Pleadings in Rastell _v._ Walton, a Theatrical Lawsuit, temp. Henry VIII., 307 BRIEF GLOSSARY, 323 INTRODUCTION In the world of politics and statecraft a nation which has once begun to decline seldom, perhaps never, recovers itself. There are too many other dogs about for the bone which has once been relinquished to be resumed later on. It is luck, indeed, if there are any decent scraps to be found on the platter when it is revisited. In the world of literature and thought the dogs are better bred, showing each other new hunting-grounds, and by example and precept often helping to restore a famished comrade to sleekness and vigour. Political conditions may not be gainsaid. A nation which has once lost its ideals cannot again produce a fresh, strong, and manly literature. But the possibilities of literature remain immense, and we cannot foretell in what country it may not revive and win fresh triumphs. Hence it is that while the political fortunes of a nation seem to move mainly along the three straight lines of ascent, enjoyment, and fall, its literary fortunes express themselves, when we try to generalise, in a series of curves, alternate rises and declines, which may be repeated again and again. In English literature out of the unknown past rose the Anglo-Saxon lyric and epic, _Deor's Complaint_, _Beowulf_, and the poems of Caedmon and Cynewulf. From the death-like sleep of our language which followed the Norman Conquest rose the heights of thirteenth-century romance. From the dull poetic pedantries of the age which succeeded Chaucer rose the glittering pinnacles of Shakespeare and his fellows. From the coldness and shallowness of the eighteenth century rose the rich and varied tableland of whose occupants Burns was one of the first and Tennyson and Browning perhaps the last. No other literature has shown such recuperative power, a thought full of hope and consolation in these days, for those who can take pleasure in the anticipated joys of their great-grandchildren.