rigin of the language in which
Chaucer wrote, and the effect produced upon him by any antecedent literary
works, in the root-languages from which the English has sprung.

GENERAL PRINCIPLE.--It may be stated, as a general principle, that to
understand a nation's literature, we must study the history of the people
and of their language; the geography of the countries from which they
came, as well as that in which they live; the concurrent historic causes
which have conspired to form and influence the literature. We shall find,
as we advance in this study, that the life and literature of a people are
reciprocally reflective.

I. CELTS AND CYMRY.--Thus, in undertaking the study of English literature,
we must begin with the history of the Celts and Cymry, the first
inhabitants of the British Islands of whom we have any record, who had
come from Asia in the first great wave of western migration; a rude,
aboriginal people, whose languages, at the beginning of the Christian era,
were included in one family, the _Celtic_, comprising the _British_ or
_Cambrian_, and the _Gadhelic_ classes. In process of time these were
subdivided thus:

The British into
_Welsh_, at present spoken in Wales.
_Cornish_, extinct only within a century.
_Armorican_, Bas Breton, spoken in French Brittany.
The Gadhelic into
_Gaelic_, still spoken in the Scottish Highlands.
_Irish_, or _Erse_, spoken in Ireland.
_Manx_, spoken in the Isle of Man.

Such are the first people and dialects to be considered as the antecedent
occupants of the country in which English literature was to have its
birth.

II. ROMAN CONQUEST.--But these Celtic peoples were conquered by the Romans
under Caesar and his successors, and kept in a state of servile thraldom
for four hundred and fifty years. There was but little amalgamation
between them and their military masters. Britain was a most valuable
northern outpost of the Roman Empire, and was occupied by large garrisons,
which employed the people in hard labors, and used them for Roman
aggrandizement, but despised them too much to attempt to elevate their
condition. Elsewhere the Romans depopulated, where they met with barbarian
resistance; they made a solitude and called it peace--for which they gave
a triumph and a cognomen to the conqueror; but in Britain, although
harassed and endangered by the insurrections of the natives, they bore
with them; they built fine citie