BOHN'S STANDARD LIBRARY HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE (WYCLIF, Chaucer, EARLIEST DRAMA, RENAISSANCE) GEORGE BELL & SONS LONDON: YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN NEW YORK: 66 FIFTH AVENUE, AND BOMBAY 53 ESPLANADE ROAD CAMBRIDGE: DEIGHTON BELL & co. WM. CLARKE ROBINSON, PH. D. FORMERLY LECTURER IN DURHAM UNIVERSity, author OF "OUR EARLY 66 (TRANSLATIOn revised bY THE AUTHOK) VOL. II WYCLIF, CHAUCER, EARLIEST DRAMA, RENAISSANCE LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS 1901 PRINTED FROM AMERICAN ELECTRO-FLATES, BY W LLIAM CLOWES and Sons, LIMITED, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET. TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. THE first volume of this work, which appeared in its English dress just ten years ago with a valuable appendix by the author, reviewed the history of English Literature from the earliest times of the ancient hymnic poetry and the old Teutonic Deities up to the close of Piers Plowman's Vision, and forms the standard and almost the only reliable work on our earliest English Literature. In the present volume the author puts forth all his strength and compresses the results of his lifeZong study of Chaucer. By the side of Chaucer are placed Wyclif, the early religious drama, and the Renaissance. The present volume may be considered the crowning work of the author's life. The proposed second volume apparently outgrew its contemplated limits, and the author published the portion here given, as Volume II. Part i., without waiting to complete the portion he had designed as Volume II. Volume II. Part ii. is to continue the history up to the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and should contain the Appendix to which frequent reference is made in these pages. It had not gone through the press when the author's sudden and lamented death occurred in January, 1892. 204248 |