mind, forming pusillanimous, small in mind, applied particularly to a want of spirit or courage.

LESSONS IN ENGLISH.-XIII.

DERIVATIONS: PREFIXES (continued). Preter, of Latin origin (præter, against), is found in preternatural, contrary to nature.

Pro, of Latin origin, fore, forward, as in produce (Latin, duco, I lead), to bring forward. Pro appears in proceed (Latin, cedo, I go), in procreate (Latin, creo, I beget), in proffer (Latin, fero, I bear), in prolepsis, an anticipation, etc.

"We have evinced (proved) that the generality of mankind have constantly had a certain prolepsis or anticipation in their minds concerning the actual existence of a God."-Cudworth, "Intellectual System."

Pro becomes in French pour, which again becomes pur, as in purport (Latin, porto, I carry), signification. Purchase is given by Richardson as from a fancied French word, namely, pourchasser; and purchase, he says, means to chase, and so to obtain. Such derivations are enough to bring etymology into disgrace. Purchase is from a low Latin word, perchauchare (per-calcare), which meant to tread over, and to mark out, the limits of a piece of land, the necessary preliminary to the purchase of it. See Ducange on the word, who gives the noun purchacia (purchase), as something acquired. Purchacia is common in old legal documents, and is the origin of the obsolete French word pourchasser (perchauchare), which has nothing whatever to do with chasser, to chase or hunt. Pourchas, in old French, signifies labour, and suggests the derivation which involves labour as the price paid in the acquisition of land, etc. This idea of purchase, as founded on labour, is in unison with the meaning of purchase. Whence it signifies a point for a lever to act upon, or the power which

hence ensues, as in these words:

"A politician, to do great things, looks for a power, which our workmen call a purchase; and if he finds that power in politics as in

mechanics, he cannot be at a loss to apply it."-Burke.

Proto, of Greek origin (πpwrоs, pro'-tos, first), occurs in protomartyr (martyr, a witness), the first witness or martyr: applied to Stephen, in Church history.

"With Hampden, firm assertor of her laws,

And protomartyr in the glorious cause."-Boyse.

Also in prototype. We have already had antitype and archetype: here we have prototype, which means the first or original form

or model.

Pseudo, of Greek origin (eudos, su'-dos, a falsehood), signifies what is not genuine, false; as, pseudo-prophet, a false prophet.

"Out of a more tenacious cling to worldly respects, he stands up for all the rest to justify a long usurpation and convicted pseudepiscopacy

(Greek, CTIOKOros, a bishop) of prelates."-Milton.

Pusill, of Latin origin, comes from pusillus (little) or pupillus (E.R. pupil), the diminutivo form of pusus or pupus, a boy (pupa, a girl), which is the source of our word puppet, in the French poupée, a baby, a doll. Pusill is found in union with animus,

"It is such light as putrefaction breeds

In fly-blown flesh, whereon the maggot feeds, Shines in the dark, but ushered into day, The stench remains, the lustre dies away."-Cowper. Quadr, quadra, of Latin origin (quatuor, four), is found in quadrangle, four-angled; quadruped (Latin, pes, a foot), fourfooted; quadruple (Latin, plica, a fold), fourfold; also quater, as in quaternion (quaternio, the number four), etc.

"Aire and ye elements, the eldest birth

Of Nature's womb, that in quaternion run,
Perpetual circle, multiform; and mix

And nourish all things."-Milton, " Paradise Lost."

The four elements of the ancients were fire, air, earth, and water. "I have chosen to write my poem (annus mirabilis) in quatrains or stanzas of four in alternate rhyme, because I have ever judged them more noble and of greater dignity both for the sound and number than any other verse in use amongst us."-Dryden.

Quinque (quint), Latin, five, occurs in quinquennial (Latin, annus, a year), happening every five years; in quintessence (Latin, essentia, essence); and in quintuple, fivefold.

"Aristoteles of Stagira hath put down for principles these three, to wit, a certain forme called entelechia, matter, [and] privation: for elements four; and for a fifth, quintessence, the heavenly body which is immutable."-Holland, “Plutarch.”

Re (red), of Latin origin, primarily signifies back, backward (and has nothing to do with ere, nor does it mean before, as Richardson states), as return, to turn back; hence opposition, as resist, to stand against; also repetition, as revive, to live again ; reform, to make again.

Re, denoting back :

Re sometimes merely strengthens the word, as in receive, reception (Latin, capio, I take), and recommend (Latin, mando, from manus, a hand; and do, I give).

