JOHN RICHARD GREENE (1837-1883) did the world a great service by the publication, in 1874, of his Short History of the English People. It has the advantage over Hume and Macaulay that in a single volume it covers the entire ground. And the method is different from that of former historians; as indicated by the title, it is a history, not so much of kings and courts, as of the people themselves, the very groundwork of the nation. The style, notwithstanding the condensation of the narrative, is clear and graphic, and at times even poetical. The work, since the author's death, has been illustrated and published in four volumes. He also published The Making of England and The Conquest of England.

WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY (1838 -) is a philosophical historian, treating not so much of events as of the causes of events, the influences that mould life and character and make history in its widest sense. His great works are-History of European Morals in the Middle Ages, History of England in the 18th Century, History of Ireland in the 18th Century, and Democracy and Liberty (1897).

JUSTIN MCCARTHY (1830 -), a very versatile writer, leader, since the death of Parnell, of the Irish party in Parliament. He wrote-A History of Our Own Times, in 2 vols., which has had great popularity (also in I vol.) and The French Revolution, 2 vols. ; also several novels, among which are-Dear Lady Disdain and The Dictator. A continuation of the History of Our Own Times, in I vol., was published in 1897.

OTHER LATER HISTORIANS.

EDWARD AUGUSTUS FREEMAN (1823-1892) published more than thirty volumes, but his greatest work is The Norman Conquest, which is exhaustive of the subject. Among the others may be named The Reign of William Rufus and The English People in Its Three Homes.

DR. WILLIAM STUBBS (1825), Bishop of Oxford, and twenty years Professor of History at that University, stands very high among historians. His greatest works are-Early Plantagenets and Constitutional History of England.

SAMUEL GARDINER (1829 -) is the author of The History of England

from the Accession of James I. to the Outbreak of the Civil War, and two volumes of the " Epochs of History" series-The Thirty Years' War and The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, also Student's History of England.

JAMES BRYCE (1838), Oxford professor, statesman, traveller, historian, is the author of The Holy Roman Empire and The American Commonwealth-a thorough analysis of American institutions.

LATER CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS.

Some writers who belong here are noticed under another head. For example, Matthew Arnold is classed as a poet, and yet he was one of the finest critics of the age. Stevenson was a novelist

and also a critic. And, on the contrary, some who are under this head are also poets or novelists. So numerous are the authors embraced under this comprehensive heading that we can give little more than the names of a few of the best.

JOHN MORLEY (1838 -) is author of 3 vols. of Miscellanies, Studies in Literature, and a long list of biographies in the English Men of Letters series, all excellent, and a First Sketch of English Literature.

ANDREW LANG (1844 -), one of the most active literary men in England, author of Books and Bookmen, Letters to Dead Authors, Letters on Literature, etc., also several volumes of poems, among them Ballads on Blue China, Ballads and Verses Vain, Helen of Troy.

EDMUND W. GOSSE (1849 -), poet and critic. Very prolific, yet graceful and accurate. Some of his best volumes of essays are—Gossip in a Library, Questions at Issue, The Jacobean Poets, and Critical Kit-Kats. He also wrote an excellent History of English Literature in the 18th Century, and charming lives of Gray, Congreve, and other men of letters. Among his poetical works are— Viol and Flute, King Erik, and New Poems.

LESLIE STEPHEN (1832 -) is the author of the delightful Hours in a Library, three series; also of History of English

Thought in the 18th Century, Science of Ethics, and lives of Pope, Johnson, and Swift.

England's best

EDWARD DOWDEN (1843 -) is one of Shaksperian scholars, also a poet and essayist. Among his best works are—Introduction to Shakspere; Shakspere—His Mind and Art, and Studies in Literature. He has also published a very popular Primer of English Literature, and a life of Southey.

OTHER CRITICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITERS. WALTER H. PATER (1838-1894) was one of the best of recent essayists. He wrote Appreciations (essays on Coleridge, Lamb, and others), Greek Studies, The Renaissance, Miscellaneous Studies, published since his death, Child in the House, a poem.

