been told by a company of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury, with a Prologue and connecting narrations.

EXTRACTS.
1.

Truth is the highest thing a man may keep.

II.

Of study took he moste* care and heed;
Not a word spake he more than was nede,
And that was said in forme and reverence,
And short and quicke, and ful of high sentence;
Souning in moral vertue was his speche,

And gladly wolde he lerne and gladly teche.

Prologue: The Clerk (Student).

OTHER AUTHORS OF THIS AGE.

JOHN WYCKLIFFE (1324-1384), a learned preacher, sometimes called "The Morning Star of the Reformation," author of the first English Translation of the whole Bible.

WILLIAM LANGLAND (about 1332-1400), author of a powerful allegorical poem entitled Piers Plowman.

JOHN GOWER (1320 ?-1402), called by Chaucer " Moral Gower," author of a long, tedious poem entitled Confessio Amantis (A Lover's Confession). SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE (1300-1372), author of a book of Travels.

PERIOD II.-AGE OF CAXTON.
1400-1550.

(Henry V. Henry VI., Edward IV., Edward V., Richard III., Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary.)

HIS was an age of turmoil, and it gave rise to no great author.

TH

It is celebrated in history on account of four great events:

I. The invention of printing, and its introduction into England

by Caxton;

2. The Discovery of America;

3. The Wars of the Roses;

4. The Protestant Reformation in England under Henry VIII.

In reading Chaucer it is often necessary to sound e final, to preserve the

metre.

AUTHORS OF THIS AGE.

WILLIAM CAXTON (1412-1492), the first English printer. Th first book printed in England was The Game and Play of Chess. JOHN SKELTON (1460-1529), a satirical poet, first "PoetLaureate," tutor to the Duke of York, afterwards Henry VIII., author of Colin Clout, Book of the Sparrow, etc.

SIR THOMAS Wyatt (1503–1542), a statesman and lyric poet. His best poems are his love songs.

HENRY HOWARD, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547), a writer of sonnets and songs, and first writer of blank verse. He was executed by the King upon an absurd charge of treason.

SIR THOMAS MORE (1480-1535), Chancellor to Henry VIII., executed because he refused to assist the King in getting a divorce from Catharine. Author of Utopia, a prose romance.

TYNDALE (1480-1536) and CoVERDALE (1487-1568), translators of the Bible. Henry VIII. caused Tyndale to be burned.

THIS

PERIOD III.—ELIZABETHAN AGE.

1550-1625.

(Reigns of Elizabeth and James I.)

Nature at this Within a period

HIS is the most glorious era of English literature. No other age presents such a splendid array of great names, such originality, such creative energy; and no other has added so many grand ideas to the mental treasures of the race. time seems to have been prodigal of great men. of eleven years (1553 to 1564) she produced three writers-Spenser, Shakspeare, and Bacon-either of whom would have made any age illustrious; besides many others, who, had they lived in any other period, would have stood in the first rank of authors.

Among the chief literary events of the age were the rise and marvellous development of the English drama, and the revision of the English Bible (Protestant version) under King James, in 1611.

Its chief historical events were the restoration of Protestant

supremacy, the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, and the destruction of the Spanish Armada.

We select as its literary representatives the three already men tioned,-Spenser, Shakspeare, and Bacon.

SPENSER. 1553-1599.

Edmund Spenser, whose name stands second on the roll of great English poets, was born in London in 1553; received a liberal education; was introduced at Court by Sir Philip Sidney; received from the Queen a grant of land in Ireland, where he spent several years of his life; finally, in 1599, was driven from his castle by a mob, and died soon after in London, at the age of forty-six. He was a man of pure character, elegant culture, and rare geniusone of the brightest ornaments of Elizabeth's reign.

His principal work is The Faerie Queene, a long allegory in six books, setting forth the excellence of holiness, temperance, chastity, justice, courtesy, and friendship, under the guise of knights. It is distinguished for the fertility of its invention, the beauty of its descriptions, and the wealth of its imagery. Among the best of his other poems are his Epithalamion, or marriage song, Hymns of Love, Beauty, Heavenly Love, and Heavenly Beauty, and his exquisite Sonnets.

EXTRACTS.
I.

Oh, how can beauty master the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging wrong!

Faerie Queene, Bk. I., Canto III.

II.

At last the golden oriental gate

Of greatest heaven 'gan to open fair,

And Phoebus, fresh as bridegroom to his mate,

Came dancing forth, shaking his dewy hair,

And hurled his glistening beams through gloomy air.

III.

F. Q., Bk. I., Canto V.

MINISTERING ANGELS.

And is there care in heaven? And is there love

In heavenly spirits to these creatures base,

That may compassion of their evils move?
There is; else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts: but oh, the exceeding grace
Of highest God, that loves his creatures so,
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels he sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe?

How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succor us that succor want!
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant,
Against foul fiends to aid us militant!

They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,
And their bright squadrons round about us plant,—

And all for love and nothing for reward:

Oh, why should Heavenly God to men have such regard?
F. Q., Bk. II., Canto VIII.

SHAKSPEARE. 1564-1616.

William Shakspeare, the greatest dramatist, and probably the greatest genius, of all time, was born at Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1564. His boyhood was passed in his native village, where, when about eighteen, he married Ann Hathaway, a woman eight years older than himself. Soon after he went to London where he became successively an actor, a dramatist, and a theatrical manager. Having obtained both fame and fortune, he retirea in 1611 to Stratford, where he died in 1616, on his fifty-second birthday.

His greatest works are his dramas, thirty-seven in number. These may be classified, as to their nature, into Tragedies and Comedies; as to their origin, into Historical and Fictitious. The historical plays may be still further divided into Authentic and Legendary. Among the best of his tragedies are Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear; among the best comedies, The Merchant of Venice, As you Like it, and Midsummer Night's Dream; among the best historical plays, Julius Cæsar, King Henry IV, King Henry V., and King Richard III.

EXTRACTS.

I.

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

II.

This above all-to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

III.

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;

And this our life, exempt from public haunt,

Hamlet.

Hamlet.

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

IV.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

As you Like it.

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

V.

Midsummer Night's Dream.

These our actors,

As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made of, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

BACON. 1561-1626.

The Tempest.

Sir Francis Bacon, known as Lord Bacon, was born in 1561, and died in 1626. After his graduation he spent some time in travel, then studied law, and rapidly rose from one honor to another, until