Rect, of Latin origin (recias, straight), appears in rectify (Latin, facio, I make), to make straight; in rectangular (Latin, angulus, a corner), right-angled; rectilinear (Latin, linea, a line), straightlined; and rectitude, uprightness.

Retro, Latin, backward, as in retrogradation (Latin, gradior, I walk), going backward. It is found, also, in retroactive (Latin, ago, I do, act), acting in a backward direction.

to punish the offences which did not exist at the time they were com"A bill of pains and penalties was introduced, a retroactive statute,

mitted."-Gibbon, Memoirs."

Se, of Latin origin, the base of sine, without, denotes separation, apart from, without; as, seclude (Latin, claudo, I shut), to shut out; secede (Latin, I go, yield), to withdraw from; seduce (Latin, duco, I lead), to lead from duty.

"From the fine gold I separate the allay, And show how hasty writers sometimes stray." Dryden, "Art of Poetry." (annus), occurring every seven years; and in septentrion, the Sept, of Latin origin (septem, seven), appears in septennial seven stars, the Great Bear, Charles's Wain, the north. "Thou art as opposite to every good As the antipodes are unto us, Or as the South to the Septentrion.”

Shakespeare," Hen. VI." (3rd pt.)

fair degree of rapidity. It is however, a wearisome matter to be always copying the same copy-slips over and over again; and to prevent this we have prepared a series of cheap ruled copy-books, based on the method which has been taught in our lessons on Penmanship, and furnished with suitable headlines, which will provide the reader with a variety of subjects for copying, and save him the trouble of ruling his paper.

In "Cassell's Graduated Copy-Books "the learner will find everything that can be required for practice. The series, the contents of which we append, comprises eighteen books, price 2d. each, and may be procured direct from the publishers of the POPULAR EDUCATOR, and from all booksellers.

GREAT BOOKS.

III-CHAUCER'S "CANTERBURY TALES."

ENGLISH literature was extinguished by the Norman Conquest. Readers may perhaps be disposed to ask whether any such thing as English literature existed before that epoch; but the question proceeds from a misapprehension. The modern English are (with certain modifications) the descendants of the older race which was subdued at Hastings; their language is in some important respects the same; and the primitive tongue is illustrated by a considerable number of works which are as much the products of our nationality as the works of Shakespeare. The term " Anglo-Saxon" is a modern invention: the subjects of Egbert, of Alfred, and of Athelstan, called themselves Englishmen, and nothing else. We may speak, therefore, of an earlier and a later English literature, and the later may almost be said to begin with Chaucer. That great poet had, indeed, many precursors-writers of ballads and of rhymed romances, which, uncouth though they were in form, show not a little of the rough ore of poetry; but Chaucer is the first really great author -the first accomplished literary man--who appeared in England after the depression of the national spirit.

The year in which Geoffrey Chaucer was born is believed to have been 1328, the second year of the reign of Edward III. He died in 1400, having lived through the entire reign of Richard II., into that of Henry IV. His life was thus co-extensive with one of the most brilliant and characteristic eras of the Middle Ages; and we are indebted to him for many vivid and animated pictures of the days of chivalry-of the old heroic and knightly England, which could fight and sing with equal mastery, and which lives in more prosaic times like the memory of a gorgeous pageant, and the echo of a clarion before the jousts of gallantry and valour. Of the family of Chaucer, little is known; but he was probably a Londoner. He had appointments under the crown, and was more than once on the Continent. A large number of poems by him preceded the composition of the "Canterbury Tales; but the collection bearing that title is the work by which he is principally known, and which more than any other shows the ripeness of his genius. The "Canterbury Tales were probably written in the latter years of the poet's life. They are a series of stories in verse, each complete in itself, but the whole bound together by a fiction such as many writers, ancient and modern, have employed as a species of framework. Chaucer supposes himself (as doubtless he had been in reality) one of a company of pilgrims journeying from London to Canterbury, that they may pay their devotions at the shrine of Thomas à Becket. They start from the Tabard Inn, in the High Street of Southwarka hostelry which was standing until a few years ago, and which attracted almost as many visitors as Shakespeare's house at Stratford-on-Avon. Whether any portion of the original

structure lasted into our time has by some been doubted; but the crumbling old tavern, or rather the range of buildings at the back and side of the inn-yard, was undoubtedly ancient, and had a singularly venerable and interesting appearance. At Canterbury, also, there are houses which look as if they might have existed in the days of Richard II. But, however this may be, one thing is certain-that the continuity of English life and character has remained unbroken from the days of Chaucer to our own. The personages described in the Introduction to the "Canterbury Tales are unmistakable English people. All the principal occupations of medieval life-military, ecclesiastical, learned, and industrial-are represented in the company which set out from Southwark on that April morning.

