Portrait of Luther by Maimbourg, Bossuet, and Voltaire 179

My former Mis-judgment of Shakspeare-Mistaken Ad-

mirers of the Poet

-

225

- 229

235

Page

Voltaire's Opinion of Shakspeare-Opinion of English

Critics

- 239

244

The faults of Shakspeare are the Faults of his Age.—The

Language of Shakspeare and Dante

Mechanism of the English Stage in the sixteenth century 249

Character of Shakspeare's Genius

-

Shakespeare's Style of Writing has corrupted Taste-

Writing is an art

Striking Beauties of Shakspeare

Shakspeare's Female Characters

Classic Models

The Era of Shakspeare

Poets and other Writers contemporary with Shakspeare

The Life of Shakspeare

Shakspeare one of the five or six Great Master Spirits

254

- 260

- 266

- 273

PART THE THIRD.

LITERATURE UNDER THE FIRST TWO STUARTS AND DURING

THE COMMONWEALTH.

What England owes to the Stuarts

James I.-Basilikon Doron

Raleigh.-Cowley

Political Writings under Charles I. and Cromwell

The Abbe de Lamennais

Killing no Murder-Locke-Hobbes-Denham

Benjamin

HISTORICAL VIEW

OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

B

VOL. I.

HISTORICAL VIEW

OF

ENGLISH LITERATURE.

INTRODUCTION.

OF THE LATIN AS THE SOURCE OF THE LANGUAGES OF LATIN EUROPE.

WHEN a powerful people has passed away; when the language which it used has ceased to be spoken; that language remains a monument of another age, in which we admire the master-pieces of a broken pencil and chisel. To tell how the idioms of the tribes of Ausonia became the Latin idiom; how much of the character of the barbarous tribes who formed it was retained by that idiom; what it lost and