English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History Designed as a Manual of Instruction

If Moore was, in the opinion of his age, an Irish prodigy, Burns is, for all time, a Scottish marvel. The one was polished and musical, but artificial and insidiously immoral; t...

Sir Richard Steele. Periodicals. The Crisis. His Last Days. Jonathan Swift--Poems. The Tale of a Tub. Battle of the Books. Pamphlets. M. B. Drapier. Gulliver's Travels. Stella a...

History presents itself to the student in two forms: The first is _chronicle_, or a simple relation of facts and statistics; and the second, _philosophical history_, in which we...

We have now reached a new topic in the course of English Literature--contemporaneous, indeed, with the subjects just named, but marked by new and distinct development. It was a...

The great feature in the realm of prose fiction, since the appearance of the works of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett, had been the Waverley novels of Sir Walter Scott; but t...

The Faerie Queene. The Plan Proposed. Illustrations of the History. The Knight and the Lady. The Wood of Error and the Hermitage. The Crusades. Britomartis and Sir Artegal. Eliz...

ROMAN NEWS LETTERS.--English serials and periodicals, from the very time of their origin, display, in a remarkable manner, the progress both of English literature and of English...

The Transition Period. James Thomson. The Seasons. The Castle of Indolence. Mark Akenside. Pleasures of the Imagination. Thomas Gray. The Elegy. The Bard. William Cowper. The Ta...

The Court of Charles II. Dryden's Early Life. The Death of Cromwell. The Restoration. Dryden's Tribute. Annus Mirabilis. Absalom and Achitophel. The Death of Charles. Dryden's C...

The New School. William Wordsworth. Poetical Canons. The Excursion and Sonnets. An Estimate. Robert Southey. His Writings. Historical Value. S. T. Coleridge. Early Life. His Hel...

Contemporary History. Birth and Early Life. Essay on Criticism. Rape of the Lock. The Messiah. The Iliad. Value of the Translation. The Odyssey. Essay on Man. The Artificial Sch...

Walter Scott. Translations and Minstrelsy. The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Other Poems. The Waverly Novels. Particular Mention. Pecuniary Troubles. His Manly Purpose. Powers Overt...

In contrast with Milton, in his own age, both in political tenets and in the character of his poetry, stood Cowley, the poetical champion of the party of king and cavaliers duri...

In the same age, and inspired by similar influences, there sprang up a widely-different school of novelists, which has been variously named as the Sentimental and the Subjective...

Early Life of Byron. Childe Harold and Eastern Tales. Unhappy Marriage. Philhellenism and Death. Estimate of his Poetry. Thomas Moore. Anacreon. Later Fortunes. Lalla Rookh. His...

Having come down, in the course of English Literature, to the reign of William and Mary, we must look back for a brief space to consider the religious polemics which grew out of...

Having thus mentioned the writers whom we regard as belonging to the period of Chaucer, although some of them, like Henryson and Dunbar, flourished at the close of the fifteenth...

The middle of the eighteenth century is marked as a period in which, while other forms of literature flourished, there arose a taste for historic research. Not content with the...

The latter half of the eighteenth century, so marked, as we have seen, for manifold literary activity, is, in one phase of its history, distinctly represented by the drama. It w...

Nothing more decidedly marks the nineteenth century than the progress of history as a branch of literature. A wealth of material, not known before, was brought to light, increas...

Contemporary with Shakspeare, and almost equal to him in English fame at least, is Francis Bacon, the founder of the system of experimental philosophy in the Elizabethan age. Th...

The Power of Shakspeare. Meagre Early History. Doubts of his Identity. What is known. Marries, and goes to London. "Venus" and "Lucrece." Retirement and Death. Literary Habitude...

Historical Facts. Reform in Religion. The Clergy, Regular and Secular. The Friar and the Sompnour. The Pardonere. The Poure Persone. John Wiclif. The Translation of the Bible. T...

ALFRED TENNYSON.--It is the certain fate of all extravagant movements, social or literary, to invite criticism and opposition, and to be followed by reaction. The school of Word...

To cater further to the Artificial Age, the literary cravings of which far exceeded those of any former period, there sprang up a school of Essayists, most of whom were also poe...

Milton's blindness, his loneliness, and his loss of power, threw him upon himself. His imagination, concentrated by these disasters and troubles, was to see higher things in a c...

It is Charles Lamb who says "Milton almost requires a solemn service to be played before you enter upon him." Of Milton, the poet of _Paradise Lost_, this is true; but for Milto...

Doctor Samuel Johnson was poet, dramatist, essayist, lexicographer, dogmatist, and critic, and, in this array of professional characters, played so distinguished a part in his d...

With what joy does the traveller in the desert, after a day of scorching glow and a night of breathless heat, descry the distant trees which mark the longed-for well-spring in t...

And now it is evident, from what has been said, that we stand upon the eve of a great movement in history and literature. Up to this time everything had been more or less tentat...

CHARLES LAMB.--This distinguished writer, although not a novelist like Dickens and Thackeray, in the sense of having produced extensive works of fiction, was, like them, a humor...

All the portraits are representatives of classes. But an inquiry into the social life of the period will be more systematic, if we look first at the nature and condition of chiv...

To the Elizabethan period also belongs the glory of having produced and fostered the English drama, itself so marked a teacher of history, not only in plays professedly historic...

There is no portion of the literature of this period which so fully represents and explains the social history of the age as the drama. With the restoration of Charles it return...

Bede was a precocious youth, whose excellent parts commended him to Bishop Benedict. He made rapid progress in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; was a deacon at the unusual age of ninet...

The Uses of Literature. Italy, France, England. Purpose of the Work. Celtic Literary Remains. Druids and Druidism. Roman Writers. Psalter of Cashel. Welsh Triads and Mabinogion....

With the conquest of England, and as one of the strongest elements of its permanency, the feudal system was brought into England; the territory was surveyed and apportioned to b...

From what has been said, it is manifest that as to his plots and historical reproductions, Shakspeare has little merit but taste in selection; and indeed in most cases, had he i...

There are two words in the English language which are now used to express the two great divisions of mental production--_Science_ and _Literature_; and yet, from their etymology...

The simile is not inapt, as applied to the first efforts of the early English, or Semi-Saxon literature, during the latter part of the twelfth and the whole of the thirteenth ce...

When we consider the very extended circulation of the English Bible in the version made by direction of James I., we are warranted in saying that no work in the language, viewed...

The true origin of English literature is Saxon. Anglo-Saxon is the mother tongue of the English language, or, to state its genealogy more distinctly, and to show its family rela...