Sixteenth-Century English Prose. Edited by Karl 3. Holzknecht. (Hamish Hamilton,
48s.) THEsE volumes in Harper's English Literature series are intended as an introduction for students to the literature of the sixteenth century, and anyone reading them straight through will come away with a considerable stock of Tudor poetry and prose in his head— and often of poetry and prose not easily accessible elsewhere. This being so, it would be churlish to complain of the selection, though rather more than the usual obiNtions can be- made to it. For instance. why Dunbar and not 'The Cherry and the Slae?' Why not Drayton? Whatever his actual dates he was surely a sixteenth-century poet by his style. On the other hand, it is praiseworthy to devote a section to Elizabethan satire and so much space to the Prayer Book and Bible. The editing is careful and the introductions more remarkable for scholarship than for any true
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