History of English Literature from "Beowulf" to Swinburne

The rejoicing age of Elizabeth was fond of "variety entertainments". The Court Masques, such as those of Lyly, and George Peele's "Arraignment of Paris," abounded in songs, musi...

Scott's example and success naturally attracted many writers towards the novel. Byron, Shelley, Mrs. Shelley, and Claire Clairmont, with Polidori, Byron's physician, all amused...

We now turn to the poets of the nineteenth century, after Wordsworth, though the first on the list was his senior in years. He is less important for his work than as the pioneer...

The so-called Romantic Movement in the English Literature of the early nineteenth century, was, first, the result of a tendency to expansion in every conceivable direction. Ther...

With the death of Sterne it might have been said that the English novel expired for the time, though of course, as Donne admitted in the case of the decease of Miss Drury, "a ki...

Steele and Addison are the Twins among the stars of the age of Queen Anne. Swift impresses us as a greater genius than either Steele or Addison, but he is not loved, and he is n...

It is difficult, or even impossible, to mark out the Caroline from the Jacobean poets, who, again, overlap with the Elizabethan poets. The chief schools of the Caroline poets we...

We could scarcely understand how Dr. Johnson gained his immense influence and acknowledged chiefship in literature if we had only his works of various kinds before us. But he ha...

In England, when the King came to his own again (29 May, 1660) and the reign of the Saints was ended, it was certain that the Theatre also would come to her own. The stage had b...

The name of Thomas Chatterton, the youngest and most short-lived of English poets, is curiously connected with that of Horace Walpole. Born, at Bristol, on 20 November, 1752, un...

John Fletcher was born at Rye in December, 1579; being the son of that Dean of Peterborough who troubled the last moments of Mary, Queen of Scots, and later was bishop, successi...

After the appearance of the works of Hume and Robertson, History became, as we have heard Gibbon say, the most popular theme with the reading public. His own monumental work gav...

A great, indeed an inestimable influence in literature at this juncture, was that of the long-forgotten Greek language, Greek poetry, and Greek philosophy. When Erasmus, who the...

Chaucer is the earliest English poet who is still read for human pleasure, as well as by specialists in the studies of literature, language, and prosody. A few of his lines are...

In sketching the history of the English drama from its beginnings to the close of Ben Jonson's career, we have passed through a long tract of years, rich in other than poetic li...

It may have occurred to the reader that the words which Ben Jonson quoted about Shakespeare, _Sufflaminandus erat_--he flowed so freely that he needed stopping--indicate the gre...

Originally the "Scots" or Scottish tongue was Gaelic, the language of the Irish Scots who, landing in Argyll about A.D. 500, finally gave a dynasty and its existing name, to "Sc...

Robert Burton, author of "The Anatomy of Melancholy," would have been despised by Overbury both as "a mere Fellow of a House" and as "a melancholy man," while to Milton he must...

The literature of every modern country is made up of many elements, contributed by various races; and has been modified at different times by foreign influences. Thus, among the...

Edward FitzGerald (1809-1883), a contemporary at Trinity College, Cambridge, of Thackeray and Tennyson, was in later life the friend of both. Though he vehemently admired Tennys...

The novel, since the days of the mediaeval romances, and the Elizabethan prose stories from Sidney's "Arcadia" to the tales of Greene and Nash, was never quite unrepresented in...

Books written on English soil in the Latin language are no part of English literature. It is necessary, however, to notice them, because they testify to the knowledge and taste...

Contemporary with Chaucer, and in perfect contrast with Chaucer, whom he probably never met, was the author of the alliterative "rum, ram, ruff," poem "Piers Plowman". This auth...

Thanks to Geoffrey, at last, some time about 1200-1220, came an English poet, Layamon, a true poet (now and then), whose work reminds us occasionally at once of the Greeks whom...

Alexander Pope, the son of Catholic parents in the trading class, was born in the year of Revolution, 1688. His education was private, priests were his tutors, but he acquired L...

"Is it to the credit or discredit of Young, as a poet, that of his 'Night Thoughts' the French are particularly fond?" So asks Croft, the sardonic author of a notice on Young in...

When romance "is in," and, after Geoffrey of Monmouth, romance _was_ in, every other kind of literature "is out"; is unfashionable and little regarded. The English rhyming chron...

In one shape or another, the drama, acting with or without written words, is always in existence, at least in the form of pantomime, even among the rudest peoples. The Church pe...

He pursued his studies, found out that it was possible, and became convinced that it is also possible to square the circle. Easy as it seems, this feat has never been accomplish...

As far as literature is concerned the poetry of the period which we have been considering is infinitely more important than the prose. For most prosaic purposes, Englishmen stil...

The names of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) and of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547), are for ever memorable in English poetry, not so much for what they actually achieved...

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England and Scotland were rich in popular poetry and in ballads. We must define the meaning of "popular" and "ballad" poetry, as used in...

At the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), the invaders possessed a literature in their own language, poems on the adventures of Charlemagne, and of Roland and the other peers a...

When the Anglo-Saxons became Christians (597-655) they took the Gospel, and the rules of the Church, in the North, from the Irish missionaries who, under St. Columba of Ireland,...

Of all these Latin chroniclers by far the most important was Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bishop of St. Asaph, who finished his "History of the Britons" about 1147. Geoffrey, as has be...

Though English poets, in the fourteenth century, had a full command of rhyme, and of many forms, simple or complicated, of rhyming verse, there began a return to the old Anglo-S...

After Chaucer and Gower, English poets wandered back into the wilderness. They are most valuable to students of the development of the language, they were popular in their own t...

Much the most important novelty in the literature of this period is the "Morte d'Arthur," finished by the author, Sir Thomas Malory or Maleor, in 1469, and published in 1485. Ma...