Some departments of literature are passed over, or partially touched. Among the former are books relating to particular arts, as agriculture or painting, or to subjects of merely local interest, as those of English law. Among the latter is the great and extensive portion of every library, the historical. Unless where history has been written with peculiar beauty of language, or philosophical spirit, I have generally omitted all mention of it: in our researches after truth of fact, the number of books that possess some value is exceedingly great, and would occupy a disproportionate space in such a general view of literature as the present. For a similar reason, I have not given its numerical share to theology. It were an impertinence to anticipate, for the sake of obviating, the possible criticism of the public which has a right to judge, and for those judgments I have had so much cause to be grateful, nor less so to dictate how it should read what it is not bound to read at all; but perhaps I may be allowed to say, that I do not wish this to be considered as a book of reference on particular topics, in which point of view it must often appear to disadvantage; and that, if it proves of any value, it will be as an entire and synoptical work. INTRODUCTION TO THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. CHAPTER I. ON THE GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE END OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY. _Loss of Ancient Learning in the Fall of the Roman Empire--First Symptoms of its Revival--Improvement in the Twelfth Century--Universities and Scholastic Philosophy--Origin of Modern Languages--Early Poetry--Provençal, French, German, and Spanish--English Language and Literature--Increase of Elementary Knowledge--Invention of Paper--Roman Jurisprudence--Cultivation of Classical Literature--Its Decline after the Twelfth Century--Less visible in Italy--Petrarch._ |Retrospect of learning in middle ages necessary.| 1. Although the subject of these volumes does not comprehend the literary history of Europe, anterior to the commencement of the fifteenth century, a period as nearly coinciding as can be expected in any arbitrary division of time, with what is usually denominated the revival of letters, it appears necessary to prefix such a general retrospect of the state of knowledge for some preceding ages, as will illustrate its subsequent progress. In this, however, the reader is not to expect a regular history of mediæval literature, which would be nothing less than the extension of a scheme already, perhaps, too much beyond my powers of execution.[1]