To the general reader all that is profitable in this study dates from the appearance of Chaucer, who has been justly styled the Father of English Poetry; and Chaucer even requires a glossary, as a considerable portion of his vocabulary has become obsolete and much of it has been modified; but for the student of English literature, who wishes to understand its philosophy and its historic relations, it becomes necessary to ascend to a more remote period, in order to find the origin 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 cities like London and York, originally military outposts, and transformed much of the country between the Channel and the Tweed from pathless forest into a civilized residence.