Long Will

CHAPTER XII

Chapter 427,253 wordsPublic domain

Y-Robed in Russet

"Is naught to do," said Calote. "My life is like an empty house."

And if her father admonished her that she fill it, she answered him: "I am too poor. My richesse is spent."

So the summer waned, and Richard's red vengeance began to pale. The people and the King alike sickened of blood. Here and there a man was pardoned. Those two aldermen that bade the peasants come into London by the Bridge and Ald Gate in June were let go free.

"If thou canst come at the King, he will surely set free Stephen Fitzwarine," urged Will. "'Steadfast' is never Richard's watchword, natheless he doth not willingly harm his friends. He 'll do them kindness in secret, if he may not openly."

"How may I endure to live out the length of my days to my life's end?" sighed Calote. "Is naught to do."

Nevertheless, about this time she began to be seen about the gates of the Palace at Westminster, and craved leave to enter; but the guards made mock of her and drove her away. As oft as thrice in the week they did this, but she came again.

One day, 't was October's end and presently Parliament would be met together at Westminster, Calote stood on London Bridge, on the drawbridge, and saw a barge come down Thames. And when the barge was rowed beneath the drawbridge, Calote looked down, and the King sat therein with madame his mother, and certain lords and ladies of the court. One of these was Godiyeva.

The folk on the bridge peered over, and there was muttering, for the people no longer loved the King.

"Goeth to Tower for a night and a day to discover what prisoners be harboured therein and to consider their case," said one, and spat in the water.

Calote turned about and ran back to London, and so on to the Tower gate. An hour she waited, and then came forth Stephen's gaoler.

"Nay, I will bear no more messages to prisoners," said that man very rough, when she had caught his arm. "The King 's within. There 'll be a lopping of heads, and mine own wags very loose o' my neck."

"To no prisoner, good brother," pleaded Calote, "but to a fair lady; Godiyeva 's her name, madame's waiting-woman."

The gaoler grunted, and stood uncertain.

"Do but say this,--there 's a jongleuse craveth speech of her, a jongleuse that served her once."

He grunted yet more loud and went within.

After a little while he came again and a page with him, who led Calote across the outer and inner ward to the keep, and so by narrow ways and steep stairs to a turret chamber where sat the Lady Godiyeva.

"Lady," said Calote, "hast thou forgot one night in Yorkshire, at thy manor-house?"

"Mine old father is dead," Godiyeva answered, "and Eleyne, my sister, is lady o' the manor,--but I have not forgot."

"Lady,--Madame Godiyeva, I would come at King Richard. Have a boon to crave, a token to deliver."

Godiyeva bent her eyes, thoughtful, stern, upon the maid: "A token to deliver?" quoth she. "In Yorkshire thou didst wear a dagger, I saw 't, that night."

"Dost fear I 'll kill the King?" Calote smiled, very sad. "Nay,--here 's the dagger; keep it!"

"'T is Master Fitzwarine's crest," said Godiyeva.

"Ay, lady, he 's my love!--Lies low in dungeon. Here 's my boon."

"This is a strange matter," mused Godiyeva, "for that Etienne Fitzwarine is esquire and very parfait gentleman, in all the court was none so true of his word, and so courteous to ladies. But this is a common wench, a jongleuse.--Natheless, I heard him how he said, 'This damosel is promised to be my wedded wife.'--Come, I 'll pay my debt!"

Behind the arras of a little door they stood and listened. There was no sound. Then Godiyeva put her eye to the edge of the arras.

"He is alone," she said. "Go in!"

Richard stood in a window. He held a little picture in his hand, and looked on it smiling. Calote, barefoot, stepped noiseless over the floor. Godiyeva, behind the arras, coughed.

"Coeur de joie!" cried Richard, staring. But when he saw who it was that knelt, gold-haired, before him, he went white and covered his eyes.

"I would forget!" he said, "I would forget! 'T is overpast!--Shall a king never think on joyful things? Ah, give me leave to tune my thoughts to love! These six months past I 've hearkened to hatred. Was never king so meek. But now there 's a marriage toward. Wilt thou have me think on murders,--and I take a wife in January?"

"Nay,--not on murders, sire,--on pardon and peace."

His moody face cleared slow,--"Is 't an omen?" he questioned, and, stretching forth his hand with the picture, "See! here 's the lady shall be Queen of England one day,--and queens are merciful. There 's a tale of my grandmother, Philippa, how she saved the burgesses of Calais,--and they were six. Here 's but only one, and he was my childhood's friend.--She hath a wondrous pleading eye,--my lady.--'T is an omen." He went to a table and wrote somewhat on a parchment; then clapped his hands, and to the page that entered, said:--

"Bear this hastily to the warden of the Tower."

"Gramerci! Sire!" whispered Calote, and bowed her head on her knees so that her long hair lay on the ground at the King's feet as 't were a pool of sunshine.

"I ever meant to set him free--when the noblesse had forgot," said Richard huskily. "He must depart in secret, for a little while. And now may I forget murder and turn me to merriment. The Rising 's pricked flat. I will never remember it more."

"And dost thou willingly forget that day the people blessed thee for thy gifts of freedom and grace, sire? Dost thou willingly forget that day thou wast bravest man in England,--and king?"

"Hush!--Hush!" he cried. "Kings may not hearken to truth,--'t is sure confusion."

"Here 's the horn, sire, wherewith I gathered the folk into fellowship." Calote untied the bag that hung from her neck.

"O thou mischief-maker!" said Richard to his hunting-horn. "Thou betrayer unto foolishness! Thou shalt be sold to buy my wedding garment."

But now was the arras pushed aside, and Stephen came in, and his gaoler that grinned very joyous.

Calote heard. And then she had arisen to her feet, and turned her back upon the King. And Stephen kissed her hair, and her two hands that rested on his shoulders; but her face was hid.

"O my love, my lady!" said Stephen. And presently, "'T is a wondrous fair world!"

She lifted her face to speak, but he was waiting for her lips.

The gaoler made a happy clucking noise.

Richard laughed merrily. "Coeur de joie!" quoth he, "but I 'll kiss also!" and he kissed the little picture.

