Handbook of Universal Literature
A >>
Anne C. Lynch Botta >> Handbook of Universal Literature
CONCLUSION.
INDEX.
LIST OF AUTHORITIES.
The following works are the sources from which this book is wholly or
chiefly derived:--
Taylor's History of the Alphabet; Dwight's Philology; Herder's Spirit of
Hebrew Poetry; Lowth's Hebrew Poetry; Asiatic Researches; the works of
Gesenius, De Wette, Ewald, Colebrooke, Sir William Jones, Wilson, Ward;
Schlegel's Hindu Language and Literature; Max Müller's History of Sanskrit
Literature; and What India has taught us; Malcolm's History of Persia;
Richardson on the Language of Eastern Nations; Adelung's Mithridates;
Chodzko's Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia; Costello's Rose
Garden of Persia; Rémusat's Mémoire sur l'Ecriture Chinoise; Davis on the
Poetry of the Chinese; Williams's Middle Kingdom; The Mikado's Empire;
Rein's Travels in Japan; Duhalde's Description de la Chine; Champollion's
Letters; Wilkinson's Extracts from Hieroglyphical Subjects; the works of
Bunsen, Müller, and Lane; Müller's History of the Literature of Ancient
Greece, continued by Donaldson; Browne's History of Roman Classical
Literature; Fiske's Manual of Classical Literature; Sismondi's Literature
of the South of Europe; Goodrich's Universal History; Sanford's Rise and
Progress of Literature; Schlegel's Lectures on the History of Literature;
Schlegel's History of Dramatic Art; Tiraboschi's History of Italian
Literature; Maffei, Corniani, and Ugoni on the same subject; Chambers's
Handbooks of Italian and German Literature; Vilmar's History of German
Literature; Foster's Handbook of French Literature; Nisard's Histoire de
la Littérature Française; Demogeot's Histoire de la Littérature française;
Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature; Talvi's (Mrs. Robinson)
Literature of the Slavic Nations; Mallet's Northern Antiquities; Keyson's
Religion of the Northmen; Pigott's Northern Mythology; William and Mary
Howitt's Literature and Romance of Northern Europe; De s'Gravenweert's Sur
la Littérature Néerlandaise; Siegenbeck's Histoire Littéraire des Pays-
Bas; Da Pontes' Poets and Poetry of Germany; Menzel's German Literature;
Spaulding's History of English Literature; Chambers's Cyclopaedia of
English Literature; Shaw's English Literature; Stedman's Victorian Poets;
Trübner's guide to American Literature; Duyckinck's Cyclopaedia of
American Literature; Griswold's Poets and Prose Writers of America;
Tuckerman's Sketch of American Literature; Frothingham's Transcendental
Movement in New England. French, English, and American Encyclopaedias,
Biographies, Dictionaries, and numerous other works of reference have also
been extensively consulted.
INTRODUCTION.
THE ALPHABET.
1. The Origin of Letters.--2. The Phoenician Alphabet and Inscriptions.--
3, The Greek Alphabet. Its Three Epochs.--4. The Medieval Scripts. The
Irish. The Anglo-Saxon. The Roman. The Gothic. The Runic.
1. THE ORIGIN OF LETTERS.--Alphabetic writing is an art easy to acquire,
but its invention has tasked the genius of the three most gifted nations
of the ancient world. All primitive people have begun to record events and
transmit messages by means of rude pictures of objects, intended to
represent things or thoughts, which afterwards became the symbols of
sounds. For instance, the letter _M_ is traced down from the
conventionalized picture of an owl in the ancient language of Egypt,
_Mulak_. This was used first to denote the bird itself; then it stood for
the name of the bird; then gradually became a syllabic sign to express the
sound "mu," the first syllable of the name, and ultimately to denote "M,"
the initial sound of that syllable.
In like manner _A_ can be shown to be originally the picture of an eagle,
_D_ of a hand, _F_ of the horned asp, _R_, of the mouth, and so on.
Five systems of picture writing have been independently invented,--the
Egyptian, the Cuneiform, the Chinese, the Mexican, and the Hittite. The
tradition of the ancient world, which assigned to the Phoenicians the
glory of the invention of letters, declared that it was from Egypt that
they originally derived the art of writing, which they afterwards carried
into Greece, and the latest investigations have confirmed this tradition.
