The Project Gutenberg eBook, English Lands Letters and Kings: From Celt to Tudor, by Donald Grant Mitchell

Note:

Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See [ https://archive.org/details/englishlandslett01mitc]
Project Gutenberg has the other three volumes of this work.
[II: From Elizabeth to Anne]: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54142/54142-h/54142-h.htm
[III: Queen Anne and the Georges]: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37226/37226-h/37226-h.htm
[IV: The Later Georges to Victoria]: see http://www.gutenberg.org/files/54143/54143-h/54143-h.htm

ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS
AND KINGS

From Celt to Tudor

ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS AND KINGS

By Donald G. Mitchell

I.	From Celt to Tudor
II.	From Elizabeth to Anne
III.	Queen Anne and the Georges
IV.	The Later Georges to Victoria

Each 1 vol., 12mo, cloth, gilt top, $1.50

AMERICAN LANDS AND LETTERS

From the Mayflower to Rip Van Winkle

1 vol., square 12mo, Illustrated, $2.50

ENGLISH LANDS LETTERS
AND KINGS

From Celt to Tudor

BY
Donald G. Mitchell

NEW YORK
Charles Scribner’s Sons
MDCCCXCVII

TROW’S
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY,
NEW YORK

PREFACE.

This little book is made up from the opening series of a considerable range of “talks,” with which—during the past few years—I have undertaken to entertain, and (if it might be) instruct a bevy of friends; and the interest of a few outsiders who have come to the hearings has induced me to put the matter in type. I feel somewhat awkwardly in obtruding upon the public any such panoramic view of British writers, in these days of specialists—when students devote half a lifetime to the analysis of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a single period.

I have tried, however, to avoid bad mistakes and misleading ones, and shall reckon my commentary only so far forth good—as it may familiarize the average reader with the salient characteristics of the writers brought under notice, and shall put these writers into such a swathing of historic and geographic enwrapments as shall keep them better in mind.

When I consider the large number of books recently issued on similar topics, and the scholarly acuteness, and the great range belonging to so many of them, I am not a little discomforted at thought of my bold scurry over so wide reach of ground. Indeed, I have the figure before me now—as I hint an apology—of an old-time country doctor who has ventured with his saddle-bags and spicy nostrums into competition with a half score of special practitioners—with their microscopy and their granules dosimetriques; but I think, consolingly, that possibly the old-time mediciner—if not able to cure, can at the least induce a pleasurable slumber.

Edgewood, 1889.

CONTENTS.

	PAGE
[CHAPTER I.]
Preliminary,	[1]
Early Centuries,	[5]
Celtic Literature,	[7]
Beginning of English Learning,	[9]
Cædmon,	[13]
Beda,	[15]
King Alfred,	[17]
Canute and Godiva,	[22]
William the Norman,	[25]
Harold the Saxon,	[29]
[CHAPTER II.]
Geoffrey of Monmouth,	[37]
King Arthur Legends,	[39]
Early Norman Kings,	[46]
Richard Cœur de Lion,	[50]
Times of King John,	[53]
Mixed Language,	[56]
Sir John Mandeville,	[59]
Early Book-making,	[62]
Religious Houses,	[66]
Life of a Damoiselle,	[72]
[CHAPTER III.]
Roger Bacon,	[77]
William Langlande,	[84]
John Wyclif,	[90]
Chaucer,	[97]
[CHAPTER IV.]
Of Gower and Froissart,	[127]
Two Henrys and Two Poets,	[132]
Henry V. and War Times,	[141]
Joan of Arc and Richard III.,	[146]
Caxton and First English Printing,	[149]
Old Private Letters,	[154]
A Burst of Balladry,	[158]
[CHAPTER V.]
Early Days of Henry VIII.,	[167]
Cardinal Wolsey, and Sir Thomas More,	[173]
Cranmer, Latimer, Knox, and Others,	[182]
Verse-writing and Psalmodies,	[189]
Wyatt and Surrey,	[193]
A Boy-king, a Queen, and Schoolmaster,	[197]
[CHAPTER VI.]
Elizabethan England,	[204]
Personality of the Queen,	[207]
Burleigh and Others,	[210]
A Group of Great Names,	[214]
Edmund Spenser,	[217]
The Faery Queen,	[221]
Philip Sidney,	[230]
[CHAPTER VII.]
John Lyly,	[245]
Francis Bacon,	[250]
Thomas Hobbes,	[261]
George Chapman,	[266]
Marlowe,	[269]
A Tavern Coterie,	[274]
[CHAPTER VIII.]
George Peele,	[284]
Thomas Dekker,	[287]
Michael Drayton,	[291]
Ben Jonson,	[295]
Some Prose Writers,	[303]
The Queen’s Progresses,	[312]

ENGLISH LANDS, LETTERS, & KINGS.