hilip Sidney, Drummond of Hawthornden,
Thomas Heywood, George Wither, Sir Henry Wotton, Sir William Davenant,
Thomas Randolph, Frances Quarles, James Shirley, and other greater and
lesser poets.

I have included all the important Elizabethan dramatists except John
Marston, all the editions of whose works, according to my researches,
are out of print.

In the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods talent was so extraordinarily
plentiful that the standard of excellence is quite properly raised,
and certain authors are thus relegated to the third, or excluded,
class who in a less fertile period would have counted as at least
second-class.

SUMMARY OF THE FIRST PERIOD. L s. d.

19 prose authors in 36 volumes costing 2 1 6
29 poets in 36 " " 3 7 6
__ __ _________
48 72 L5 9 0

In addition, scores of authors of genuine interest are represented in
the anthologies.

The prices given are gross, and in many instances there is a 25
per cent. discount to come off. All the volumes can be procured
immediately at any bookseller's.

CHAPTER XII

AN ENGLISH LIBRARY: PERIOD II

After dealing with the formation of a library of authors up to John
Dryden, I must logically arrange next a scheme for the period covered
roughly by the eighteenth century. There is, however, no reason why
the student in quest of a library should follow the chronological
order. Indeed, I should advise him to attack the nineteenth century
before the eighteenth, for the reason that, unless his taste
happens to be peculiarly "Augustan," he will obtain a more immediate
satisfaction and profit from his acquisitions in the nineteenth
century than in the eighteenth. There is in eighteenth-century
literature a considerable proportion of what I may term "unattractive
excellence," which one must have for the purposes of completeness,
but which may await actual perusal until more pressing and more human
books have been read. I have particularly in mind the philosophical
authors of the century.

PROSE WRITERS. L s. d.

JOHN LOCKE, _Philosophical Works_: Bohn's
Edition (2 vols.) 0 7 0

SIR ISAAC NEWTON, _Principia_ (sections 1,
2, and 3): Macmillans 0 12 0

Gilbert Burnet, _Histo