INTRODUCTORY The study of literature follows several lines. Attention may be centered, for example, on a single masterpiece considered separately, with a view to under- Ways of standing it thoroughly and training the mind studying in literary appreciation. A little more literature difficult is the study of a group of masterpieces as types of various forms-the essay, the novel, the drama. A third line of study confines itself to the works of a single author, with a view to becoming familiar with his art and his personality in all the stages of development. This too is difficult, but delightful. Finally, it is profitable to study all the works, prose and poetry, of a certain group of authors-the Elizabethan, for example, or the Victorian, noting common characteristics and getting glimpses of the times as reflected in literature. Need of a general survey Eventually, however, need is felt of a wide survey of the entire field. The student becomes interested in literature as a growth, from the first faint beginnings down to the present day. He wishes to know when this literary form appeared, when that, and what changes they have undergone; why we find in one century mountain peaks, in another only dull tablelands of mediocrity. Even in the earlier stages of study, at least a brief historical sketch is convenient, indeed almost necessary, for intelligent study, that each masterpiece may be given its proper setting. The following summary is presented for this purpose for those who lack the time necessary to master a complete manual. It contains the little that a high school pupil ought to know, before graduation, about the history of English literature. The tables of authors and masterpieces are so brief that they may with profit be memorized, save for the dates, just as the student of history memorizes lists of kings. It is assumed that, besides learning the tables, the pupil will study in detail the lives of the few authors read in classroom, finding his material either in the introductory pages of school editions or in such works of reference as are provided in the school library. NOTE.-Poetry is indicated by a dagger and prose fiction by a circle. The names of the greatest authors appear in heavy type. Scanty A single shelf of no great length would hold all that has come down to us from this early period: a few manuscript books and a few loose leaves, which rare good fortune has preserved for a thousand years remains and more. Could these priceless relics be brought together and were we privileged to examine them, our first surprise, perhaps, would come at finding the manuscripts written in a language which, though English, is as strange as German, which it resembles. Had we the ability to read AngloSaxon, as early English is called, we should again be surprised to find how much of this Language Religious character early literature, poetry and prose, is of a religious character. But this is easily explained. Coming of When, in the fourth and fifth centuries, the English left their homes on the south shores of the Baltic and North seas and invaded England, pillaging, plundering, killing great numbers of the Britons whose lands they were seizing, and driving the remainder westward, they were a pagan people and such they remained till the sixth century when missionaries from Italy and Ireland wrought a great change. In a remarkably short time Christianity drove out the pagan beliefs. Monasteries rose here and there throughout the land, each monastery not only a religious but an educational center, for connected with each was a school. Some of these schools grew into what might be called colleges, whose truly great teachers attracted large numbers. In less than a century after the coming of the missionaries, the English monasteries were famous throughout western Europe, so great a zeal did the English show for religion and learning. English poetry It is not strange, therefore, that the literature of this period, for the most part written by monks or at least by Earliest those who had received their training in the monasteries, should be religious. It is a mistake, however, to think that English literature was cradled in the monastery. The English had always been a song-loving people. They sang as they rushed into battle. Song cheered their feasts when petty tribal kings gathered their warriors about them in the mead halls. There were professional poets among them— scops they were called-who composed and chanted herosongs. Little of this earlier "heathen" poetry has been preserved, however; for it was oral literature, passed down from singer to singer by memory alone. Yet the most interesting poem in all this period of four centuries takes us back to these pre-Christian days, though the version that we |