2. THE PHOENICIAN ALPHABET.--Of the Phoenician alphabet the Samaritan is
the only living representative, the Sacred Script of the few families who
still worship on Mount Gerizim. With this exception, it is only known to
us by inscriptions, of which several hundred have been discovered. They
form two well-marked varieties, the Moabite and the Sidonian. The most
important monument of the first is the celebrated Moabite stone,
discovered in 1868 on the site of the ancient capital of the land of Moab,
portions of which are preserved in the Louvre. It gives an account of the
revolt of the King of Moab against Jehoram, King of Israel, 890 B.C. The
most important inscription of the Sidonian type is that on the magnificent
sarcophagus of a king of Sidon, now one of the glories of the Louvre.
A monument of the early Hebrew alphabet, another offshoot of the
Phoenician, was discovered in 1880 in an inscription in the ancient tunnel
which conveys water to the pool of Siloam.
3. THE GREEK ALPHABET.--The names, number, order, and forms of the
primitive Greek alphabet attest its Semitic origin. Of the many
inscriptions which remain, the earliest has been discovered, not in
Greece, but upon the colossal portrait statues carved by Rameses the
Great, in front of the stupendous cave temple at Abou-Simbel, at the time
when the Hebrews were still in Egyptian bondage. In the seventh century B.
C., certain Greek mercenaries in the service of an Egyptian king inscribed
a record of their visit in five precious lines of writing, which the dry
Nubian atmosphere has preserved almost in their pristine sharpness.
The legend, according to which Cadmus the Tyrian sailed for Greece in
search of Europa, the damsel who personified the West, designates the
island of Thera as the earliest site of Phoenician colonization in the
Aegean, and from inscriptions found there this may be regarded as the
first spot of European soil on which words were written, and they exhibit
better than any others the progressive form of the Cadmean alphabet. The
oldest inscriptions found on Hellenic soil bearing a definite date are
those cut on the pedestals of the statues which lined the sacred way
leading to the temple of Apollo, near Miletus. Several of those, now in
the British Museum, range in date over the sixth century B.C. They belong,
not to the primitive alphabet, but to the Ionian, one of the local
varieties which mark the second stage, which may be called the epoch of
transition, which began in the seventh and lasted to the close of the
fifth century B.C. It is not till the middle of the fifth century that we
have any dated monuments belonging to the Western types. Among these are
the names of the allied states of Hellas, inscribed on the coils of the
three-headed bronze serpent which supported the gold tripod dedicated to
the Delphian Apollo, 476 B.C. This famous monument was transported to
Byzantium by Constantine the Great, and still stands in the Hippodrome at
Constantinople. Of equal interest is the bronze Etruscan helmet in the
British Museum, dedicated to the Olympian Zeus, in commemoration of the
great victory off Cumae, which destroyed the naval supremacy of the
Etruscans, 474 B.C., and is celebrated in an ode by Pindar.
The third epoch witnessed the emergence of the classical alphabets of
European culture, the Ionian and the Italic.
The Ionian has been the source of the Eastern scripts, Romaic, Coptic,
Slavic, and others. The Italic became the parent of the modern alphabets
of Western Europe.
4. THE MEDIAEVAL SCRIPTS.--A variety of national scripts arose in the
establishment of the Teutonic kingdoms upon the ruins of the Roman Empire.
But the most magnificent of all mediaeval scripts was the Irish, which
exercised a profound influence on the later alphabets of Europe. From a
combination of the Roman and Irish arose the Anglo-Saxon script, the
precursor of that which was developed in the ninth century by Alcuin of
York, the friend and preceptor of Charlemagne. This was the parent of the
Roman alphabet, in which our books are now printed. Among other
deteriorations, there crept in, in the fourteenth century, the Gothic or
black letter character, and these barbarous forms are still essentially
retained by the Teutonic nations though discarded by the English and Latin
races; but from its superior excellences the Roman alphabet is constantly
extending its range and bids fair to become the sole alphabet of the
future. In all the lands that were settled and overrun by the
Scandinavians, there are found multitudes of inscriptions in the ancient
alphabet of the Norsemen, which is called the Runic. The latest modern
researches seem to prove that this was derived from the Greek, and
probably dates back as far as the sixth century B.C.The Goths were early
in occupation of the regions south of the Baltic and east of the Vistula,
and in direct commercial intercourse with the Greek traders, from whom
they doubtless obtained a knowledge of the Greek alphabet, as the Greeks
themselves had gained it from the Phoenicians.
