How this old form disappeared it is impossible to say. With it went many old Saxon words and the French accent. To Wycliffe, the translator of the Scriptures, we owe the early formation of our English prose. Since his day the spelling has been greatly altered, but the framework of his sentences remains. A few verses of the Magnificat, according to his version, are appended: "And Marye seyde: my soul magnifieth the Lord. "And my spiryt hath gladdid in God myn helth. "For he hath behulden the mekenesse of his handmayden; for lo this alle generatiouns schulen seye that I am blessed. "For he that is mighti hath done to me grete thingis, and his name is holy. "And his mercy is fro kyndrede to kyndredis to men that dreden him." Sir Thomas More is a prominent figure in English history, and a writer of some force. His chief work, the Utopia, is a labored production; but it is principally remembered from its having supplied us with an adjective, utopian. Two poets of this period are still popular: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. If they had written upon other themes with the skill they have expended upon the frivolous conceits of lovers, some of their verses would have been printed in the body of this book. Surrey's poem written while a prisoner at Windsor is admirable. But the affectations of writers of his age, when treating upon the subject of love, are insufferable. William Dunbar, in the same century, is declared by Sir Walter Scott to be unrivalled by any poet that Scotland has produced; but with our impressions of Burns and of Sir Walter himself, the judgment seems hasty. Hugh Latimer (burned at the stake in 1555) was a powerful writer, full of a grave wit as well as steadfast purpose. 1 Merrily sung the monks within Ely And hear we these monks' song. His story of the "Goodwin Sands and Tenterden Steeple" is unsurpassed in humor. William Tyndale, the second translator of the Bible, deserves mention as an early authority in the correct use of English. He was strangled and burned near Antwerp by order of Henry VIII. His version of the Lord's Prayer is as follows: — "Oure Father which arte in heven, halowed be thy name. Thy wyll be fulfilled, as well in erth as yt is in heven. Geve vs this daye our dayly breade. And forgeve vs oure treaspasses, even as we forgeve them which treaspas vs. Leede vs not into temptacion, but delyvre vs from yvill. Amen." The Acts and Monuments of the Church, popularly known as Fox's Book of Martyrs, exercised a powerful influence in forming a fluent and idiomatic style of narration. Thomas Sackville, Earl of Dorset, the author of "A Mirror for Magistrates," is said by Hallam to furnish the connecting link between Chaucer and Spenser. Arthur Brooke, the author of the "Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet," upon which Shakespeare founded his famous play, and George Gascoigne, author of "The Steele Glas," the first English satire, belong to this period. The affectations of the age culminated in the Euphues of John Lyly, from whose influence not even Spenser appears to have been wholly free. The natural periods or turning-points of our literary history have been too irregular to coincide with the centuries; and there would seem, to Americans at least, to be no propriety in classifying authors, like acts of parliament, by the reigns of more or less unlettered kings. It has been thought expedient, therefore, to divide the list in what seems a natural way. Commencing with Chaucer, the student will find the principal authors that flourished until the birth of Spenser. From this second great poet the period extends to Milton, embracing all the great dramatists and those masculine poets that are mentioned hereafter. The third period extends from Milton to Pope; the fourth from Pope to Wordsworth; the fifth from Wordsworth to Tennyson (1810). The sixth embraces contemporary authors. It will be understood that these tables do not include the authors from whose works specimens have been taken for this Hand-Book. I. FROM ABOUT THE TIME OF CHAUCER TO SPENSER. The period from Spenser to Milton was more prolific in works of imagination than any in English history. Not to dwell with too much emphasis upon Shakespeare, this period gave birth to nearly all our classic dramas, to our weightiest sermons and essays, and to much of our noblest poetry. During this period our language probably attained its highest development, certainly as a vehicle for poetry. The authors whom we term "Elizabethan " seemed to use words with a certain vital meaning. Their images and epithets remind us of the boughs of that tree which when broken off by Dante trickled blood. Their verses are strong and sinewy, — not without grace, but with the unconscious grace of manly dignity. No successful imitations could be made either of the pregnant sentences of Bacon, the learned profusion of Jeremy Taylor, or of the pungent lines of any of the great galaxy of dramatists. And with all our gains from modern science, it is doubtful whether the language has not lost as much in power and picturesqueness as it has gained in refinement and in its multiplied synonymes. A glance over the following table will bring to mind many immortal names. There is room to mention but a few. Sir Philip Sidney, a soldier of renown and a writer of mark both in prose and verse; - James Shirley, remembered, if for nothing else, by the couplet, "Only the actions of the just Smell sweet and blossom in the dust;' Sir John Davies, a poet whose imaginative power is shown in this oftquoted fragment, from "The Orchestra," a poem upon Dancing, — "For lo, the sea that fleets about the land, And like a girdle clips her solid waist, For his great crystal eye is always cast Up to the moon, and on her fixéd fast; And as she danceth in her pallid sphere Thomas Hobbes, of whom Mackintosh says, "His style is the very perfection of didactic language;" and Macaulay says, "His language is more precise and luminous than has ever been employed by any other metaphysical writer; "- Burton, whose quaint " Anatomy of Melancholy" is an exhaustless mine of ancient learning, and whose introductory poem was the precursor of "Il Penseroso;" Chapman, the great translator of Homer; Massinger, whose "New Way to Pay Old Debts" still holds the stage; - Bishop Hall, one of the ablest and most impressive of divines;—and Sir Thomas Browne, the learned physician and essayist, hardly inferior to any of his brilliant contemporaries. From Milton to Pope, although the period contains many of the greatest names in our literature, is certainly a descent. If prose improved, poetry as surely declined. The political history of the time will throw some light on the state of letters. The unblushing wickedness of the court of Charles I. was the cause of the rise of Puritanism; and this, for a time, added decency to the other qualities of the British muse. But with the Restoration a reaction came, and the license under the first Charles was modesty itself in comparison with the prevailing grossness under the second. There was but *Dates uncertain. |