BY ISAAC BASSETT CHOATE. "Dan Chaucer, well of English undefyled." SPENSER'S Faërie Queene. BOSTON: ROBERTS BROTHERS. 1892. INTRODUCTION. IF F there were any need whatever of the sanction of some name of weight and authority upon literary matters to justify a careful, painstaking study of the less-known contributors to early English literature, it would be quite enough to refer one to what is said by Principal Shairp in regard to the exclusive study which is commonly given to a few master-spirits whom he calls "the great world-poets of all times." Of those who have never aspired to this high rank he has these generous words to say: "For the whole host of lesser, though still genuine, poets, much more for the source whence all poetry comes, we are apt to have but scanty regard. It is well, perhaps, that for a short time, as students, we should so concentrate our gaze; for we thus get a standard of what is noblest in thought and most perfect in expression. But this exclusiveness should continue but a little while, and for a special purpose. If it be prolonged into life, if we continue only to admire and enjoy a few poets of the greatest name, we become, while fancying ourselves to be large-minded, narrow and artificial." More concisely stated, the perfectly reasonable argument amounts to this, that we should go to the great poets to learn what our literature ought to be, but 200442 to those of lower rank to find out what our literature has been and is. What is here said of the poets is equally applicable to prose writers in relation to purely literary work. It is also to be considered that there are whole libraries of books that have been written upon Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton. Many of the less-known subjects require to be studied at first hand; that is, in their writings themselves. The general reader only here and there comes across some faint allusion to them or to their work. The clew thus found will lead direct to our best libraries, and a little searching will prove how small a proportion of the literature of more than two hundred and fifty years ago is to be found there. The disappointment will be all the easier to be borne when it is considered that this condition of things illustrates well the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. It could not be otherwise than that much that was good in the past, if not some even of the best, should be eclipsed by the constantly improving quality of an advancing literature. As the history of letters is continuous in the same manner as the history of the race goes on without a break, it is not difficult to trace many an impulse it has here and there received from delicate touches in the past. No one can fail to see that every indication of improvement in English letters as well as in English life and character stands for some good, honest work in England's past. This thought gives interest to the man who stands back of the work, and it forms a bond of comradeship among those who have toiled in the past and those who are toiling now in the common |