"'T behooves us give thanks to the King," whispered Calote. Her face was hid anew, and she spake to her love's heart that leaped against his courtepy.

Then they two turned them, hand in hand, and the King cried out, "A-a-ah!--How art thou pale!--Etienne!"

Stephen bent his knee: "Sire," he said, "wa-was nothing hid from thee;--thou knewest all th-things ever I did in that Rising. I was true to King Richard."

"This is thy sword, Etienne," quoth the King. "These many months it hath hung at my side. Take it again!"

Stephen looked on the sword, sombre, slow. "My forefathers, they were men of might," he said. "There were three died in the Holy Land doing battle with the Paynim. The Scots slew my grandfather in fair fight. My father fell in France, in the last Edward's quarrel. Next after England, the King, and my lady, I have loved my sword."

He stretched forth his hands and took it. "Oh, thou bright blade, what hosts of infidels and dastard French, what enemies to Truth and Richard, methought I 'd slay! And thou hast drunk the blood of one man only, a dead man, that gave his life for England's sake and the people. Thou wert maiden, and they dishonoured thee."

And Stephen had snapped his sword in twain across his knee.

"This is the sword that hewed Wat Tyler's head off his body," he said. "I have done with swords. Thy Majesté hath noblesse a plenty to serve thee; 't was proven in June, when Wat Tyler fell. I might not count the sword-thrusts at that time. But of common folk, peasants and labourers, there is a dearth in England. And wherefore this is so, none knoweth better than thou, sire."

Richard stirred, restless: "'T is the old Etienne, was never afeared to find fault with his king," said he, and would have made a jest of this matter, but laughter came not at his bidding.

"Thou hast need of loyal labourers, sire. So will I serve thee. If Saint Francis set his hands to labour, so may Stephen Fitzwarine, and withouten shame."

"By the Rood!" cried Richard. "Thou art lord of a manor;--born into this condition. These things be beyond man to change. They are appointed of High God."

"Natheless, God helping me, these things shall be changed, sire. Presently, o' my manor, mayst thou see a-many free labourers tilling each man his own field. And Stephen Fitzwarine shall be one."

"Thou 'rt mad!" screamed the King. "Dungeon hath darkened thy wits."

"So methought, sire," said the gaoler, "but hath more wits than most,--hath not turned a hair."

"Now, by Saint Thomas of Canterbury!" Richard shouted, "I--I--nay,--I 've signed thy pardon,--I 'll keep faith,--this once."

Then his humour changed and he began to laugh very loud:--

"Go free! Turn peasant an thou wilt! But as concerning thy land, King Richard is God's anointed, shall look to his stewardship. I will keep custom for Christ's sake. Wherefore is thy manor confiscate, and the villeins that dwell thereon, to the King."--He set his lips in a grim smile: "Who saith Richard is not a good provisor, against his wedding day?"

The gaoler pushed Stephen and Calote out of the room and down the stair:--

"Best begone," quoth he, "hath been known to change his mind," and he shut them out by a postern.

They went and sat on the side of Saint Catherine's Hill that looked on Thames. A long while they sat there, holding each other's hand, smiling each into other's eyes, saying little. But Stephen said:--

"Thou 'rt mine!"

And Calote said:--

"Methought this love was not for me!"

Her feet were bare, her kirtle frayed, and all their worldly goods was a penny the gaoler had thrust in Stephen's hand. Stephen laughed, and tossed the penny and caught it on the back of his hand. Then Calote laughed also, and said she, shaking her head and smiling:--

"'T is not true that failure lieth in wait all along life's way?" and a question grew in her eyes, and the smile faded.

He kissed her gray eyes where the shadows hovered:--

"What 's to fail?" quoth he.

"So saith my father," she made answer. "Yet meseems I must ever see the Archbishop's head above London Bridge,--and next day Wat's. Was not this failure?"

"Sweet heart," said Stephen, "I have been in prison a many months, and concerning éternité I have learned a little. W-Wat Tyler failed to be King of England. But thou and I, and those others, we did not arise up to make W-Wat Tyler king. Dost believe there liveth to-day a villein in England ho-ho-holdeth 't is righteous a man shall be bond-servant to another against his own will? Thou mayst scourge a man to silence,--but he 'll think his thought;--yea, and wh-whisper it to 's children.--We did not fail."

Then Stephen took his love's face betwixt his hands, and kissed her brow and eyes and lips:--

"I had a dream that I should dress thee in silk, pearl-broidered, and a veil of silver. But now am I a landless man; must labour with my two hands for daily bread. Natheless, am I tied to no man's manor,--may sell my labour where I will. D-dost sigh for the dream, sweet heart, and to be called Madame? Be advised in time,--a man 's ofttimes endurable if his infirmity 's shrouded in good Flemish broadcloth, but if he be naked as a needle, then must he be a man indeed--to pass."

"Now, prythee, how is 't honour to a maid if her lord lift her up to his estate?" said Calote. "But if he condescend and clothe him in her coat-armour, then is she honoured in vérité."

"In Yorkshire, mayhap I 'll find shepherding with Diggon. Wilt go thither?" Stephen asked her.

And when she had answered him Yea, he laughed soft, and sang:--

"Then I 'll put off my silken coat, And all my garments gay. Lend me thy ragged russet gown, For that 's my best array. Ohé! For that's my best array."

EPILOGUE

"Love is leche of lyf."

_The Vision Concerning Piers Plowman._ B. PASSUS I.

EPILOGUE

In the cloister of Malvern Priory schoolboys hummed and buzzed. The sick man heard them.

"I have had a vision," he said, "I must sing it." And after: "Nay,--I had forgot. 'T was long ago."

He lay on a pallet in the midst of the cloister garth, close by the sun-dial. At dusk of the day past he had knocked at the gate and fallen in the arms of the porter. All night a brother watched beside him, and after Lauds the prior came to the door of the cell.

"'T is not the Black Death, or such-like malady?" he queried.

"Nay, Father, but a bodily weakness only. Hath scaped the dawn, but I doubt not his spirit will flit at sunset."

