ing role. The motive of the tragedy is somewhat strained and
fantastic, but it is, notwithstanding, very effective on the stage. It
gives one an unwonted thrill to listen to a play, by a contemporary
English writer, which is really literature. One gets a faint idea of
what it must have been to assist at the first night of _Hamlet_.

1. English Literature in the Reign of Victoria. Henry
Morley. (Tauchnitz Series.)

2. Victorian Poets. E.C. Stedman. Boston: Houghton,
Mifflin & Co., 1886.

3. Dickens. Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, David
Copperfield, Bleak House, Tale of Two Cities.

4. Thackeray. Vanity Fair, Pendennis, Henry Esmond,
The Newcomes.

5. George Eliot. Scenes of Clerical Life, Mill on the
Floss, Silas Marner, Romola, Adam Bede, Middlemarch.

6. Macaulay. Essays, Lays of Ancient Rome.

7. Carlyle. Sartor Resartus, French Revolution, Essays
on History, Signs of the Times, Characteristics, Burns, Scott,
Voltaire, and Goethe.

8 The Works of Alfred Tennyson. London: Stranham
& Co., 1872. 6 vols.

9. Selections from the Poetical Works of Robert Browning.
London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1880. 2 vols.

APPENDIX.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER.

THE PRIORESS.

[From the general prologue to the Canterbury Tales.]

There was also a nonne, a prioresse,
That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy;
Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy;
And she was cleped[23] madame Eglentine.
Ful wel she sange the service devine,
Entuned in hire nose ful swetely;
And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly[24]
After the scole of Stratford-atte-Bowe,[25]
For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.
At mete was she wel ytaught withalle;
She lette no morsel from hire lippe falle,
Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.
Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest.
In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest.[26]
Hire over lippe wiped she so clene
That in hire cuppe was no ferthing[27] sene
Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught.
Ful semely after hire mete she raught.[28]
And sikerly[29] she was of grete disport
And ful plesant and amiable of port,
And peined hire to contrefeten chere
Of court,[30] and ben estatelich of manere
And to ben holden digne[31] of reverence.
But for to speken of hire conscience,
She was so charitable and so pitous,
She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
Caughte in a trappe, if it were