APPENDIX II.

A LIST OF SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL BRITISH WRITERS, AND OF THEIR CHIEF WORKS.

ANGLO-SAXON PERIOD.

Cadmon, (died about A.D. 680.) He wrote in Anglo-Saxon, a 'Metrical Paraphrase' of certain portions of Scripture.

Bede, (born 672; died 735.) He translated the Gospels and Psalms into Anglo-Saxon, and composed in Latin an Ecclesiastical History of Britain.

Alfred the Great, (born 848; died 901.) He translated into AngloSaxon, part of the Psalms, Bede's History; and 'Boethius on the Consolations of Philosophy.'

Alfric, (died 1005.)

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His Eighty Homilies' written in the simplest Anglo-Saxon, for the use of the common people, are his greatest work.

SEMI-SAXON PERIOD.

Layamon, (flourished about 1190) He translated into the mixed Saxon of the day, Wace's 'Brut' or 'Chronicle,' and considerably enlarged and improved it.

EARLY ENGLISH PERIOD.

Robert of Gloucester, (flourished about 1268.) He wrote a Rhyming Chronicle' narrating British history to the end of Henry III.'s reign.

Robert Manning, (flourished about 1300.). He wrote a 'Rhyming Chronicle' translated from the French of Wace and Langtoft.

Sir John Mandeville, (born about 1300; died 1372; flourished during the reign of Edward III.) He spent thirty-four years in visiting various countries, and afterwards wrote a Narrative of his Travels.' He is our oldest English prose-writer.

John Wycliffe, (born 1324; died 1384; flourished during the reigns of Edward III and Richard II.) He translated the Bible into English.

Geoffrey Chaucer, (born 1328; died 1400, flourished during the reign of Richard II.) He wrote The Canterbury Tales;' The Court of Love' 'The Flower and the Leaf,' etc. He has been styled the Father of English Poetry.'

John Gower, (born about 1340; died 1402; flourished during the reigns of Richard II and Henry IV.) His three great works

were called 'Speculum Meditantis;' 'Vox Clamantis ;' and 'Confessio Amantis.'

MIDDLE ENGLISH.

John Lydgate, (flourished during the reigns of Henry V and VI.) His principal works are 'The Fall of Princes;' 'The Destruction of Troy;' and 'The Dance of Death.'

Sir John Fortescue, (flourished during the reigns of Henry VI and Edward IV.) His principal English work is The Difference between an Absolute and a Limited Monarchy.'

William Caxton, (born 1410; died 1491; flourished during the reigns of Henry VI, Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII.) The first English printer. He translated 'The Fall of Troy' from the French. The first book printed in England was on The Game of Chess.'

Sir Thomas More, (born 1480; died 1535.) He wrote 'Utopia,' and 'The Life and Reign of Edward V.' He was beheaded for denying the supremacy of Henry VIII.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, (born 1516; beheaded in 1547; flourished during the reign of Henry VIII.) He introduced Blank verse into the English language, and is said to have written also the first English sonnets.

Thomas Cranmer, (born 1489; died 1556; flourished during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI.) One of the principal compilers of the Liturgy, Prayer Book, and Articles of the Church of England.

MODERN ENGLISH.

Roger Ascham, (born 1515; died 1568; flourished during the reigns of Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth.) His chief works are 'Toxophilus' and 'The Schoolmaster.' He was tutor to the Lady (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth, and may be considered as the first who wrote an English work on Education.

Sir Philip Sydney, (born 1554; died 1586; flourished during the reign of Elizabeth.) He wrote the 'Defence of Poesy;''Arcadia,' and other poems.

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Edmund Spenser, (born 1553; died 1599; flourished during the reign of Elizabeth.) He wrote the Faerie Queen;' the 'Shepherd's Calendar,' Epithalamion;' and other poems.

Richard Hooker, (born 1553; died 1600; flourished during the reign of Elizabeth.) A great theological writer; author of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.'

William Shakespeare, (born 1564; died 1615; flourished during

the reign of Elizabeth.) Our great national Poet and Dramatist. His most celebrated Tragedies are Macbeth,' 'King Lear,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' 'Hamlet,' and 'Othello.' His principal Comedies are- Midsummer Night's Dream,'As You Like It,' and Much Ado about Nothing. His chief Historical Plays are'King John,'' Henry IV,' 'Henry VI,' 'Richard III.' Amongst his minor poems are- Venus and Adonis,' The Passionate Pilgrim,'' Lucrece,' and 'A Lover's Complaint.'

"The name of Shakespeare is the greatest in our literature-it is the greatest in all literature. No man ever came near him in the creative powers of the mind: no man had ever such strength at once, and such variety of imagination. The number of characters in his plays is astonishingly great: yet he never takes an abstract quality to embody it, scarcely, perhaps, a definite condition of manners, as Jonson does. Nor did he draw much from living models; there is no manifest appearance of personal caricature in his comedies, though in some slight traits of character this may not improbably have been the case. Compare with him Homer, the tragedians of Greece, the poets of Italy, Plautus, Cervantes, Molière, Addison, Le Sage, Fielding, Richardson, Scott, the romancers of the elder or of the later schools: one man has far more than surpassed them all, others may have been as sublime; others may have been more pathetic; others may have equalled him in grace and purity of language, and have shunned some of his faults but the philosophy of Shakespeare, his intimate searching out of the human heart, whether in the gnomic form of sentence, or in the dramatic exhibition of character, is a gift peculiarly his own." HALLAM's Introduction to the Literature of Europe.

