1775-1776), Madame d'Epinay continued, under the superintendence +of Diderot, the correspondence he had begun with various European +sovereigns. She spent most of her later life at La Briche, a small house +near La Chevrette, in the society of Grimm and of a small circle of men +of letters. She died on the 17th of April 1783. Her _Conversations +d'Emilie_ (1774), composed for the education of her grand-daughter, +Emilie de Belsunce, was crowned by the French Academy in 1783. The +_Memoires et Correspondance de Mme d'Epinay, renfermant un grand nombre +de lettres inedites de Grimm, de Diderot, et de J.-J. Rousseau, ainsi +que des details_, &c, was published at Paris (1818) from a MS. which she +had bequeathed to Grimm. The _Memoires_ are written by herself in the +form of a sort of autobiographic romance. Madame d'Epinay figures in it +as Madame de Montbrillant, and Rene is generally recognized as Rousseau, +Volx as Grimm, Garnier as Diderot. All the letters and documents +published along with the _Memoires_ are genuine. Many of Madame +d'Epinay's letters are contained in the _Correspondance de l'abbe +Galiani_ (1818). Two anonymous works, _Lettres a mon fils_ (Geneva, +1758) and _Mes moments heureux_ (Geneva, 1759), are also by Madame +d'Epinay. + + See Rousseau's _Confessions_; Lucien Perey [Mlle Herpin] and Gaston + Maugras, _La Jeunesse de Mme d'Epinay, les dernieres annees de Mme + d'Epinay_ (1882-1883); Sainte-Beuve, _Causeries du lundi_, vol. ii.; + Edmond Scherer, _Etudes sur la litterature contemporaine_, vols. iii. + and vii. There are editions of the _Memoires_ by L. Enault (1855) and + by P. Boiteau (1865); and an English translation, with introduction + and notes (1897), by J.H. Freese. + + + + +EPIPHANIUS, SAINT (c. 315-402), a celebrated Church Father, born in the +beginning of the 4th century at Bezanduca, a village of Palestine, near +Eleutheropolis. He is said to have been of Jewish extraction. In his +youth he resided in Egypt, where he began an ascetic course of life, +and, freeing himself from Gnostic influences, invoked episcopal +assistance against heretical thinkers, eighty of whom were driven from +the cities. On his return to Palestine he was ordained presbyter by the +bishop of Eleutheropolis, and became the president of a monastery which +he founded near his native place. The account of his intimacy with the +patriarch Hilarion is not trustworthy. In 367 he was nominated bishop of +Constantia, previously known as Salamis, the metropolis of Cyprus--an +office which he held till his death in 402. Zealous for the truth, but +passionate and bigoted, he devoted himself to two great labours, namely, +the spread of the recently established monasticism, and the confutation +of heresy, of which he regarded Origen and his followers as the chief +representatives. The first of the Origenists that he attacked was John, +bishop of Jerusalem, whom he denounced from his own pulpit at Jerusalem +(394) in terms so violent that the bishop sent his archdeacon to request +him to desist; and afterwards, instigated by Theophilus, bishop of +Alexandria, he proceeded so far as to summon a council of Cyprian +bishops to condemn the errors of Origen. In his closing years he came +into conflict with Chrysostom, the patriarch of Constantinople, who had +given temporary shelter to four Nitrian monks whom Theophilus had +expelled on the charge of Origenism. The monks gained the support of the +empress Eudoxia, and when she summoned Theophilus to Constantinople that +prelate forced the aged Epiphanius to go with him. He had some +controversy with Chrysostom but did not stay to see the result of +Theophilus's machinations, and died on his way home. The principal work +of Epiphanius is the _Panarion_, or treatise on heresies, of which he +also wrote an abridgment. It is a "medicine chest" of remedies for all +kinds of heretical belief, of which he names eighty varieties. His +accounts of the earlier errors (where he has preserved for us large +excerpts from the original Greek of Irenaeus) are more reliable than +those of contemporary heresies. In his desire to see the Church safely +moored he also wrote the _Ancoratus_, or discourse on the true faith. +His encyclopaedic learning shows itself in a treatise on Jewish weights +and measures, and another (incomplete) on ancient gems. These, with two +epistles to John of Jerusalem and Jerome, are his only genuine remains. +He wrote a large number of works which are lost. In allusion to his +knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, Egyptian, Greek and Latin, Jerome styles +Epiphanius [Greek: Pentaglossos] (Five-tongued); but if his knowledge of +languages was really so extensive, it is certain that he was utterly +destitute of critical and logical power. His early asceticism seems to +have imbued him with a love of the marvellous; and his religious zeal +served only to increase his credulity. His erudition is outweighed by +his prejudice, and his inability to recognize the responsibilities of +authorship makes it necessary to assign most value to those portions of +his works which he simply cites from earlier writers. + + The primary sources for the life are the church histories of Socrates + and Sozomen, Palladius's _De vita Chrysostomi_ and Jerome's _De vir. + illust._ 114. Petau (Petavius) published an edition of the works in 2 + vols. fol. at Paris in 1622; cf. Migne, _Patr. Graec._ 41-43. The + Panarion and other works were edited by F. Oehler (Berlin, 1859-1861). + For more recent work especially on the fragments see K. Bonwetsch's + art. in Herzog-Hauck's _Realencyk._ v. 417. + + Other theologians of the same name were: (1) Epiphanius Scholasticus, + friend and helper of Cassiodorus; (2) Epiphanius, bishop of Ticinum + (Pavia), c. 438-496; (3) Epiphanius, bishop of Constantia and + Metropolitan of Cyprus (the Younger), c. A.D. 680, to whom some + critics have ascribed certain of the works supposed to have been + written by the greater Epiphanius; (4) Epiphanius, bishop of + Constantia in the 9th century, to whom a similar attribution has been + made. + + + + +EPIPHANY, FEAST OF. The word epiphany, in Greek, signifies an apparition +of a divine being. It was used as a singular or a plural, both in its +Greek and Latin forms, according as one epiphany was contemplated or +several united in a single commemoration. For in the East from an early +time were associated with the feast of the Baptism of Christ +commemorations of the physical birth, of the Star of the Magi, of the +miracles of Cana, and of the feeding of the five thousand. The +commemoration of the Baptism was also called by the Greek fathers of the +4th century the Theophany or Theophanies, and the Day of Lights, i.e. of +the Illumination of Jesus or of the Light which shone in the Jordan. In +the Teutonic west it has become the Festival of the three kings (i.e. +the Magi), or simply Twelfth day. Leo the Great called it the Feast of +the _Declaration_; Fulgentius, of the _Manifestation_; others, of the +_Apparition_ of Christ. + +In the following article it is attempted to ascertain the date of +institution of the Epiphany feast, its origin, and its significance and +development. + +Clement of Alexandria first mentions it. Writing c. 194 he states that +the Basilidians feasted the day of the Baptism, devoting the whole night +which preceded it to lections of the scriptures. They fixed it in the +15th year of Tiberius, on the 15th or 11th of the month Tobi, dates of +the Egyptian fixed calendar equivalent to January 10th and 6th. When +Clement wrote the great church had not adopted the feast, but toward +A.D. 300 it was widely in vogue. Thus the Acts of Philip the Martyr, +bishop of Heraclea in Thrace, A.D. 304, mention the "holy day of the +Epiphany." Note the singular. Origen seems not to have heard of it as a +feast of the Catholic church, but Hippolytus (died c. 235) recognized it +in a homily which may be genuine. + +In the age of the Nicene Council, A.D. 325, the primate of Alexandria +was charged at every Epiphany Feast to announce to the churches in a +"Festal Letter" the date of the forthcoming Easter. Several such letters +written by Athanasius and others remain. In the churches so addressed +the feast of Jan. 6 must have been already current. + +In Jerusalem, according to the Epistle of Macarius[1] to the Armenians, +c. 330, the feast was kept with zeal and splendour, and was with Easter +and Pentecost a favourite season for Baptism. + +We have evidence of the 4th century from Spain that a long fast marked +the season of Advent, and prepared for the feast of Epiphany on the 6th +of January. The council of Saragossa c. 380 enacted that for 21 days, +from the 17th of December to the 6th of January, the Epiphany, the +faithful should not dance or make merry, but steadily frequent the +churches. The synod of Lerida in 524 went further and forbade marriages +during Advent. Our earliest Spanish lectionary, the _Liber comicus_ of +Toledo, edited by Don Morin (_Anecd. Maredsol._ vol. i.), provides +lections for five Sundays in Advent, and the gospel lections[2] chosen +regard the Baptism of Christ, not His Birth, of which the feast, like +that of the Annunciation, is mentioned, but not yet dated, December 25 +being assigned to St Stephen. It is odd that for "the Apparition of the +Lord" the lection Matt. ii. 1-15 is assigned, although the lections for +Advent belong to a scheme which identified Epiphany with the Baptism. +This anomaly we account for below. The old editor of the Mozarabic +Liturgy, Fr. Antonio Lorenzano, notes in his preface S 28 that the +Spaniards anciently terminated the Advent season with the Epiphany +Feast. In Rome also the earliest fixed system of the ecclesiastical +year, which may go back to 300, makes Epiphany the _caput festorum_ or +chief of feasts. The Sundays of Advent lead up to it, and the first +Sundays of the year are "The Sunday within the octave of Epiphany," "the +first Sunday after," and so forth. December 25 is no critical date at +all. In Armenia as early as 450 a month of fasting prepared for the +Advent of the Lord at Epiphany, and the fast was interpreted as a +reiteration of John the Baptist's season of Repentance. + +In Antioch as late as about 386 Epiphany and Easter were the two great +feasts, and the physical Birth of Christ was not yet feasted. On the eve +of Epiphany after nightfall the springs and rivers were blessed, and +water was drawn from them and stored for the whole year to be used in +lustrations and baptisms. Such water, says Chrysostom, to whose orations +we owe the information, kept pure and fresh for one, two and three +years, and like good wine actually improved the longer it was kept. Note +that Chrysostom speaks of the Feast of the _Epiphanies_, implying two, +one of the Baptism, the other of the Second Advent, when Christ will be +manifested afresh, and we with him in glory. This Second Epiphany +inspired, as we saw, the choice of Pauline lections in the _Liber +comicus_. But the salient event commemorated was the Baptism, and +Chrysostom almost insists on this as the exclusive significance of the +feast:--"It was not when he was born that he became manifest to all, but +when he was baptized." In his commentary on Ezekiel Jerome employs the +same language _absconditus est et non apparuit_, by way of protest +against an interpretation of the Feast as that of the Birth of Jesus in +Bethlehem, which was essayed as early as 375 by Epiphanius in Cyprus, +and was being enforced in Jerome's day by John, bishop of Jerusalem. +Epiphanius boldly removed the date of the Baptism to the 8th of +November. "January 6" (= Tobi 11), he writes, "is the day of Christ's +Birth, that is, of the Epiphanies." He uses the plural, because he adds +on January 6 the commemoration of the water miracle of Cana. Although in +375 he thus protested that January 6 was the day "of the Birth after the +Flesh," he became before the end of the century a convert, according to +John of Nice, to the new opinion that December 25 was the real day of +this Birth. That as early as about 385, January 6 was kept as the +physical birthday in Jerusalem, or rather in Bethlehem, we know from a +contemporary witness of it, the lady pilgrim of Gaul, whose +_peregrinatio_, recently discovered by Gamurrini, is confirmed by the +old Jerusalem Lectionary preserved in Armenian.[3] Ephraem the Syrian +father is attested already by Epiphanius (c. 375) to have celebrated the +physical birth on January 6. His genuine Syriac hymns confirm this, but +prove that the Baptism, the Star of the Magi, and the Marriage at Cana +were also commemorated on the same day. That the same union prevailed in +Rome up to the year 354 may be inferred from Ambrose. Philastrius (_De +haer._ ch. 140) notes that some abolished the Epiphany feast and +substituted a Birth feast. This was between 370 and 390. + +In 385 Pope Siricius[4] calls January 6 _Natalicia_, "the Birthday of +Christ or of Apparition," and protests against the Spanish custom (at +Tarragona) of baptizing on that day--another proof that in Spain in the +4th century it commemorated the Baptism. In Gaul at Vienna in 360 Julian +the Apostate, out of deference to Christian feeling, went to church "on +the festival which they keep in January and call Epiphania." So +Ammianus; but Zonaras in his Greek account of the event calls it the day +of the Saviour's Birth. + +Why the feast of the Baptism was called the feast or day of the +Saviour's Birth, and why fathers of that age when they call Christmas +the birthday constantly qualify and add the words "in the flesh," we are +able to divine from Pope Leo's (c. 447) 18th Epistle to the bishops of +Sicily. For here we learn that in Sicily they held that in His Baptism +the Saviour was reborn through the Holy Spirit. "The Lord," protests +Leo, "needed no remission of sins, no remedy of rebirth." The Sicilians +also baptized neophytes on January 6, "because baptism conveyed to Jesus +and to them one and the same grace." Not so, argues Leo, the Lord +sanctioned and hallowed the power of regeneration, not when He was +baptized, but "when the blood of redemption and the water of baptism +flowed forth from his side." Neophytes should therefore be baptized at +Easter and Pentecost alone, never at Epiphany. + +Fortune has preserved to us among the _Spuria_ of several Latin fathers, +Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome and Maximus of Turin, various homilies for +Sundays of the Advent fast and for Epiphany. The Advent lections of +these homilists were much the same as those of the Spanish _Liber +comicus_; and they insist on Advent being kept as a strict fast, without +marriage celebrations. Their Epiphany lection is however Matt. iii. +1-17, which must therefore have once on a time been assigned in the +_Liber comicus_ also in harmony with its general scheme. The psalms used +on the day are, cxiii. (cxiv.) "When Israel went forth," xxviii. (xxix.) +"Give unto the Lord," and xxii. (xxiii.) "the Lord is my Shepherd." The +same lection of Matthew and also Ps. xxix. are noted for Epiphany in the +Greek oration for the day ascribed to Hippolytus, which is at least +earlier than 300, and also in special old Epiphany rites for the +Benediction of the waters found in Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, +Syriac, &c. Now by these homilists as by Chrysostom,[5] the Baptism is +regarded as the occasion on which "the Saviour first _appeared_ after +the flesh in the world or on earth." These words were classical to the +homilists, who explain them as best they can. The baptism is also +declared to have been "the consecration of Christ," and "regeneration of +Christ and a strengthening of our faith," to have been "Christ's second +nativity." "This _second birth_ hath more renown than his first ... for +now the God of majesty is inscribed (as his father), but then (at his +first birth) Joseph the Carpenter was assumed to be his father ... he +hath more honour who cries aloud from Heaven (viz. God the Father), than +he who labours upon earth" (viz. Joseph).