"A friar?" 'T would seem as the word stank in the nostrils of the good Father.

"Nay,--a clerk,--belike a priest secular."

"A Wyclifite preacher?" the prior questioned sharply. "We may not harbour these Worcester Lollards."

"Hath a breviary, with prayers for the dead well thumbed. Likewise a parchment. 'T is here."

The prior unrolled the parchment beneath the window. The sky was a-flush with the coming up of the sun.

"Nay," quoth he presently, "'t is naught harmful. A poem."

The brother was peering over his prior's shoulder:--

"Here 's Holy Writ," said he.

"In Latin, brother, as is meet."

"'T is very bad Latin," the brother made answer.

The sick man spoke: "I will go up on the Hills," said he, "the Malvern Hills," and he made as to rise; but this he might not do.

The brother gave him to drink, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

"Here 's an exhortation to King Richard II.," said the prior at the window. "But Richard 's dead."

"Ay," spake the sick man. "Death and Dishonour ran a race for Richard. Dishonour caught him first, but Death hath finished him. Mine exhortation came too late, wherefore I broke off in the midst. I was ever too late or too early, all my life long."

The prior came to the bed.

"I will go up on the Hills," said the man, and sat upright, but immediately a faintness seized him and he swooned.

"Two-score and ten year, sayst thou?" quoth the prior. "Haply Brother Owyn will know him."

When the sick man was come out of his swoon he said again, "I will go a-wandering on the Malvern Hills. Let me forth,--the Hills. 'T is dark,--let me forth to the sun.--Dost mind how I said, 'The prior of Malvern shall not clap me in cloister'?--I am come home to the Hills."

"Let him be borne into the cloister garth," said the prior. "There may he fresh him in the sun."

At noon, when there was no shadow on the face of the sun-dial, Brother Owyn came hobbling slow over the grass betwixt two young monks that guided his steps. For Brother Owyn was very old and bent and blind. He had a beard like a snowdrift.

"Two-score and ten year," he mumbled, "and a poet, sayst 'ou?"

They sat him down beside the sick man's pallet, and one brought a cushion for his feet, and the other drew his hood over his head, lest the wind harm him,--howbeit 't was June. Then they went away and left him with the stranger.

"Two-score and ten year," said the old man, "and 't is as yesterday.--I go forth a pilgrimage to Truth, said he,--I have had a vision concerning Peter the Ploughman."

The sick man opened his eyes. "The ploughman knoweth the way to Truth," quoth he.

Brother Owyn lifted up his face to the sunlight, as he were listening:--

"Will Langland, art thou there?" he asked.

At the sound of his own name the sick man's wandering wits came back. He was 'ware of the old monk beside him.

"Thou canst not see?" he questioned.

"Nay, I do see very clear," said Brother Owyn, in that high, protesting voice of age. "I see a river, shineth as the sun, and on the farther side my daughter awaiteth me.--Her locks shine as bright pure gold,--loose on her shoulders so softly they lie."

"My daughter hath likewise golden hair," murmured Long Will, "and my granddaughter."

"The Lord, the King of Heaven, hath ta'en my daughter, my pearl, to be his bride," said the old man. He held his head upright, very proud, but then it began to shake and shake, till it dropped again, and his chin was sunk in his breast.

"My daughter is wife to truest man in England; might have been courtier to the King; but he 's a shepherd in Yorkshire,--and his son 's a shepherd. They be free labourers, no villeins," cried Will.

One in the cloister heard him and came running.

"Ay," assented Brother Owyn, his head ever a-nod, "the King's Son of Heaven, he is the Good Shepherd."

The other monk poured wine between the sick man's white lips and smoothed his pillow. Then he drew aside Brother Owyn's cowl and shouted in his ear, "Dost know him, brother, dost remember him?"

"Hath a daughter," the old man answered, "but so have I. Her name 's Margaret,--which is to mean a pearl."

"Calote is my daughter called," the sick man made known very clear.

The young monk shrugged his shoulders and went back to the cloister.

After a little while Brother Owyn spoke:--

"Will Langland had a daughter called Calote. She stood t' other side the brook, and the light o' the sun blinded mine eyen. Methought 't was mine own daughter come to take me home. I mind it as 't were yesterday. 'In the city where the wall is jasper and the gates are twelve pearls,' quoth she, 'will there be any villeins to labour while other men feast?' I mind it as 't were yesterday."

"I am Will Langland," said the sick man.

"Yea, thou art he," returned the old monk. "I had forgot."

A little while they slept in the sun, but betwixt the hours of sext and nones, Will moved his head on his pillow:--

"If any goeth into Yorkshire, I would have him seek out Stephen Fitzwarine, and Calote his wife, and say to them that Will Langland hath gone home to the Hills of Malvern for a little space. They would have had me stay. My daughter wept when she bade good-by, and the babe on her arm held me by my hair.--All 's not failure,--brother."

The old man dozed and did not hear him.

"She stood in her cottage doorway,--my daughter,--and the wolds stretching far like the billows of the sea. But they 're not the Hills of Malvern.

"'We 'll watch for thee, father,' she said, 'bide not long away. Here 's thy corner by the fireside. Here 's home.'--But I was born in the Malvern Hills, my daughter.

"Stephen saw me as I crossed the wold.--He stood in the midst of his flock; and young Will ran and gave me his shepherd's crook,--'Thou hast no staff, gran'ther,' he said, 'I 'll fashion me another.' 'T was early morn,--springtime. But I 've come back to Malvern--for a little"--

"Here is a safe refuge for them that wait," the old man answered.

Long Will moved his head, restless. "But I may not wait long," he said, "I go forth a pilgrimage to Truth, that dwelleth in the Kingdom of Rightwisnesse."

"My daughter dwelleth therein,--I prythee tell her I 'm an old man now. I am fain to cross the river."

"I will," said the sick man.

So they were silent until the setting of the sun. Then said Long Will out aloud:--

"By Christ--I will become a pilgrim, And wander as wide as the world reaches, To seek Piers the Ploughman that Pride might destroy-- ... Now Kynde me avenge, And send me success and salvation till I have Piers Ploughman."