CLASSIFICATION OF LANGUAGES.
Modern philologists have made different classifications of the various
languages of the world, one of which divides them into three great
classes: the Monosyllabic, the Agglutinated, and the Inflected.
--The _first_, or Monosyllabic class, contains those languages which
consist only of separate, unvaried monosyllables. The words have no
organization that adapts them for mutual affiliation, and there is in
them, accordingly, an utter absence of all scientific forms and principles
of grammar. The Chinese and a few languages in its vicinity, doubtless
originally identical with it, are all that belong to this class. The
languages of the North American Indians, though differing in many
respects, have the same general grade of character.
The _second_ class consists of those languages which are formed by
agglutination. The words combine only in a mechanical way; they have _no_
elective affinity, and exhibit toward each other none of the active or
sensitive capabilities of living organisms. Prepositions are joined to
substantives, and pronouns to verbs, but never so as to make a new form of
the original word, as in the inflected languages, and words thus placed in
juxtaposition retain their personal identity unimpaired.
The agglutinative languages are known also as the Turanian, from Turan, a
name of Central Asia, and the principal varieties of this family are the
Tartar, Finnish, Lappish, Hungarian, and Caucasian. They are classed
together almost exclusively on the ground of correspondence in their
grammatical structure, but they are bound together by ties of far less
strength than those which connect the inflected languages. The race by
whom they are spoken has, from the first, occupied more of the surface of
the earth than either of the others, stretching westward from the shores
of the Japan Sea to the neighborhood of Vienna, and southward from the
Arctic Ocean to Afghanistan and the southern coast of Asia Minor.
The inflected languages form the _third_ great division. They have all a
complete interior organization, complicated with many mutual relations and
adaptations, and are thoroughly systematic in all their parts. Between
this class and the monosyllabic there is all the difference that there is
between organic and inorganic forms of matter; and between them and the
agglutinative languages there is the same difference that exists in nature
between mineral accretions and vegetable growths. The boundaries of this
class of languages are the boundaries of cultivated humanity, and in their
history lies embosomed that of the civilized portions of the world.
Two great races speaking inflected languages, the Semitic and the Indo-
European, have shared between them the peopling of the historic portions
of the earth; and on this account these two languages have sometimes been
called political or state languages, in contrast with the appellation of
the Turanian as nomadic. The term Semitic is applied to that family of
languages which are native in Southwestern Asia, and which are supposed to
have been spoken by the descendants of Shem, the son of Noah. They are the
Hebrew, Aramaeic, Arabic, the ancient Egyptian or Coptic, the Chaldaic,
and Phoenician. Of these the only living language of note is the Arabic,
which has supplanted all the others, and wonderfully diffused its elements
among the constituents of many of the Asiatic tongues. In Europe the
Arabic has left a deep impress on the Spanish language, and is still
represented in the Maltese, which is one of its dialects.
The Semitic languages differ widely from the Indo-European in reference to
their grammar, vocabulary, and idioms. On account of the great
preponderance of the pictorial element in them, they may be called the
metaphorical languages, while the Indo-European, from the prevailing style
of their higher literature, may be called the philosophical languages. The
Semitic nations also differ from the Indo-European in their national
characteristics; while they have lived with remarkable uniformity on the
vast open plains, or wandered over the wide and dreary deserts of their
native region, the Indo-Europeans have spread themselves over both
hemispheres, and carried civilization to its highest development. But the
Semitic mind has not been without influence on human progress. It early
recorded its thoughts, its wants, and achievements in the hieroglyphs of
ancient Egypt; the Phoenicians, foremost in their day in commerce and the
arts, introduced from Egypt alphabetic letters, of which all the world has
since made use. The Jewish portion of the race, long in communication with
Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia, and Persia, could not fail to impart to these
nations some knowledge of their religion and literature, and it cannot be
doubted that many new ideas and quickening influences were thus set in
motion, and communicated to the more remote countries both of the East and
West.
The most ancient languages of the Indo-European stock may be grouped in
two distinct family pairs: the Aryan, which comprises two leading
families, the Indian and Iranian, and the Graeco-Italic or Pelasgic, which
comprises the Greek family and its various dialects, and the Italic
family, the chief-subdivisions of which are the Etruscan, the Latin, and
the modern languages derived from the Latin. The other Indo-European
families are the Lettic, Slavic, Gothic, and Celtic, with their various
subdivisions.
