CONTENTS Development of Middle English Literature Geoffrey Chaucer: Poet of the Dawn. III. THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES The Fifteenth Century: The Renascence First Half of the Sixteenth Century LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ALFRED THE GREAT PAGE Frontispiece From the statue by Hamo Thornycroft, R. A. By permission of Alfred Bowker, Mayor of Winchester, England, and Honorary Secretary of the National Commemoration of King Alfred the Great. ENGLAND IN THE ANGLO-SAXON AGE. 7 REDUCED FACSIMILE OF A PAGE OF BEOWULF MANUSCRIPT IN 15 FACSIMILE TAKEN FROM AN ELEVENTH CENTURY MANUSCRIPT 51 Containing an account of the wonders of the East. FACSIMILE OF A PAGE FROM CAXTON'S SECOND EDITION OF Printed about 1484. CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY TALES THE INTERIOR OF THE SWAN THEATRE, ABOUT 1596. 85 123 From a sketch, in the University Library at Utrecht, by Johannes de Witt, a Dutch scholar. 135 QUEEN ELIZABETH. After an engraving by Holl from an original portrait in Edward VII.'s collection, St. James Palace. Autograph from Winsor's America. FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE TO THE FOURTH EDITION OF HAMLET 153 In the quarto texts (1611). Reproduced from the original copy in the Boston Public Library. FACSIMILE OF THE FIRST PAGE OF PARADISE LOST 189 Reproduced from an original copy of the first edition (1667) in the Boston Public Library. FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE, PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, FIRST EDITION 213 SCENE IN A TYPICAL ENGLISH COFFEE-HOUSE From the heading of an old Broadside of 1674. REPRODUCTION OF ORIGINAL FRONTISPIECE IN FIRST EDITION 229 . 269 465 A STUDENT'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE CHAPTER I THE ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD I. Britain and the English. II. Anglo-Saxon Poetry. III. Anglo-Saxon Prose. IV. The Nation and the Language. By the term Literature is meant those written or printed compositions which preserve the thought and experience of a race recorded Literature. in artistic form. The element of beauty must be present in greater or less degree, and such works must be inspired by a purpose to afford intellectual pleasure to the one who reads them or hears them read. Books written to give information merely are not usually inIcluded in this term; text-books, scientific treatises, chronicles, reports, and similar compilations hardly belong to literature; but works in which the imaginative power of the writer is engaged, those which move or stir the feelings and appeal to the sense of beauty which is found in every intelligent mind these make up the real literature of a people. Such are poems and dramas, prose works also, in which these elements |