So, after the sun was set, that other brother came forth, and the prior.

"Said I not so, that he would be gone about now?" quoth the brother.

"Yea," smiled Brother Owyn. "Hath gone on pilgrimage. This long-legged lad 's more than he seems. Prythee let him go, prior. He 's a poet,--will one day bring honour to Malvern Priory."

MADE AT THE TEMPLE PRESS LETCHWORTH IN GREAT BRITAIN

EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY

A LIST OF THE 896 VOLUMES ARRANGED UNDER AUTHORS

_Anonymous works are given under titles. Anthologies, Dictionaries, etc. are arranged at the end of the list._

Abbott's Rollo at Work, etc., 275

Addison's Spectator, 164-7

Æschylus's Lyrical Dramas, 62

Æsop's and Other Fables, 657

Aimard's The Indian Scout, 428

Ainsworth's Tower of London, 400 " Old St. Paul's, 522 " Windsor Castle, 709 " The Admirable Crichton, 894 " Rookwood, 870

A Kempis's Imitation of Christ, 484

Alcott's Little Women, and Good Wives, 248 " Little Men, 512

Alpine Club: Peaks, Passes and Glaciers, 778

Andersen's Fairy Tales, 4 " More Fairy Tales, 822

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 624

Anson's Voyages, 510

Aristophanes' Acharnians, etc., 344 " Frogs, etc., 516

Aristotle's Nicomachaen Ethics, 547 " Politics, 605

Armour's Fall of the Nibelungs, 312 " Gudrun, 880

Arnold's (Matthew) Essays, 115 " Poems, 334 " Study of Celtic Literature, etc., 458

Aucassin and Nicolette, 497

Augustine's (Saint) Confessions, 200

Aurelius's (Marcus) Meditations, 9

Austen's (Jane) Sense and Sensibility, 21 " Pride and Prejudice, 22 " Mansfield Park, 23 " Emma, 24 " Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion, 25

Bacon's Essays, 10 " Advancement of Learning, 719

Bagehot's Literary Studies, 520, 521

Baker's (Sir S. W.) Cast up by the Sea, 539

Ballantyne's Coral Island, 245 " Martin Rattier, 246 " Ungava, 276

Balzac's Wild Ass's Skin, 26 " Eugénie Grandet, 169 " Old Goriot, 170 " Atheist's Mass, etc., 229 " Christ in Flanders, etc., 284 " The Chouans, 285 " Quest of the Absolute, 286 " Cat and Rachet, etc., 349 " Catherine de Medici, 419 " Cousin Pons, 463 " The Country Doctor, 530 " Rise and Fall of César Birotteau, 596 " Lost Illusions, 656 " The Country Parson, 686 " Ursule Mirouet, 733

Barbusse's Under Fire, 798

Barca's (Mme C. de la) Life in Mexico, 664

Baxter's (Richard) Autobiography, 868

Bates's Naturalist on the Amazon, 446

Beaumont and Fletcher's Selected Plays, 506

Beaumont's (Mary) Joan Seaton, 597

Bede's Ecclesiastical History, 479

Belt's Naturalist in Nicaragua, 561

Berkeley's (Bishop) Principles of Human Knowledge, New Theory of Vision, etc., 483

Berlioz (Hector), Life of, 602

Binns's Life of Abraham Lincoln, 783

Björnson's Plays, 625, 696

Blackmore's Lorna Doone, 304 " Springhaven, 350

Blackwell's Pioneer Work for Women, 667

Blake's Poems and Prophecies, 792

Boccaccio's Decameron, 845, 846

Boehme's The Signature of All Things, etc., 569

Bonaventura's The Little Flowers, The Life of St. Francis, etc., 485

Borrow's Wild Wales, 49 " Lavengro, 119 " Romany Rye, 120 " Bible in Spain, 151 " Gypsies in Spain, 697

Boswell's Life of Johnson, 1, 2 " Tour to the Hebrides, 387

Boult's Asgard and Norse Heroes, 689

Boyle's The Sceptical Chymist, 559

Bright's (John) Speeches, 252

Brontë's (A.) The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and Agnes Grey, 685

Brontë's (C.) Jane Eyre, 287 " Shirley, 288 " Villette, 351 " The Professor, 417

Brontë's (E.) Wuthering Heights, 243

Brown's (Dr. John) Rab and His Friends, etc., 116

Browne's (Frances) Grannie's Wonderful Chair, 112

Browne's (Sir Thos.) Religio Medici, etc., 92

Browning's Poems, 1833-44, 41 " 1844-64, 42 " The Ring and the Book, 502

Buchanan's Life and Adventures of Audubon, 601

Bulfinch's The Age of Fable, 472 " Legends of Charlemagne, 556

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, 204 " Grace Abounding, and Mr. Badman, 815

Burke's American Speeches and Letters, 340 " Reflections on the French Revolution, etc., 460

Burnet's History of His Own Times, 85

Burney's Evelina, 352

Burns's Poems and Songs, 94

Burton's East Africa, 500

Burton's (Robert) Anatomy of Melancholy, 886-888

Butler's Analogy of Religion, 90

Butler's (Samuel) Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, 881

Butler's The Way of All Flesh, 895

Buxton's Memoirs, 773

Byron's Complete Poetical and Dramatic Works, 486-8

Cæsar's Gallic War, etc., 702

Calderon's Plays, 819

Canton's Child's Book of Saints, 61

Canton's Invisible Playmate, etc., 566

Carlyle's French Revolution, 31, 32 " Letters, etc., of Cromwell, 266-8 " Sartor Resartus, 278 " Past and Present, 608 " Essays, 703, 704 " Reminiscences, 875

Carroll's (Lewis) Alice in Wonderland, etc., 836

Castiglione's The Courtier, 807

Cellini's Autobiography, 51

Cervantes' Don Quixote, 385, 386

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 307

Chesterfield's Letters to his Son, 823

Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian Romances, 698

Cibber's Apology for his Life, 668

Cicero's Select Letters and Orations, 345

Clarke's Tales from Chaucer, 537 " Shakespeare's Heroines, 109-11

Cobbett's Rural Rides, 638, 639

Coleridge's Biographia, 11 " Golden Book of Poetry, 43 " Lectures on Shakspeare, 162

Collins's Woman in White, 464

Collodi's Pinocchio, 538

Converse's Long Will, 328

Cook's (Captain) Voyages, 99

Cooper's The Deerslayer, 77 " The Pathfinder, 78 " Last of the Mohicans, 79 " The Pioneer, 171 " The Prairie, 172

Cowper's Letters. 774 " Poems, 872

Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece, 721

Craik's Manual of English Literature, 346

Craik (Mrs.). _See_ Mulock.

