THE AGE OF TRANSITION.
The Age of Transition. By F. J. Snell, M.A. 2 vols. "Hand- books of English Literature," Edited by Professor Hales. (George Bell and Sons. 7s. net.)—This volume completes the series of "Handbooks," and we congratulate Professor Hales on the very valuable contribution which he has been the means of making to literary study. Mr. Snell has done a piece of work which, useful, and indeed indispensable, as it is, has no great attractions for either author or reader. He takes the period between the death of Chaucer and the literary activity of Spenser, and, as Professor Hales remarks in the introduction which he has furnished to the second volume, it was without any figure of commanding eminence. If there is eminence, it is not of authorship. Wo connect Sir Philip Sidney with the field of Zutphen rather than with the " Arcadia " ; Latimer is the intrepid martyr rather than the preacher of the "Seven Sermons," and Caxton the printer more than the indefatigable translator and author. Mr. Snell's first task is to dissociate Chaucer's name from a multi- tude of pieces that have been fathered upon him, and to treat of his disciples. The second chapter is given to Occleve and Lydgate, and the third and fourth to Scottish verse. No names in the Southern Kingdom can be matched with Dunbar, Douglas, and Lyndsay. After this we have "The Spenserian Vanguard" ; "The Poets of the Renaissance," among whom Wyatt and Sidney are conspicuous ; and finally, the most inter- esting of the whole, as it is here that the period shows itself at its best, "Ballads and Songs." "It was," says Mr. Snell, "the golden age of the English ballad." It is enough to mention "Chevy Chase," the "Robin Hood" cycle, and "The Nutbrown Maid." The second volume, after a brief account of the drama, deals with the prose writers, a numerous company, with not a few famous names—Tyndale, Coverdale, and More, for instance, are among them—yet with no one in the front rank of literature. Still, it is necessary to know about them, and Mr. Snell tells us exactly what we want to hear.
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