When sitting at supper at the Tabard, the night before their departure, the pilgrims receive a proposal by the host, to the effect that, as they ride to Canterbury, slowly ambling on their horses, mules, and palfreys, they shall entertain one another by telling tales, and again on their return to London, and that he who tells the best story shall have a supper at the cost of all the others. The suggestion is agreed to, and they set out. The first narrative, and, on the whole, the finest, is the knight's tale. This is the story of Palamon and Arcite, a romance of love and chivalry, of which the characters and the scene belong to ancient Greece, while the manners are mainly those of medievalism. The poem might stand by itself as a work of no inconsiderable length, since it consists of 2,250 verses. It is founded on the much longer production of Boccaccio, called the "Teseide," Theseus being one of the characters, and is the same story which has been told by Shakespeare and Fletcher in the play of "The Two Noble Kinsmen."

His

Another of the tales standing out conspicuously from the rest, and the one best known to the general public, is that of "Patient Grizzel," or Griselda, the pathos of which has never been surpassed. Chaucer was also a great humourist. humour, like that of all our old writers, is often coarse and objectionable; but it is characterised by nothing like the heartless, cynical immorality which brands with such an indelible mark the comic drama of the reign of Charles II. The truth is that Chaucer's was a complete human nature-as complete as Shakespeare's own, though with less of philosophical depth and stately enrichment. The poet of the "Canterbury Tales" has the simplicity of a child, combined with the knowledge of a Though a scholar and an accomplished writer, his treatment of the joys and sorrows of human life has in it something elemental and primitive; yet he could depict society like a courtier and a man of the world. His chief work was never completed; but it remains a noble monument of the genius of a great Englishman, who died more than a century and a half before the fulness of the Elizabethan age.

man.

THE HISTORY OF ART.

VI.-ROMAN ART.

STRICTLY speaking, it would hardly be too much to say that the Romans themselves had no art at all. And yet, on the other hand, the Roman influence has been more powerful and more permanent upon all subsequent artistic work than any other influence whatsoever. Though it is true that we derive everything from Greece, we yet derive it all through Rome. The Romans themselves were essentially a practical people. They were great architects and great engineers, but they were not great painters, or sculptors, or even poets. Everything which they had they took from Greece; and for the most part the painting, the statuary, the decorations, and the other ornamental work of Roman houses and Roman towns in the later imperial period was actually the handicraft of Greek artists. But art, by passing from Greece to Rome, became cosmopolitan -it was handed on to every part of the great Roman world, and it was handed down to all the modern civilisations which rose upon the ruins of the Roman empire. In Britain and in Asia Minor, in North Africa and in Hungary alike, we may still find relics of ancient Roman art; and in every country of Europe at the present day we may find existing artistic practices directly derived by us from the Roman world.

The original Romans, before they came into contact with Greek civilisation, were anything but an artistic people. They

it.

were a nation of well-trained soldiers and excellent engineers, and all their earliest works were of a thoroughly practical sort. The city walls, the fortifications of the Capitol, the great arched sewer or cloaca maxima, the quarried outlet of the Alban Lake, the paved causeways around the city, the aqueducts which supplied it with water-these are the chief remains of the original Italian Rome. To the very end, the arch was the keystone of native Roman handicraft, and architecture was the one genuine home-bred Roman art. Wherever the empire went, its path is marked chiefly by the square and well-planned Roman camps, by the Roman earthworks and "castles" upon the hillsides, or by the straight and admirably-engineered Roman roads, which run up hill and down dale, irrespective of natural difficulties, crossing morasses by piles and rivers by bridges, and having pavements of solid stone in the neighbourhood of all the principal cities. But these things all belong entirely to the department of industrial or even of military art, and have little or no connection with art in the sense in which we are here using During this earlier Roman period, art in Italy was principally represented by the Etruscans, from whom, as well as from the Greek colonies, the Romans learnt the first rudiments of artistic handicraft. Till quite a late period, however, the citizens of the state which conquered the world remained ridiculously backward and ignorant on all æsthetic subjects. After they had actually taken Corinth itself, the Roman general, Mummius, according to a well-known story, told the sailors who were commissioned to take the priceless paintings and statues of that city to Rome, that if they broke or injured any one of them they would be held responsible for them, and must replace them by others of equal value. But conquered Greece, as Horace phrases it, took captive her rude conquerors. The wealthy Roman gentlemen soon acquired a taste for Greek sculpture and Greek painting, and before long Rome became in fact the head-quarters of Greek art. Wherever the Romans went, this art followed them. Even in England, we find from time to time traces of luxurious Roman villas, with encaustic tiles, marble pillars, and mosaic pavements representing scenes from the old Greek mythological stories. At Lincoln, London, Bath, Old Sarum, and along the Roman wall in Northumberland, numerous fragments of Roman art have been recovered, and they bear witness to the universal diffusion of the Greek culture throughout all Europe by means of the conquering Roman civilisation.

