English Writers. By HENRY MORley. Vol. 1. FROM THE BEGINNING TO BEOWULF. II. III. IV. V. VII. VIII. VI. FROM CADMON TO THE Conquest. FROM THE CONQUEST TO CHAUCER. THE LITERATURE OF THE FOURTEEnth Century (Part I.). FROM CAXTON TO COVERDALE. FROM SURREY TO SPENSER. IX.-SPENSER AND HIS TIME. X.-SHAKESPEARE AND HIS TIME: UNDER Elizabeth. A First Sketch of English Literature. From the Earliest Period to the Present Time. By HENRY MORley. Twenty-eighth Thousand. Library of English Literature. Edited by HENRY MORLEY. Complete in 5 Volumes. With 630 Illustrations from old MSS., Books, Pictures, and Sculptures. Vol. I.-SHORTER ENGLISH POEMS. II. ILLUSTRATIONS OF ENGLISH RELIGION. IV.-SHORTER WORKS IN ENGLISH PROSE. V.-SKETCHES OF LONGER WORKS IN ENGLISH VERSE AND PROSE CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, Ludgate Hill, London. AN ATTEMPT TOWARDS A HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE BY HENRY MORLEY LL.D. LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE AT AND W. HALL GRIFFIN B.A. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE AT QUeen's college LONDON ΧΙ SHAKESPEARE AND HIS TIME: UNDER JAMES I. CASSELL AND COMPANY LIMITED LONDON PARIS & MELBOURNE 1895 [ALL RIGHTS reserved] PREFACE. BORN September 15th, 1822, the teacher and friend whose unfinished volume I have attempted to complete died in his seventy-second year on May 14th, 1894, at Carisbrooke, Isle of Wight. Only two years before, Professor Morley had written the name of that place beneath a memorial sketch of a fellow-worker who, like himself, "was slowly crowning hist life's work with a History of English Literature," when the hand of death had caused it to be "left a fragment." And as one reads again the words "We sorrow for the loss of a strong man from the little field which to some is a happy playground, but to Professor ten Brink was a place of labour where each furrow ploughed gave hope of a harvest for the future," we feel that this utterance was but the echo of the spirit of devoted earnestness in which Henry Morley himself had wrought. Rejoicing in the treasure of England's literature, feeling that in it lay a potent influence for good, he had laboured both by spoken. and written word to sow its seed in many a furrow, and to spread the knowledge of it to the uttermost, so that, according to the words of the poet whom he loved to interpret, what *"E. W." viii. 415-6. |