[6] + +Similarly the old _ordo Romanus_ of the age of Pepin (given by +Montfaulcon in his preface to the Mozarabic missal in Migne, _Patr. +Latina_, 85, col. 46), under the rubric of the Vigil of the Theophany, +insists that "the _second birth_ of Christ (in Baptism) being +distinguished by so many mysteries (e.g. the miracle of Cana) is more +honoured than the first" (birth from Mary). + +These homilies mostly belong to an age (? 300-400) when the commemoration +of the physical Birth had not yet found its own day (Dec. 25), and was +therefore added alongside of the Baptism on January 6. Thus the two +Births, the physical and the spiritual, of Jesus were celebrated on one +and the same day, and one homily contains the words: "Not yet is the feast +of his origin fully completed, and already we have to celebrate the solemn +commemoration of his Baptism. He has hardly been born humanwise, and +already he is being _reborn_ in sacramental wise. For to-day, though after +a lapse of many annual cycles, he was hallowed (or consecrated) in Jordan. +So the Lord arranged as to link rite with rite; I mean, in such wise as to +be brought forth through the Virgin and to be begotten through the mystery +(i.e. sacrament) in one and the same season." Another homily preserved in +a MS. of the 7th or 8th century and assigned to Maximus of Turin declares +that the Epiphany was known as the Birthday of Jesus, either because He +was then born of the Virgin or _reborn in baptism_. This also was the +classical defence made by Armenian fathers of their custom of keeping the +feast of the Birth and Baptism together on January 6. They argued from +Luke's gospel that the Annunciation took place on April 6, and therefore +the Birth on January 6. The Baptism was on Christ's thirtieth birthday, +and should therefore be also kept on January 6. Cosmas Indicopleustes (c. +550) relates that on the same grounds believers of Jerusalem joined the +feasts. All such reasoning was of course _apres coup_. As late as the 9th +century the Armenians had at least three discrepant dates for the +Annunciation--January 5, January 9, April 6; and of these January 5 and 9 +were older than April 6, which they perhaps borrowed from Epiphanius's +commentary on the Gospels. The old Latin homilist, above quoted, hits the +mark when he declares that the innate logic of things required the Baptism +(which must, he says, be any how called a natal or birth festival) to fall +on the same day as Christmas--_Ratio enim exigit_. Of the argument from +the 6th of April as the date of the Annunciation he knows nothing. The +12th century Armenian Patriarch Nerses, like this homilist, merely rests +his case against the Greeks, who incessantly reproached the Armenians for +ignoring their Christmas on December 25, on the inherent logic of things, +as follows: + + "Just as he was born after the flesh from the holy virgin, so he was + _born_ through baptism and from the Jordan, by way of example unto us. + And since there are here _two births_, albeit differing one from the + other in mystic import and in point of time, therefore it was + appointed that we should feast them together, as the first, so also + the second birth." + +The Epiphany feast had therefore in its own right acquired the name of +_natalis dies_ or birthday, as commemorating the spiritual rebirth of +Jesus in Jordan, before the _natalis in carne_, the Birthday _in the +flesh_, as Jerome and others call it, was associated with it. This idea +was condemned as Ebionite in the 3rd century, yet it influences +Christian writers long before and long afterwards. So Tertullian says: +"We little fishes (_pisciculi_), after the example of our great fish +([Greek: ichthyn]) Jesus Christ the Lord, are born (_gignimur_) in the +water, nor except by abiding in the water are we in a state of +salvation." And Hilary, like the Latin homilists cited above, writes of +Jesus that "he was _born again_ through baptism, and then became Son of +God," adding that the Father cried, when he had gone up out of the +water, "My Son art thou, I have this day begotten thee" (Luke iii. 22). +"But this," he adds, "was with the begetting of a man who is being +reborn; on that occasion too he himself was being reborn unto God to be +perfect son; as he was son of man, so in baptism, he was constituted son +of God as well." The idea frequently meets us in Hilary; it occurs in +the Epiphany hymn of the orthodox Greek church, and in the Epiphany +hymns and homilies of the Armenians. + +A letter is preserved by John of Nice of a bishop of Jerusalem to the +bishop of Rome which attests a temporary union of both feasts on January +6 in the holy places. The faithful, it says, met before dawn at +Bethlehem to celebrate the Birth from the Virgin in the cave; but before +their hymns and lections were finished they had to hurry off to Jordan, +13 m. the other side of Jerusalem, to celebrate the Baptism, and by +consequence neither commemoration could be kept fully and reverently. +The writer therefore begs the pope to look in the archives of the Jews +brought to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem, and to ascertain +from them the real date of Christ's birth. The pope looked in the works +of Josephus and found it to be December 25. The letter's genuineness has +been called in question; but revealing as it does the Church's ignorance +of the date of the Birth, the inconvenience and precariousness of its +association with the Baptism, the recency of its separate institution, +it could not have been invented. It is too tell-tale a document. Not the +least significant fact about it is that it views the Baptism as an +established feast which cannot be altered and set on another date. Not +it but the physical birth must be removed from January 6 to another +date. It has been shown above that perhaps as early as 380 the +difficulty was got over in Jerusalem by making the Epiphany wholly and +solely a commemoration of the miraculous birth, and suppressing the +commemoration of the Baptism. Therefore this letter must have been +written--or, if invented, then invented before that date. Chrysostom +seems to have known of it, for in his Epiphany homily preached at +Antioch, c. 392 (op. vol. ii. 354, ed. Montf.), he refers to the +archives at Rome as the source from which the date December 25 could be +confirmed, and declares that he had obtained it from those who dwell +there, and who observing it from the beginning and by old tradition, had +communicated it to the East. The question arises why the feast of the +Baptism was set on January 6 by the sect of Basilides? And why the great +church adopted the date? Now we know what sort of considerations +influenced this sect in fixing other feasts, so we have a clue. They +fixed the Birth of Jesus on Pachon 25 (= May 20), the day of the Niloa, +or feast of the descent of the Nile from heaven. We should thus expect +January 6 to be equally a Nile festival. And this from various sources +we know it was. On Tobi 11, says Epiphanius[7] (c. 370), every one draws +up water from the river and stores it up, not only in Egypt itself, but +in many other countries. In many places, he adds, springs and rivers +turn into wine on this day, e.g. at Cibyra in Caria and Gerasa in +Arabia. Aristides Rhetor (c. 160) also relates how in the winter, which +began with Tobi, the Nile water was at its purest. Its water, he says, +if drawn at the right time conquers time, for it does not go bad, +whether you keep it on the spot or export it. Galleys were waiting on a +certain night to take it on board and transport it to Italy and +elsewhere for libations and lustrations in the Temples of Isis. "Such +water," he adds, "remained fresh, long after other water supplies had +gone bad. The Egyptians filled their pitchers with this water, as others +did with wine; they stored it in their houses for three or four years or +more, and recommended it the more, the older it grew, just as the Greeks +did their wines." + +Two centuries later Chrysostom, as we have seen, commends in identical +terms the water blessed and drawn from the rivers at the Baptismal +feast. It is therefore probable that the Basilidian feast was a +Christianized form of the blessing of the Nile, called by Chabas in his +Coptic calendar _Hydreusis_. Mas'udi the Arab historian of the 10th +century, in his _Prairies d'or_ (French trans. Paris, 1863, ii. 364), +enlarges on the splendours of this feast as he saw it still celebrated +in Egypt. + +Epiphanius also (_Haer._ 51) relates a curious celebration held at +Alexandria of the Birth of the Aeon. On January 5 or 6 the votaries met +in the holy compound or Temple of the Maiden (Kore), and sang hymns to +the music of the flute till dawn, when they went down with torches into +a shrine under ground, and fetched up a wooden idol on a bier +representing Kore, seated and naked, with crosses marked on her brow, +her hands and her knees. Then with flute-playing, hymns and dances they +carried the image seven times round the central shrine, before restoring +it again to its dwelling-place below. He adds: "And the votaries say +that to-day at this hour _Kore_, that is, the Virgin, gave birth to the +Aeon." + +Epiphanius says this was a heathen rite, but it rather resembles some +Basilidian or Gnostic commemoration of the spiritual birth of the Divine +life in Jesus of the Christhood, from the older creation the Ecclesia. + +The earliest extant Greek text of the Epiphany rite is in a Euchologion +of about the year 795, now in the Vatican. The prayers recite that at +His baptism Christ hallowed the waters by His presence in Jordan,[8] and +ask that they may now be blessed by the Holy Spirit visiting them, by +its power and inworking, as the streams of Jordan were blessed. So they +will be able to purify soul and body of all who draw up and partake of +them. The hymn sung contains such clauses as these: + + "To-day the grace of the Holy Spirit hallowing the waters appears + ([Greek: epiphainetai], cf. Epiphany).... To-day the systems of waters + spread out their backs under the Lord's footsteps. To-day the unseen + is seen, that he may reveal himself to us. To-day the Increate is of + his own will ordained (lit. hath hands laid on him) by his own + creature. To-day the Unbending bends his neck to his own servant, in + order to free us from servitude. To-day we were liberated from + darkness and are illumined by light of divine knowledge. To-day for us + the Lord by means of rebirth (lit. palingenesy) of the Image reshapes + the Archetype." + +This last clause is obscure. In the Armenian hymns the ideas of the +rebirth not only of believers, but of Jesus, and of the latter's +ordination by John, are very prominent. + +The history of the Epiphany feast may be summed up thus:-- + +From the Jews the Church took over the feasts of Pascha and Pentecost; +and Sunday was a weekly commemoration of the Resurrection. It was +inevitable, however, that believers should before long desire to +commemorate the Baptism, with which the oldest form of evangelical +tradition began, and which was widely regarded as the occasion when the +divine life began in Jesus; when the Logos or Holy Spirit appeared and +rested on Him, conferring upon Him spiritual unction as the promised +Messiah; when, according to an old reading of Luke iii. 22, He was +begotten of God. Perhaps the Ebionite Christians of Palestine first +instituted the feast, and this, if a fact, must underlie the statement +of John of Nice, a late but well-informed writer (c. 950), that it was +fixed by the disciples of John the Baptist who were present at Jesus' +Baptism. The Egyptian gnostics anyhow had the feast and set it on +January 6, a day of the blessing of the Nile. It was a feast of +Adoptionist complexion, as one of its names, viz. the Birthday (Greek +[Greek: genethlia], Latin _Natalicia_ or _Natalis dies_), implies. This +explains why in east and west the feast of the physical Birth was for a +time associated with it; and to justify this association it was +suggested that Jesus was baptized just on His thirtieth birthday. In +Jerusalem and Syria it was perhaps the Ebionite or Adoptionist, we may +add also the Gnostic, associations of the Baptism that caused this +aspect of Epiphany to be relegated to the background, so that it became +wholly a feast of the miraculous birth. At the same time other +epiphanies of Christ were superadded, e.g. of Cana where Christ began +His miracles by turning water into wine and _manifested_ forth His +glory, and of the Star of the Magi. Hence it is often called the Feast +of _Epiphanies_ (in the plural). In the West the day is commonly called +the Feast of the three kings, and its early significance as a +commemoration of the Baptism and season of blessing the waters has been +obscured; the Eastern churches, however, of Greece, Russia, Georgia, +Armenia, Egypt, Syria have been more conservative. In the far East it is +still the season of seasons for baptisms, and in Armenia children born +long before are baptized at it. Long ago it was a baptismal feast in +Sicily, Spain, Italy (see Pope Gelasius to the Lucanian Bishops), Africa +and Ireland. In the Manx prayer-book of Bishop Phillips of the year 1610 +Epiphany is called the "little Nativity" (_La nolicky bigge_), and the +Sunday which comes between December 25 and January 6 is "the Sunday +between _the two Nativities_," or _Jih duni oedyr 'a Nolick_; Epiphany +itself is the "feast of the water vessel," _lail ymmyrt uyskey_, or "of +the well of water," _Chibbyrt uysky_. + + AUTHORITIES.