Excerpt from The Family Library of British Poetry: From Chaucer to the Present Time, (1350-1878) The Editors intended to give here a general sketch of British poetry but as a companion volume, The Family Library of British Prose, is soon to accompany the present work, they have concluded to reserve for that volume a general view of the literature of Britain, in cluding its prose as well as poetical writers. It will be seen that this method has the advan tage of enabling the Editors to give a more symmetrical view of the different periods of British literature. The age of Elizabeth re quires Hooker and Bacon as much as Spenser, and nearly as much as Shakespeare; in the age of Charles II. (leaving out Milton, ) the two great imaginative minds are Bunyan and Jeremy Taylor; in the period between 1740 and 1790 no poet, in respect to imperial and prodigal genius, can be compared with Burke and among the poets of the present century, the large majority are eminent as prose-writers as 'well as poets. The examples of Scott, Cole ridge, Southey, and Moore will at once recur to every mind. The Editors for these reasons have decided to postpone their general sketch of the literature of Britain, and present it in the forthcoming Family Library of British Prose. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.