A History of English Literature | Page 7

Ossianic imitations. Burns, 1759-96. Blake.
THE DRAMA. Pseudo-Classical Tragedy, Addison's 'Cato,' 1713. Sentimental Comedy. Domestic Tragedy. Revival of genuine Comedy of Manners. Goldsmith, 'She Stoops to Conquer,' 1773. Sheridan.
VIII. The Romantic Triumph, 1798 to about 1830. Coleridge, 1772-1834. Wordsworth, 1770-1850. Southey, 1774-1843. Scott, 1771-1832. Byron, 1788-1824. Shelley, 1792-1822. Keats, 1759-1821.
IX. The Victorian Period, about 1830-1901. Victoria Queen, 1837-1901.
ESSAYISTS. POETS. NOVELISTS.
Macaulay, 1800-1859. Mrs. Browning, 1806- Charlotte Bront��, Carlyle, 1795-1881. 1861. 1816-1855. Ruskin, 1819-1900. Tennyson, 1809-1892. Dickens, 1812-1870. Browning, 1812-1889. Thackeray, 1811-1863. Matthew Arnold, Kingsley, 1819-1875. poems, 1848-58. George Eliot, 1819- Rossetti, 1828-82. 1880. Matthew Arnold, Morris, 1834-96. Reade, 1814-1884. essays, 1861-82. Swinburne, 1837-1909. Trollope, 1815-1882. Blackmore, 'Lorna Doone,' 1869. Shorthouse,' John Inglesant,' 1881. Meredith, 1828-1910. Thomas Hardy, 1840- Stevenson, 1850-1894. Kipling, 1865- Kipling, 1865-

REFERENCE BOOKS
It is not a part of the plan of this book to present any extended bibliography, but there are certain reference books to which the student's attention should be called. 'Chambers' Cyclopedia of English Literature,' edition of 1910, published in the United States by the J. B. Lippincott Co. in three large volumes at $15.00 (generally sold at about half that price) is in most parts very satisfactory. Garnett and Gosse's 'Illustrated History of English Literature, four volumes, published by the Macmillan Co. at $20.00 and in somewhat simpler form by Grosset and Dunlap at $12.00 (sold for less) is especially valuable for its illustrations. Jusserand's 'Literary History of the English People' (to 1642, G. P. Putnam's Sons, three volumes, $3.50 a volume) should be mentioned. Courthope's 'History of English Poetry' (Macmillan, six volumes, $3.25 a volume), is full and after the first volume good. 'The Cambridge History of English Literature,' now nearing completion in fourteen volumes (G. P. Putnam's Sons, $2.50 a volume) is the largest and in most parts the most scholarly general work in the field, but is generally too technical except for special students. The short biographies of many of the chief English authors in the English Men of Letters Series (Macmillan, 30 and 75 cents a volume) are generally admirable. For appreciative criticism of some of the great poets the essays of Lowell and of Matthew Arnold are among the best. Frederick Byland's 'Chronological Outlines of English Literature' (Macmillan, $1.00) is very useful for reference though now much in need of revision. It is much to be desired that students should have at hand for consultation some good short history of England, such as that of S. E. Gardiner (Longmans, Green, and Co.) or that of J. R. Green.
CHAPTER I
PERIOD I. THE BRITONS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS. TO A. D. 1066.
FOREWORD. The two earliest of the nine main divisions of English Literature are by far the longest--taken together are longer than all the others combined--but we shall pass rather rapidly over them. This is partly because the amount of thoroughly great literature which they produced is small, and partly because for present-day readers it is in effect a foreign literature, written in early forms of English or in foreign languages, so that to-day it is intelligible only through special study or in translation.
THE BRITONS. The present English race has gradually shaped itself out of several distinct peoples which successively occupied or conquered the island of Great Britain. The earliest one of these peoples which need here be mentioned belonged to the Celtic family and was itself divided into two branches. The Goidels or Gaels were settled in the northern part of the island, which is now Scotland, and were the ancestors of the present Highland Scots. On English literature they exerted little or no influence until a late period. The Britons, from whom the present Welsh are descended, inhabited what is now England and Wales; and they were still further subdivided, like most barbarous peoples, into many tribes which were often at war with one another. Though the Britons were conquered and chiefly supplanted later on by the Anglo-Saxons, enough of them, as we shall see, were spared and intermarried with the victors to transmit something of their racial qualities to the English nation and literature.
The characteristics of the Britons, which are those of the Celtic family as a whole, appear in their history and in the scanty late remains of their literature. Two main traits include or suggest all the others: first, a vigorous but fitful emotionalism which rendered them vivacious, lovers of novelty, and brave, but ineffective in practical affairs; second, a somewhat fantastic but sincere and delicate sensitiveness to beauty. Into impetuous action they were easily hurried; but their momentary ardor easily cooled into fatalistic despondency. To the mysterious charm of Nature--of hills and forests and pleasant breezes; to the loveliness and grace of meadow-flowers or of a young man or a girl; to the varied sheen of rich colors--to all attractive objects of sight and sound and motion their fancy