The Project Gutenberg EBook of English Literature, Considered as an
Interpreter of English History, by Henry Coppee

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Title: English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History
Designed as a Manual of Instruction

Author: Henry Coppee

Release Date: February 26, 2005 [EBook #15176]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLISH LITERATURE, ***

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English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History.

Designed as a _Manual of Instruction_.

By

Henry Coppee, LL.D.,

President of the Lehigh University.

The Roman Epic abounds in moral and poetical defects; nevertheless it
remains the most complete picture of the national mind at its highest
elevation, the most precious document of national history, if the
history of an age is revealed in its ideas, no less than in its events
and incidents.--Rev. C. Merivale.

_History of the Romans under the Empire_, c. xli.

Second Edition.
Philadelphia:
Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger.
1873.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by Claxton,
Remsen & Haffelfinger, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at
Washington.

Stereotyped by J. Fagan & Son, Philadelphia.

To The Right Reverend William Bacon Stevens, D.D., LL.D., Bishop Of
Pennsylvania.

My Dear Bishop:

I desire to connect your name with whatever may be useful and valuable in
this work, to show my high appreciation of your fervent piety, varied
learning, and elegant literary accomplishments; and, also, far more than
this, to record the personal acknowledgment that no man ever had a more
constant, judicious, generous and affectionate brother, than you have been
to me, for forty years of intimate and unbroken association.

Most affectionately and faithfully yours,

Henry Coppee.

PREFACE

It is not the purpose of the author to add another to the many volumes
containing a chronological list of English authors, with brief comments
upon each. Such a statement of works, arranged according to periods, or
reigns of English monarchs, is valuable only