Creasy's Fifteen Decisive Battles, 300

Crèvecoeur's Letters from an American Farmer, 640

Curtis's Prue and I, and Lotus, 418

Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, 588

Dante's Divine Comedy, 308

Darwin's Origin of Species, 811 " Voyage of the Beagle, 104

Dasent's Story of Burnt Njal, 558

Daudet's Tartarin of Tarascon, 423

Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, 59 " Captain Singleton, 74 " Memoirs of a Cavalier, 283 " Journal of Plague, 289 " Tour through England and Wales, 820, 821 " Moll Flanders, 837

De Joinville's Memoirs of the Crusades, 333

Demosthenes' Select Orations, 546

Dennis's Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, 183. 184

De Quincey's Lake Poets, 163 " Opium-Eater, 223 " English Mail Coach, etc., 609

De Retz (Cardinal), Memoirs of, 735, 736

Descartes' Discourse on Method, 570

Dickens's Barnaby Rudge, 76 " Tale of Two Cities, 102 " Old Curiosity Shop, 173 " Oliver Twist, 233 " Great Expectations, 234 " Pickwick Papers, 235 " Bleak House, 236 " Sketches by Boz, 237 " Nicholas Nickleby, 238 " Christmas Books, 239 " Dombey and Son, 240 " Martin Chuzzlewit, 241 " David Copperfield, 242 " American Notes, 290 " Child's History of England, 291 " Hard Times, 292 " Little Dorrit, 293 " Our Mutual Friend, 294 " Christmas Stories, 414 " Uncommercial Traveller, 536 " Edwin Drood, 725 " Reprinted Pieces, 744

Disraeli's Coningsby, 535

Dodge's Hans Brinker, 620

Donne's Poems, 867

Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, 501 " The House of the Dead, 533 " Letters from the Underworld, etc., 654 " The Idiot, 682 " Poor Folk, and the Gambler, 711 " The Possessed, 861, 862 " The Brothers Karamazov, 802, 803

Dowden's Life of R. Browning, 701

Dryden's Dramatic Essays. 568

Dufferin's Letters from High Latitudes, 499

Dumas' The Three Musketeers, 81 " The Black Tulip, 174 " Twenty Years After, 175 " Marguerite de Valois, 326 " The Count of Monte Cristo, 393 394 " The Forty-Five, 420 " Chicot the Jester, 421 " Vicomte de Bragelonne, 593-5 " Le Chevalier de Maison Rouge, 614

Du Maurier's Trilby, 863

Duruy's Heroes of England, 471 " History of France, 737, 738

Edgar's Cressy and Poictiers, 17 " Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 320

Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, etc., 410

Eighteenth-Century Plays, 818

Eliot's Adam Bede, 27 " Silas Marner, 121 " Romola, 231 " Mill on the Floss, 325 " Felix Holt, 353 " Scenes of Clerical Life, 468 " Middlemarch, 2 vols., 854-5

Elyot's Gouernour, 227

Emerson's Essays, 12 " Representative Men, 279 " Nature, Conduct of Life, etc., 322 " Society and Solitude, etc., 567 " Poems, 715

Epictetus's Moral Discourses, 404

Erckmann-Chatrian's The Conscript and Waterloo, 354 " Story of a Peasant, 706, 707

Euclid's Elements, 891

Euripides' Plays, 63, 271

Evans's Holy Graal, 445

Evelyn's Diary, 220, 221

Everyman and other Interludes, 381

Ewing's (Mrs.) Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances, etc., 730 " Jackanapes, Daddy Darwin's Dovecot, and The Story of a Short Life, 731

Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity, 576

Ferrier's (Susan) Marriage, 816

Fielding's Amelia, 2 vols., 852-3 " Tom Jones, 355, 356 " Joseph Andrews, 467 " Jonathan Wild and the Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon, 877

Finlay's Byzantine Empire, 33 " Greece under the Romans, 185

Flaubert's Madame Bovary, 808 " Salammbo, 869

Fletcher's (Beaumont and) Selected Plays, 506

Ford's Gatherings from Spain, 152

Forster's Life of Dickens, 781, 782

Fox's (George) Journal, 754

Fox's (Charles James) Selected Speeches, 759

Francis's (Saint), The Little Flowers, etc., 485

Franklin's Journey to the Polar Sea, 447

Freeman's Old English History for Children, 540

French Mediaeval Romances, 557

Froissart's Chronicles, 57

Froude's Short Studies, 13, 705 " Henry VIII., 372-4

Froude's Edward VI, 375 " Mary Tudor, 477 " History of Queen Elizabeth's Reign, 583-7 " Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield, 666

Galt's Annals of the Parish, 427

Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty, 263

Gaskell's Cranford, 83 " Life of Charlotte Brontë, 318 " Sylvia's Lovers, 524 " Mary Barton, 598 " Cousin Phillis, etc., 615 " North and South, 680

Gatty's Parables from Nature, 158

Geoffrey of Monmouth's Histories of the Kings of Britain, 577

George's Progress and Poverty, 560

Gibbon's Roman Empire, 434-6, 474-6 " Autobiography, 511

Gilfillan's Literary Portraits, 348

Giraldus Cambrensis, Wales, 272

Gleig's Life of Wellington, 341 " The Subaltern, 708

Goethe's Conversations with Eckermann, 851 " Faust, 335 " Wilhelm Meister, 599, 600

Gogol's Dead Souls, 726 " Taras Bulba, 740

Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, 295 " Poems and Plays, 415

Goncharov's Oblomov, 878

Gorki's Through Russia, 741

Gotthelf's Ulric the Farm Servant, 228

Gray's Poems and Letters, 628

Green's Short History of the English People, 727, 728. The cloth edition is in 2 vols. All other editions are in 1 vol.