The most distinguishing marks of Roman industrial art are, perhaps, two: first, its highly artistic character; and secondly, the constant employment of costly natural materials instead of artificial products. In the Roman houses of the higher class, such as the villas disenhumed from the lava of Pompeii-the city buried in the first century of our era by an eruption of Vesuvius-the artistic character of the workmanship and decorations is very noticeable. The doorways and steps were of marble; the hall was paved with mosaic, laid down in a border of the Greek key pattern, surrounding a group of figures, or, perhaps, a symbolical watch-dog, placed there to guard the owner's property; an inscription of "Welcome" occupied the threshold; a marble fountain, with carved figures on its base, played into a basin in the vestibule; statues stood in every niche; frescoes of lightly-draped goddesses and heroes in bright colours decked the walls; and hangings of rich fabrics were festooned over the interior doorways. The whole effect, though perhaps a little formally classical, was far from being so cold and colourless as we often suppose, for modern restorations, like the Pompeian Court in the Crystal Palace, and the Pompeian villa of the Prince Jérôme Napoleon at Paris, certainly err in the direction of copying only the white and naked marble which alone remains to us, without adding the gold, the tinting, the drapery, and the mats, which undoubtedly added warmth and colour, and enriched the appearance of the whole as it originally existed. The shape, too, of every jar, vase, tripod, stool, lamp, chair, couch, or table, in the Roman home was almost universally of exquisite grace and beauty. In digging amongst Roman ruins, in the mere dust-heaps and kitchen refuse of ancient towns in Italy or Southern France, one cannot fail to be struck by the extraordinary gracefulness and lovely forms of the broken pottery and household goods-more common wine-jars, or bedroom lamps, or ordinary cooking utensils. All of them are designed with an eye to beauty of form, and often with an

amount of simple but graceful decoration, which contrasts most markedly with our own shapeless, ugly, practical pottery or glass, our beer-bottles, our barrels, our jugs and basins, or our tumblers and teacups. The same difference is also noticeable between the flowing and dignified Roman robes and our own atrocious coats and trousers. In fact, the Romans of the later age lived in a practical world of beautiful objects: every implement of every-day life, every piece of common furniture, every jar, vessel, or utensil, every article of clothing, was designed by artistic hands and with an eye to artistic effect. This is the end at which all aesthetic reformers amongst ourselves have long been aiming, but it is one from which we are still very, very far removed. Some of our efforts at reform have erred on the side of extravagance.

The second point, the employment of costly natural materials instead of artificial products, is equally characteristic of Roman industrial art. It marks to some extent an age in which manufactures and chemical knowledge are yet deficient, but it also prevents much artistic degradation into which we ourselves have fallen. Paper, cotton, glass, plaster of Paris, papier mâché, lacquer, paste, ormolu, tinsel, veneering-these, with the aid of our cheap dyes and pigments, our machinery, and our skill in imitating jewellery or precious metals, have done endless harm in degrading the taste and the handicraft of modern Europe. But the ancient world had few such things, and so it employed instead, amber, porphyry, marble, onyx, alabaster, jade, gold, silver, bronze, and enamel. These costly materials were carefully carved into cups and vases of exquisite shape, or moulded into graceful and beautifully-chased ornaments. Furniture of choice woods, ivory, and marble; floors of tiles, mosaic, or parti-coloured stone; drapery of silk, woollen, or linen fabrics; sculpture, painting, and other high artistic handiwork-these formed the universal decorations of Roman homes. Everything was real and genuine; there were no shams of any sort; and, as the materials were generally so costly, the labour of handicraft was seldom grudged, and the execution was consequently perfect.

