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Manners of the sixteenth century-Violent and
complete expansion of nature

English manners-Expansion of the energetic and
gloomy character

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The poets-General harmony between the character
of a poet and that of his age-Nash, Decker,
Kyd, Peele, Lodge, Greene—Their condition and
life-Marlowe-His life-His works-Tambur

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INTRODUCTION.

The historian might place himself for a given period, say a series of ages, or in the human soul, or with some particular people; he might study, describe, relate, all the events, all the transformations, all the revolutions which had been accomplished in the internal man; and when he had finished his work, he would have a history of civilisation amongst the people and in the period he had selected.-GUIZOT, Civilisation in Europe, p. 25.

HISTORY has been transformed, within a hundred years in Germany, within sixty years in France, and that by the study of their literatures.

It was perceived that a literary work is not a mere individual play of imagination, the isolated caprice of an excited brain, but a transcript of contemporary manners, a manifestation of a certain kind of mind. It vas concluded that we might recover, from the monuments of literature, a knowledge of the manner in which men thought and felt centuries ago. The attempt was made, and it succeeded.

Pondering on these modes of feeling and thought, men decided that they were facts of the highest kind. They saw that these facts bore reference to the most important occurrences, that they explained and were explained by them, that it was necessary thenceforth to give them a rank, and a most important rank, in history. This rank they have received, and from that moment history has undergone a complete change: in its subject-matter, its system, its machinery, the appre

VOL. I.

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