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The language of Spenser must not be held to be the language of the time; he purposely used an antiquated diction to give a quaint and piquant tone to his romance. A modern critic has denied that the language is thus treated by the poet; but it must be allowed that Sir Philip Sidney, living at the moment, was a competent judge of this fact, and in his "Defence of Poesie" he complains of this very circumstance in the "Faerie Queen."



We arrive now at the last name which we intend to introduce in our review of the literature of England at this period, and it is the greatest; perhaps the greatest which has yet diffused its glory over this or any other country. The genius of Shakespeare appears to penetrate into all departments of human knowledge, and his instincts to possess a universal accuracy. Whether he describes the beauties of Nature at large, or enters the haunts of busy life, high or low, royal, noble, or plebeian, or sends his all-searching glance into the depths of the human mind, or the strange intricacies of human nature, we are equally astonished at the clearness of his perceptive faculties, and the justness of his conclusions. We shall not here discuss the various guesses, for such to a great degree they are, which have been indulged in by his host of critics and biographers, regarding his little known life. It is sufficient that we know that he was born at Stratford-on-Avon in 1564; that his father was in the Town Council, and a man of property; his mother connected by birth with the family of John Hampden, the illustrious patriot; that the Shakespeares, therefore, were of gentle blood, and bore a coat of arms. That William was said to have been apprenticed to a butcher, or that one of his father's trades was that of a butcher. That at the age, it is said, of eighteen, but probably not till later, for some cause he went to London, where he became connected with the theatre, and so early as 1589 we find that he had written