Grettir Saga, 699

Grimm's Fairy Tales, 56

Grote's History of Greece, 186-197

Guest's (Lady) Mabinogion, 97

Hahnemann's The Organon of the Rational Art of Healing, 663

Hakluyt's Voyages, 264, 265, 313, 314, 338, 339, 388, 389

Hallam's Constitutional History, 621-3

Hamilton's The Federalist, 519

Harte's Luck of Roaring Camp, 681

Harvey's Circulation of Blood, 262

Hawthorne's Wonder Book, 5 " The Scarlet Letter, 122

Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables, 176 " The Marble Faun, 424 " Twice Told Tales, 531 " Blithedale Romance, 592

Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 65 " Table Talk, 321 " Lectures, 411 " Spirit of the Age and Lectures on English Poets, 459 " Plain Speaker, 814

Hebbel's Plays, 694

Heimskringla: the Olaf Sagas, 717 " Sagas of the Norse Kings, 847

Helps' (Sir Arthur) Life of Columbus, 332

Herbert's Temple, 309

Herodotus, 405, 406

Herrick's Hesperides, 310

Hobbes's Leviathan, 691

Holinshed's Chronicle, 800

Holmes's Life of Mozart, 564

Holmes's (O. W.) Autocrat, 66 " Professor, 67 " Poet, 68

Homer's Iliad, 453 " Odyssey, 454

Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 201, 202

Horace's Complete Poetical Works, 515

Houghton's Life and Letters of Keats, 801

Howard's (E.), Rattlin the Reefer, 857

Howard's (John) State of the Prisons, 835

Hughes's Tom Brown's Schooldays, 58

Hugo's (Victor) Les Misérables, 363, 364 " Notre Dame, 422 " Toilers of the Sea, 509

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, etc., 548, 549

Hunt's (Leigh) Selected Essays, 829

Hutchinson's (Col.) Memoirs, 317

Huxley's Man's Place in Nature, 47 " Select Lectures and Lay Sermons, 498

Ibsen's The Doll's House, etc., 494 " Ghosts, etc., 552 " Pretender, Pillars of Society Rosmersholm, 659 " Brand, 716 " Lady Inger, etc., 729 " Peer Gynt, 747

Ingelow's Mopsa the Fairy, 619

Irving's Sketch Book, 117 " Conquest of Granada, 478; " Life of Mahomet, 513

Italian Short Stories, 876

James's (G. P. R.) Richelieu, 357

James (Wm.), Selections from, 739

Jefferies' (Richard) Bevis, 850

Johnson's (Dr.) Lives of the Poets, 770-1

Jonson's (Ben) Plays. 489, 490

Josephus's Wars of the Jews, 712

Kalidasa's Shakuntala, 629

Keats's Poems, 101

Keble's Christian Year, 690

King's Life of Mazzini, 562

Kinglake's Eothen, 337

Kingsley's (Chas.) Westward Ho!, 20 " Heroes, 113 " Hypatia, 230 " Water Babies, and Glaueus, 277 " Hereward the Wake, 206 " Alton Locke, 462 " Yeast, 611 " Madam How and Lady Why, 777 " Poems, 793

Kingsley's (Henry) Ravenshoe, 28 " Geoffrey Hamlyn, 416

Kingston's Peter the Whaler, 6 " Three Midshipmen, 7

Kirby's Kalevala, 259-60

Koran, 380

Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare, 8 " Essays of Elia, 14 " Letters, 342, 343

Landor's Imaginary Conversations and Poems, 890

Lane's Modern Egyptians, 315

Langland's Piers Plowman, 571

Latimer's Sermons, 40

Law's Serious Call, 91

Layamon's (Wace and) Arthurian Chronicles, 578

Lear (Edward). _See under_ Anthologies

Le Sage's Gil Blas, 437, 438

Leslie's Memoirs of John Constable, 563

Lessing's Laocoön, etc., 843

Lever's Harry Lorrequer, 177

Lewes' Life of Goethe, 269

Lincoln's Speeches, etc., 206

Livy's History of Rome, 603, 609 670, 749, 755, 756

Locke's Civil Government, 751

Lockhart's Life of Napoleon, 3 " Life of Scott, 55 " Life of Burns, 156

Longfellow's Poems, 382

Lönnrott's Kalevala, 259, 260

Lover's Handy Andy, 178

Lowell's Among My Books, 607

Lucretius's Of the Nature of Things, 750

Lützow's History of Bohemia, 432

Lyell's Antiquity of Man, 700

Lytton's Harold, 15 " Last of the Barons, 18 " Last Days of Pompeii, 80 " Pilgrims of the Rhine, 390 " Rienzi, 532

Macaulay's England, 34-6 " Essays, 225, 226 " Speeches on Politics, etc., 399 " Miscellaneous Essays, 439

MacDonald's Sir Gibbie, 678 " Phantastes, 732

Machiavelli's Prince, 280 " Florence, 376

Maine's Ancient Law, 734

Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. 45, 46

Malthus on the Principles of Population, 692, 693

Mandeville's Travels, 812

Manning's Sir Thomas More, 19 " Mary Powell, and Deborah's Diary, 324

Marlowe's Plays and Poems, 383

Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy, 82 " Little Savage, 159 " Masterman Ready, 160 " Peter Simple, 232 " Children of New Forest, 247 " Percival Keene, 358 " Settlers in Canada, 370 " King's Own, 580 " Jacob Faithful, 618

Martinean's Feats on the Fjords, 429

Martinengo-Cesaresco's Folk-Lore and other Essays, 673

Marx's Capital, 848, 849

Maurice's Kingdom of Christ, 146-7

Mazzinl's Duties of Man, etc., 224

Melville's Moby Dick, 179 " Typee, 180 " Omoo, 297

Mérimée's Carmen, etc., 834

Merivale's History of Rome, 433

Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz, 842

Mignet's French Revolution, 713

Mill's Utilitarianism, Liberty, Representative Government, 482 " Rights of Woman, 825

