., _Growth of the Drama_; Vol. III., _Jacobean to Victorian_.
(Oxford Treasury.)

*_Oxford Book of English Verse_. (Oxford.)

*Craik's _English Prose_, 5 vols. (Craik.)

*Page's _British Poets of the Nineteenth Century_. (Page.)

Chambers's _Cyclopedia of English Literature_. (Chambers.)

Manly's _English Poetry_ (from 1170). (Manly I.)

Manly's _English Prose_ (from 1137). (Manly II.)

_Century Readings for a Course in English Literature_. (Century.)

CHAPTER I: FROM 449 A.D. TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066

Subject Matter and Aim.--The history of English literature traces
the development of the best poetry and prose written in English by the
inhabitants of the British Isles. For more than twelve hundred years
the Anglo-Saxon race has been producing this great literature, which
includes among its achievements the incomparable work of Shakespeare.

This literature is so great in amount that the student who approaches
the study without a guide is usually bewildered. He needs a history of
English literature for the same reason that a traveler in England
requires a guidebook. Such a history should do more than indicate
where the choicest treasures of literature may be found; it should
also show the interesting stages of development; it should emphasize
some of the ideals that have made the Anglo-Saxons one of the most
famous races in the world; and it should inspire a love for the
reading of good literature.

No satisfactory definition of "literature" has ever been framed.
Milton's conception of it was "something so written to after times, as
they should not willingly let it die." Shakespeare's working
definition of literature was something addressed not to after times
but to an eternal present, and invested with such a touch of nature as
to make the whole world kin. When he says of Duncan:--

"After life's fitful fever he sleeps well,"

he touches the feelings of mortals of all times and opens the door for
imaginative activity, causing us to wonder why life should be a fitful
fever, followed by an incommunicable sleep. Much of what we call
literature would not survive the test of Shakespeare's definition; but
true literature must appeal to imagination and feeling as well as to
intellect. No mere definition can take the place of what may be called
a feeling for literature. Such a feeling will develop as the best
English poetry and prose: are sympathetically read. Wordsworth had
this feeling when he defi