--Gregory Nazianz., Orat. xli.; Suicer, _Thesaurus_, s.v. + [Greek: epiphaneia]; Cotelerius _In constit. Apost._ (Antwerp, 1698), + lib. v. cap. 13; R. Bingham, _Antiquities_ (London, 1834), bk. xx.; + Ad. Jacoby, _Bericht uber die Taufe Jesu_ (Strassburg, 1902); H. + Blumenbach, _Antiquitates Epiphaniorum_ (Leipzig, 1737); J.L. Schulze, + _De festo Sanctorum Luminum_, ed. J.E. Volbeding (Leipzig, 1841); and + K.A.H. Kellner, _Heortologie_ (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1906). (See also + the works enumerated under CHRISTMAS.) (F. C. C.) + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] For its text see _The Key of Truth_, translated by F.C. + Conybeare, Oxford, and the article ARMENIAN CHURCH. + + [2] These are Matt. iii. 1-11, xi. 2-15, xxi. 1-9; Mark i. 1-8; Luke + iii. 1-18. The Pauline lections regard the Epiphany of the Second + Advent, of the prophetic or Messianic kingdom. + + [3] Translated in _Rituale Armenorum_ (Oxford, 1905). + + [4] Epist. ad Himerium, c. 2. + + [5] Hom. I. in Pentec. _op._ tom. ii. 458; "With us the Epiphanies is + the first festival. What is this festival's significance? This, that + God was seen upon earth and consorted with men." For this idea there + had soon to be substituted that of the manifestation of Christ to the + Gentiles. + + [6] See the Paris edition of Augustine (1838), tom. v., Appendix, + _Sermons_ cxvi., cxxv., cxxxv., cxxxvi., cxxxvii.; cf. tom. vi. + _dial. quaestionum_, xlvi.; Maximus of Turin, Homily xxx. + + [7] Perhaps Epiphanius is here, after his wont, transcribing an + earlier source. + + [8] The same idea is frequent in Epiphany homilies of Chrysostom and + other 4th-century fathers. + + + + +EPIRUS, or EPEIRUS, an ancient district of Northern Greece extending +along the Ionian Sea from the Acroceraunian promontory on the N. to the +Ambracian gulf on the S. It was conterminous on the landward side with +Illyria, Macedonia and Thessaly, and thus corresponds to the southern +portion of Albania (q.v.). The name Epirus ([Greek: Epeiros]) signified +"mainland," and was originally applied to the whole coast southward to +the Corinthian Gulf, in contradistinction to the neighbouring islands, +Corcyra, Leucas, &c. The country is all mountainous, especially towards +the east, where the great rivers of north-western Greece--Achelous, +Arachthus and Aous--rise in Mt Lacmon, the back-bone of the Pindus +chain. In ancient times Epirus did not produce corn sufficient for the +wants of its inhabitants; but it was celebrated, as it has been almost +to the present day, for its cattle and its horses. According to +Theopompus (4th cent. B.C.), the Epirots were divided into fourteen +independent tribes, of which the principal were the Chaones, the +Thesproti and the Molossi. The Chaones (perhaps akin to the Chones who +dwelt in the heel of Italy) inhabited the Acroceraunian shore, the +Molossians the inland districts round the lake of Pambotis (mod. +Jannina), and the Thesprotians the region to the north of the Ambracian +gulf. In spite of its distance from the chief centres of Greek thought +and action, and the barbarian repute of its inhabitants, Epirus was +believed to have exerted at an early period no small influence on +Greece, by means more especially of the oracle of Dodona. Aristotle even +placed in Epirus the original home of the Hellenes. But in historic +times its part in Greek history is mainly passive. The states of Greece +proper founded a number of colonies on its coast, which formed +stepping-stones towards the Adriatic and the West. Of these one of the +earliest and most flourishing was the Corinthian colony of Ambracia, +which gives its name to the neighbouring gulf. Elatria, Bucheta and +Pandosia, in Thesprotia, originated from Elis. Among the other towns in +the country the following were of some importance. In Chaonia: Palaeste +and Chimaera, fortified posts to which the dwellers in the open country +could retire in time of war; Onchesmus or Anchiasmus, opposite Corcyra +(Corfu), now represented by Santi Quarante; Phoenice, still so called, +the wealthiest of all the native cities of Epirus, and after the fall of +the Molossian kingdom the centre of an Epirotic League; Buthrotum, the +modern Butrinto; Phanote, important in the Roman campaigns in Epirus; +and Adrianopolis, founded by the emperor whose name it bore. In +Thesprotia: Cassope, the chief town of the most powerful of the +Thesprotian clans; and Ephyra, afterwards Cichyrus, identified by W.M. +Leake with the monastery of St John 3 or 4 m. from Phanari, and by C. +Bursian with Kastri at the northern end of the Acherusian Lake. In +Molossia: Passaron, where the kings were wont to take the oath of the +constitution and receive their people's allegiance; and Tecmon, Phylace +and Horreum, all of doubtful identification. The Byzantine town of Rogus +is probably the same as the modern Luro, the Greek Oropus. + +_History._--The kings, or rather chieftains, of the Molossians, who +ultimately extended their power over all Epirus, claimed to be descended +from Pyrrhus, son of Achilles, who, according to legend, settled in the +country after the sack of Troy, and transmitted his kingdom to Molossus, +his son by Andromache. The early history of the dynasty is very obscure; +but Admetus, who lived in the 5th century B.C., is remembered for his +hospitable reception of the banished Themistocles, in spite of the fact +that the great Athenian had persuaded his countrymen to refuse the +alliance tardily offered by the Molossians when victory against the +Persians was already secured. Admetus was succeeded, about 429 B.C., by +his son or grandson, Tharymbas or Arymbas I., who being placed by a +decree of the people under the guardianship of Sabylinthus, chief of the +Atintanes, was educated at Athens, and at a later date introduced a +higher civilization among his subjects. Alcetas, the next king mentioned +in history, was restored to his throne by Dionysius of Syracuse about +385 B.C. His son Arymbas II. (who succeeded by the death of his brother +Neoptolemus) ruled with prudence and equity, and gave encouragement to +literature and the arts. To him Xenocrates of Chalcedon dedicated his +four books on the art of governing; and it is specially mentioned that +he bestowed great care on the education of his brother's children. One +of them, Troas, he married; Olympias, the other niece, was married to +Philip II. of Macedon and became the mother of Alexander the Great. On +the death of Arymbas, Alexander the brother of Olympias, was put on the +throne by Philip and married his daughter Cleopatra. Alexander assumed +the new title of king of Epirus, and raised the reputation of his +country abroad. Asked by the Tarentines for aid against the Samnites and +Lucanians, he made a descent at Paestum in 332 B.C., and reduced several +cities of the Lucani and Bruttii; but in a second attack he was +surrounded, defeated and slain near Pandosia in Bruttium. + +Aeacides, the son of Arymbas II., succeeded Alexander. He espoused the +cause of Olympias against Cassander, but was dethroned by his own +soldiers, and had hardly regained his position when he fell in battle +(313 B.C.) against Philip, brother of Cassander. He had, by his wife +Phthia, a son, the celebrated Pyrrhus, and two daughters, Deidamia and +Troas, of whom the former married Demetrius Poliorcetes. His brother +Alcetas, who succeeded him, continued unsuccessfully the war with +Cassander; he was put to death by his rebellious subjects in 295 B.C., +and was succeeded by Pyrrhus (q.v.), who for six years fought against +the Romans in south Italy and Sicily, and gave to Epirus a momentary +importance which it never again possessed. + +Alexander, his son, who succeeded in 272 B.C., attempted to seize +Macedonia, and defeated Antigonus Gonatas, but was himself shortly +afterwards driven from his kingdom by Demetrius. He recovered it, +however, and spent the rest of his days in peace. Two other +insignificant reigns brought the family of Pyrrhus to its close, and +Epirus was thenceforward governed by a magistrate, elected annually in a +general assembly of the nation held at Passaron. Having imprudently +espoused the cause of Perseus (q.v.) in his ill-fated war against the +Romans, 168 B.C., it was exposed to the fury of the conquerors, who +destroyed, it is said, seventy towns, and carried into slavery 150,000 +of the inhabitants. From this blow it never recovered. At the +dissolution of the Achaean League (q.v.), 146 B.C., it became part of +the province of Macedonia, receiving the name Epirus Vetus, to +distinguish it from Epirus Nova, which lay to the east. + +On the division of the empire it fell to the East, and so remained +until the taking of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204, when Michel +Angelus Comnenus seized Aetolia and Epirus. On the death of Michel in +1216, these countries fell into the hands of his brother Theodore. +Thomas, the last of the direct line, was murdered in 1318 by his nephew +Thomas, lord of Zante and Cephalonia, and his dominions were +dismembered. Not long after, Epirus was overrun by the Samians and +Albanians, and the confusion which had been growing since the division +of the empire was worse confounded still. Charles II. Tocco, lord of +Cephalonia and Zante, obtained the recognition of his title of Despot of +Epirus from the emperor Manuel Comnenus in the beginning of the 15th +century; but his family was deprived of their possession in 1431 by +Murad (Amurath) II. In 1443, Scanderbeg, king of Albania, made himself +master of a considerable part of Epirus; but on his death it fell into +the power of the Venetians. From these it passed again to the Turks, +under whose dominion it still remains. For modern history see ALBANIA. + + AUTHORITIES.--Nauze, "Rech. hist. sur les peuples qui s'etablirent en + Epire," in _Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscr._ (1729); Pouqueville, _Voyage + en Moree, &c, en Albanie_ (Paris, 1805); Hobhouse, _A Journey through + Albania, &c._ (2 vols., London, 1813); Wolfe, "Observations on the + Gulf of Arta" in _Journ. Royal Geog. Soc._, 1834; W.M. Leake, Travels + in Northern Greece (London, 1835): Merleker, Darstellung des _Landes + und der Bewohner von Epeiros_ (Konigsberg, 1841); J.H. Skene, + "Remarkable Localities on the Coast of Epirus," in _Journ. Roy. Geog. + Soc._, 1848; Bowen, _Mount Athos, Thessaly and Epirus_ (London, 1852); + von Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_ (Jena, 1854); Bursian, _Geog. von + Griechenland_ (vol. i., Leipzig, 1862); Schafli, "Versuch einer + Klimatologie des Thales von Jannina," _Neue Denkschr. d. allgem. + schweizer. Ges. f. Naturw._ xix. (Zurich, 1862); Major R. Stuart, "On + Phys. Geogr. and Natural Resources of Epirus," in _Journ. R.G.S._, + 1869; Guido Cora, in _Cosmos_; Dumont, "Souvenirs de l'Adriatique, de + l'Epire, &c." in _Rev. des deux mondes_ (Paris, 1872); de Gubernatis, + "L'Epiro," _Bull. Soc. Geogr. Ital._ viii. (Rome, 1872); Dozon, + "Excursion en Albanie," _Bull. Soc. Geogr._, 6th series; Karapanos, + _Dodone et ses ruines_ (Paris, 1878); von Heldreich, "Ein Beitrag zur + Flora von Epirus," _Verh. Bot. Vereins Brandenburg_ (Berlin, 1880); + Kiepert, "Zur Ethnographie von Epirus," _Ges. Erdk._ xvii. (Berlin, + 1879); Zompolides, "Das Land und die Bewohner von Epirus," _Ausland_ + (Berlin, 1880); A. Philippson, _Thessalien und Epirus_ (Berlin, 1897). + (J. L. M.) + + + + +EPISCOPACY (from Late Lat. _episcopatus_, the office of a bishop, +_episcopus_), the general term technically applied to that system of +church organization in which the chief ecclesiastical authority within a +defined district, or diocese, is vested in a bishop. As such it is +distinguished on the one hand from Presbyterianism, government by +elders, and Congregationalism, in which the individual church or +community of worshippers is autonomous, and on the other from Papalism. +The origin and development of episcopacy in the Christian Church, and +the functions and attributes of bishops in the various churches, are +dealt with elsewhere (see CHURCH HISTORY and BISHOP). Under the present +heading it is proposed only to discuss briefly the various types of +episcopacy actually existing, and the different principles that they +represent. + +The deepest line of cleavage is naturally between the view that +episcopacy is a divinely ordained institution essential to the effective +existence of a church as a channel of grace, and the view that it is +merely a convenient form of church order, evolved as the result of a +variety of historical causes, and not necessary to the proper +constitution of a church. The first of these views is closely connected +with the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession. According to this, +Christ committed to his apostles certain powers of order and +jurisdiction in the Church, among others that of transmitting these +powers to others through "the laying on of hands"; and this power, +whatever obscurity may surround the practice of the primitive Church +(see APOSTLE, ad fin.) was very early confined to the order of bishops, +who by virtue of a special consecration became the successors of the +apostles in the function of handing on the powers and graces of the +ministry.[1] A valid episcopate, then, is one derived in an unbroken +series of "layings on of hands" by bishops from the time of the apostles +(see ORDER, HOLY). This is the Catholic view, common to all the ancient +Churches whether of the West or East, and it is one that necessarily +excludes from the union of Christendom all those Christian communities +which possess no such apostolically derived ministry. + +Apart altogether, however, from the question of orders, episcopacy +represents a very special conception of the Christian Church. In the +fully developed episcopal system the bishop sums up in his own person +the collective powers of the Church in his diocese, not by delegation of +these powers from below, but by divinely bestowed authority from above. +"Ecclesia est in episcopo," wrote St Cyprian (Cyp. iv. _Ep._ 9); the +bishop, as the successor of the apostles, is the centre of unity in his +diocese, the unity of the Church as a whole is maintained by the +intercommunion of the bishops, who for this purpose represent their +dioceses. The bishops, individually and collectively, are thus the +essential ties of Catholic unity; they alone, as the depositories of the +apostolic traditions, establish the norm of Catholic orthodoxy in the +general councils of the Church. This high theory of episcopacy which, if +certain of the Ignatian letters be genuine, has a very early origin, +has, of course, fallen upon evil days. The power of the collective +episcopate to maintain Catholic unity was disproved long before it was +overshadowed by the centralized authority of Rome; before the +Reformation, its last efforts to assert its supremacy in the Western +Church, at the councils of Basel and Constance, had broken down; and the +religious revolution of the 16th century left it largely discredited and +exposed to a double attack, by the papal monarchy on the one hand and +the democratic Presbyterian model on the other. Within the Roman +Catholic Church the high doctrine of episcopacy continued to be +maintained by the Gallicans and Febronians (see GALLICANISM and +FEBRONIANISM) as against the claims of the Papacy, and for a while with +success; but a system which had failed to preserve the unity of the +Church even when the world was united under the Roman empire could not +be expected to do so in a world split up into a series of rival states, +of which many had already reorganized their churches on a national +basis. "Febronius," indeed, was in favour of a frank recognition of this +national basis of ecclesiastical organization, and saw in Episcopacy the +best means of reuniting the dissidents to the Catholic Church, which was +to consist, as it were, of a free federation of episcopal churches under +the presidency of the bishop of Rome. The idea had considerable success; +for it happened to march with the views of the secular princes. But +religious people could hardly be expected to see in the worldly +prince-bishops of the Empire, or the wealthy courtier-prelates of +France, the trustees of the apostolical tradition. The Revolution +intervened; and when, during the religious reaction that followed, men +sought for an ultimate authority, they found it in the papal monarch, +exalted now by ultramontane zeal into the sole depositary of the +apostolical tradition (see ULTRAMONTANISM). At the Vatican Council of +1870 episcopacy made its last stand against papalism, and was vanquished +(see VATICAN COUNCIL). The pope still addresses his fellow-bishops as +"venerable brothers"; but from the Roman Catholic Church the fraternal +union of coequal authorities, which is of the essence of episcopacy, has +vanished; and in its place is set the autocracy of one. The modern Roman +Catholic Church is episcopal, for it preserves the bishops, whose +_potestas ordinis_ not even the pope can exercise until he has been duly +consecrated; but the bishops as such are now but subordinate elements in +a system for which "Episcopacy" is certainly no longer an appropriate +term. + +The word Episcopacy has, in fact, since the Reformation, been more +especially associated with those churches which, while ceasing to be in +communion with Rome, have preserved the episcopal model. Of these by far +the most important is the Church of England, which has preserved its +ecclesiastical organization essentially unchanged since its foundation +by St Augustine, and its daughter churches (see ENGLAND, CHURCH OF, and +ANGLICAN COMMUNION). The Church of England since the Reformation has +been the chief champion of the principle of Episcopacy against the papal +pretensions on the one hand and Presbyterianism and Congregationalism on +the other. As to the divine origin of Episcopacy and, consequently, of +its universal obligation in the Christian Church, Anglican opinion has +been, and still is, considerably divided.