CALIFORN

THE MAKING OF ENGLISH

LITERATURE

BOOK I

PAGANISM AND CHRISTIANITY (449-1066)

INTRODUCTORY

LITERATURE is one of the fine arts-it is language used for those ends of emotion, imagination, and beauty which are sought by the painter, by the sculptor, and by the musician. More important still, literature- Literature like all other art is an outcome and an ex- and Life pression of human life of human experience in the past, of human activity in the present, and of human aspiration for the future. In any historical study of literature, it is this intimate relation between literature and life that calls for especial emphasis.

The greater part of literature is directly or indirectly the product of individual men and women. Therefore the most immediate living fact to be regarded is the fact of personality. Behind the book is the man; and by knowledge of the man and his experiences, we may account for the character of the book. Behind all individual life, however, is the life of a whole people; and in the collective character and life of the race, we may discover Literature the larger forces that have gone to the making and the Race of its literature. A thousand minor influences act and interact toward the production of the representative works of a racial literature, but these forces all spring ultimately

out of the racial life. This racial life is like a great river. It has many tributaries and many currents; but no tributary, however great, is so important as the main stream, and no cross-currents or counter-currents prevent the onward movement of the strong central flood. Nevertheless, the race undergoes many experiences and is affected by many influences; and if we can observe the forces that have strongly modified its life, we shall see some of the guiding impulses that have determined its literature — not otherwise. In a word, to arrive at the deepest causes of literary creation, we must consider the racial character and the potent influences that from age to age have shaped that character and determined the direction of its activities. It is not to be supposed that a great guiding impulse will serve to account for a whole age and for all that is in it, for each individual genius and for all that he Impulses has achieved. To account for all literary phenomena, we should need to understand all the eddies and currents of racial and national life, all the startling and inexplicable facts of literary personality. All that we can assume is that there are great forces which give a certain degree of unity to the multitudinous variety of life and literature, and that these forces do mark for us the central current of the great literary stream. To observe the guiding impulses that have shaped the life of the English race will be to learn much concerning the secret of that long and stupendous process, the making of English literature.

Guiding