THE years 1603-60 correspond to no one literary period, for
two-thirds of them fall within the period 1580-1642 which
historians of the drama loosely call the Elizabethan age,
and the remaining third does not contain all the age of Milton.
The plan of this series reserves Shakespeare for the preceding
volume, but it must not be forgotten that the tragedies, in
which his genius reached its supreme height, belong to the reign
of James I, and he was influential throughout the years under
discussion. Milton, however, is too much the creation of the
puritan revolution to be omitted even though his most exalted
epics were published later than 1660. Nevertheless, even leav-
ing out the life of Shakespeare, the first half of the seventeenth
century has many claims to distinction in literary history. The
two greatest publications in English literature fell within its
limits--the King James Version of the Bible and the first folio
of Shakespeare. The finest comedies of Ben Jonson, and the
plays usually assigned to Beaumont and Fletcher jointly, were
first performed in the reign of James I. Apart from Milton and
Donne and, perhaps, Herrick, the poets were not of the same
calibre as the dramatists, but each managed to produce a few
gems that have escaped oblivion. The prose was even more
notable than the verse, for then appeared Bacon Advancement
of Learning, the Novum Organum, and the later editions of his
Essays, and Burton Anatomy of Melancholy. Furthermore it is
fitting that the reign of the only learned English king in modern
times should be memorable for its scholars. Then England stood
at the head of European learning, and a great scholar like
Casaubon was glad to find refuge and a spiritual home in the
land of his adoption. There he met a kindred spirit in Lancelot
Andrewes, whose knowledge of sacred literature was as pro-
found as his own. Coke established for himself a unique position
in legal history, and Selden was scarcely less eminent in several
fields. Among historians and antiquaries were such giants of
erudition as Camden, Spelman, Dugdale, and Prynne; among
political thinkers, Hobbes and Harrington. In addition the

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