[2] The "High Church" view, now +predominant, is practically identical with that of the Gallicans and +Febronians, and is based on Catholic practice in those ages of the +Church to which, as well as to the Bible, the formularies of the Church +of England make appeal. So far as this view, however, is the outcome of +the general Catholic movement of the 19th century, it can hardly be +taken as typical of Anglican tradition in this matter. Certainly, in the +16th and 17th centuries, the Church of England, while rigorously +enforcing the episcopal model at home, and even endeavouring to extend +it to Presbyterian Scotland, did not regard foreign non-episcopal +Churches otherwise than as sister communions. The whole issue had, in +fact, become confused with the confusion of functions of the Church and +State. In the view of the Church of England the ultimate governance of +the Christian community, in things spiritual and temporal, was vested +not in the clergy but in the "Christian prince" as the vicegerent of +God.[3] It was the transference to the territorial sovereigns of modern +Europe of the theocratic character of the Christian heads of the Roman +world-empire; with the result that for the reformed Churches the unit of +church organization was no longer the diocese, or the group of dioceses, +but the Christian state. Thus in England the bishops, while retaining +their _potestas ordinis_ in virtue of their consecration as successors +of the apostles, came to be regarded not as representing their dioceses +in the state, but the state in their dioceses. Forced on their dioceses +by the royal _Conge d'elire_ (q.v.), and enthusiastic apostles of the +High Church doctrine of non-resistance, the bishops were looked upon as +no more than lieutenants of the crown;[4] and Episcopacy was ultimately +resisted by Presbyterians and Independents as an expression and +instrument of arbitrary government, "Prelacy" being confounded with +"Popery" in a common condemnation. With the constitutional changes of +the 18th and 19th centuries, however, a corresponding modification took +place in the character of the English episcopate; and a still further +change resulted from the multiplication of colonial and missionary sees +having no connexion with the state (see ANGLICAN COMMUNION). The +consciousness of being in the line of apostolic succession helped the +English clergy to revert to the principle _Ecclesia est in episcopo_, +and the great periodical conferences of Anglican bishops from all parts +of the world have something of the character, though they do not claim +the ecumenical authority, of the general councils of the early Church +(see LAMBETH CONFERENCES). + +Of the reformed Churches of the continent of Europe only the Lutheran +Churches of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland preserve the +episcopal system in anything of its historical sense; and of these only +the two last can lay claim to the possession of bishops in the unbroken +line of episcopal succession.[5] The superintendents (variously entitled +also arch-priests, deans, provosts, ephors) of the Evangelical +(Lutheran) Church, as established in the several states of Germany and +in Austria, are not bishops in any canonical sense, though their +jurisdictions are known as dioceses and they exercise many episcopal +functions. They have no special powers of order, being presbyters, and +their legal status is admittedly merely that of officials of the +territorial sovereign in his capacity as head of the territorial church +(see SUPERINTENDENT). The "bishops" of the Lutheran Church in +Transylvania are equivalent to the superintendents. + +Episcopacy in a stricter sense is the system of the Moravian Brethren +(q.v.) and the Methodist Episcopal Church of America (see METHODISM). In +the case of the former, claim is laid to the unbroken episcopal +succession through the Waldenses, and the question of their eventual +intercommunion with the Anglican Church was accordingly mooted at the +Lambeth Conference of 1908. The bishops of the Methodist Episcopal +Church, on the other hand, derive their orders from Thomas Coke, a +presbyter of the Church of England, who in 1784 was ordained by John +Wesley, assisted by two other presbyters, "superintendent" of the +Methodist Society in America. Methodist episcopacy is therefore based on +the denial of any special _potestas ordinis_ in the degree of bishop, +and is fundamentally distinct from that of the Catholic Church--using +this term in its narrow sense as applied to the ancient churches of the +East and West. + +In all of these ancient churches episcopacy is regarded as of divine +origin; and in those of them which reject the papal supremacy the +bishops are still regarded as the guardians of the tradition of +apostolic orthodoxy and the stewards of the gifts of the Holy Ghost to +men (see ORTHODOX EASTERN CHURCH; ARMENIAN CHURCH; COPTS: _Coptic +Church_, &c). In the West, Gallican and Febronian Episcopacy are +represented by two ecclesiastical bodies: the Jansenist Church under the +archbishop of Utrecht (see JANSENISM and UTRECHT), and the Old Catholics +(q.v.). Of these the latter, who separated from the Roman communion +after the promulgation of the dogma of papal infallibility, represent a +pure revolt of the system of Episcopacy against that of Papalism. + (W. A. P.) + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] See Bishop C. Gore, _The Church and the Ministry_ (1887). + + [2] Neither the Articles nor the authoritative Homilies of the Church + of England speak of episcopacy as essential to the constitution of a + church. The latter make "the three notes or marks" by which a true + church is known "pure and sound doctrine, the sacraments administered + according to Christ's holy institution, and the right use of + ecclesiastical discipline." These marks are perhaps ambiguous, but + they certainly do not depend on the possession of the Apostolic + Succession; for it is further stated that "the bishops of Rome and + their adherents are not the true Church of Christ" (Homily + "concerning the Holy Ghost," ed. Oxford, 1683, p. 292). + + [3] "He and his holy apostles likewise, namely Peter and Paul, did + forbid unto all Ecclesiastical Ministers, dominion over the Church of + Christ" (_Homilies appointed to be read in Churches_, "The V. part of + the Sermon against Wilful Rebellion," ed. Oxford, 1683, p. 378). + Princes are "God's lieutenants, God's presidents, God's officers, + God's commissioners, God's judges ... God's vicegerents" ("The II. + part of the Sermon of Obedience," ib. p. 64). + + [4] Juridically they were, of course, never this in the strict sense + in which the term could be used of the Lutheran superintendents (see + below). They were never mere royal officials, but peers of + parliament, holding their temporalities as baronies under the crown. + + [5] During the crisis of the Reformation all the Swedish sees became + vacant but two, and the bishops of these two soon left the kingdom. + The episcopate, however, was preserved by Peter Magnusson, who, when + residing as warden of the Swedish hospital of St Bridget in Rome, had + been duly elected bishop of the see of Westeraes, and consecrated, c. + 1524. No official record of his consecration can be discovered, but + there is no sufficient reason to doubt the fact; and it is certain + that during his lifetime he was acknowledged as a canonical bishop + both by Roman Catholics and by Protestants. In 1528 Magnusson + consecrated bishops to fill the vacant sees, and, assisted by one of + these, Magnus Sommar, bishop of Strengness, he afterwards consecrated + the Reformer, Lawrence Peterson, as archbishop of Upsala, Sept. 22, + 1531. Some doubt has been raised as to the validity of the + consecration of Peterson's successor, also named Lawrence Peterson, + in 1575, from the insufficiency of the documentary evidence of the + consecration of his consecrator, Paul Justin, bishop of Abo. The + integrity of the succession has, however, been accepted after + searching investigation by men of such learning as Grabe and Routh, + and has been formally recognized by the convention of the American + Episcopal Church. The succession to the daughter church of Finland, + now independent, stands or falls with that of Sweden. + + + + +EPISCOPIUS, SIMON (1583-1643), the Latin form of the name of Simon +Bischop, Dutch theologian, was born at Amsterdam on the 1st of January +1583. In 1600 he entered the university of Leiden, where he studied +theology under Jacobus Arminius, whose teaching he followed. In 1610, +the year in which the Arminians presented the famous Remonstrance to the +states of Holland, he became pastor at Bleyswick, a small village near +Rotterdam; in the following year he advocated the cause of the +Remonstrants (q.v.) at the Hague conference. In 1612 he succeeded +Francis Gomarus as professor of theology at Leiden, an appointment which +awakened the bitter enmity of the Calvinists, and, on account of the +influence lent by it to the spread of Arminian opinions, was doubtless +an ultimate cause of the meeting of the synod of Dort in 1618. +Episcopius was chosen as the spokesman of the thirteen representatives +of the Remonstrants before the synod; but he was refused a hearing, and +the Remonstrant doctrines were condemned without any explanation or +defence of them being permitted. At the end of the synod's sittings in +1619, Episcopius and the other twelve Arminian representatives were +deprived of their offices and expelled from the country (see DORT, SYNOD +OF). Episcopius retired to Antwerp and ultimately to France, where he +lived partly at Paris, partly at Rouen. He devoted most of his time to +writings in support of the Arminian cause; but the attempt of Luke +Wadding (1588-1657) to win him over to the Romish faith involved him +also in a controversy with that famous Jesuit. After the death (1625) of +Maurice, prince of Orange, the violence of the Arminian controversy +began to abate, and Episcopius was permitted in 1626 to return to his +own country. He was appointed preacher at the Remonstrant church in +Rotterdam and afterwards rector of the Remonstrant college in Amsterdam. +Here he died in 1643. Episcopius may be regarded as in great part the +theological founder of Arminianism, since he developed and systematized +the principles tentatively enunciated by Arminius. Besides opposing at +all points the peculiar doctrines of Calvinism, Episcopius protested +against the tendency of Calvinists to lay so much stress on abstract +dogma, and argued that Christianity was practical rather than +theoretical--not so much a system of intellectual belief as a moral +power--and that an orthodox faith did not necessarily imply the +knowledge of and assent to a system of doctrine which included the whole +range of Christian truth, but only the knowledge and acceptance of so +much of Christianity as was necessary to effect a real change on the +heart and life. + + The principal works of Episcopius are his _Confessio s. declaratio + sententiae pastorum qui in foederato Belgio Remonstrantes vocantur + super praecipuis articulis religionis Christianae_ (1621), his + _Apologia pro confessione_ (1629), his _Verus theologus remonstrans_, + and his uncompleted work _Institutiones theologicae_. A life of + Episcopius was written by Philip Limborch, and one was also prefixed + by his successor, Etienne de Courcelles (Curcellaeus) (1586-1659), to + an edition of his collected works published in 2 vols. (1650-1665). + See also article in Herzog-Hauck, _Realencyklopadie_. + + + + +EPISODE, an incident occurring in the history of a nation, an +institution or an individual, especially with the significance of being +an interruption of an ordered course of events, an irrelevance. The word +is derived from a word ([Greek: epeisodos]) with a technical meaning in +the ancient Greek tragedy. It is defined by Aristotle (_Poetics_, 12) as +[Greek: meros holon tragodias to metaxy holon chorikon melon], all the +scenes, that is, which fall between the choric songs. [Greek: eisodos], +or entrance, is generally applied to the entrance of the chorus, but the +reference may be to that of the actors at the close of the choric songs. +In the early Greek tragedy the parts which were spoken by the actors +were considered of subsidiary importance to those sung by the chorus, +and it is from this aspect that the meaning of the word, as something +which breaks off the course of events, is derived (see A.E. Haigh, _The +Tragic Drama of the Greeks_, 1896, at p. 353). + + + + +EPISTAXIS (Gr. [Greek: epi], upon, and [Greek: stazein], to drop), the +medical term for bleeding from the nose, whether resulting from local +injury or some constitutional condition. In persistent cases of +nose-bleeding, various measures are adopted, such as holding the arms +over the head, the application of ice, or of such astringents as zinc or +alum, or plugging the nostrils. + + + + +EPISTEMOLOGY (Gr. [Greek: episteme], knowledge, and [Greek: logos], +theory, account; Germ. _Erkenntnistheorie_), in philosophy, a term +applied, probably first by J.F. Ferrier, to that department of thought +whose subject matter is the nature and origin of knowledge. It is thus +contrasted with metaphysics, which considers the nature of reality, and +with psychology, which deals with the objective part of cognition, and, +as Prof. James Ward said, "is essentially genetic in its method" +(_Mind_, April 1883, pp. 166-167). Epistemology is concerned rather with +the possibility of knowledge in the abstract (_sub specie aeternitatis_, +Ward, ibid.). In the evolution of thought epistemological inquiry +succeeded the speculations of the early thinkers, who concerned +themselves primarily with attempts to explain existence. The differences +of opinion which arose on this problem naturally led to the inquiry as +to whether any universally valid statement was possible. The Sophists +and the Sceptics, Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics and the Epicureans +took up the question, and from the time of Locke and Kant it has been +prominent in modern philosophy. It is extremely difficult, if not +impossible, to draw a hard and fast line between epistemology and other +branches of philosophy. If, for example, philosophy is divided into the +theory of knowing and the theory of being, it is impossible entirely to +separate the latter (Ontology) from the analysis of knowledge +(Epistemology), so close is the connexion between the two. Again, the +relation between logic in its widest sense and the theory of knowledge +is extremely close. Some thinkers have identified the two, while others +regard Epistemology as a subdivision of logic; others demarcate their +relative spheres by confining logic to the science of the laws of +thought, i.e. to formal logic. An attempt has been made by some +philosophers to substitute "Gnosiology" (Gr. [Greek: gnosis]) for +"Epistemology" as a special term for that part of Epistemology which is +confined to "systematic analysis of the conceptions employed by ordinary +and scientific thought in interpreting the world, and including an +investigation of the art of knowledge, or the nature of knowledge as +such." "Epistemology" would thus be reserved for the broad questions of +"the origin, nature and limits of knowledge" (Baldwin's _Dict. of +Philos._ i. pp. 333 and 414). The term Gnosiology has not, however, come +into general use. (See PHILOSOPHY.) + + + + +EPISTLE, in its primary sense any letter addressed to an absent person; +from the Greek word [Greek: epistole], a thing sent on a particular +occasion. Strictly speaking, any