GEORGE W. SAINTSBURY (1845) has published, among many other books, Elizabethan Literature, Essays in English Literature, Miscellaneous Essays, and lives of Dryden and Marlborough, all excellent.

JOHN C. SHAIRP (1819 ) is the author of Critical and Literary Essays, 5 vols., including Aspects of Poetry, Culture and Religion, Poetic Interpretation of Nature, etc.

ST. GEORGE MIVART (1827 -) is a voluminous writer on Nature and literature. Among his works are-Essays and Criticisms, 2 vols., Lessons from Nature, Man and Apes, On the Genesis of Species, and American Types of Animal Life.

JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS (1840), critic and poet, author of In the Key of Blue and other Prose Essays, Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama, Sketches and Studies in Southern Europe, and two vols. of poems entitled New and Old, and Many Moods.

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK (1834 —), a naturalist and essayist. Author of Fifty Years of Science, Scientific Lectures, The Beauties of Nature; also of The Pleasures of Life, The Uses of Life, etc.-delightful essays.

F. ANSTEY (Thomas Anstey Guthrie) has published some very bright and amusing stories, the principal of which are-Vice Versâ, The Tinted Venus, Tourmaline's Time Checks, and Lyre and Lancet.

JEROME K. JEROME (1862) has been called "the English Mark Twain." He has written some delightful nonsense, mixed with much sense. His most popular books are-Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Three Men in a Boat.

PART II.

THE LITERATURE OF AMERICA.

O

INTRODUCTION.

RIGIN.-American Literature may be said to have begun in 1640, the year in which the first book was printed in this country.

This was the Bay Psalm Book. Most of the books produced in America before this time may be regarded as English books, as they were not only printed in England, but were also intended mainly for English circulation. PERIODS.-American Literature is divided, in this work, into three Periods ::

I. The Colonial Age, 1640–1760.

II. The Revolutionary Age, 1760-1830.

III. The National Age, 1830-1876.

Later American Literature, since 1876.

PERIOD I. THE COLONIAL AGE.

1640-1760.

[Embracing, in English history, the last nine years of the reign of Charles I., the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and the reigns of Charles II., James II., William and Mary, Queen Anne, George I., and George II.]

TH

HIS age was unfavorable to literary production. It was an age of fighting rather than writing. The colonists, engaged in a constant struggle for existence, had but little time to devote to literary pursuits; hence they left us but few works of permanent and universal interest.

Most of the literature of this age is theological. This is owing

to two causes: 1. That learning was mostly confined to the clergy, and 2. That the mingling of various sects, in a time of strong religious feeling, naturally provoked much theological discussion.

Its chief literary representatives are Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards.

COTTON MATHER. 1663–1728.

Rev. Cotton Mather was one of the most learned and remarkable men that New England has ever produced. He was born in 1663, graduated at Harvard at the age of fifteen, taught for some years, was ordained at twenty-one, and from that time till his death, in 1728, devoted himself with unflagging zeal to preaching and authorship. Like many other great men of that day, he was a firm believer in witchcraft, and assisted in the persecution of the poor wretches accused of it; but this was an error of the head, not of the heart; and he was, take him for all and all, one of the greatest and best men of his age.

His principal work is a history entitled Magnalia Christi Americana, from which we derive much of our knowledge of those times. The most celebrated of his other works are Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft, and The Wonders of the Invisible World, which is an account of several witch trials.

EXTRACT.

You are young and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many a hard thump.*

EDWARDS. 1703-1758.

Rev. Jonathan Edwards, an eloquent preacher and profound metaphysician, was born in Connecticut in 1703, and died at Princeton, N. J., in 1758. He was for two years a tutor in Yale College, and at the time of his death was President of the College of New Jersey, but most of his life was spent in preaching. His

*This advice was given to Benjamin Franklin after he had bumped his head against a beam that extended across a passage-way in Mather's house.