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LEFT ENGLISH LITEBATURE 26 ENGLISH LITERATURE having as the foremost figure Chaucer (1340-1400). Contemporary with him were the poets William or Robert Lang- land (1332-1400), John Gower (1325- 1408), John Barbour (1316-1395). In prose the name of John Wyclif (1324- 1384) is pre-eminent. The period from the time of Chaucer to the appearance of Spenser (from the end of the 14th to near the end of the 16th century), is a veiy barren one in English literature. The center of poetic creation was for the time transferred to Scotland, where James I. (1394-1437) headed the list, which comprises Andrew de Wyntoun (15th century), Henry the Minstrel or Blind Harry (died after 1492), William Dunbar (1460-15—), Gavin Douglas (1474-1522), and Sir David Lyndsay (1490-1557). In Eng- land the only noteworthy prose prior to that of More being that of Reginald Pecock (1390-1460), Sir John Fortescue (1395-1485), the'Taston Letters" (1422- 1505), and Malory's "Morte d'Arthur" (completed 1469-1470) ; the only note- worthy verse, that of John Skelton (1460-1529). The Renaissance spread from Florence to England by means of Colet, Linacre, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More (1480- 1535), the last noteworthy as at the head of a new race of historians. Im- portant contributions to the prose of the time were the Tyndale New Testament, printed in 1525, and the Coverdale Bible (1535). The first signs of an artistic advance in poetic literature are to be found in Wyatt (1503-1542) and Surrey (1516-1547), who nationalized the son- net, and of whom the latter is regarded as the introducer of blank verse. The drama too, had by this time reached a fairly high stage of development. At length farces on the French model were constructed, the interludes of John Hey- wood (died 1565) being the most im- portant examples. To Nicholas Udall (1504-1556) the first comedy, "Ralph Roister Doister," was due. The first tragedy was performed in 1561, and the first prose play, the "Supposes" of Gas- coigne, in 1566. The most prominent figures are those of Sidney (1554-1586) and Spenser (1552-1599). In drama Lyly, Peele, Greene, Nash and Marlowe (1564-1593) are the chief immediate precursors of Shakespeare (1564-1606), Marlowe, alone, however, being at all comparable with him. Contemporary and later dramatic writers were Ben Jonson (1573-1637), Middleton (died 1627), Marston (better known as a satir- ist), Chapman (1557-1634), Thomas Heywood, Dekker (died 1639), Webster (17th century). Ford (1586-1639), Beau- mont (1586-1616) and Fletcher (1576- 1625), and Massinger (1584-1640). Tha minor poets include Michael Drayton (1563-1631), Samuel Daniel (1562- 1619), John Davies (1570-1626), John Donne (1573-1631), Giles Fletcher (1580-1623), and Phineas Fletcher (1584-1650), Drummond of Hawthorn- den (1585-1649). In Elizabethan prose the prominent names are those of Rogers Ascham (1515-1568), Lyly the Euphuist (1553-1606), Hooker (1554-1600), Ral- eigh (1552-1618), Bacon (1561-1626), the founder in some respects of modern scientific method, Burton (1576-1640), Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), and Selden (1584-1654), with Overbury, Knolles, Holinshed, Stowe, Camden, Flo- rio, and North. The issue of the author- ized version of the Bible in 1611 closed the prose list of the period. After the death of James I. the course of literature breaks up into three stages, the first from 1625 to 1640, in which the survivals from the Elizabethan age slowly died away. The "metaphysical poets," Cowley, Wither, Herbert, Cra- shaw, Habbington, and Quarles, and the cavalier poets. Suckling, Carew, Denham, all published poems before the close of this period, in which also Milton's early poems were composed, and the "Comus" and "Lycidas" published. The second stage (1640-1660) was given up almost wholly to controversial prose, the Puri- tan revolution checking the production of pure literature. In this controversial prose Milton was easily chief. With the restoration a third stage was begun. Milton turned his new leisure to the com- position of his great poems; the drama was revived, and Davenant and Dryden, with Otway, Southerne, Etherege, Wy- cherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Far- quhar in their first plays, and minor playwrights, are the most representative writers of the period. Butler established a genre in satire, and Marvel as a satir- ist in some respects anticipated Swift; Roscommon, Rochester, and Dorset con- tributed to the little poetry; while in prose we have Hobbes, Clarendon, Ful- ler, Sir Thomas Browne, Walton, Cotton, Pepys, and Evelyn, John Bunyan, Locke, Sir William Temple, Owen Feltham, Sir Henry Wotton, James Harrington, and a crowd of theological writers, of whom the best known are Jeremy Taylor, Richard Baxter, Robert Barclay, William Penn, George Fox, Isaac Barrow, John Tillotson, Stillingfleet, Bishop Pearson, Sherlock, South, Sprat, Cudworth, and Burnet. Other features of the last paii; of the 17th century were the immense advance in physical science under Boyle, Isaac Newton, Harvey, and others, and the rise of the newspaper press. Dryden's death in 1700 marks the