speeches in the First Book of Paradise Lost: Mr. Bright has gone still further back in search of a model. There is nothing pleasanter in our literature than the fond reverence with which each man, who is worth aught, looks back to the great spirits that went before.
Mr. Tennyson, a countryman of Robert Manning's and a careful student of old Mallory, has done much for the revival of pure English among us; not the least happy of his efforts has been the death-bed musings of his Northern Farmer. Further strides in the right direction have been made by Mr. Morris.[1] The Earthly Paradise, more than any poem of late years that I know, takes us back to 1290 or thereabouts, and shows us how copious, in skilful hands, an almost purely Teutonic diction may be. It is hopeless to attempt the recovery of the English swept away in the Thirteenth Century; but Mr. Morris, in many places, cuts down his proportion of French words to the scale which Chaucer's grandfather would have used, had that worthy, when young, essayed to make his mark in literature. It may be said of Mr. Morris as of Spenser, ‘he hath labored to restore as to their rightful heritage such good and naturall English words as have been long time out of use, and almost cleane disherited.’ So swiftly are we speeding along the right path, that ere many years we may even come to take a hearty general interest in our old title-deeds that
- ↑ Our modern poets may take for their watchword the sentence wherein Dante (De vulgari Eloquio) praises the Italian poets who went before him: ‘The illustrious heroes, Frederick Cæsar and his noble son Manfred, followed after elegance and scorned what was mean.’
