A History of English Literature by George Saintsbury (e novels for free .txt) 📕

CONTENTS CHAPTER I FROM TOTTEL'S MISCELLANY TO SPENSER The starting-point—Tottel's Miscellany—Its method and authorship—The
characteristics of its poetry—Wyatt—Surrey—Grimald—Their metres
—The stuff of their poems—The Mirror for Magistrates—Sackville—His
contributions and their characteristics—Remarks on the formal criticism
of poetry—Gascoigne—Churchyard—Tusser—Turberville—Googe—
The translators—Classical metres—Stanyhurst—Other miscellanies Pages 1-27   CHAPTER II EARLY ELIZABETHAN PROSE Outlines of Early Elizabethan Prose—Its origins—Cheke and his contemporaries
—Ascham—His style—Miscellaneous writers—Critics—Webbe—Puttenham
—Lyly—Euphues and Euphuism—Sidney—His style and critical principles
—Hooker—Greville—Knolles—Mulcaster 28-49   CHAPTER III THE FIRST DRAMATIC PERIOD Divisions of Elizabethan Drama—Its general character—Origins—Ralph Roister
Doister—Gammer Gurton's Needle—Gorboduc—The Senecan Drama—
Other early plays—The "university wits"—Their lives and characters—
Lyly (dramas)—The Marlowe group—Peele—Greene—Kyd—Marlowe
—The actor playwrights 50-81   CHAPTER IV "THE FAËRIE QUEENE" AND ITS GROUP Spenser—His life and the order of his works—The Shepherd's Calendar—The
minor poems—The Faërie Queene—Its scheme—The Spenserian stanza—
Spenser's language—His general poetical qualities—Comparison with other
English poets—His peculiar charm—The Sonneteers—Fulke Greville—
Sidney—Watson—Barnes—Giles Fletcher the elder—Lodge—Avisa—
Percy—Zepheria—Constable—Daniel—Drayton—Alcilia—Griffin—
Lynch—Smith—Barnfield—Southwell—The song and madrigal writers—
Campion—Raleigh—Dyer—Oxford, etc.—Gifford—Howell, Grove, and
others—The historians—Warner—The larger poetical works of Daniel
and Drayton—The satirists —Lodge—Donne—The poems of Donne
generally—Hall—Marston—Guilpin—Tourneur 82-156   CHAPTER V THE SECOND DRAMATIC PERIOD—SHAKESPERE Difficulty of writing about Shakespere—His life—His reputation in England
and its history—Divisions of his work—The Poems—The Sonnets—The
Plays—Characteristics of Shakespere—Never unnatural—His attitude to
morality—His humour—Universality of his range—Comments on him—
His manner of working—His variety—Final remarks—Dramatists to be
grouped with Shakespere—Ben Jonson—Chapman—Marston—Dekker 157-206   CHAPTER VI LATER ELIZABETHAN AND JACOBEAN PROSE Bacon—Raleigh—The Authorised Version—Jonson and Daniel as prose-writers
—Hakluyt—The Pamphleteers—Greene—Lodge—Harvey—Nash—Dekker
—Breton—The Martin Marprelate Controversy—Account of it, with
specimens of the chief tracts 207-252   CHAPTER VII THE THIRD DRAMATIC PERIOD Characteristics—Beaumont and Fletcher—Middleton—Webster—Heywood—
Tourneur—Day 253-288   CHAPTER VIII THE SCHOOL OF SPENSER AND THE TRIBE OF BEN Sylvester—Davies of Hereford—Sir John Davies—Giles and Phineas Fletcher
—William Browne—Wither—Drummond—Stirling—Minor Jacobean
poets—Songs from the dramatists 289-314   CHAPTER IX MILTON, TAYLOR, CLARENDON, BROWNE, HOBBES The quintet—Milton's life—His character—His periods of literary production
—First Period, the minor poems—The special excellences of Comus—
Lycidas—Second Period, the pamphlets—Their merits and defects—
Milton's prose style—Third Period, the larger poems—Milton's blank
verse—His origins—His comparative position—Jeremy Taylor's life—His
principal works—His style—Characteristics of his thought and manner—
Sir Thomas Browne—His life, works, and editions—His literary manner—
Characteristics of his style and vocabulary—His Latinising—Remarkable
adjustment of his thought and expression—Clarendon—His life—Great
merits of his History—Faults of his style—Hobbes—His life and works—
Extraordinary strength and clearness of his style 315-353   CHAPTER X CAROLINE POETRY Herrick—Carew—Crashaw—Divisions of Minor Caroline poetry—Miscellanies—
George Herbert—Sandys—Vaughan—Lovelace and Suckling—Montrose—
Quarles—More—Beaumont—Habington—Chalkhill—Marmion—Kynaston
—Chamberlayne—Benlowes—Stanley—John Hall—Patrick Carey—
Cleveland—Corbet—Cartwright, Sherburne, and Brome—Cotton—The
general characteristics of Caroline poetry—A defence of the Caroline poets 354-393   CHAPTER XI THE FOURTH DRAMATIC PERIOD Weakening of dramatic strength—Massinger—Ford—Shirley—Randolph
—Brome—Cokain—Glapthorne—Davenant—Suckling—Minor and
anonymous plays of the Fourth and other Periods—The Shakesperian
Apocrypha 394-427   CHAPTER XII MINOR CAROLINE PROSE Burton—Fuller—Lord Herbert of Cherbury—Izaak Walton—Howell—Earle
—Felltham—The rest 428-444   Conclusion 445 CHAPTER I

FROM TOTTEL'S "MISCELLANY" TO SPENSER

In a work like the present, forming part of a larger whole and preceded by another part, the writer has the advantage of being almost wholly free from a difficulty which often presses on historians of a limited and definite period, whether of literary or of any other history. That difficulty lies in the discussion and decision of the question of origins—in the allotment of sufficient, and not more than sufficient, space to a preliminary recapitulation of the causes and circumstances of the actual events to be related. Here there is no need for any but the very briefest references of the kind to connect the present volume with its forerunner, or rather to indicate the connection of the two.

There has been little difference of opinion as to the long dead-season of English poetry, broken chiefly, if not wholly, by poets Scottish rather than English, which lasted through almost the whole of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries. There has also been little difference in regarding the remarkable work (known as Tottel's Miscellany, but more properly called Songs and Sonnets, written by the Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, late Earl of Surrey, and other) which was published by Richard Tottel in 1557, and which went through two editions in the summer of that year, as marking the dawn of the new period. The book is, indeed, remarkable in many ways. The first thing, probably, which strikes the modern reader about it is the fact that great part of its contents is anonymous and only conjecturally to be attributed, while as to the part which is more certainly known to be the work of several authors, most of those authors were either dead or had written long before. Mr. Arber's remarks in his introduction (which, though I have rather an objection to putting mere citations before the public, I am glad here to quote as a testimony in the forefront of this book to the excellent deserts