such communication is an epistle, but +at the present day the term has become archaic, and is used only for +letters of an ancient time, or for elaborate literary productions which +take an epistolary form, that is to say, are, or affect to be, written +to a person at a distance. + +1. _Epistles and Letters._--The student of literary history soon +discovers that a broad distinction exists between the letter and the +epistle. The letter is essentially a spontaneous, non-literary +production, ephemeral, intimate, personal and private, a substitute for +a spoken conversation. The epistle, on the other hand, rather takes the +place of a public speech, it is written with an audience in view, it is +a literary form, a distinctly artistic effort aiming at permanence; and +it bears much the same relation to a letter as a Platonic dialogue does +to a private talk between two friends. The posthumous value placed on a +great man's letters would naturally lead to the production of epistles, +which might be written to set forth the views of a person or a school, +either genuinely or as forgeries under some eminent name. Pseudonymous +epistles were especially numerous under the early Roman empire, and +mainly attached themselves to the names of Plato, Demosthenes, Aristotle +and Cicero. + +Both letters and epistles have come down to us in considerable variety +and extent from the ancient world. Babylonia and Assyria, Egypt, Greece +and Rome alike contribute to our inheritance of letters. Those of +Aristotle are of questionable genuineness, but we can rely, at any rate +in part, on those of Isocrates and Epicurus. Some of the letters of +Cicero are rather epistles, since they were meant ultimately for the +general eye. The papyrus discoveries in Egypt have a peculiar interest, +for they are mainly the letters of people unknown to fame, and having no +thought of publicity. It is less to be wondered at that we have a large +collection of ancient epistles, especially in the realm of magic and +religion, for epistles were meant to live, were published in several +copies, and were not a difficult form of literary effort. The Tell +el-Amarna tablets found in Upper Egypt in 1887 are a series of +despatches in cuneiform script from Babylonian kings and Phoenician and +Palestinian governors to the Pharaohs (c. 1400 B.C.). The epistles of +Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Plutarch, Seneca and the Younger Pliny claim +mention at this point. In the later Roman period and into the middle +ages, formal epistles were almost a distinct branch of literature. The +ten books of Symmachus' _Epistolae_, so highly esteemed in the cultured +circles of the 4th century, may be contrasted with the less elegant but +more forceful epistles of Jerome. + +The distinction between letters and epistles has particular interest +for the student of early Christian literature. G.A. Deissmann (_Bible +Studies_) assigns to the category of letters all the Pauline writings as +well as 2 and 3 John. The books bearing the names of James, Peter and +Jude, together with the Pastorals (though these may contain fragments of +genuine Pauline letters) and the Apocalypse, he regards as epistles. The +first epistle of John he calls less a letter or an epistle than a +religious tract. It is doubtful, however, whether we can thus reduce all +the letters of the New Testament to one or other of these categories; +and W.M. Ramsay (Hastings' _Dict. Bib._ Extra vol. p. 401) has pointed +out with some force that "in the new conditions a new category had been +developed--the general letter addressed to a whole class of persons or +to the entire Church of Christ." Such writings have affinities with both +the letter and the epistle, and they may further be compared with the +"edicts and rescripts by which Roman law grew, documents arising out of +special circumstances but treating them on general principles." Most of +the literature of the sub-apostolic age is epistolary, and we have a +particularly interesting form of epistle in the communications between +churches (as distinct from individuals) known as the _First Epistle of +Clement_ (Rome to Corinth), the _Martyrdom of Polycarp_ (Smyrna to +Philomelium), and the _Letters of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons_ (to +the congregations of Asia Minor and Phrygia) describing the Gallican +martyrdoms of A.D. 177. In the following centuries we have the valuable +epistles of Cyprian, of Gregory Nazianzen (to Cledonius on the +Apollinarian controversy), of Basil (to be classed rather as letters), +of Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine and Jerome. The encyclical letters of +the Roman Catholic Church are epistles, even more so than bulls, which +are usually more special in their destination. In the Renaissance one of +the most common forms of literary production was that modelled upon +Cicero's letters. From Petrarch to the _Epistolae obscurorum virorum_ +there is a whole epistolary literature. The _Epistolae obscurorum +virorum_ have to some extent a counterpart in the Epistles of Martin +Marprelate. Later satires in an epistolary form are Pascal's _Provincial +Letters_, Swift's _Drapier Letters_, and the _Letters of Junius_. The +"open letter" of modern journalism is really an epistle. (A. J. G.) + +2. _Epistles in Poetry._--A branch of poetry bears the name of the +Epistle, and is modelled on those pieces of Horace which are almost +essays (_sermones_) on moral or philosophical subjects, and are chiefly +distinguished from other poems by being addressed to particular patrons +or friends. The epistle of Horace to his agent (or _villicus_) is of a +more familiar order, and is at once a masterpiece and a model of what an +epistle should be. Examples of the work in this direction of Ovid, +Claudian, Ausonius and other late Latin poets have been preserved, but +it is particularly those of Horace which have given this character to +the epistles in verse which form so very characteristic a section of +French poetry. The graceful precision and dignified familiarity of the +epistle are particularly attractive to the temperament of France. +Clement Marot, in the 16th century, first made the epistle popular in +France, with his brief and spirited specimens. We pass the witty +epistles of Scarron and Voiture, to reach those of Boileau, whose +epistles, twelve in number, are the classic examples of this form of +verse in French literature; they were composed at different dates +between 1668 and 1695. In the 18th century Voltaire enjoyed a supremacy +in this graceful and sparkling species of writing; the _Epitre a Uranie_ +is perhaps the most famous of his verse-letters. Gresset, Bernis, +Sedaine, Dorat, Gentil-Bernard, all excelled in the epistle. The curious +"Epitres" of J.P.G. Viennet (1777-1868) were not easy and mundane like +their predecessors, but violently polemical. Viennet, a hot defender of +lost causes, may be considered the latest of the epistolary poets of +France. + +In England the verse-epistle was first prominently employed by Samuel +Daniel in his "Letter from Octavia to Marcus Antonius" (1599), and later +on, more legitimately, in his "Certain Epistles" (1601-1603). His +letter, in _terza rima_, to Lucy, Countess of Bristol, is one of the +finest examples of this form in English literature. It was Daniel's +deliberate intention to introduce the Epistle into English poetry, +"after the manner of Horace." He was supported by Ben Jonson, who has +some fine Horatian epistles in his _Forests_ (1616) and his +_Underwoods_. _Letters to Several Persons of Honour_ form an important +section in the poetry of John Donne. Habington's _Epistle to a Friend_ +is one of his most finished pieces. Henry Vaughan (1622-1695) addressed +a fine epistle in verse to the French romance-writer Gombauld +(1570-1666). Such "letters" were not unfrequent down to the Restoration, +but they did not create a department of literature such as Daniel had +proposed. At the close of the 17th century Dryden greatly excelled in +this class of poetry, and his epistles to Congreve (1694) and to the +duchess of Ormond (1700) are among the most graceful and eloquent that +we possess. During the age of Anne various Augustan poets in whom the +lyrical faculty was slight, from Congreve and Richard Duke down to +Ambrose Philips and William Somerville, essayed the epistle with more or +less success, and it was employed by Gay for several exercises in his +elegant persiflage. Among the epistles of Gay, one rises to an eminence +of merit, that called "Mr Pope's welcome from Greece," written in 1720. +But the great writer of epistles in English is Pope himself, to whom the +glory of this kind of verse belongs. His "Eloisa to Abelard" (1717) is +carefully modelled on the form of Ovid's "Heroides," while in his _Moral +Essays_ he adopts the Horatian formula for the epistle. In either case +his success was brilliant and complete. The "Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot" +has not been surpassed, if it has been equalled, in Latin or French +poetry of the same class. But Pope excelled, not only in the voluptuous +and in the didactic epistle, but in that of compliment as well, and +there is no more graceful example of this in literature than is afforded +by the letter about the poems of Parnell addressed, in 1721, to Robert, +earl of Oxford. After the day of Pope the epistle again fell into +desuetude, or occasional use, in England. It revived in the charming +naivete of Cowper's lyrical letters in octosyllabics to his friends, +such as William Bull and Lady Austin (1782). At the close of the century +Samuel Rogers endeavoured to resuscitate the neglected form in his +"Epistle to a Friend" (1798). The formality and conventional grace of +the epistle were elements with which the leaders of romantic revival +were out of sympathy, and it was not cultivated to any important degree +in the 19th century. It is, however, to be noted that Shelley's "Letter +to Maria Gisborne" (1820), Keats's "Epistle to Charles Clarke" (1816), +and Landor's "To Julius Hare" (1836), in spite of their romantic +colouring, are genuine Horatian epistles and of the pure Augustan type. +This type, in English literature, is commonly, though not at all +universally, cast in heroic verse. But Daniel employs _rime royal_ and +_terza rima_, while some modern epistles have been cast in short iambic +rhymed measures or in blank verse. It is sometimes not easy to +distinguish the epistle from the elegy and from the dedication. (E. G.) + + For St Paul's Epistles see PAUL, for St Peter's see PETER, for + Apocryphal Epistles see APOCRYPHAL LITERATURE, for Plato's see PLATO, + &c. + + + + +EPISTYLE (Gr. [Greek: epi], upon, and [Greek: stylos], column), the +Greek architectural term for architrave, the lower member of the +entablature of the classic orders (q.v.). + + + + +EPISTYLIS (C.G. Ehrenberg), in zoology, a genus of peritrichous +Infusoria with a short oral disc and collar, and a rigid stalk, often +branching to form a colony. + + + + +EPITAPH (Gr. [Greek: epitaphios], sc. [Greek: logos], from [Greek: epi], +upon, and [Greek: taphos], a tomb), strictly, an inscription upon a +tomb, though by a natural extension of usage the name is applied to +anything written ostensibly for that purpose whether actually inscribed +upon a tomb or not. When the word was introduced into English in the +14th century it took the form _epitaphy_, as well as _epitaphe_, which +latter word is used both by Gower and Lydgate. Many of the best-known +epitaphs, both ancient and modern, are merely literary memorials, and +find no place on sepulchral monuments. Sometimes the intention of the +writer to have his production placed upon the grave of the person he has +commemorated may have been frustrated, sometimes it may never have +existed; what he has written is still entitled to be called an epitaph +if it be suitable for the purpose, whether the purpose has been carried +out or not. The most obvious external condition that suitability for +mural inscription imposes is one of rigid limitation as to length. An +epitaph cannot in the nature of things extend to the proportions that +may be required in an elegy. + +The desire to perpetuate the memory of the dead being natural to man, +the practice of placing epitaphs upon their graves has been common among +all nations and in all ages. And the similarity, amounting sometimes +almost to identity, of thought and expression that often exists between +epitaphs written more than two thousand years ago and epitaphs written +only yesterday is as striking an evidence as literature affords of the +close kinship of human nature under the most varying conditions where +the same primary elemental feelings are stirred. The grief and hope of +the Roman mother as expressed in the touching lines-- + + "Lagge fili bene quiescas; + Mater tua rogat te, + Ut me ad te recipias: + Vale!" + +find their echo in similar inscriptions in many a modern cemetery. + +Probably the earliest epitaphial inscriptions that have come down to us +are those of the ancient Egyptians, written, as their mode of sepulture +necessitated, upon the sarcophagi and coffins. Those that have been +deciphered are all very much in the same form, commencing with a prayer +to a deity, generally Osiris or Anubis, on behalf of the deceased, whose +name, descent and office are usually specified. There is, however, no +attempt to delineate individual character, and the feelings of the +survivors are not expressed otherwise than in the fact of a prayer being +offered. Ancient Greek epitaphs, unlike the Egyptian, are of great +literary interest, deep and often tender in feeling, rich and varied in +expression, and generally epigrammatic in form. They are written usually +in elegiac verse, though many of the later epitaphs are in prose. Among +the gems of the Greek anthology familiar to English readers through +translations are the epitaphs upon those who had fallen in battle. There +are several ascribed to Simonides on the heroes of Thermopylae, of which +the most celebrated is the epigram-- + + "Go tell the Spartans, thou that passest by, + That here, obedient to their laws, we lie." + +A hymn of Simonides on the same subject contains some lines of great +beauty in praise of those who were buried at Thermopylae, and these may +be regarded as forming a literary epitaph. In Sparta epitaphs were +inscribed only upon the graves of those who had been especially +distinguished in war; in Athens they were applied more indiscriminately. +They generally contained the name, the descent, the demise, and some +account of the life of the person commemorated. It must be remembered, +however, that many of the so-called Greek epitaphs are merely literary +memorials not intended for monumental inscription, and that in these +freer scope is naturally given to general reflections, while less +attention is paid to biographical details. Many of them, even some of +the monumental, do not contain any personal name, as in the one ascribed +to Plato-- + + "I am a shipwrecked sailor's tomb; a peasant's there doth stand: + Thus the same world of Hades lies beneath both sea and land." + +Others again are so entirely of the nature of general reflections upon +death that they contain no indication of the particular case that called +them forth. It may be questioned, indeed, whether several of this +character quoted in ordinary collections are epitaphs at all, in the +sense of being intended for a particular occasion. + +Roman epitaphs, in contrast to those of the Greeks, contained, as a +rule, nothing beyond a record of facts. The inscriptions on the urns, of +which numerous specimens are to be found in the British Museum, present +but little variation. The letters D.M. or D.M.S. (_Diis Manibus_ or +_Diis Manibus Sacrum_) are followed by the name of