Among the higher arts, architecture was certainly the one which was most distinctively Roman, and upon Roman architecture all that of modern times is ultimately based. The Colosseum, the Capitol, the various temples, the basilicas, the baths, and the forum, all still remain in considerable ruins in Rome itself. But the triumphal arches, perhaps, best express the Roman character, both in their grandeur, their purpose, and their style. They are military and governmental in intention, celebrating the triumph of some imperator or general-in-chief, and so they fittingly represent the art of a conquering and organising people. That of Titus is well known, from its connection with the final subjugation of Judæa, and its carvings of the sacred utensils from the Temple at Jerusalem. The accompanying cut, however, figures the Arch of Constantine, one of the latest efforts of declining art in the dying empire. It has not the vigour or originality of the earlier arches, being, in fact, a product of the age of decadence, when spontaneous genius had almost died out, and when workmen made painstaking and laborious attempts to imitate the fresher designs of an older time. Nevertheless, in its massive construction, its noble proportions, its rich yet studiously quiet ornament, and its total freedom from floridity or over-decoration, it is not wholly unworthy of the best Roman period. It stands among the flimsier buildings of modern Rome as a monument of the true old Roman solidity and strength. Indeed, throughout the whole of the empire, the Roman masonry remains to the present day the best and most lasting stonework in the world. The gateways at Trèves and Lincoln, the amphitheatres at Arles and Nîmes, the great wall, and the little church of St. Martin at Canterbury, are all examples of the strength and permanence of Roman mason-work. They seem almost to rival the Pyramids in durability.

In painting and sculpture, as already noticed, there is hardly such a thing as real Roman work, for though every Roman house of the higher class was full of their products, the Romans themselves to the last despised the mere handicraft of art, and were content simply with buying and admiring. They were connoisseurs, but not artists. As Virgil says, others might carve marble into life, or give breath to bronze; their art it was to rule the nations with their sway, to spare the humble and war down the proud. Hence there is no distinctive Roman

*

school as opposed to the Greek school. The Roman province in the world of art was simply to diffuse the Greek in countries which it would not otherwise have reached. The Greek sculpture and painting of the later age does indeed differ from that of the earlier time. It is less stately, less pure, less ideal, more cosmopolitan, and more given to mere tricks of art and pretty fancies; but it is not on that account more Roman. It represents, in fact, the style of art which naturally grows up for the gratification of wealthy but not very highly refined patrons-a style of art in which mere passing pleasure rather than the highest artistic qualities are aimed at. It lacks severity, ideality, and grandeur; it fritters itself away for the most part

every kind, industrial as well as pictorial, sank almost into its primitive rudeness. The seat of the empire was transferred by Constantine to his new capital of Byzantium, on the Bosphorus, which he called after his own name, Constantinople. The debased art of the new metropolis is known as the Byzantine style; and from it all our modern art is most directly derived. The great Italian schools of the middle ages were attempts to revivify and alter the Byzantine models. At Constantinople, the empire continued to drag on a feeble existence for many centuries, and the court assumed an almost Chinese conventionality. Everything was done according to fixed and inviolable rules of etiquette. The emperor was attended by a certain

on mere prettiness and fanciful ideas. These are the inevitable signs of a degenerate age.

Greek and Roman art finally died down with all the rest of the Roman system at the decay of the empire. The same internal rottenness-depending upon slavery, degeneration, and the dying out of the old free military class-which killed out all the vitality of the Roman world, also killed out the vitality of its art. The last so-called Romans were not Roman at all. They were the mixed descendants of slaves and freedmen from all parts of the world. Everything that had kept the great military organisation together was gone. The empire was falling to pieces. The towns were half depopulated; the country was tilled by serfs; the aristocracy had died out, and was replaced by the mass of freedmen and aliens; the land was in the hands of a few owners, who could not find slaves enough to cultivate it, and so turned it into huge grazing farms. In such a condition of things, with a body of fresh and vigorous barbarians pouring horde after horde against the frontiers, art of

number of officials, each having his own distinctive dress and his titles of honour. All his attendants were drilled in every action, and carried symbolical emblems of their position. The art was of a piece with this cut-and-dried life. It was a development of old Greek and Roman art, indeed, but a develop. ment from which all the life and freedom was gone. The Byzantine paintings and mosaics are stiff and wooden, with formal attitudes and settled conventional colours. Their gilding and their pigments are very brilliant, and they are not wanting in a certain decorative splendour of their own, like the splendour of illuminations, which are indeed direct survivals of Byzantine workmanship. But there is no vigour or freshness in them; they are mere dead attempts to copy in a debased style the manner of an elder and better time. The Byzantine fashion was naturally copied in other parts of the dismembered empire. It was from this artificial and wooden school that the early Italian revival came to rescue the world of art from its living death.