(6) The Prose Writers, of whom Bacon is the most notable.  His chief philosophical work is the Instauratio Magna (incomplete), which includes “The Advancement of Learning” and the “Novum Organum”; but he is known to literary readers by his famous Essays.  Minor prose writers are Richard Hooker, John Foxe, the historians Camden and Knox, the editors Hakluyt and Purchas, who gave us the stirring records of exploration, and Thomas North, the translator of Plutarch’s Lives.

SELECTIONS FOR READING. Spenser.  Faery Queen, selections in Standard English Classics; Bk.  I, in Riverside Literature Series, etc.; Shepherd’s Calendar, in Cassell’s National Library; Selected Poems, in Canterbury Poets Series; Minor Poems, in Temple Classics; Selections in Manly’s English Poetry, or Ward’s English Poets.

Minor Poets.  Drayton, Sackville, Sidney, Chapman, Selections in Manly or Ward; Elizabethan songs, in Schelling’s Elizabethan Lyrics, and in Palgrave’s Golden Treasury; Chapman’s Homer, in Temple Classics.

The Early Drama.  Play of Noah’s Flood, in Manly’s Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, or in Pollard’s English Miracle Plays, Moralities and Interludes, or in Belles Lettres Series, sec. 2; L.T.  Smith’s The York Miracle Plays.

Lyly.  Endymion, in Holt’s English Readings.

Marlowe.  Faustus, in Temple Dramatists, or Mermaid Series, or Morley’s Universal Library, or Lamb’s Specimens of English Dramatic Poets; Selections in Manly’s English Poetry, or Ward’s English Poets; Edward II, in Temple Dramatists, and in Holt’s English Readings.

Shakespeare.  Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, etc., in Standard English Classics (edited, with notes, with special reference to college-entrance requirements).  Good editions of single plays are numerous and cheap.  Hudson’s and Rolfe’s and the Arden Shakespeare are suggested as satisfactory.  The Sonnets, edited by Beeching, in Athenaeum Press Series.

Ben Jonson.  The Alchemist, in Canterbury Poets Series, or Morley’s Universal Library; Selections in Manly’s English Poetry, or Ward’s English Poets, or Canterbury Poets Series; Selections from Jonson’s Masques, in Evans’s English Masques; Timber, edited by Schelling, in Athenaeum Press Series.

Bacon.  Essays, school edition (Ginn and Company); Northup’s edition, in Riverside Literature Series (various other inexpensive editions, in the Pitt Press, Golden Treasury Series, etc.); Advancement of Learning, Bk.  I, edited by Cook (Ginn and Company).  Compare selections from Bacon, Hooker, Lyly, and Sidney, in Manly’s English Prose.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.[159] HISTORY.  Text-book, Montgomery, pp. 208-238; Cheyney, pp. 330-410; Green, ch. 7; Traill, Macaulay, Froude.

Special works.  Creighton’s The Age of Elizabeth; Hall’s Society in the Elizabethan Age; Winter’s Shakespeare’s England; Goadby’s The England of Shakespeare; Lee’s Stratford on Avon; Harrison’s Elizabethan England.