the person whose +ashes are enclosed, his age at death, and sometimes one or two other +particulars. The inscription closes with the name of the person who +caused the urn to be made, and his relationship to the deceased. It is a +curious illustration of the survival of traces of an old faith after it +has been formally discarded to find that the letters D.M. are not +uncommon on the Christian inscriptions in the catacombs. It has been +suggested that in this case they mean _Deo Maximo_ and not _Diis +Manibus_, but the explanation would be quite untenable, even if there +were not many other undeniable instances of the survival of pagan +superstitions in the thought and life of the early Christians. In these +very catacomb inscriptions there are many illustrations to be found, +apart from the use of the letters D.M., of the union of heathen with +Christian sentiment, (see Maitland's _Church in the Catacombs_). The +private burial-places for the ashes of the dead were usually by the side +of the various roads leading into Rome, the Via Appia, the Via Flaminia, +&c. The traveller to or from the city thus passed for miles an almost +uninterrupted succession of tombstones, whose inscriptions usually began +with the appropriate words _Siste Viator_ or _Aspice Viator_, the origin +doubtless of the "Stop Passenger," which still meets the eye in many +parish churchyards of Britain. Another phrase of very common occurrence +on ancient Roman tombstones, _Sit tibi terra levis_ ("Light lie the +earth upon thee"), has continued in frequent use, as conveying an +appropriate sentiment, down to modern times. A remarkable feature of +many of the Roman epitaphs was the terrible denunciation they often +pronounced upon those who violated the sepulchre. Such denunciations +were not uncommon in later times. A well-known instance is furnished in +the lines on Shakespeare's tomb at Stratford-on-Avon, said to have been +written by the poet himself-- + + "Good frend, for Jesus' sake forbeare + To digg the dust enclosed heare; + Bleste be y^e man y^t spares thes stones. + And curst be he y^t moves my bones." + +The earliest existing British epitaphs belonged to the Roman period, +and are written in Latin after the Roman form. Specimens are to be seen +in various antiquarian museums throughout the country; some of the +inscriptions are given in Bruce's _Roman Wall_, and the seventh volume +of the _Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum_ edited by Hubner, containing the +British inscriptions, is a valuable repertory for the earlier Roman +epitaphs in Britain. The earliest, of course, are commemorative of +soldiers, belonging to the legions of occupation, but the Roman form was +afterwards adopted for native Britons. Long after the Roman form was +discarded, the Latin language continued to be used, especially for +inscriptions of a more public character, as being from its supposed +permanence the most suitable medium of communication to distant ages. It +is only, in fact, within recent years that Latin has become unusual, and +the more natural practice has been adopted of writing the epitaphs of +distinguished men in the language of the country in which they lived. +While Latin was the chief if not the sole literary language, it was, as +a matter of course, almost exclusively used for epitaphial inscriptions. +The comparatively few English epitaphs that remain of the 11th and 12th +centuries are all in Latin. They are generally confined to a mere +statement of the name and rank of the deceased following the words "Hic +jacet." Two noteworthy exceptions to this general brevity are, however, +to be found in most of the collections. One is the epitaph to Gundrada, +daughter of the Conqueror (d. 1085), which still exists at Lewes, though +in an imperfect state, two of the lines having been lost; another is +that to William de Warren, earl of Surrey (d. 1089), believed to have +been inscribed in the abbey of St Pancras, near Lewes, founded by him. +Both are encomiastic, and describe the character and work of the +deceased with considerable fulness and beauty of expression. They are +written in leonine verse. In the 13th century French began to be used in +writing epitaphs, and most of the inscriptions to celebrated historical +personages between 1200 and 1400 are in that language. Mention may be +made of those to Robert, the 3rd earl of Oxford (d. 1221), as given in +Weever, to Henry III. (d. 1272) at Westminster Abbey, and to Edward the +Black Prince (d. 1376) at Canterbury. In most of the inscriptions of +this period the deceased addresses the reader in the first person, +describes his rank and position while alive, and, as in the case of the +Black Prince, contrasts it with his wasted and loathsome state in the +grave, and warns the reader to prepare for the same inevitable change. +The epitaph almost invariably closes with a request, sometimes very +urgently worded, for the prayers of the reader that the soul of the +deceased may pass to glory, and an invocation of blessing, general or +specific, upon all who comply. Epitaphs preserved much of the same +character after English began to be used towards the close of the 14th +century. The following, to a member of the Savile family at Thornhill, +is probably even earlier, though its precise date cannot be fixed:-- + + "Bonys emongg stonys lys ful + steyl gwylste the sawle wan- + deris were that God wylethe"-- + +that is, Bones among stones lie full still, whilst the soul wanders +whither God willeth. It may be noted here that the majority of the +inscriptions, Latin and English, from 1300 to the period of the +Reformation, that have been preserved, are upon brasses (see BRASSES, +MONUMENTAL). The very curious epitaph on St Bernard, probably written by +a monk of Clairvaux, has the peculiarity of being a dialogue in Latin +verse. + +It was in the reign of Elizabeth that epitaphs in English began to +assume a distinct literary character and value, entitling them to rank +with those that had hitherto been composed in Latin. We learn from Nash +that at the close of the 16th century it had become a trade to supply +epitaphs in English verse. There is one on the dowager countess of +Pembroke (d. 1621), remarkable for its successful use of a somewhat +daring hyperbole. It was written by William Browne, author of +_Britannia's Pastorals_:-- + + "Underneath this sable hearse + Lies the subject of all verse; + Sydney's sister, Pembroke's mother; + Death, ere thou hast slain another + Fair and learn'd and good as she, + Time will throw his dart at thee. + Marble piles let no man raise + To her name for after days; + Some kind woman, born as she, + Reading this, like Niobe, + Shall turn marble, and become + Both her mourner and her tomb." + +If there be something of the exaggeration of a conceit in the second +stanza, it needs scarcely to be pointed out that epitaphs, like every +other form of composition, necessarily reflect the literary +characteristics of the age in which they were written. The deprecation +of marble as unnecessary suggests one of the finest literary epitaphs in +the English language, that by Milton upon Shakespeare. + +The epitaphs of Pope are still considered to possess very great literary +merit, though they were rated higher by Johnson and critics of his +period than they are now. + +Dr Johnson, who thought so highly of Pope's epitaphs, was himself a +great authority on both the theory and practice of this species of +composition. His essay on epitaphs is one of the few existing monographs +on the subject, and his opinion as to the use of Latin had great +influence. The manner in which he met the delicately insinuated request +of a number of eminent men that English should be employed in the case +of Oliver Goldsmith was characteristic, and showed the strength of his +conviction on the subject. His arguments in favour of Latin were chiefly +drawn from its inherent fitness for epitaphial inscriptions and its +classical stability. The first of these has a very considerable force, +it being admitted on all hands that few languages are in themselves so +suitable for the purpose; the second is outweighed by considerations +that had considerable force in Dr Johnson's time, and have acquired more +since. Even to the learned Latin is no longer the language of daily +thought and life as it was at the period of the Reformation, and the +great body of those who may fairly claim to be called the well-educated +classes can only read it with difficulty, if at all. It seems, +therefore, little less than absurd, for the sake of a stability which is +itself in great part delusive, to write epitaphs in a language +unintelligible to the vast majority of those for whose information +presumably they are intended. Though a stickler for Latin, Dr Johnson +wrote some very beautiful English epitaphs, as, for example, the +following on Philips, a musician:-- + + "Philips, whose touch harmonious could remove + The pangs of guilty power or hapless love; + Rest here, distressed by poverty no more, + Here find that calm thou gav'st so oft before; + Sleep undisturbed within this peaceful shrine + Till angels wake thee with a note like thine!" + +In classifying epitaphs various principles of division may be adopted. +Arranged according to nationality they indicate distinctions of race +less clearly perhaps than any other form of literature does,--and this +obviously because when under the influence of the deepest feeling men +think and speak very much in the same way whatever be their country. At +the same time the influence of nationality may to some extent be traced +in epitaphs. The characteristics of the French style, its grace, +clearness, wit and epigrammatic point, are all recognizable in French +epitaphs. In the 16th century those of Etienne Pasquier were universally +admired. Instances such as "La premiere au rendez-vous," inscribed on +the grave of a mother, Piron's epitaph, written for himself after his +rejection by the French Academy-- + + "Ci-git Piron, qui ne fut rien, + Pas meme academicien"-- + +and one by a relieved husband, to be seen at Pere la Chaise-- + + "Ci-git ma femme. Ah! qu'elle est bien + Pour son repos et pour le mien"-- + +might be multiplied indefinitely. One can hardly look through a +collection of English epitaphs without being struck with the fact that +these represent a greater variety of intellectual and emotional states +than those of any other nation, ranging through every style of thought +from the sublime to the commonplace, every mood of feeling from the most +delicate and touching to the coarse and even brutal. Few subordinate +illustrations of the complex nature of the English nationality are more +striking. + +Epitaphs are sometimes classified according to their authorship and +sometimes according to their subject, but neither division is so +interesting as that which arranges them according to their +characteristic features. What has just been said of English epitaphs is, +of course, more true of epitaphs generally. They exemplify every variety +of sentiment and taste, from lofty pathos and dignified eulogy to coarse +buffoonery and the vilest scurrility. The extent to which the humorous +and even the low comic element prevails among them is a noteworthy +circumstance. It is curious that the most solemn of all subjects should +have been frequently treated, intentionally or unintentionally, in a +style so ludicrous that a collection of epitaphs is generally one of the +most amusing books that can be picked up. In this as in other cases, +too, it is to be observed that the unintended humour is generally of a +much more entertaining kind than that which has been deliberately +perpetrated. + + See Weever, _Ancient Funerall Monuments_ (1631, 1661, Tooke's edit., + 1767); Philippe Labbe, _Thesaurus epitaphiorum_ (Paris, 1666); + _Theatrum funebre extructum a Dodone Richea seu Ottone Aicher_ (1675); + Hackett, _Select and Remarkable Epitaphs_ (1757); de Laplace, + _Epitaphes serieuses, badines, satiriques et burlesques_ (3 vols., + Paris, 1782); Pulleyn, _Churchyard Gleanings_ (c. 1830); L. Lewysohn, + _Sechzig Epitaphien von Grabsteinen d. israelit. Friedhofes zu Worms_ + (1855); Pettigrew, _Chronicles of the Tombs_ (1857); S. Tissington, + _Epitaphs_ (1857); Robinson, _Epitaphs from Cemeteries in London, + Edinburgh, &c._ (1859); le Blant, _Inscriptions chretiennes de la + Gaule anterieures au VIII^e siecle_ (1856, 1865); Blommaert, Galliard, + &c, _Inscriptions funeraires et monumentales de la prov. de Flandre + Orient_ (Ghent, 1857, 1860); _Inscriptions fun. et mon. de la prov. + d'Anvers_ (Antwerp, 1857-1860); Chwolson, _Achtzehn hebraische + Grabschriften aus der Krim_ (1859); J. Brown, _Epitaphs, &c, in + Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh_ (1867); H.J. Loaring, _Quaint, + Curious, and Elegant Epitaphs_ (1872); J.K. Kippax, _Churchyard + Literature, a Choice Collection of American Epitaphs_ (Chicago, 1876); + also the poet William Wordsworth's _Essay on Epitaphs_. + + + + +EPITHALAMIUM (Gr. [Greek: epi], at or upon, and [Greek: thalamos], a +nuptial chamber), originally among the Greeks a song in praise of bride +and bridegroom, which was sung by a number of boys and girls at the door +of the nuptial chamber. According to the scholiast on Theocritus, one +form, the [Greek: katakoimetikon], was employed at night, and another, +the [Greek: diegertikon], to arouse the bride and bridegroom on the +following morning. In either case, as was natural, the main burden of +the song consisted of invocations of blessing and predictions of +happiness, interrupted from time to time by the ancient chorus of _Hymen +hymenaee_. Among the Romans a similar custom was in vogue, but the song +was sung by girls only, after the marriage guests had gone, and it +contained much more of what modern morality would condemn as obscene. In +the hands of the poets the epithalamium was developed into a special +literary form, and received considerable cultivation. Sappho, Anacreon, +Stesichorus and Pindar are all regarded as masters of the species, but +the finest example preserved in Greek literature is the 18th Idyll of +Theocritus, which celebrates the marriage of Menelaus and Helen. In +Latin, the epithalamium, imitated from Fescennine Greek models, was a +base form of literature, when Catullus redeemed it and gave it dignity +by modelling his _Marriage of Thetis and Peleus_ on a lost ode of +Sappho. In later times Statius, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris and +Claudian are the authors of the best-known epithalamia in classical +Latin; and they have been imitated by Buchanan, Scaliger, Sannazaro, and +a whole host of modern Latin poets, with whom, indeed, the form was at +one time in great favour. The names of Ronsard, Malherbe and Scarron are +especially associated with the species in French literature, and Marini +and Metastasio in Italian. Perhaps no poem of this class has been more +universally admired than the _Epithalamium_ of Spenser (1595), though he +has found no unworthy rivals in Ben Jonson, Donne and Quarles. At the +close of _In Memoriam_ Tennyson has appended a poem, on the nuptials of +his sister, which is strictly an epithalamium. + + + + +EPITHELIAL, ENDOTHELIAL and GLANDULAR TISSUES, + + Epithelium. + +in anatomy. Every surface of the body which may come into contact with +foreign substances is covered with a protecting layer of cells closely +bound to one another to form continuous sheets. These are epithelial +cells (from [Greek: thele], a nipple). By the formation of outgrowths or +ingrowths from these surfaces further structures, consisting largely or +entirely of cells directly derived from the surface epithelium, may be +formed. In this way originate the central nervous system, the sensitive +surfaces of the special sense organs, the glands, and the hairs, nails, +&c. The epithelial cells possess typical microscopical characters which +enable them to be readily distinguished from all others. Thus the cell +outline is clearly marked, the nucleus large and spherical or +ellipsoidal. The protoplasm of the cell is usually large in amount and +often contains large numbers of granules. + + + Varieties. + +The individual cells forming an epithelial membrane are classified +according to their shape. Thus we find _flattened_, or _squamous_, +_cubical_, _columnar_, _irregular_, _ciliated_ or _flagellated_ cells. +Many of the membranes formed by these cells are only one cell thick, as +for instance is the case for the major part of the alimentary canal. In +other instances the epithelial membrane may consist of a number of +layers of cells, as in the case of the epidermis of the skin. +Considering in the first place those membranes of which the cells are in +a single layer we may distinguish the following:-- + +1. _Columnar Epithelium_ (figs. 1 and 2).