In its general plan this little volume is modeled on the author's more advanced _English Literature_ and _American Literature_; but the material, the viewpoint, the presentation of individual writers,--all the details of the work are entirely new. Such a book is like a second journey through ample and beautiful regions filled with historic associations, a journey that one undertakes with new companions, with renewed pleasure and, it is to be hoped, with increased wisdom. It is hardly necessary to add that our subject has still its unvoiced charms, that it cannot be exhausted or even adequately presented in any number of histories. For literature deals with life; and life, with its endlessly surprising variety in unity, has happily some suggestion of infinity. WILLIAM J. LONG STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT CONTENTS ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE What is Literature? The Tree and the Book. Books of Knowledge and Books of Power. The Art of Literature. A Definition and Some Objections. CHAPTER II. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE Tributaries of Early Literature. The Anglo-Saxon or Old-English Period. Specimens of the Language. The Epic of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Songs. Types of Earliest Poetry. Christian Literature of the Anglo-Saxon Period. The Northumbrian School. Bede. Cædmon. Cynewulf. The West-Saxon School. Alfred the Great. _The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._ The Anglo-Norman or Early Middle-English Period. Specimens of the Language. The Norman Conquest. Typical Norman Literature. Geoffrey of Monmouth. First Appearance of the Legends of Arthur. Types of Middle-English Literature. Metrical Romances. Some Old Songs. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF CHAUCER AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING Specimens of the Language. History of the Period. Geoffrey Chaucer. Contemporaries and Successors of Chaucer. Langland and his _Piers Plowman_. Malory and his _Morte d' Arthur_. Caxton and the First Printing Press. The King's English as the Language of England. Popular Ballads. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN AGE Historical Background. Literary Characteristics of the Period. Foreign Influence. Outburst of Lyric Poetry. Lyrics of Love. Music and Poetry. Edmund Spenser. The Rise of the Drama. The Religious Drama. Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes. The Secular Drama. Pageants and Masques. Popular Comedies. Classical and English Drama. Predecessors of Shakespeare. Marlowe. Shakespeare. Elizabethan Dramatists after Shakespeare. Ben Jonson. The Prose Writers. The Fashion of Euphuism. The Authorized Version of the Scriptures. Francis Bacon. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography. CHAPTER V. THE PURITAN AGE AND THE RESTORATION