vomiting books and pamphlets, and disgusting when he draws Mary Queen of Scots, do not hinder the pleasure of those who read him for his language and his art.  He is great for other reasons than these.  First because of the extraordinary smoothness and melody of his verse and the richness of his language—­a golden diction that he drew from every source—­new words, old words, obsolete words—­such a mixture that the purist Ben Jonson remarked acidly that he wrote no language at all.  Secondly because of the profusion of his imagery, and the extraordinarily keen sense for beauty and sweetness that went to its making.  In an age of golden language and gallant imagery his was the most golden and the most gallant.  And the language of poetry in England is richer and more varied than that in any other country in Europe to-day, because of what he did.

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Elizabethan prose brings us face to face with a difficulty which has to be met by every student of literature.  Does the word “literature” cover every kind of writing?  Ought we to include in it writing that aims merely at instruction or is merely journey-work, as well as writing that has an artistic intention, or writing that, whether its author knew it or no, is artistic in its result?  Of course such a question causes us no sort of difficulty when it concerns itself only with what is being published to-day.  We know very well that some things are literature and some merely journalism; that of novels, for instance, some deliberately intend to be works of art and others only to meet a passing desire for amusement or mental occupation.  We know that most books serve or attempt to serve only a useful and not a literary purpose.  But in reading the books of three centuries ago, unconsciously one’s point of view shifts.  Antiquity gilds journey-work; remoteness and quaintness of phrasing lend a kind of distinction to what are simply pamphlets or text-books that have been preserved by accident from the ephemeralness which was the common lot of hundreds of their fellows.  One comes to regard as literature things that had no kind of literary value for their first audiences; to apply the same seriousness of judgment and the same tests to the pamphlets of Nash and Dekker as to the prose of Sidney and Bacon.  One loses, in fact, that power to distinguish the important from the trivial which is one of the functions of a sound literary taste.  Now, a study of the minor writing of the past is, of course, well worth a reader’s pains.  Pamphlets, chronicle histories, text-books and the like have an historical importance; they give us glimpses of the manners and habits and modes of thought of the day.  They tell us more about the outward show of life than do the greater books.  If you are interested in social history, they are the very thing.  But the student of literature ought to beware of them, nor ought he to touch them till he is familiar with the big and lasting things.  A man does not possess