A School History of English Literature Author:Elizabeth Lee 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: perfect English prose is to be found in the following verses from Solomon's Song (viii. 6, 7):— Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: f... more »or love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. Older students should read the article on Thomas More in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. xxxviii. Easily accessible reprints of More's Utopia and Ascham's Schoolmaster are to be found in Cassell's National Library. CHAPTER V. EARLY ELIZABETHAN POETS. I. Tottel's Miscellany. Modern English poetry begins with the publication in 1557 of the collection of poems known as Tottel's Mis- " Totters (ellany. It is our first anthology, and was at Misceilany", once popular. A second edition appeared in ofernfiordSernok tne same 'eari an(J tne book had altogether English eight editions during Elizabeth's reign. The poetry. ll le g volume is Songs and Sonnets written by the Right Honourable Lord Henry Howard, late Earl of Surrey, and others. It was edited by Nicholas Grimald, and contained in its first form thirty-six poems by the Earl of Surrey, ninety by Sir Thomas Wyatt, forty by Grimald, and ninety-five by unnamed authors, many of whom have since been identified. It is beyond doubt the book referred to by Slender in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor (i. i. 205-6), when he says, "I had rather than forty shillings I had my book of songs and sonnets here". Such collections of poems found much favour with the Elizabethans. Two that appeared before Spenser are the Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576), edited by...« less