INTTRODUCTIOlSr.
 

ISING from a prolonged study of the Marian
and Elizabethan period of our Literature, we
are oppressed with a sense of its magnitude
and manysidedness, and of the utter impos¬
sibility of mentioning here even a tithe of the
interesting facts that have been met with in
the search.

There is also the clear conviction that nothing
in it is worthless : but that everything—even a
Ballad, a Proclamation, or a Sermon—may in
some way or other be turned to good account.

Further there is the most distinct percep¬
tion of the growth of English Mind all through
the long reign of the Virgin Queen.
In its earlier years, our Scholars and Poets were busy with translations from
the great Classical Authors, and our Divines were even busier with translations of
the Works of the Protestant Theologians on the Continent. Original English work
was then relatively poor. Theatres did not exist in this country. But few Interludes
were written, and still fewer were printed. There was then in our language but
little food for the Imagination.
A Transcript dc,                                      U                                                      V, xxv.