* * * * *
1. English Writers. Henry Morley. Cassell & Co., 1887.
4 vols.
2. Skeat's Specimens of English Literature, 1394-1579
(Clarendon Press Series.) Oxford.
3. Morte Darthur. London: Macmillan & Co., 1868.
(Globe Edition.)
4. English and Scottish Ballads. Edited by Francis J.
Child. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1859. 8 vols.
5. Spenser's Poetical Works. Edited by Richard Morris.
London: Macmillan & Co., 1877. (Globe Edition.)
6. "A Royal Poet." In Washington Irving's Sketch
Book. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1864.
CHAPTER III.
THE AGE OF SHAKSPERE.
1564-1616.
The great age of English poetry opened with the publication of Spenser's
_Shepheard's Calendar_, in 1579, and closed with the printing of
Milton's _Samson Agonistes_, in 1671. Within this period of little less
than a century English thought passed through many changes, and there
were several successive phases of style in our imaginative literature.
Milton, who acknowledged Spenser as his master, and who was a boy of
eight years at Shakspere's death, lived long enough to witness the
establishment of an entirely new school of poets, in the persons of
Dryden and his contemporaries. But, roughly speaking, the dates above
given mark the limits of one literary epoch, which may not improperly be
called the Elizabethan.
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