Miller's Old Red Sandstone, 103

Milman's History of the Jews, 377, 378

Milton's Areopagitica and other Prose Works, 795 " Poems, 384

Molière's Comedies, 830-1

Mommsen's History of Rome, 542-5

Montagu's (Lady) Letters, 69

Montaigne's Essays, 440-2

More's Utopia, and Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, 461

Morier's Hajji Baba, 679

Morris's (Wm.) Early Romances, 261 " Life and Death of Jason, 575

Morte D'Arthur Romances, 634

Motley's Dutch Republic, 86-8

Mulock's John Halifax, 123

Neale's Fall of Constantinople, 655

Newcastle's (Margaret, Duchess of) Life of the First Duke of Newcastle, etc., 722

Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, 636 " On the Scope and Nature of University Education, and a Paper on Christianity and Scientific Investigation, 723

Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, 892

Oliphant's Salem Chapel, 244

Omar Khayyam, 819

Osborne (Dorothy), Letters of, 674

Owen's (Robert) A New View of Society, etc., 799

Paine's Rights of Man, 718

Palgrave's Golden Treasury, 96

Paltock's Peter Wilkins, 673

Park's (Mungo) Travels, 205

Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, 302, 303

Pascall's Pensees, 874

Paston Letters, 752, 753

Peacock's Headlong Hall, 327

Penn's The Peace of Europe, Some Fruits of Solitude, etc., 724

Pepys's Diary, 53, 54

Percy's Reliques, 148, 149

Pitt's Orations, 145

Plato's Republic, 64 " Dialogues, 456, 457

Plutarch's Lives, 407-409 " Moralia, 565

Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination, 336 " Poems and Essays. 791

Polo's (Marco) Travels, 306

Pope's Complete Poetical Works, 760

Prescott's Conquest of Peru, 301 " Conquest of Mexico, 397, 398

Prévost's Manon Lescaut, etc., 834

Procter's Legends and Lyrics, 150

Quiller-Couch's Hetty Wesley, 864

Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, 26, 827

Radcliffe's (Mrs. Ann) The Mysteries of Udolpho, 865, 866

Ramayana and Mahabharata, 403

Reade's The Cloister and the Hearth, 29 " Peg Woffington, 299

Reid's (Mayne) Boy Hunters of the Mississippi, 582 " The Boy Slaves, 797

Renan's Life of Jesus, 805

Reynold's Discourses, 118

Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 590

Richardson's Pamela, 683, 684 " Clarissa, 882-5

Roberts' (Morley) Western Avernus, 762

Robertson's Religion and Life, 37 " Christian Doctrine, 38 " Bible Subjects, 39

Robinson's (Wade) Sermons, 637

Roget's Thesaurus, 630, 631

Rossetti's (D. G.) Poems, 627

Rousseau's Confessions, 859, 860 " Emile, 518 " Social Contract and other Essays, 660

Ruskin's Seven Lamps of Architecture, 207 " Modern Painters, 208-212 " Stones of Venice, 213-215 " Unto this Last, etc., 216 " Elements of Drawing, etc., 217 " Pre-Raphaelitism, etc., 218 " Sesame and Lilies, 219 " Ethics of the Dust, 282 " Crown of Wild Olive, and Cestus of Aglaia, 323 " Time and Tide, etc., 450 " The Two Boyhoods, 683

Russell's Life of Gladstone, 661

Sand's (George) The Devil's Pool, and François the Waif, 534

Scheffel's Ekkehard, 529

Scott's (M.) Tom Cringle's Log, 710

Scott's (Sir W.) Ivanhoe, 16 " Fortunes of Nigel, 71 " Woodstock, 72 " Waverley, 75 " The Abbot, 124 " Anne of Geierstein, 125 " The Antiquary, 126 " Highland Widow, and Betrothed, 127 " Black Dwarf, Legend of Montrose, 128 " Bride of Lammermoor, 129 " Castle Dangerous, Surgeon's Daughter, 130 " Robert of Paris, 131 " Fair Maid of Perth, 132 " Guy Mannering, 133 " Heart of Midlothian, 134 " Kenilworth, 135 " The Monastery, 136 " Old Mortality, 137 " Peveril of the Peak, 138 " The Pirate, 139 " Quentin Durward, 140 " Redgauntlet, 141 " Rob Roy, 142 " St. Ronan's Well, 143 " The Talisman, 144 " Lives of the Novelists, 331 " Poems and Plays, 550, 551

Seebohm's Oxford Reformers, 665

Seeley's Ecce Homo, 305

Sienkiewiez's Tales, 871

Sewell's (Anna) Black Beauty, 748

Shakespeare's Comedies, 153 " Histories, etc., 154 " Tragedies, 155

Shelley's Poetical Works, 257, 258

Shelley's (Mrs.) Frankenstein, 616 " Rights of Women, 825

Sheppard's Charles Auchester, 505

Sheridan's Plays, 95

Sismondi's Italian Republics, 250

Smeaton's Life of Shakespeare, 514

Smith's Wealth of Nations, 412, 413

Smith's (George) Life of Wm. Carey, 395

Smollett's Roderick Random, 790 " Peregrine Pickle, 838, 839

Sophocles' Dramas, 114

Southey's Life of Nelson, 52

Spectator, 164-7

Speke's Source of the Nile, 50

Spencer's (Herbert) Essays on Education, 503

Spenser's Faerie Queene, 443, 444 " The Shepherd's Calendar, 879

Spinoza's Ethics, etc., 481

Spyri's Heidi, 431

Stanley's Memorials of Canterbury, 89 " Eastern Church, 251

Steele's The Spectator, 164-7

Sterne's Tristram Shandy, 617 " Sentimental Journey and Journal to Eliza, 796

Stevenson's Treasure Island and Kidnapped, 763 " Master of Ballantrae and the Black Arrow, 764 " Virginibus Puerisque and Familiar Studies of Men and Books, 765 " An Inland Voyage, Travels with a Donkey, and Silverado Squatters, 766 " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Merry Men, etc., 767 " Poems, 768 " In the South Seas and Island Nights' Entertainments, 769

