Excerpt from The Literary Reader: Typical Selections From Some of the Best British and American Authors, From Shakespeare to the Present Time, Chronologically Arranged; With Biographical and Critical Sketches, and Numerous Notes, Etc, Etc

It may be regarded as the legitimate result of the Reformation, which loosened the bonds that had trammeled men's minds, and encouraged free investigation and free expression. It has three representatives, par excel lenee, - Hooker-of. The theological spirit, Bacon of the philosophical, and Shakespeare of the poetic and dramatic. With the last' of these, the most illustrious of the sons of man, our series of glimpses at English literary history begins.

As even the merest mention of all distinguished writers was obviously impracticable, it has been attempted, in the preparation of this volume, to introduce those of the number who most faithfully and forcibly represent the several stages and departments of English literature. In Shakespeare we see a delegate at large from every literary interest known in his time Milton gives voice to the thoughtful and devout poetry of Puritanism; Swift illustrates the power of satire with a brilliancy that has never been surpassed; Addison inaugurates the revival of classicalism in literature, and gives the world a pattern of rigid, though beautiful, accuracy in style; Johnson exemplifies ponderousness in matter and manner, and leaves a lasting impress on English letters; Goldsmith, more thoroughly than any writer had done before his time, transfuses himself into his writings, revealing his own gentle, genial, and poetical nature in his books with almost unequaled fidelity of portraiture; Gibbon, first of all Englishmen, demonstrated the power of the historian, not only to rescue the past, but to mold the future. But the catalogue is too long to be thus continued. What is here left undone, the student may profitably do for himself, re cording briefiy his judgment of each writer and specifying his distinguishing services or office in literature.

As helps to history, these brief interviews with typical representatives of different periods cannot fail to be valuable. To the epics of Homer we are largely indebted for our knowledge of the politics, theology, and social customs of the Greeks and Trojans and our debt for similar acquisitions to English writers of early times, though rarely acknowledged, is even greater. Chaucer gives us pictures of a life that, but for him, we could only imagine, - a life in which rude ecclesiasticism held unquestioned dominion. Dryden describes or suggests the vicissitudes of religious faith that were the most conspicuous feature of English life in his time, and the pervading corruption that demoralized all classes. Coleridge enlightens us as to the first movements of that spirit of free inquiry whose results have pro-eminently distinguished the nineteenth century. It would be easy to enlarge upon this point if space permitted; but a little reflection will con vince the intelligent reader that the literature of a nation is its true his tory it is spontaneous and unprejudiced, while formal historical narratives are invariably colored by prejudice, personal, political, or theological. If Hume's and Macaulay's and Fronde's Histories were suddenly destroyed, the surviving general literature of England would afford ample materials for their reconstruction.

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