Too often intending but their own glory, they point the way to the source of it, and are straightway themselves forgotten.
Very little of the poetry of the fifteenth century is worthy of a different fate from that which has befallen it.

Possibly the Wars of the Roses may in some measure account for the barrenness of the time; but I do not think they will explain it.

In the midst of the commotions of the seventeenth century we find Milton, the only English poet of whom we are yet sure as worthy of being named with Chaucer and Shakspere.
It is in quality, however, and not in quantity that the period is deficient.

It had a good many writers of poetry, some of them prolific.
John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, a great imitator of Chaucer, was the principal of these, and wrote an enormous quantity of verse.

We shall find for our use enough as it were to keep us alive in passing through this desert to the Paradise of the sixteenth century--a land indeed flowing with milk and honey.