A Short History of English Literature |
Contents
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Common terms and phrases
alliteration alliterative Anglo-Saxon appeared ballad Beowulf better blank verse Boethius born Cædmon Cambridge Canterbury Tales certainly chapter character charm Chaucer chief chiefly classical comedy contemporary couplet criticism curious Cynewulf death decasyllable died doubt drama dramatist Dryden earlier early edition Elizabethan England English literature English poetry English prose Euphuism extremely fact famous fifteenth century French Gawain genius Hampole important interesting John Jonson kind King known Lady language later Latin Layamon least less lines literary London Lyly lyric matter mediæval merely merit metre metrical middle Middle English Milton moral never original Ormulum Oxford passages perhaps period person phrase piece Piers Plowman plays poems poet poetical poetry popular pretty printed probably prosody Queen reprinted rhyme romance satire Scottish seems Shakespeare sometimes sonnet Spenser stanza story style things Thomas tion tragedy translation vols whole Widsith writer written wrote
Popular passages
Page 670 - The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments.
Page 417 - I saw eternity the other night Like a great ring of pure and endless light, All calm as it was bright; And round beneath it, time in hours, days, years, Driv'n by the spheres, Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world And all her train were hurled...
Page 709 - HALLAM'S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND, from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II. 8vo, Cloth, $2 00. HALLAM'S LITERATURE. Introduction to the Literature of Europe during the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries.
Page 653 - For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
Page 451 - ... tis all one to lie in St. Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt: ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.
Page 443 - ... room in the soul. They give liberty of callings, so that at the same instant one may follow his proper vocation. The husbandman may dart forth an ejaculation and not make a balk the more. The seaman nevertheless steer his ship right in the darkest night.
Page 645 - But as a letter-writer, in his few excursions into the essay, and in such other literary amusements as lie permitted himself, he stands very high, and the somewhat artificial character of his etiquette, the wholly artificial character of his standards of literary, aesthetic, and other judgment, ought not to obscure his excellence. Devoted as he was to French, speaking and writing it as easily as he did English, he never Gallicised his style as Horace Walpole did, nor fell into incorrectnesses as...
Page 423 - Tis now, since I sat down before That foolish fort, a heart, (Time strangely spent !) a year, and more ; And still I did my part: Made my approaches, from her hand Unto her lip did rise ; And did already understand The language of her eyes. Proceeded on with no less art, My tongue was engineer ; I thought to undermine the heart By whispering in the ear. When...
Page 531 - Protestant sects generally), and Martin (Lutheranism and Anglicanism) displays an all-pervading irony of thought, and a felicity of expressing that irony, which had never been seen in English prose before. The irony, it must be added, goes, as far as things human are concerned, very deep and very wide, and its zigzag glances at politics, philosophy, manners, the hopes and desires and pursuits and pleasures and pains of man, leave very little unscathed. There is a famous and not necessarily false...
Page 481 - Love still has something of the sea From whence his mother rose; No time his slaves from doubt can free, Nor give their thoughts repose. They are becalmed in clearest days, And in rough weather tost; They wither under cold delays, Or are in tempests lost.