Jonathan Swift was born in 1667, on the 30th of November.  His father was a Jonathan Swift, sixth of the ten sons of the Rev. Thomas Swift, vicar of Goodrich, near Ross, in Herefordshire, who had married Elizabeth Dryden, niece to the poet Dryden’s grandfather.  Jonathan Swift married, at Leicester, Abigail Erick, or Herrick, who was of the family that had given to England Robert Herrick, the... more...

INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR. Recitation with dramatic energy by men whose business it was to travel from one great house to another and delight the people by the way, was usual among us from the first. The scop invented and the glee-man recited heroic legends and other tales to our Anglo-Saxon forefathers. These were followed by the minstrels and other tellers of tales written for the people. They... more...

This volume of "Mediæval Tales" is in four parts, containing severally, (1) Turpin's "History of Charles the Great and Orlando," which is an old source of Charlemagne romance; (2) Spanish Ballads, relating chiefly to the romance of Charlemagne, these being taken from the spirited translations of Spanish ballads published in 1823 by John Gibson Lockhart; (3) a selection of stories... more...

Pope’s life as a writer falls into three periods, answering fairly enough to the three reigns in which he worked.  Under Queen Anne he was an original poet, but made little money by his verses; under George I. he was chiefly a translator, and made much money by satisfying the French-classical taste with versions of the “Iliad” and “Odyssey.”  Under George I. he also edited Shakespeare, but... more...

INTRODUCTION. Arthur Young was born in 1741, the son of a clergyman, at Bradfield, in Suffolk.  He was apprenticed to a merchant at Lynn, but his activity of mind caused him to be busy over many questions of the day.  He wrote when he was seventeen a pamphlet on American politics, for which a publisher paid him with ten pounds’ worth of books.  He started a periodical, which ran to six numbers. ... more...