The history of the age of the Guelphs and Ghibellines is clearly revealed in the vision of Dante: the times of Louis XIV.

are amply illustrated by the pulpit of Massillon, Bourdaloue, and Bridaine, and by the drama of Corneille, Racine, and Moliere.
ENGLISH LITERATURE THE BEST ILLUSTRATION .-- But in seeking for an illustration of the position that literature is eminently a teacher and interpreter of history, we are fortunate in finding none more striking than that presented by English literature itself.

All the great events of English history find complete correspondent delineation in English literature, so that, were the purely historical record lost, we should have in the works of poetry, fiction, and the drama, correct portraitures of the character, habits, manners and customs, political sentiments, and modes and forms of religious belief among the English people; in a word, the philosophy of English history.
In the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, Dryden, and Addison, are to be found the men and women, kings, nobles, and commons, descriptions of English nature, hints of the progress of science and advancement in art; the conduct of government, the force of prevailing fashions--in a word, the moving life of the time, and not its dry historic record.
"Authors," says the elder D'Israeli, "are the creators or creatures of opinion: the great form the epoch; the many reflect the age." Chameleon-like, most of them take the political, social, and religious hues of the period in which they live, while a few illustrate it perhaps quite as forcibly by violent opposition and invective.
We shall see that in Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_ and in Gower's _Vox Clamantis_ are portrayed the political ferments and theological controversies of the reigns of Edward III.

and Richard II.

Spenser decks the history of his age in gilded mantle and flowing plumes, in his tribute to Gloriana, The Faery Queen, who is none other than Elizabeth herself.
Literature partakes of the fierce polemic and religious enthusiasm which mark the troublous times of the Civil War; it becomes tawdry, tinselled, and licentious at the Restoration, and develops into numerous classes and more serious instruction, under the constitutional reigns of the house of Hanover, in which the kings were bad, but the nation prosperous because the rights of the people were guaranteed.
Many of the finest works of English literature are _purely and directly historical_; what has been said is intended to refer more particularly to those that are not--the unconscious, undesigned teachers of history, such as fiction, poetry, and the drama.
PURPOSE OF THE WORK .-- Such, then, is the purpose of this volume--to indicate the teachings of history in the principal productions of English literature.