The word Aryan (Sanskrit, Arya), the oldest known name of the entire Indo-
European family, signifies well-born, and was applied by the ancient
Hindus to themselves in contradistinction to the rest of the world, whom
they considered base-born and contemptible.
In the country called Aryavarta, lying between the Himalaya and the
Vindhya Mountains, the high table-land of Central Asia, more than two
thousand years before Christ, our Hindu ancestors had their early home.
From this source there have been, historically, two great streams of Aryan
migration. One, towards the south, stagnated in the fertile valleys, where
they were walled in from all danger of invasion by the Himalaya Mountains
on the north, the Indian Ocean on the south, and the deserts of Bactria on
the west, and where the people sunk into a life of inglorious ease, or
wasted their powers in the regions of dreamy mysticism. The other
migration, at first northern, and then western, includes the great
families of nations in Northwestern Asia and in Europe. Forced by
circumstances into a more objective life, and under the stimulus of more
favorable influences, these nations have been brought into a marvelous
state of individual and social progress, and to this branch of the human
family belongs all the civilization of the present, and most of that which
distinguishes the past.
The Indo-European family of languages far surpasses the Semitic in
variety, flexibility, beauty, and strength. It is remarkable for its
vitality, and has the power of continually regenerating itself and
bringing forth new linguistic creations. It renders most faithfully the
various workings of the human mind, its wants, its aspirations, its
passion, imagination, and reasoning power, and is most in harmony with the
ever progressive spirit of man. In its varied scientific and artistic
development it forms the most perfect family of languages on the globe,
and modern civilization, by a chain reaching through thousands of years,
ascends to this primitive source.
CHINESE LITERATURE.
1. Chinese literature.--2. The Language.--3. The Writing.--4. The five
Classics and four Books.--5. Chinese Religion and Philosophy, Lao-tsé,
Confucius, Meng-tsé or Mencius.--6. Buddhism.--7. Social Constitution of
China.--8. Invention of Printing.--9. Science, History, and Geography.
Encyclopaedias.--10. Poetry.--11. Dramatic Literature and Fiction.--12.
Education in China.
1. CHINESE LITERATURE.--The Chinese literature is one of the most
voluminous of all literatures, and among the most important of those of
Asia. Originating in a vast empire, it is diffused among a population
numbering nearly half the inhabitants of the globe. It is expressed by an
original language differing from all others, it refers to a nation whose
history may be traced back nearly five thousand years in an almost
unbroken series of annals, and it illustrates the peculiar character of a
people long unknown to the Western world.
2. THE LANGUAGE.--The date of the origin of this language is lost in
antiquity, but there is no doubt that it is the most ancient now spoken,
and probably the oldest written language used by man. It has undergone few
alterations during successive ages, and this fact has served to deepen the
lines of demarkation between the Chinese and other branches of the race
and has resulted in a marked national life. It belongs to the monosyllabic
family; its radical words number 450, but as many of these, by being
pronounced with a different accent convey a different meaning, in reality
they amount to 1,203. Its pronunciation varies in different provinces, but
that of Nanking, the ancient capital of the Empire, is the most pure. Many
dialects are spoken in the different provinces, but the Chinese proper is
the literary tongue of the nation, the language of the court and of polite
society, and it is vernacular in that portion of China called the Middle
Kingdom.
3. THE WRITING.--There is an essential difference between the Chinese
language as spoken and written, and the poverty of the former presents a
striking contrast with the exuberance of the latter. Chinese writing,
generally speaking, does not express the sounds of the words, but it
represents the ideas or the objects indicated by them. Its alphabetical
characters are therefore ideographic, and not phonetic. They were
originally rude representations of the thing signified; but they have
undergone various changes from picture-writing to the present more
symbolical and more complete system.
As the alphabetic signs represent objects or ideas, it would follow that
there must be in writing as many characters as words in the spoken
language. Yet many words, which have the same sound, represent different
ideas; and these must be represented also in the written language. Thus
the number of the written words far surpasses that of the spoken language.
As far as they are used in the common writing, they amount to 2,425. The
number of characters in the Chinese dictionary is 40,000, of which,
however, only 10,000 are required for the general purposes of literature.
They are disposed under 214 signs, which serve as keys, and which
correspond to our alphabetic order.
The Chinese language is written, from right to left, in vertical columns
or in horizontal lines.
