O THE DEATH OF SCOTT, 1789-1832

CHAPTER VIII.
FROM THE DEATH OF SCOTT TO THE PRESENT TIME, 1832-1893

APPENDIX

LIST OF PORTRAITS.

WILLIAM SHAKSPERE

GEOFFREY CHAUCER, EDMUND SPENSER, FRANCIS BACON,
JOHN MILTON

JOHN DRYDEN, JOSEPH ADDISON, ALEXANDER POPE, JONATHAN
SWIFT

SAMUEL JOHNSON, OLIVER GOLDSMITH, WILLIAM COWPER,
ROBERT BURNS

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, GEORGE GORDON BYRON, PERCY
BYSSHE SHELLEY, JOHN KEATS

ROBERT SOUTHEY, SIR WALTER SCOTT, SAMUEL TAYLOR
COLERIDGE, THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY

THOMAS CARLYLE, JOHN RUSKIN, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE
THACKERAY, CHARLES DICKENS

GEORGE ELIOT (MARY ANN EVANS), JAMES ANTHONY
FROUDE, ROBERT BROWNING, ALFRED TENNYSON

_The required books of the C.L.S.C. are recommended by a Council of
six. It must, however, be understood that recommendation does not
involve an approval by the Council, or by any member of it, of every
principle or doctrine contained in the book recommended._

CHAPTER I.

FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER.

1066-1400.

The Norman conquest of England, in the 11th century, made a break in the
natural growth of the English language and literature. The Old English
or Anglo-Saxon had been a purely Germanic speech, with a complicated
grammar and a full set of inflections. For three hundred years following
the battle of Hastings this native tongue was driven from the king's
court and the courts of law, from Parliament, school, and university.
During all this time there were two languages spoken in England. Norman
French was the birth-tongue of the upper classes and English of the
lower. When the latter got the better of the struggle, and became, about
the middle of the 14th century, the national speech of all England, it
was no longer the English of King Alfred. It was a new language, a
grammarless tongue, almost wholly stripped of its inflections. It had
lost half of its old words, and had filled their places with French
equivalents. The Norman lawyers had introduced legal terms; the ladies
and courtiers words of dress and courtesy. The knight had imported the
vocabulary of war and of the chase. The master-builders of the Norman
castles and cathedrals contributed technical expressions proper to the
architect and the mason. The art of cooking was French. The naming of
the living animals, _ox, swine, sheep, deer_, was left to the Saxon
churl who had the herding of them, while the dressed meats, _beef, pork,
mutton, venison_, received their bapti