English literature a claim to be named among the literatures of the world. Having successfully transplanted the methods of French and Italian poetry into English, he suddenly appeared in his " Canterbury Tales" as not only an original but an intensely national poet, the creator of the frank, genial humour which has remained a distinguishing note of English literature to this day. The field has been immeasurably amplified, but Chaucer's performance in it has never been surpassed. The "Canterbury Tales" is his most important work, but his other poems place him far above any contemporary or successor until we arrive at Spenser.

Clarendon, Earl of, Edward Hyde (born at Dinton, near Salisbury, 1608; died at Rouen, 1674; buried in Westminster Abbey), was a member of the Short and the Long Parliament, and up to 1641 sided with the popular party; he then withdrew and headed the Royalist opposition in Parliament until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he attached himself to the king. He was knighted in 1643, and made Chancellor of the Exchequer. After a period of exile with Charles II., he returned to England at the Restoration, and in 1661 was created Earl of Clarendon. His daughter Anne was secretly married to the Duke of York in 1659. As a minister he was unpopular. In 1667 he was dismissed from office, and banished by the king; and he spent his last years in France. His "History of the Rebellion," though an apology rather than an impartial history, is marked by great dignity of style and skill in narrative.

Darwin, Charles Robert (born at Shrewsbury, 1809; died at Down, Kent, 1882), is renowned as the naturalist who has, above all others, contributed to establish the theory of evolution, especially by his great work "The Origin of Species" (1859). In his youth he had taken part in a scientific exploring expedition, which kept him voyaging for many years, and whose results are communicated in the work from which our extract is derived. His style is unadorned and occasionally negligent, but, like his own character, a model of unpretending simplicity.

De Quincey, Thomas (born at Manchester, 1785; died at Edinburgh, 1859), is so renowned as the English opium-eater, that it is hardly remembered how small a portion his experience in this capacity covers of his voluminous work. With many grave defects, the worst of which is immoderate prolixity, he is still eminent beyond most contemporaries as biographer, autobiographer, historian, essayist, critic, and political economist; while still higher claim to distinction is the majesty and harmony of his style. Of this, "The Revolt of the Kalmucks" is a fine example. Notwithstanding the bulk of his literary productions, he was extremely fastidious in composition, and would probably have produced little but for the pressure of necessity.

Dickens, Charles (born at Portsmouth, 1812; died near Rochester, 1869), is so universally popular a figure, both as author and man, that it is hardly necessary to speak of him here in either capacity. It may be remarked, however, that the extract given in the text belongs to his later period, when the inevitable exhaustion of that prodigious exuber

ance of animal spirits, which in his youth had made him the greatest of modern humorists, compelled him to resort to artifice in his plots, and to pen his descriptions with anxious care and effort. The masterly art of the second period is no adequate substitute for the overwhelming genius of the first, but it deserves great admiration notwithstanding.

Dryden, John (born in Northamptonshire, 1631; died in London, 1700), was, after Milton's death, the first English poet of his age, and by far its most conspicuous man of letters. It was a prosaic period; pure poetry had become for the time impossible, and Dryden did all that could be done in elevating essentially prosaic themes by dignified style and splendid versification. His poems on the politics of his day are his masterpieces; but he was also a prolific dramatist, a successful adapter and translator, and a fine lyric poet. His prose style is still regarded as a model; and his critical writings reveal a powerful intelligence hampered by the circumstances of his age, of which he is far in advance.

Eliot, George (the assumed name of Marian Evans)-born near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, 1819; died at Chelsea, 1880)-is by common consent the most powerful intellect that has yet appeared among English authoresses. Her attention was at first given to philosophy, but upon the encouragement of her friends, G. H. Lewes and Herbert Spencer, she attempted fiction, and her first considerable novel, "Adam Bede" (1859), placed her alongside of Thackeray and Dickens. Her succeeding works showed no abatement in power. "Middlemarch" is a most wonderful picture of English middle-class life; "Romola," a great historical novel; "Silas Marner," from which an extract is taken, an exquisite idyll; and every one has its own peculiar charm. Her principal defect-a certain heaviness of treatment and tendency to pedantry of style-naturally grew the more upon her the longer she wrote. She frequently attempted verse, but produced only one memorable poem, "The Legend of Jubal."

