Such, at least, will be a sufficiently exact division for our purpose,
although the student will find them overlapping each other's domain
occasionally, interchanging functions, and reciprocally serving for each
other's advantage. Thus it is no confusion of terms to speak of the poetry
of science and of the science of poetry; and thus the great functions of
the human mind, although scientifically distinct, co-operate in harmonious
and reciprocal relations in their diverse and manifold productions.


ENGLISH LITERATURE.--English Literature may then be considered as
comprising the progressive productions of the English mind in the paths of
imagination and taste, and is to be studied in the works of the poets,
historians, dramatists, essayists, and romancers--a long line of brilliant
names from the origin of the language to the present day.

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