Thought in the 18th Century, Science of Ethics, and lives of Pope, Johnson, and Swift. England's best EDWARD DOWDEN (1843 -) is one of Shaksperian scholars, also a poet and essayist. Among his best works are- —Introduction to Shakspere; Shakspere-His Mind and Art, and Studies in Literature. He has also published a very popular Primer of English Literature, and a life of Southey. OTHER CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. WALTER H. PATER (1838-1894) was one of the best of recent essayists. He wrote Appreciations (essays on Coleridge, Lamb, and others), Greek Studies, The Renaissance, Miscellaneous Studies, published since his death, Child in the House, a poem. GEORGE W. SAINTSBURY (1845) has published, among many other books, Elizabethan Literature, Essays in English Literature, Miscellaneous Essays, and lives of Dryden and Marlborough, all excellent. JOHN C. SHAIRP (1819 ) is the author of Critical and Literary Essays, 5 vols., including Aspects of Poetry, Culture and Religion, Poetic Interpretation of Nature, etc. ST. GEORGE MIVART (1827 -) is a voluminous writer on Nature and literature. Among his works are-Essays and Criticisms, 2 vols., Lessons from Nature, Man and Apes, On the Genesis of Species, and American Types of Animal Life. JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS (1840 —), critic and poet, author of In the Key of Blue and other Prose Essays, Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe, and two vols. of poems entitled New and Old, and Many Moods. SIR JOHN LUBBOCK (1834 —), a naturalist and essayist. Author of Fifty Years of Science, Scientific Lectures, The Beauties of Nature; also of The Pleasures of Life, The Uses of Life, etc.-delightful essays. F. ANSTEY (Thomas Anstey Guthrie) has published some very bright and amusing stories, the principal of which are-Vice Versâ, The Tinted Venus, Tourmaline's Time Checks, and Lyre and Lancet. JEROME K. JEROME (1862 —) has been called "the English Mark Twain." He has written some delightful nonsense, mixed with much sense. His most popular books are-Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Three Men in a Boat. PART II. THE LITERATURE OF AMERICA. O INTRODUCTION. RIGIN.-American Literature may be said to have begun in 1640, the year in which the first book was printed in this country. This was the Bay Psalm Book. Most of the books produced in America before this time may be regarded as English books, as they were not only printed in England, but were also intended mainly for English circulation. PERIODS.-American Literature is divided, in this work, into three Periods : I. The Colonial Age, 1640-1760. II. The Revolutionary Age, 1760-1830. III. The National Age, 1830-1876. Later American Literature, since 1876. PERIOD I.-THE COLONIAL AGE. 1640-1760. [Embracing, in English history, the last nine years of the reign of Charies I., the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the reigns of Charles II., James II., William and Mary, Queen Anne, George I., and George II.] `HIS age was unfavorable to literary production. It was an THI age of fighting rather than writing. The colonists, engaged in a constant struggle for existence, had but little time to devote to literary pursuits; hence they left us but few works of permanent and universal interest. Most of the literature of this age is theological. This is owing to two causes: 1. That learning was mostly confined to the clergy, and 2. That the mingling of various sects, in a time of strong relig ious feeling, naturally provoked much theological discussion. Its chief literary representatives are Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards. COTTON MATHER. 1663–1728. Rev. Cotton Mather was one of the most learned and remarkable men that New England has ever produced. He was born in 1663, graduated at Harvard at the age of fifteen, taught for some years, was ordained at twenty-one, and from that time till his death, in 1728, devoted himself with unflagging zeal to preaching and authorship. Like many other great men of that day, he was a firm believer in witchcraft, and assisted in the persecution of the poor wretches accused of it; but this was an error of the head, not of the heart; and he was, take him for all and all, one of the greatest and best men of his age. His principal work is a history entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, from which we derive much of our knowledge of those times. The most celebrated of his other works are Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft, and The Wonders of the Invisible World, which is an account of several witch trials. EXTRACT. You are young and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many a hard thump.* EDWARDS. 1703-1758. Rev. Jonathan Edwards, an eloquent preacher and profound metaphysician, was born in Connecticut in 1703, and died at Princeton, N. J., in 1758. He was for two years a tutor in Yale College, and at the time of his death was President of the College of New Jersey, but most of his life was spent in preaching. His *This advice was given to Benjamin Franklin after he had bumped his head against a beam that extended across a passage-way in Mather's house. great work, An Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will, is one of the profoundest metaphysical works ever written, and insures the author a permanent place among the great thinkers of the world. Said Robert Hall," I consider Jonathan Edwards the greatest of the sons of men." EXTRACT. Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts: the sight of the deep. blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind. OTHER AUTHORS OF THIS AGE. JOHN ELIOT (1604-1690), "the apostle to the Indians," who translated the Bible into an Indian dialect. This was the first Bible printed in America. MRS. ANN BRADSTREET (1612-1672), wife of Gov. Bradstreet, the first American poetess, author of The Four Elements. Rev. Increase Mather (1635-1723), father of Cotton Mather, and author of Remarkable Providences, etc. He was a very learned man, and was for some years President of Harvard College. JOHN WOOLMAN (1720-1773), a noted Quaker preacher. His principal work is his Journal, which has been edited by the poet Whittier. ENGLISH CONTEMPORARIES. This age is nearly coextensive with the ages of Milton, Dryden, and Pope. (See English Literature, pp. 17, 20, 21.) PERIOD II.-REVOLUTIONARY AGE. (Embracing, in English history, the reigns of George III. and George IV.) IN IN this age was fought, with tongue and pen and sword, the great battle of political independence. During all this period, before and during and after the Revolution, till our liberties were fully secured and established, the chief subjects of thought and discussion were the rights of man and the principles of government. As a consequence, the literature of the age, both in prose and poetry, is almost exclusively of a political and patriotic character. The authors of this age will be divided into two classes :- II. The Prose WRITERS, represented by Franklin, Jefferson Hamilton, Dwight, and Audubon. I. POETS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY AGE. DRAKE. 1795-1820. Joseph Rodman Drake was a young poet of brilliant promise, who died in 1820, at the early age of twenty-five. He was the author of two celebrated poems, The American Flag and The Culprit Fay. The latter, which was written on a wager, in three days, is a fairy tale, the scene of which is laid on the banks of the Hudson. EXTRACT When Freedom, from her mountain height, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there! The American Flag. NOTE. The last four lines of this poem, as written by Drake, were as fol Ows: "And fixed as yonder orb divine That saw thy bannered blaze unfurled, These were rejected, and the following, by Fitz-Greene Halleck, which are inferior to then, both in poetic beauty and clearness, were substituted:"Forever float that standard sheet! Where breathes the foe but falls before us, With Freedom's soil beneath our feet, |