Sir Walter Raleigh, (born 1552; beheaded in 1618; flourished during the reigns of Elizabeth and James I.) His chief works are a History of the World,' (written during his imprisonment in the Tower;) and a 'Narrative of his Cruise to Guiana.'

Francis Bacon, Viscount St. Albans, (born 1561; died 1626; Chancellor in the reign of James I.) Author of the Novum Organum,' "The New Atlantis,' etc. He has been styled the 'Father of Ethical Philosophy.'

Michael Drayton, (born 1563; died in 1631; flourished during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I and Charles I.) A poet; his chief work is the Polyolbion,' in thirty books, containing descriptions of the legends, scenery, and antiquities of England.

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Christopher Marlowe, (born 1564; died 1594; flourished during the reign of Elizabeth.) A celebrated Dramatist; his chief works are 'Tamburlaine the Great, The Life and Death of Dr. Faus tus,' and 'The Jew of Malta.'

Ben Jonson, (born 1574; died 1637 flourished during the reigns

of Elizabeth, James I, and Charles I.) A celebrated Dramatist and Poet. His principal Tragedies are 'Cataline,' and 'Sejanus.' Every man in his Humour,' Volpone,' 'The Silent Woman,' and the Alchemist,' are his finest Comedies.

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Beaumont and Fletcher, (who flourished during the reign of James I) united their talents in the joint production of fifty-two Plays.

Philip Massinger, (born 1584; died 1639; flourished during the reign of James I and Charles I.) A Dramatist; his principal work is 'A New Way to Pay Old Debts.' "A calm and dignified style, with little passionate fire," observes Mr. Collier, "characterizes the pen of Massinger."

Robert Herrick, (born 1591; died 1674; wrote during the reign of Charles I-the Commonwealth-and the reign of Charles II.) Remarkable chiefly for his lyric poems, such as, 'To Daffodils,' 'To Blossoms,''Gather the Rosebuds while ye may.'

Joseph Hall, (born 1574; died 1656; flourished during the reign of Charles I and during the Commonwealth.) An eminent divine; author of 'Contemplations on Historical Passages of the Old and New Testament, and of Occasional Meditations.' He also wrote several vigorous poetical Satires; he has been styled the English Seneca.'

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Robert Burton, (born 1578; died in 1640; flourished during the reign of Charles I.) He wrote the Anatomy of Melancholy, a strangely quaint, and witty book, full of learned quotations. His life was chequered with a deep melancholy, to relieve which he wrote his famous work.

Jeremy Taylor, (born 1613; died 1667; flourished during the reign of Charles I and during the Commonwealth.) An eminent divine; author of Holy Living and Dying.'

Thomas Fuller, (born 1608; died 1661; flourished during the reign of Charles I and during the Commonwealth.) A brilliant theological and general writer; author of the Church History of Britain, and of the Worthies of England.'

John Milton, (born 1608; died 1674; flourished during the reign of Charles I-the Commonwealth-and the reign of Charles II.) An illustrious English poet. His chief works are 'Paradise Lost,' 'Paradise Regained,' Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity,' 'Il Pensoroso,'' Comus,' and 'Lycidas.' His principal prose works are the 'Areopagitica, Tractate on Education,' The Tenure of kings,' Eikonoklastes,' etc.

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"A mighty poet, tried at once by pain, danger, poverty, obloquy and blindness, meditated, undisturbed by the obscene tumult which raged all around him, a song so sublime and so holy that it would

not have misbecome the lips of those ethereal Virtues whom he saw, with that inner eye, which no calamity could darken, flinging down on the jasper pavement their crowns of amaranth and gold."—Lord Macaulay.

Abraham Cowley, (born 1618; died 1667; flourished during the same period as Milton.) A poet; author of the Anacreontics'-the Cutler of Coleman St.' etc.

Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, (born 1608; died 1674; prime minister of Charles II.) Author of the 'History of the Rebellion' in the time of Charles I.

Samuel Butler, (born 1612; died 1680; monwealth-and the reign of Charles II.) a witty satirical poem.

wrote during the ComAuthor of 'Hudibras'→

Ralph Cudworth, (born 1617; died 1688; flourished during the Commonwealth-and reign of Charles II.) An eminent divine; author of The True Intellectual System of the Universe'—a work which completely confutes Atheistical doctrines.

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John Evelyn, (born 1620; died 1706.) Author of the ' Diary'— a work which presents us with a clear view of English life, especially under Charles II.

John Bunyan, (born 1628; died 1688;) wrote the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' during his imprisonment in the time of Charles II. "Bunyan,' says Lord Macaulay, "is as decidedly the first of allegorists; as Demosthenes is the first of orators, or Shakespeare the first of dramatists."

John Dryden, (born 1631; died 1700; flourished during the Commonwealth-and the reigns of Charles II, James II, and William III.) A poet, dramatist, and prose-writer. Author of 'Alexander's Feast The Hind and Panther'-'A Translation of Virgil,' etc. "He was," observes Mr. Spalding, "the literary chief of the whole interval between Cromwell and Queen Anne."

John Locke, (born 1632; died 1704 ;) published in 1690, during the reign of William III, his famous philosophical work, an Essay on the Human Understanding.' He also wrote "Thoughts concerning Education'-'A Treatise on Civil Government,' etc.

Dr. Gilbert Burnett, (born 1643; died 1715 :) wrote the History of the Reformation,' and 'A History of My Own Times.' The latter work sketching the Civil War and the history of Cromwell, minutely describes the period between the Restoration and the Treaty of Utrecht. His chief theological treatise is that on the 'Thirty-nine Articles.'

Joseph Addison, (born 1672; died 1719; flourished during the reign of Queen Anne.) A distinguished writer both in prose and