161

CHAPTER XV.

OF SAVAGE BEASTS AND VERMIN 169

CHAPTER XVI.

OF OUR ENGLISH DOGS AND THEIR QUALITIES 179

CHAPTER XVII.

OF FISH USUALLY TAKEN UPON OUR COASTS 186

CHAPTER XVIII.

OF QUARRIES OF STONE FOR BUILDING 191

CHAPTER XIX.

OF WOODS AND MARSHES 196

CHAPTER XX.

OF PARKS AND WARRENS 206

CHAPTER XXI.

OF PALACES BELONGING TO THE PRINCE 215

CHAPTER XXII.

OF ARMOUR AND MUNITION 223

CHAPTER XXIII.

OF THE NAVY OF ENGLAND 229

CHAPTER XXIV.

OF SUNDRY KINDS OF PUNISHMENT APPOINTED FOR OFFENDERS 237

CHAPTER XXV.

OF UNIVERSITIES 248

APPENDIX--

A.--HOLINSHED'S DEDICATION 263

B.--AN ELIZABETHAN SURVEY OF ENGLAND 265

C.--SOMEBODY'S QUARREL WITH HARRISON 266

D.--HARRISON'S CHRONOLOGY 266

"FOREWORDS."[1]

I am unwilling to send out this _Harrison_, the friend of some twenty
years' standing, without a few words of introduction to those readers who
don't know it. The book is full of interest, not only to every Shakspere
student, but to every reader of English history, every man who has the
least care for his forefathers' lives. Though it does contain sheets of
padding now and then, yet the writer's racy phrases are continually
turning up, and giving flavour to his descriptions, while he sets before
us the very England of Shakspere's day. From its Parliament and
Universities, to its beggars and its rogues; from its castles to its huts,
its horses to its hens; from how the state was managd, to how Mrs. Wm.
Harrison (and no doubt Mrs. William Shakspere) brewd her beer; all is
there. The book is a deliberately drawn picture of Elizabethan England;
and nothing could have kept it from being often reprinted and a thousand
times more widely known than it is, except the long and dull historical
and topographical Book I.[2]--_The Description of Britaine_--set before
the interesting account in Books II. and III., of the England under
Harrison's eyes in 1577-87.