St. Francis, The Little Flowers of, etc., 485

Stow's Survey of London, 589

Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, 371

Strickland's Queen Elizabeth, 100

Surtees' Jorrocks' Jaunts, 817

Swedenborg's Heaven and Hell, 379 " Divine Love and Wisdom, 635 " Divine Providence, 658 " The True Christian Religion, 893

Swift's Gulliver's Travels, 60 " Journal to Stella, 757 " Tale of a Tub, etc., 347

Swiss Family Robinson, 430

Tacitus's Annals, 273 " Agricola and Germania, 274

Taylor's Words and Places, 517

Tennyson's Poems, 44, 626

Thackeray's Esmond, 73 " Vanity Fair, 298 " Christmas Books, 359 " Pendennis, 425, 426 " Newcomes, 465, 466 " The Virginians, 507, 508 " English Humorists, and The Four Georges, 610 " Roundabout Papers, 687

Thierry's Norman Conquest, 198, 199

Thoreau's Walden, 281

Thucydides' Peloponnesian War, 455

Tolstoy's Master and Man, and Other Parables and Tales, 469 " War and Peace, 525-7 " Childhood, Boyhood and Youth, 591 " Anna Karenina, 612, 613

Trench's On the Study of Words and English Past and Present, 788

Trollope's Barchester Towers, 30 " Dr. Thorne, 360 " Framley Parsonage, 181 " Golden Lion of Granpere, 761 " Last Chronicles of Barset, 391, 392 " Phineas Finn, 832-3 " Small House at Allington, 361 " The Warden, 182

Trotter's The Bayard of India, 396 " Hodson of Hodson's Horse, 401 " Warren Hastings, 452

Turgenev's Virgin Soil, 528 " Liza, 677 " Fathers and Sons, 742

Tyndall's Glaciers of the Alps, 98

Tytler's Principles of Translation, 168

Vasari's Lives of the Painters, 784-7

Verne's (Jules) Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, 319 " Dropped from the Clouds, 367 " Abandoned, 368 " The Secret of the Island, 369 " Five Weeks in a Balloon, and Around the World in Eighty Days, 779

Virgil's Æneid, 161 " Eclogues and Georgics, 222

Voltaire's Life of Charles XII, 270 " Age of Louis XIV, 780

Wace and Layamon's Arthurian Chronicles, 578

Wakefield's Letter from Sydney, etc., 828

Walpole's Letters, 775

Walton's Compleat Angler, 70

Waterton's Wanderings in South America, 772

Wesley's Journal, 105-108

White's Selborne, 48

Whitman's Leaves or Grass, and Democratic Vistas, etc., 573

Whyte-Melville's Gladiators, 523

Wilde's Plays, Prose Writings and Poems, 858

Wood's (Mrs. Henry) The Channings, 84

Woolman's Journal, etc., 402

Wordsworth's Shorter Poems, 203 " Longer Poems, 311

Xenophon's Cyropædia, 67

Yellow Book, 503

Yonge's The Dove in the Eagle's Nest, 329 " The Book of Golden Deeds, 330 " The Heir of Redclyffe, 362

Yonge's The Little Duke, 470 " The Lances of Lynwood, 570

Young's (Arthur) Travels in France and Italy, 720

_Anthologies, Dictionaries, etc._:

A Book of English Ballads, 572

A Book of Heroic Verse, 574

A Book of Nonsense, by Edward Lear, and Others, 806

A Century of Essays, An Anthology, 653

American Short Stories of the Nineteenth Century, 840

A New Book of Sense and Nonsense, 813

An Anthology of English Prose: From Bede to Stevenson, 675

An Encyclopædia of Gardening, by Walter P. Wright, 555

Ancient Hebrew Literature, 4 vols., 253-6

Anglo-Saxon Poetry, 794

Annals of Fairyland, 365, 366, 541

Anthology of British Historical Speeches and Orations, 714

Atlas of Classical Geography, 451

Atlases, Literary and Historical: Europe, 496; America, 553; Asia, 633; Africa and Australasia, 662

Dictionary, Biographical, of English Literature, 449 " of Dates, 554 " Everyman's English, 776 " of Non-Classical Mythology, 632 " Smaller Classical, 495 " of Quotations and Proverbs, 809-10

English Short Stories. An Anthology, 743

Fairy Gold, 157

Fairy Tales from the Arabian Nights, 249

French Short Stories, 896

Golden Treasury of Longer Poems, 746

Minor Elizabethan Drama, 491, 492

Minor Poets of the Eighteenth Century, 844

Minor Poets of the 17th Century, 873

Mother Goose, 473

Muses' Pageant, The, 581, 606, 671

New Golden Treasury, 695

New Testament, The, 93

A Poetry Book for Boys and Girls, 894

Political Liberty, a Symposium, 745

Prayer Books of King Edward VI. 1st and 2nd, 448

Prelude to Poetry, 789

Reader's Guide to Everyman's Library, by R. Farquharson Sharp and E. Rhys, 889

Restoration Plays, 604

Russian Short Stories, 758

Shorter Novels: Elizabethan, 824 " Jacobean and Restoration, 841 " Eighteenth Century, 856

Theology in the English Poets, 493

Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, Roget's, 630, 631

NOTE--The following numbers are at present out of print: 89, 110, 111, 146, 227, 228, 244, 275, 390, 418, 565, 597, 664

LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON & CO. INC.

Transcriber's Notes:

Punctuation, use of hyphens, and accent marks were standardized. Spaces were retained in contractions of verbs. Obsolete and alternative spellings were not changed.

The following were corrected:

'jolyf' to 'joly' ... I would I were that joly gentil one, ... 'wherefor' to 'wherefore' ... the gold wherefore the people ... 'Thorough' to Through' ... Through parliament doth the King ... duplicate 'the' removed ... Ballantrae and the Black Arrow ...