4. THE CLASSICS.--The first five canonical books are "The Book of
Transformations," "The Book of History," "The Book of Rites," "The Spring
and Autumn Annals," and "The Book of Odes"
"The Book of Transformations" consists of sixty-four short essays on
important themes, symbolically and enigmatically expressed, based on
linear figures and diagrams. These cabala are held in high esteem by the
learned, and the hundreds of fortune-tellers in the streets of Chinese
towns practice their art on the basis of these mysteries.
"The Book of History" was compiled by Confucius, 551-470 B. C., from the
earliest records of the Empire, and in the estimation of the Chinese it
contains the seeds of all that is valuable in their political system,
their history, and their religious rites, and is the basis of their
tactics, music, and astronomy. It consists mainly of conversations between
kings and their ministers, in which are traced the same patriarchal
principles of government that guide the rulers of the present day.
"The Book of Rites" is still the rule by which the Chinese regulate all
the relations of life. No every-day ceremony is too insignificant to
escape notice, and no social or domestic duty is beyond its scope. No work
of the classics has left such an impression on the manners and customs of
the people. Its rules are still minutely observed, and the office of the
Board of Rites, one of the six governing boards of Peking, is to see that
its precepts are carried out throughout the Empire. According to this
system, all the relations of man to the family, society, the state, to
morals, and to religion, are reduced to ceremonial, but this includes not
only the external conduct, but it involves those right principles from
which all true politeness and etiquette spring.
The "Book of Odes" consists of national airs, chants, and sacrificial odes
of great antiquity, some of them remarkable for their sublimity. It is
difficult to estimate the power they have exerted over all subsequent
generations of Chinese scholars. They are valuable for their religious
character and for their illustration of early Chinese customs and
feelings; but they are crude in measure, and wanting in that harmony which
comes from study and cultivation.
The "Spring and Autumn Annals" consist of bald statements of historical
facts. Of the Four Books, the first three--the "Great Learning," the "Just
Medium," and the "Confucian Analects"--are by the pupils and followers of
Confucius. The last of the four books consists entirely of the writings of
Mencius (371-288 B. C.). In originality and breadth of view he is superior
to Confucius, and must be regarded as one of the greatest men Asiatic
nations have produced.
The Five Classics and Four Books would scarcely be considered more than
curiosities in literature were it not for the incomparable influence, free
from any debasing character, which they have exerted over so many millions
of minds.
5. CHINESE RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.--Three periods may be distinguished in
the history of the religious and philosophical progress of China. The
first relates to ancient tradition, to the idea of one supreme God, to the
patriarchal institutions, which were the foundation of the social
organization of the Empire, and to the primitive customs and moral
doctrines. It appears that this religion at length degenerated into that
mingled idolatry and indifference which still characterizes the people of
China.
In the sixth century B.C., the corruption of the ancient religion having
reached its height, a reaction took place which gave birth to the second,
or philosophical period, which produced three systems. Lao-tsé, born 604
B.C., was the founder of the religion of the Tao, or of the external and
supreme reason. The Tao is the primitive existence and intelligence, the
great principle of the spiritual and material world, which must be
worshiped through the purification of the soul, by retirement, abnegation,
contemplation, and metempsychosis. This school gave rise to a sect of
mystics similar to those of India.
Later writers have debased the system of Lao-tsé, and cast aside his
profound speculations for superstitious rituals and the multiplication of
gods and goddesses.
Confucius was the founder of the second school, which has exerted a far
more extensive and beneficial influence on the political and social
institutions of China. Confucius is a Latin name, corresponding to the
original Kung-fu-tsé, Kung being the proper name, and Fu-tsé signifying
reverend teacher or doctor. He was born 551 B.C., and educated by his
mother, who impressed upon him a strong sense of morality. After a careful
study of the ancient writings he decided to undertake the moral reform of
his country, and giving up his high position of prime minister, he
traveled extensively in China, preaching justice and virtue wherever he
went. His doctrines, founded on the unity of God and the necessities of
human nature, bore essentially a moral character, and being of a practical
tendency, they exerted a great influence not only on the morals of the
people, but also on their legislation, and the authority of Confucius
became supreme. He died 479 B.C., at the age of seventy-two, eleven years
before the birth of Socrates. He left a grandson, through whom the
succession has been transmitted to the present day, and his descendants
constitute a distinct class in Chinese society.