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (born at Boston, Massachusetts, 1803; died at Concord, 1882), is perhaps the most remarkable, and certainly the most influential writer as yet produced by America. His prose works consist chiefly of essays and orations, embodiments of a few leading principles infinitely varied in expression, couched in a style of perfect originality untainted by affectation, and, though sometimes mystical in appearance, instinct with shrewd common sense, as in the estimate of Napoleon given here. His great defect as a thinker is want of continuity. Carlyle, who compared the simple force of his style to "silent electricity," added that the apparent connection of the ideas was sometimes no closer than that of pellets of shot knotted up together in a parcel. Emerson wrote much obscure and extravagant verse, and a little, of which "The Rhodora " here given is an instance, more elegant in form and graceful in expression than that of any other American poet.

Fanshawe, Anne, Lady Fanshawe, the wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe, cavalier, diplomatist, and poet, sufficiently depicts her own character in her beautiful letter on her husband, whose memoir she also wrote.

Froissart, Jean (born about 1338; died about 1404), is one of those writers who have obtained a supreme position in literature by absolute simplicity and truth. He may be compared to Herodotus; like him a chronicler, a traveller, and exercised in rescuing memorable deeds from oblivion. No more convincing picture was ever painted than Froissart's view of the age of chivalry, as it existed in the courts and camps of the fourteenth century. His magical power of description is the same whether he is depicting what he has seen or professing to depict what he only knows by hearsay. His picture is in so far defective that we see nothing but the splendour of the great world, and have no hint of the sufferings of the poor. Had Froissart, however, been capable of giving this side of the picture, it could not have been said, as it may now, that his book represents Chivalry's conception of herself.

Gibbon, Edward (born at Putney, 1737; died in London, 1793), is by common consent the greatest of English historians. His supremacy is no doubt partly due to his choice of a subject precisely adapted to his powers. "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," from the extinction of the Antonine dynasty to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, is a magnificent pageant, comprising an immense number of personages and incidents requiring to be marshalled into a vast procession. With Gibbon everything falls into its right place, is dispatched with dignified brevity, and made to contribute its full effect to the total impression, which is as though the world walked across the stage. So absolutely vital is this magnificence, which hardly another than Gibbon could have attained, that his shortcomings of head and heart, and the inevitable defects of his knowledge at the period when he wrote, appear inconsiderable in comparison. His stately style befits his theme, but is not to be recommended as a general model.

Gilpin, William (born near Carlisle, 1724; died in Hampshire, 1804), was a clergyman and useful miscellaneous author in his day, who survives in ours as an agreeable writer on landscape and country life.

Godwin, William (born at Wisbeach, 1756; died in London, 1836), obtained great fame and influence in his own day as a thinker in politics and morals, but is now chiefly remembered by his striking novel, “Caleb Williams," and as the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, and father-inlaw of Shelley. His life of Chaucer, from which our extract is taken, has long been superseded by more accurate knowledge.

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Gray, Thomas (born in London, 1716; died at Cambridge, 1771), is perhaps of all English poets the one who enjoys the most fame in proportion to his productiveness. Four or five poems have sufficed not merely to immortalize the fastidious author of Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," but to place him high in the second rank of English poets. The poem mentioned, indeed, cannot in its own manner be surpassed; and almost equal praise is due to Gray's elegant and polished letters, like his poems the fruit of infinite solicitude.

Hall, Newman (born at Maidstone, 1816; died at Hampstead, 1902), was an eminent and popular Congregational clergyman.

Hallam, Henry (born at Windsor, 1777; died in London, 1859), is the author of three works on great subjects-the Middle Ages, the English constitution, and the literature of Europe-so learned and thorough as, without much aid from beauty of composition, still to maintain the honourable place accorded to them by contemporaries.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel (born at Salem, Massachusetts, 1804; died on a tour in the White Mountains, 1864), is undoubtedly the greatest genius in fiction as yet produced by America. His novels are perfectly original in style and thought, dealing for the most part with modern people, yet spiritual as Dante; true to nature and free from all extravagance, yet leavened with a pervading sense of something beyond the visible world. In his short tales his peculiar genius appears in an even more concentrated form. The one here given is a good example.

Head, Sir Francis Bond (born in Kent, 1793; died at Croydon, 1875), travelled in his youth in the Argentine Republic, was afterwards governor of Upper Canada, and wrote important books upon both countries, besides essays on a great variety of miscellaneous subjects. His judgment is frequently infirm, but he is very lively and entertaining.

