Historical Sketches of English and American Literature

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a Latin term is often given with a Saxon word of the same, or nearly the same meaning following it, as' humble and lowly, '' assemble and meet together.' Another effect proceeded from the freedom with whirh the people were allowed to judge of the doctrines, and canvass the texts of the sacred writings. The...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: a Latin term is often given with a Saxon word of the same, or nearly the same meaning following it, as' humble and lowly, '' assemble and meet together.' Another effect proceeded from the freedom with whirh the people were allowed to judge of the doctrines, and canvass the texts of the sacred writings. The keen interest with which they now perused the Bible, hitherto a closed book to most of them, is allowed to have given the first impulse to the practice of reading in both parts of the island, and to have been one of the causes of the flourishing literary era which followed. . Among the great men of this age, it would be improper to overlook Sir John Cheke, professor of Greek at Cambridge, who first induced the learned of England to study that language, and the valuable literature embodied in it, with any considerable degree of care; he was also one of the first who attempted to hold out precepts and models for the improvement of English composition. The earliest theoretical book on the latter subject, was published in 1553, by Thomas Wilson of Cambridge, under the title of The Art of Rhetoric; it was a work of some merit. Another distinguished instructive writer of this age, was Roger Ascham, preceptor to Queen Elizabeth. He wrote an essay entitled Tozophilus, to inculcate the propriety of mixing recreation with study, and a treatise called The Schoolmaster, containing directions for the most approved methods of studying languages. Much of the intellect and learning of the latter years of Henry VIIT., and the whole reigns of Edward and Mary, was spent upon religious controversies, which, though interesting at the time, soon ceased to be remembered. THIRD PERIOD. THE REIGNS OP ELIZABETH, JAMES I., AND CHARLES I. 1558 TO 1649. In the preceding sections, the history of En...