of the history of philosophy, of religion, of politics, of art, of science, and of commerce is necessary, that few students, old or young, are competent to interpret correctly the history of literature in its unbroken sequence. It is wise, then, unless the student is well equipped with a wide range of general knowledge, not to undertake the study of the history of literature in full detail, but to secure a general view of that history and to apply much of his energy to close study of the types of literature as they are found in various periods.

General contents of the periods. At the beginning of the study of each of the historical periods in this book there will be given a general description of the character of the period, but it may be well at this point to give a very summary pre-view.

In the ANGLO-SAXON age little was written which is worthy of attention excepting the epic poems and the heroic songs upon which those epic poems were based. The MIDDLE-ENGLISH period presented to mankind as its chief gift Chaucer, golden-hearted, most human poet, whom Edmund Spenser called the "well of English undefiled," and of whom Walter Savage Landor wrote that he "was worth a dozen Spensers." During the period of the RENAISSANCE we come upon the fullorbed choir consisting of Shakespeare and his fellow Elizabethans, most of whom were sane, clear-sighted, and, generally, wholesome. It was these Elizabethans who, more than any other group of writers, unlocked for us the doors of human nature in all its varying moods. The SEVENTEENTH CENTURY was a century of tumult in politics, in religion, and in all social conditions, and, as we might therefore expect, during that century there was a great deal of feverish and extravagant writing. And yet, as we should also have the right to expect of any period of human history, there were at that time some men who in their

writings provided a corrective to all the extravagant and exaggerated writing, by the production of literature in the most carefully controlled form. Many of the most exquisite and delicately made of all songs were then written by Herrick and his fellow lyric poets; and Bacon and Bunyan, Dryden and Milton, produced a large number of the world's masterpieces, covering, among them, almost all the types of literature. Furthermore, as we have a right to expect of great thinkers in times of turmoil, there came from the writers we have just named and from some others much of the best literary criticism of all time.

It was in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, however, that critical investigation of life and of literature came to be a very prominent matter. Much of this critical work was done by Jonathan Swift and Henry Fielding, the giant-like minds of that century, though that which is best known is by lesser men, - Pope and Addison. The eighteenth century was the era of the essay and of the novel, both of which are, above all things, critical of life and literature. During the EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY period, lyric poetry, with all of its frailty and yet freedom from the duller things of earth, showed itself in the most varied ways in the writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Byron, Shelley, and many others. The VICTORIAN AGE was a splendid epoch, and many of its great names are already familiar to all who begin the study of literature from the historical point of view. The PRESENT-DAY, from 1890 on, is likely to exclude from our reading much that has been of great value in the past. But it is an age in which there are at work some very earnest, thoughtful, keen, and skilled artists both in verse and prose, though the ease of publication and the present great appetite for reading make possible and almost inevitable the printing of a huge number of unworthy books.

Types of literature, their historical order.

If we trace

the types of literature through these centuries, we come upon them in about the following order: the epic, the ballad and other brief stories in verse, the drama, criticism, the essay, the novel, the lyric poem, the short-story. Many of these types are contemporaneous with each other; and in the present day all the types, with the exception of the epic such as was written by Milton and by Spenser, are being produced in profusion. Besides these types of written discourse, universally called "literary" because they are written in a manner most readily understood by the greatest number and the most varied kinds of people who read, there are the works of many noted historians, the speeches of great orators, the treatises of learned philosophers, and the daily journals. Many of these are written in the literary manner; among them the works of Macaulay and John Richard Green in history, of Burke and Webster in oratory, of Hume and Thomas Henry Huxley in philosophy and science. These works are as much a part of the history of English literature as are the novels of Thackeray or the poems of Tennyson.

General character of the types. All the activities of human life which we daily see are signs of the inner impulses and desires and plans of man's spirit. Also each product of man's writing is a symbolic illustration or sign of an intellectual or an emotional condition, or of both. The types of literature do not differ so much in the nature of their subject matter, except in the amount of subject matter included within them, as they differ in their ways of presenting their subject matter. Each type of literature differs from every other in its point of view and in its plan or structure. While no serious person has ever been sure that he can make a perfect definition of any of them, yet it will be well to try to have a fairly definite idea of what each is before one comes into touch with them in their manifold kinds and uses.

Definitions. The Epic consists of a series of stories, most of them centering about one important character, or, we may say, strung like pearls upon the strand of some great heroic personality, who represents in his history the ideals of the age which tells the stories about him. It is generally a long poem. Often any narrative poem, long or short, is called an epic, simply because it tells a story.

The Ballad is a brief story in verse, quite musical in its movement, sometimes epic because it tells a story representative of an age and a people, and sometimes lyric because it is suffused with personal emotion.

The Drama represents a crisis in the life of an individual or of a group of individuals, and, by means of dialogue, develops that important crisis through a series of minor crises to its logical conclusion. The drama is considered by many to be the most important of all the forms of literature. It is not so difficult to plan as a great novel is, but it represents the most profound and the most subtle work of all the types, and the greatest minds have given their energies to writing it.

Criticism generally takes the form of more or less brief essays, most often in prose, which attempt to explain and determine the worth of the various ways in which man has tried to express his ideas and impressions of life. Unless the term is qualified in some way," criticism" is nearly always applied to the interpretation of literature.

The Essay was defined by Dr. Samuel Johnson as a "loose. sally of the mind." But looseness in thought, and therefore in structure, does not characterize essays of the best quality. Francis Bacon thought of the essay as we think of an assay made in the office of an expert in ores. Perhaps a combination Bacon would with rea

of the idea of Dr. Johnson with that of

sonable accuracy describe the essay. The essay always at

tempts to make clear, or enforce, or develop, an idea, or the plan thought to be latent in some historical or contemporary experience. Its method may be that of story, of description, of exposition, or the technical method of argumentation.

The Novel is the most ambitious of all the kinds of literature. It endeavors to represent clearly and forcefully a view of the complex social relations of men. It usually deals with individual characters and situations upon the background of the life of a community or of a nation. The more individual its material, the more likely the novel is to be woven into the form of a plot; while the more national, or epic, the material, the more rambling is likely to be the structure of the story.

The Lyric poem is brief, highly musical, sometimes simple, sometimes richly complex in its musical harmonies. It is often as simple in the movement of its story as the ballad, yet often complex to the highest degree. It usually reflects the passion of the mind or of the heart of an individual.

The Short-story is not so modern as it is frequently said to be; but it was consciously brought almost to a state of perfection not earlier than the nineteenth century. It differs from the novel in its brevity, and, usually, in the finely wrought craftsmanship of its plot, but even more in the limited nature of its subject matter. It is only in its background that the shortstory can be said to be national, or epic, for it is too restricted in scope to deal with more than a very few incidents and a very few characters. Generally there is but one important and dominant incident related in the life of not more than one or two important characters. Change in the inner character of the persons written of in the short-story may be depicted, but there is hardly room enough for the portrayal of development of character such as is found in the novel and in the drama. The situation in the short-story is usually dramatic.