From Chaucer to Tennyson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: From Chaucer to Tennyson Author: Henry A. Beers Release Date: March 17, 2004 [eBook #11618] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FROM CHAUCER TO TENNYSON***
Juliet Sutherland, Sjaani and PG Distributed Proofreaders
The Project Gutenberg eBook, From Chaucer to Tennyson, by Henry A. Beers, et al 1894
PREFACE.
In so brief a history of so rich a literature, the problem is how to get room enough to give, not an adequate impression—that is impossible —but any impression at all of the subject. To do this I have crowded out every thing but belles lettres. Books in philosophy, history, science, etc., however important in the history of English thought, receive the merest incidental mention, or even no mention at all. Again, I have omitted the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, which is written in a language nearly as hard for a modern Englishman to read as German is, or Dutch. Cædmon and Cynewulf are no more a part of English literature than Vergil and Horace are of Italian. I have also left out the vernacular literature of the Scotch before the time of Burns. Up to the date of the union Scotland was a separate kingdom, and its literature had a development ...