--This variety covers the main +part of the intestinal tract, i.e. from the end of the oesophagus to the +commencement of the rectum. It is also found lining the ducts of many +glands. In a highly typical form it is found covering the villi of the +small intestine (fig. 1). The external layer of the cell is commonly +modified to form a thin membrane showing a number of very fine radially +arranged lines, which are probably the expression of very minute tubular +perforations through the membrane. + +[Illustration: FIG. 1.--Isolated Epithelial Cells from the Small +Intestine of the Frog.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 2.--Columnar Epithelial Cells resting upon a +Basement Membrane.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Mosaic appearance of a Columnar Epithelial +Surface as seen from above.] + +The close apposition of these cells to form a closed membrane is well +seen when a surface covered by them is examined from above (fig. 3). The +surfaces of the cells are then seen to form a mosaic, each cell area +having a polyhedral shape. + +2. _Cubical Epithelium._--This differs from the former in that the cells +are less in height. It is found in many glands and ducts (e.g. the +kidney), in the middle ear, choroid plexuses of the brain, &c. + +[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Squamous Epithelial Cells from the Mucous +Membrane of the Mouth.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Isolated ciliated Epithelial Cells from the +Trachea.] + +3. _Squamous or Flattened Epithelium_ (fig. 4).--In this variety the +cell is flattened, very thin and irregular in outline. It occurs as the +covering epithelium of the alveoli of the lung, of the kidney glomerules +and capsule, &c. The surface epithelial cells of a stratified epithelium +are also of this type (fig. 4). Closely resembling these cells are those +known as endothelial (see later). + +4. _Ciliated Epithelium_ (fig. 5).--The surface cells of many +epithelial membranes are often provided with a number of very fine +protoplasmic processes or _cilia_. Most commonly the cells are columnar, +but other shapes are also found. During life the cilia are always in +movement, and set up a current tending to drive fluid or other material +on the surface in one direction along the membrane or tube lined by such +epithelium. It is found lining the trachea, bronchi, parts of the nasal +cavities and the uterus, oviduct, vas deferens, epididymis, a portion of +the renal tubule, &c. + +In the instance of some cells there may be but a single process from the +exposed surface of the cell, and then the process is usually of large +size and length. It is then known as a _flagellum_. Such cells are +common among the surface cells of many of the simple animal organisms. + +[Illustration: FIG. 6.--A Stratified Epithelium from a Mucous Membrane.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Stratified Epithelium from the Skin. + + c, Columnar cells resting on the fibrous true skin. + p, The so-called prickle cells. + g, Stratum granulosum. + h, Horny cells. + s, Squamous horny cells.] + +When the cells of an epithelial surface are arranged several layers +deep, we can again distinguish various types:-- + +1. _Stratified Epithelium_ (figs. 6 and 7).--This is found in the +epithelium of the skin and of many mucous membranes (mouth, oesophagus, +rectum, conjunctiva, vagina, &c.). Here the surface cells are very much +flattened (squamous epithelium), those of the middle layer are +polyhedral and those of the lowest layer are cubical or columnar. This +type of epithelium is found covering surfaces commonly exposed to +friction. The surface may be dry as in the skin, or moist, e.g. the +mouth. The surface cells are constantly being rubbed off, and are then +replaced by new cells growing up from below. Hence the deepest layer, +that nearest the blood supply, is a formative layer, and in successive +stages from this we can trace the gradual transformation of these +protoplasmic cells into scaly cells, which no longer show any sign of +being alive. In the moist mucous surfaces the number of cells forming +the epithelial layer is usually much smaller than in a dry stratified +epithelium. + +2. _Stratified Ciliated Epithelium._--In this variety the superficial +cells are ciliated and columnar, between the bases of these are found +fusiform cells and the lowest cells are cubical or pyramidal. This +epithelium is found lining parts of the respiratory passages, the vas +deferens and the epididymis. + +[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Transitional Epithelium from the Urinary +Bladder, showing the outlines of the cells only.] + +3. _Transitional Epithelium_ (fig. 8).--This variety of epithelium is +found lining the bladder, and the appearance observed depends upon the +contracted or distended state of the bladder from which the preparation +was made. If the bladder was contracted the form seen in fig. 8 is +obtained. The epithelium is in three or more layers, the superficial one +being very characteristic. The cells are cubical and fit over the +rounded ends of the cells of the next layer. These are pear-shaped, the +points of the pear resting on the basement membrane. Between the bases +of these cells lie those of the lowermost layer. These are irregularly +columnar. If the bladder is distended before the preparation is made, +the cells are then found stretched out transversely. This is especially +the case with the surface cells, which may then become very flattened. + +Considering epithelium from the point of view of function, it may be +classified as protective, absorptive or secretory. It may produce +special outgrowths for protective or ornamental purposes, such are +hairs, nails, horns, &c., and for such purposes it may manufacture +within itself chemical material best suited for that purpose, e.g. +keratin; here the whole cell becomes modified. In other instances may be +seen in the interior of the cells many chemical substances which +indicate the nature of their work, e.g. fat droplets, granules of +various kinds, protein, mucin, watery granules, glycogen, &c. In a +typical absorbing cell granules of material being absorbed may be seen. +A secreting cell of normal type forming specific substances stores these +in its interior until wanted, e.g. fat as in sebaceous and mammary +glands, ferment precursors (salivary, gastric glands, &c.), and various +excretory substances, as in the renal epithelium. + +Initially the epithelium cell might have all these functions, but later +came specialization and therefore to most cells a specific work. Some of +that work does not require the cell to be at the surface, while for +other work this is indispensable, and hence when the surface becomes +limited those of the former category are removed from the surface to the +deeper parts. This is seen typically in secretory and excretory cells, +which usually lie below the surface on to which they pour their +secretions. If the secretion required at any one point is considerable, +then the secreting cells are numerous in proportion and a typical gland +is formed. The secretion is then conducted to the surface by a duct, and +this duct is also lined with epithelium. + +[Illustration: FIG. 9.--A Compound Tubular Gland. One of the pyloric +glands of the stomach of the dog.] + + + Glands. + +_Glandular Tissues._--Every gland is formed by an ingrowth from an +epithelial surface. This ingrowth may from the beginning possess a +tubular structure, but in other instances may start as a solid column of +cells which subsequently becomes tubulated. As growth proceeds, the +column of cells may divide or give off offshoots, in which case a +compound gland is formed. In many glands the number of branches is +limited, in others (salivary, pancreas) a very large structure is +finally formed by repeated growth and subdivision. As a rule the +branches do not unite with one another, but in one instance, the liver, +this does occur when a reticulated compound gland is produced. In +compound glands the more typical or secretory epithelium is found +forming the terminal portion of each branch, and the uniting portions +form ducts and are lined with a less modified type of epithelial cell. + +[Illustration: FIG. 10.--A Tubulo-alveolar Gland. One of the mucous +salivary glands of the dog. On the left the alveoli are unfolded to show +their general arrangement. d, Small duct of gland subdividing into +branches; e, f and g, terminal tubular alveoli of gland.] + +[Illustration: FIG. 11.--A Compound Alveolar Gland. One of the terminal +lobules of the pancreas, showing the spherical form of the alveoli.] + +Glands are classified according to their shape. If the gland retains its +shape as a tube throughout it is termed a _tubular_ gland, simple +tubular if there is no division (large intestine), _compound_ tubular +(fig. 9) if branching occurs (pyloric glands of stomach). In the simple +tubular glands the gland may be coiled without losing its tubular form, +e.g. in sweat glands. In the second main variety of gland the secretory +portion is enlarged and the lumen variously increased in size. These are +termed _alveolar_ or _saccular_ glands. They are again subdivided into +simple or compound alveolar glands, as in the case of the tubular glands +(fig. 10). A further complication in the case of the alveolar glands may +occur in the form of still smaller saccular diverticuli growing out from +the main sacculi (fig. 11). These are termed _alveoli_. + +The typical secretory cells of the glands are found lining the terminal +portions of the ramifications and extend upwards to varying degrees. +Thus in a typical acinous gland the cells are restricted to the final +alveoli. The remaining tubes are to be considered mainly as ducts. In +tubulo-alveolar glands the secreting epithelium lines the alveus as well +as the terminal tubule. + +The gland cells are all placed upon a basement membrane. In many +instances this membrane is formed of very thin flattened cells, in other +instances it is apparently a homogeneous membrane, and according to some +observers is simply a modified part of the basal surface of the cell, +while according to others it is a definite structure distinct from the +epithelium. + +In the secretory portion of the gland and in the smaller ducts the +epithelial layer is one cell thick only. In the larger ducts there are +two layers of cells, but even here the surface cell usually extends by a +thinned-out stalk down to the basement membrane. + +The detailed characters of the epithelium of the different glands of the +body are given in separate articles (see ALIMENTARY CANAL, &c.). It will +be sufficient here to give the more general characters possessed by +these cells. They are cubical or conical cells with distinct oval nuclei +and granular protoplasm. Within the protoplasm is accumulated a large +number of spherical granules arranged in diverse manners in different +cells. The granules vary much in size in different glands, and in +chemical composition, but in all cases represent a store of material +ready to be discharged from the cell as its secretion. Hence the general +appearance of the cell is found to vary according to the previous degree +of activity of the cell. If it has been at rest for some time the cell +contains very many granules which swell it out and increase its size. +The nucleus is then largely hidden by the granules. In the opposite +condition, i.e. when the cell has been actively secreting, the +protoplasm is much clearer, the nucleus obvious and the cell shrunken in +size, all these changes being due to the extrusion of the granules. + + + Endothelium and mesothelium. + +_Endothelium and Mesothelium._--Lining the blood vessels, lymph vessels +and lymph spaces are found flattened cells apposed to one another by +their edges to form an extremely thin membrane. These cells are +developed from the middle embryonic layer and are termed endothelium. A +very similar type of cells is also found, formed into a very thin +continuous sheet, lining the body-cavity, i.e. pleural pericardial, and +peritoneal cavities. These cells develop from that portion of the +mesoderm known as the mesothelium, and are therefore frequently termed +mesothelial, though by many they are also included as endothelial cells. + +[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Mesothelial Cells forming the Peritoneal Serous +Membrane. Three stomata are seen surrounded by cubical cells. One of +these is closed. The light band marks the position of a lymphatic. +(After Klein.)] + +A mesothelial cell is very flattened, thus resembling a squamous +epithelial cell. It possesses a protoplasm with faint granules and an +oval or round nucleus (fig. 12). The outline of the cell is irregularly +polyhedral, and the borders may be finely serrated. The cells are united +to one another by an intercellular cement substance which, however, is +very scanty in amount, but can be made apparent by staining with silver +nitrate when the appearance reproduced in the figure is seen. By being +thus united together, the cells form a continuous layer. This layer is +pierced by a number of small openings, known as stomata, which bring the +cavity into direct communication with lymph spaces or vessels lying +beneath the membrane. The stomata are surrounded by a special layer of +cubical and granular cells. Through these stomata fluids and other +materials present in the body-cavity can be removed into the lymph +spaces. + +_Endothelial membranes_ (fig. 13) are quite similar in structure to +mesothelial. They are usually elongated cells of irregular outline and +serrated borders. + +[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Endothelial Cells from the Interior of an +Artery.] + +By means of endothelial or mesothelial membranes the surfaces of the +parts covered by them are rendered very smooth, so that movement over +the surface is greatly facilitated. Thus the abdominal organs can glide +easily over one another within the peritoneal cavity; the blood or lymph +experiences the least amount of friction; or again the friction is +reduced to a minimum between a tendon and its sheath or in the joint +cavities. The cells forming these membranes also possess further +physiological properties. Thus it is most probable that they play an +active part in the blood capillaries in transmitting substances from the +blood into the tissue spaces, or conversely in preventing the passage of +materials from blood to tissue space or from tissue space to blood. +Hence the fluid of the blood and that of the tissue space need not be of +the same chemical composition. (T. G. Br.) + + + + +EPITOME (Gr. [Greek: epitome], from [Greek: epitemnein], to cut short), +an abridgment, abstract or summary giving the salient points of a book, +law case, &c., a