ENGLISH WRITERS

English Writers.

By HENRY MORLEY.

I.-FROM THE BEGINNING TO BEOWULF.

II. FROM CÆDMON TO The Conquest.

III. FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCer.

IV. THE LITERATURE OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY (Part I.).
V. THE LITERATURE OF THE Fourteenth CENTURY (Part II.)
VI. FROM CHAUCER TO CAXTON.
VII.-FROM CAXTON TO COVERDALE.
VIII. FROM SURREY TO SPENSER.

IX.-SPENSER AND HIS TIME.

X.-SHAKESPEARE AND HIS TIME: UNDER ELIZABETH.

XI. SHAKESPEARE AND HIS TIME: UNDER JAMES I.

A First Sketch of English Literature.

From

the Earliest Period to the Present Time. By HENRY MORLEY. Twenty-eighth Thousand.

Library of English Literature.

Edited by HENRY

MORLEY. Complete in 5 Volumes. With 630 Illustrations from

old MSS., Books, Pictures, and Sculptures.

Vol. I.-SHORTER ENGLISH POEMS.

II. ILLUSTRATIONS OF ENGLISH REligion.
III.-ENGLISH PLAYS.

IV.-SHORTER WORKS IN ENGLISH PROSE.

V.-SKETCHES OF LONGER WORKS IN ENGLISH VERSE AND PROSE.

CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, Ludgate Hill, London.

3-1828

AN ATTEMPT TOWARDS

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

BY

HENRY MORLEY LL.D.

LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE AT
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

AND

W. HALL GRIFFIN B.A.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT QUEEN'S COLLEGE LONDON

ΧΙ

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS TIME: UNDER JAMES I.

CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED

LONDON PARIS & MELBOURNE

1895

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]

COME L' UOM S'ETERNA.

-Dante.

3-26-37 орт

PREFACE.

BORN September 15th, 1822, the teacher and friend whose
unfinished volume I have attempted to complete died in
his seventy-second year on May 14th, 1894, at Carisbrooke,
Isle of Wight. Only two years before, Professor Morley had
written the name of that place beneath a memorial sketch of
a fellow-worker who, like himself, "was slowly crowning his
life's work with a History of English Literature," * when
the hand of death had caused it to be "left a fragment."
And as one reads again the words "We sorrow for the loss
of a strong man from the little field which to some is a
happy playground, but to Professor ten Brink was a
place of labour where each
of a harvest for the future," we feel that this utterance was
but the echo of the spirit of devoted earnestness in which
Henry Morley himself had wrought. Rejoicing in the
treasure of England's literature, feeling that in it lay a
potent influence for good, he had laboured both by spoken
and written word to sow its seed in many a furrow, and to
spread the knowledge of it to the uttermost, so that, according
to the words of the poet whom he loved to interpret, wha

furrow ploughed gave hope

* "E. W." viii. 415-6.