Excerpt from The History of English Poetry, From the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 1: To Which Are Prefixed Two Dissertations, I. On the Origin of Romantic Fiction in Europe, II. On the Introduction of Learning Into England That. Thefe {peculations fhould' become the fa vourite purfuits, and the fafhionable topics, of fuch a period. Is extremely natural. We look back on the. Favage condition of our ancefiors' with the triumph of fuperiority, we are pleafed to mark the fieps'by which Iwe have been raifed from rudenefs to elegance: and our reflections on this fubjeet are accom panied with aconfcious pride, arifing, in great meafure, froma tacit comparifon of the infinite difproportion between the feeble efforts of remote ages, and our. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.