Jefferies, Richard (born in Wiltshire, 1848; died at Worthing, 1887), is of all English prose writers the most successful delineator of the aspects of Nature; accurate as Gilbert White, poetical in spirit, though not in form, as Keats or Tennyson. His most successful works are either literal descriptions of nature, such as "Wild Life in a Southern County," where he has depicted with marvellous vividness the dreams of his native Wiltshire; or fanciful romances like "Wood Magic," or After London," in which the description of country scenery and animal life is inextricably interwoven with imaginative incident.

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Jeffrey, Francis (Lord Jeffrey)-1773-1850-exercised an enormous influence on literature in his day as the editor of the Edinburgh Review, in which he wrote much valuable criticism on prose writers, and some very shallow criticism upon poetry. The demerits of the latter have caused the real excellence of his other writings to be unduly slighted. He was acute, ingenious, versatile, and altogether noble and admirable in his public capacity as advocate and judge, and in his private character as an intrepid and high-minded man.

Johnson, Samuel (born at Lichfield, 1709; died in London, 1784), is perhaps of all men the one who in his lifetime established the most uncontested dictatorship over literature. As a man of genius, he cannot be placed on the level of some of his contemporaries, but in sheer intellectual force he surpassed them all; and his reputation was grounded less upon his works than upon his strength of argument and his conversational powers. These live in the pages of his biographer and reporter, Boswell, who has preserved with little loss of lustre a reputation which might otherwise have grown dim. Poor, diseased, uncouth, Johnson worked his way up to an undisputed supremacy over many men whose writings will long survive his own, but who, with the single exception of Burke,

His

felt that his intellectual stature was nevertheless greater than theirs. Rude and overbearing to offensiveness, Johnson was nevertheless the most tender-hearted of men. His noble, manly, rugged figure has been admirably depicted by Carlyle, a kindred spirit in many respects. impressive style is too Latinized and too pompous to be a good model. Keats, John (born in London, 1795; died at Rome, 1821), is one of the most extraordinary of modern English poets. The son of a livery stable keeper, with no especial advantages of education, he displayed such a genius for reproducing the spirit of antique Greek poetry as but few scholars have approached; while, at the same time, his poems on classical themes are no mere imitations, but new creations. Medieval subjects were equally congenial to him, and the best of his odes and sonnets stand unrivalled for grandeur of conception, richness of expression, and solemn music. Sickness and misfortune blighted this fair promise, but not until enough had been achieved to secure the young poet undying fame.

Landor, Walter Savage (born in Warwickshire, 1775; died near Florence, 1864), has a very high and peculiar reputation as the author of fine English prose and verse in a style of massive dignity and classic finish. Many of his blank verse poems are as Grecian as Keats's, but in quite a different way. Of his prose works the most extensive and the best known is his "Imaginary Conversations," a treasury of wisdom, contrasting most strangely with the mismanagement of his ill-regulated life. His "Pentameron,' ," from which our extract is taken, is a piece of delightful humour, introducing Petrarch and Boccaccio, and full of the life and atmosphere of Tuscany, where Landor had resided for many years.

Lyell, Sir Charles (born in Forfarshire, 1797; died in London, 1875), was the most eminent British geologist of his day, and was particularly distinguished for the support he gave to the doctrine of the general uniformity of the operations of nature, in opposition to that of vast catastrophes which had prevailed before him. The description of the Great Dismal Swamp, taken from his travels in America, is a good example of his clear and easy style.

Marlowe, Christopher (born at Canterbury, 1564; died at Greenwich, 1593), only appears here as the author of the beautiful song, "Come, live with me, and be my love," quoted by Izaak Walton. His great position in our literature is, of course, due to his being the first powerful dramatic writer that the English theatre possessed, the Eschylus of our stage, and the precursor of Shakespeare.

Marvell, Andrew (born near Hull, 1621; died in London, 1678), was assistant to Milton as Latin Secretary under the Commonwealth, and an incorruptible patriot as member for Hull in the time of Charles the Second. His beautiful lyrical poems were chiefly written in his youth; he afterwards showed great vigour as a satirist.

Miller, Hugh (born at Cromarty, 1802; died in Edinburgh, 1856), successively stonemason, banker's clerk, and editor of a newspaper, by