short and concise account of any particular subject or +event. By transference _epitome_ is also used to express the +representation of a larger thing, concrete or abstract, reproduced in +miniature. Thus St Mark's was called by Ruskin the "epitome of Venice," +as it embraces examples of all the periods of architecture from the 10th +to the 19th centuries. + + + + +EPOCH (Gr. [Greek: epoche], holding in suspense, a pause, from [Greek: +epechein], to hold up, to stop), a term for a stated period of time, and +so used of a date accepted as the starting-point of an era or of a new +period in chronology, such as the birth of Christ. It is hence +transferred to a period which marks a great change, whether in the +history of a country or a science, such as a great discovery or +invention. Thus an event may be spoken of as "epoch-making." The word is +also used, synonymously with "period," for any space of time marked by a +distinctive condition or by a particular series of events. + +In astronomy the word is used for a moment from which time is measured, +or at which a definite position of a body or a definite relation of two +bodies occurs. For example, the position of a body moving in an orbit +cannot be determined unless its position at some given time is known. +The given time is then the epoch; but the term is often applied to the +mean longitude of the body at the given time. + + + + +EPODE, in verse, the third part in an ode, which followed the strophe +and the antistrophe, and completed the movement; it was called [Greek: +epodos periodos] by the Greeks. At a certain moment the choirs, which +had chanted to right of the altar or stage and then to left of it, +combined and sang in unison, or permitted the coryphaeus to sing for +them all, standing in the centre. When, with the appearance of +Stesichorus and the evolution of choral lyric, a learned and artificial +kind of poetry began to be cultivated in Greece, a new form, the [Greek: +eidos epodikon], or epode-song, came into existence. It consisted of a +verse of trimeter iambic, followed by a dimeter iambic, and it is +reported that, although the epode was carried to its highest perfection +by Stesichorus, an earlier poet, Archilochus, was really the inventor of +this form. The epode soon took a firm place in choral poetry, which it +lost when that branch of literature declined. But it extended beyond the +ode, and in the early dramatists we find numerous examples of monologues +and dialogues framed on the epodical system. In Latin poetry the epode +was cultivated, in conscious archaism, both as a part of the ode and as +an independent branch of poetry. Of the former class, the epithalamia of +Catullus, founded on an imitation of Pindar, present us with examples of +strophe, antistrophe and epode; and it has been observed that the +celebrated ode of Horace, beginning _Quem virum aut heroa lyra vel +acri_, possesses this triple character. But the word is now mainly +familiar from an experiment of Horace in the second class, for he +entitled his fifth book of odes _Epodon liber_ or the Book of Epodes. He +says in the course of these poems, that in composing them he was +introducing a new form, at least in Latin literature, and that he was +imitating the effect of the iambic distichs invented by Archilochus. +Accordingly we find the first ten of these epodes composed in alternate +verses of iambic trimeter and iambic dimeter, thus:-- + + "At o Deorum quicquid in coelo regit + Terras et humanum genus." + +In the seven remaining epodes Horace has diversified the measures, while +retaining the general character of the distich. This group of poems +belongs in the main to the early youth of the poet, and displays a +truculence and a controversial heat which are absent from his more +mature writings. As he was imitating Archilochus in form, he believed +himself justified, no doubt, in repeating the sarcastic violence of his +fierce model. The curious thing is that these particular poems of +Horace, which are really short lyrical satires, have appropriated almost +exclusively the name of epodes, although they bear little enough +resemblance to the genuine epode of early Greek literature. + + + + +EPONA, a goddess of horses, asses and mules, worshipped by the Romans, +though of foreign, probably Gallic, origin. The majority of inscriptions +and images bearing her name have been found in Gaul, Germany and the +Danube countries; of the few that occur in Rome itself most were exhumed +on the site of the barracks of the _equites singulares_, a foreign +imperial body-guard mainly recruited from the Batavians. Her name does +not appear in Tertullian's list of the _indigetes di_, and Juvenal +contrasts her worship unfavourably with the old Roman Numa ritual. Her +cult does not appear to have been introduced before imperial times, when +she is often called Augusta and invoked on behalf of the emperor and the +imperial house. Her chief function, however, was to see that the beasts +of burden were duly fed, and to protect them against accidents and +malicious influence. In the countries in which the worship of Epona was +said to have had its origin it was a common belief that certain beings +were in the habit of casting a spell over stables during the night. The +Romans used to place the image of the goddess, crowned with flowers on +festive occasions, in a sort of shrine in the centre of the architrave +of the stable. In art she is generally represented seated, with her hand +on the head of the accompanying horse or animal. + + See Tertullian, Apol. 16; Juvenal viii. 157; Prudentius, _Apoth._ 197; + Apuleius, _Metam._ iii. 27; articles in Daremberg and Saglio's _Dict, + des antiquites_ and Pauly-Wissowa's _Realencyclopadie_. + + + + +EPONYMOUS, that which gives a name to anything (Gr. [Greek: eponymos], +from [Greek: onoma], a name), a term especially applied to the mythical +or semi-mythical personages, heroes, deities, &c. from whom a country or +city took its name. Thus Pelops is the giver of the name to the +Peloponnese. At Athens the chief archon of the year was known as the +[Greek: archon eponymos], as the year was known by his name. There was a +similar official in ancient Assyria. In ancient times, as in historical +and modern cases, a country or a city has been named after a real +personage, but in many cases the person has been invented to account for +the name. + + + + +EPPING, a market town in the Epping parliamentary division of Essex, +England, 17 m. N.N.E. from London by a branch of the Great Eastern +railway. Pop. of urban district (1901), 3789. The town lies high and +picturesquely, at the northern outskirts of Epping Forest. The modern +church of St John the Baptist replaces the old parish church of All +Saints in the village of Epping Upland 2 m. N.W. This is in part Norman. +There is considerable trade in butter, cheese and sausages. + +Epping Forest forms part of the ancient Waltham Forest, which covered +the greater part of the county. All the "London Basin," within which the +Forest lies, was densely wooded. The Forest became one of the commonable +lands of Royal Chases or hunting-grounds. It was threatened with total +disafforestation, when under the Epping Forest Act of 1871 a board of +commissioners was appointed for the better management of the lands. The +corporation of the city of London then acquired the freehold interest of +waste land belonging to the lords of the manor, and finally secured +5559-1/2 acres, magnificently timbered, to the use of the public for +ever, the tract being declared open by Queen Victoria in 1882. The +Ancient Court of Verderers was also revived, consisting of an hereditary +lord warden together with four verderers elected by freeholders of the +county. The present forest lies between the valleys of the Roding and +the Lea, and extends southward from Epping to the vicinity of Woodford +and Walthamstow, a distance of about 7 m. It is readily accessible from +the villages on its outskirts, such as Woodford, Chingford and Loughton, +which are served by branches of the Great Eastern railway. These are +centres of residential districts, and, especially on public holidays in +the summer, receive large numbers of visitors. + + + + +EPPS, the name of an English family, well known in commerce and +medicine. In the second half of the 18th century they had been settled +near Ashford, Kent, for some generations, claiming descent from an +equerry of Charles II., but were reduced in circumstances, when JOHN +EPPS rose to prosperity as a provision merchant in London, and restored +the family fortunes. He had four sons, of whom JOHN EPPS (1805-1869), +GEORGE NAPOLEON EPPS (1815-1874), and JAMES EPPS (1821-1907) were +notable men of their day, the two former as prominent doctors who were +ardent converts to homoeopathy, and James as a homoeopathic chemist and +the founder of the great cocoa business associated with his name. Among +Dr G.N. Epps's children were Dr Washington Epps, a well-known +homoeopathist, Lady Alma-Tadema, and Mrs Edmund Gosse. + + + + +EPREMESNIL (ESPREMESNIL or EPREMENIL), JEAN JACQUES DUVAL D' +(1745-1794), French magistrate and politician, was born in India on the +5th of December 1745 at Pondicherry, his father being a colleague of +Dupleix. Returning to France in 1750 he was educated in Paris for the +law, and became in 1775 _conseiller_ in the parlement of Paris, where he +soon distinguished himself by his zealous defence of its rights against +the royal prerogative. He showed bitter enmity to Marie Antoinette in +the matter of the diamond necklace, and on the 19th of November 1787 he +was the spokesman of the parlement in demanding the convocation of the +states-general. When the court retaliated by an edict depriving the +parlement of its functions, Epremesnil bribed the printers to supply him +with a copy before its promulgation, and this he read to the assembled +parlement. A royal officer was sent to the palais de justice to arrest +Epremesnil and his chief supporter Goislard de Montsabert, but the +parlement (5th of May 1788) declared that they were all Epremesnils, and +the arrest was only effected on the next day on the voluntary surrender +of the two members. After four months' imprisonment on the island of Ste +Marguerite, Epremesnil found himself a popular hero, and was returned to +the states-general as deputy of the nobility of the outlying districts +of Paris. But with the rapid advance towards revolution his views +changed; in his _Reflexions impartiales_ ... (January 1789) he defended +the monarchy, and he led the party among the nobility that refused to +meet with the third estate until summoned to do so by royal command. In +the Constituent Assembly he opposed every step towards the destruction +of the monarchy. After a narrow escape from the fury of the Parisian +populace in July 1792 he was imprisoned in the Abbaye, but was set at +liberty before the September massacres. In September 1793, however, he +was arrested at Le Havre, taken to Paris, and denounced to the +Convention as an agent of Pitt. He was brought to trial before the +revolutionary tribunal on the 21st of April 1794, and was guillotined +the next day. + + D'Epremesnil's speeches were collected in a small volume in 1823. See + also H. Carre, _Un Precurseur inconscient de la Revolution_ (Paris, + 1897). + + + + +EPSOM, a market town in the Epsom parliamentary division of Surrey, +England, 14 m. S.W. by S. of London Bridge. Pop. of urban district +(1901), 10,915. It is served by the London & South-Western and the +London, Brighton & South Coast railways, and on the racecourse on the +neighbouring Downs there is a station (Tattenham Corner) of the +South-Eastern & Chatham railway. The principal building is the parish +church of St Martin, a good example of modern Gothic, the interior of +which contains some fine sculptures by Flaxman and Chantrey. Epsom (a +contraction of Ebbisham, still the name of the manor) first came into +notice when mineral springs were discovered there about 1618. For some +time after their discovery the town enjoyed a wonderful degree of +prosperity. After the Restoration it was often visited by Charles II., +and when Queen Anne came to the throne, her husband, Prince George of +Denmark, made it his frequent resort. Epsom gradually lost its celebrity +as a spa, but the annual races held on its downs arrested the decay of +the town. Races appear to have been established here as early as James +I's residence at Nonsuch, but they did not assume a permanent character +until 1730. The principal races--the Derby and Oaks--are named after one +of the earls of Derby and his seat, the Oaks, which is in the +neighbourhood. The latter race was established in 1779, and the former +in the following year. The spring races are held on a Thursday and +Friday towards the close of April; and the great Epsom meeting takes +place on the Tuesday and three following days immediately before +Whitsuntide,--the Derby on the Wednesday, and the Oaks on the Friday +(see HORSE-RACING). The grand stand was erected in 1829, and +subsequently enlarged; and there are numerous training stables in the +vicinity. Close to the town are the extensive buildings of the Royal +Medical Benevolent College, commonly called Epsom College, founded in +1855. Scholars on the foundation must be the sons of medical men, but in +other respects the school is open. In the neighbourhood is the Durdans, +a seat of the earl of Rosebery. + + + + +EPSOM SALTS, heptohydrated magnesium sulphate, MgSO4.7H2O, the _magnesii +sulphas_ of pharmacy (Ger. _Bittersalz_). It occurs dissolved in sea +water and in most mineral waters, especially in those at Epsom (from +which place it takes its name), Seidlitz, Saidschutz and Pullna. It also +occurs in nature in fibrous excrescences, constituting the mineral +epsomite or hair-salt; and as compact masses (reichardite), as in the +Stassfurt mines. It is also found associated with limestone, as in the +Mammoth Caves, Kentucky, and with gypsum, as at Montmartre. Epsom salts +crystallizes in the orthorhombic system, being isomorphous with the +corresponding zinc and nickel sulphates, and also with magnesium +chromate. Occasionally monoclinic crystals are obtained by crystallizing +from a strong solution. It is used in the arts for weighting cotton +fabrics, as a top-dressing for clover hay in agriculture, and in dyeing. +In medicine it is frequently employed as a hydragogue purgative, +specially valuable in febrile diseases, in congestion of the portal +system, and in the obstinate constipation of painters' colic. In the +last case it is combined with potassium iodide, the two salts being +exceedingly effective in causing the elimination of lead from the +system. It is also very useful as a supplement to mercury, which needs a +saline aperient to complete its action. The salt should be given a few +hours after the mercury, e.g. in the early morning, the mercury having +been given at night. It possesses the advantage of exercising but little +irritant effect upon the bowels. Its nauseous bitter taste may to some +extent be concealed by acidifying the solution with dilute sulphuric +acid, and in some cases where full doses have failed the repeated +administration of small ones has proved effectual. + + For the manufacture of Epsom salts and for other hydrated magnesium + sulphates see MAGNESIUM. + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th +Edition, Volume 9, Slice 6, by Various + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENCYCLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA *** + +***** This file should be named 35306.txt or 35306.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/3/0/35306/ + +Produced by Marius Masi, Don Kretz and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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