and Marlowe's _The Passionate Shepherd to His Love_. The best pastoral lyrics from the modern point of view are Shakespeare's two songs: "Under the Greenwood Tree" (_As you like it_) and "When Icicles Hang by the Wall" (_Love's Labor's Lost_). The best miscellaneous lyrics are the songs in Shakespeare's _Cymbeline_, _The Tempest_, and _As You Like It_. Drayton's _Ballad of Agincourt_ and _Sonnet 61_ are his best lyrical verse. Read Ben Jonson's _An Epitaph on Salathiel Pavy_ and, from his Pindaric Ode, the stanza beginning:--
From John Donne, read either _The Funeral_, _The Canonization_, or _The Dream_.
Good selections from all varieties of Elizabethan lyrics may be found in Bronson, II., Ward. I., _Oxford, Century_, Manly, I. Nearly all the lyrics referred to in this list, including the best songs from the dramatists, are given in Schelling's _Elizabethan Lyrics_ (327 pp., 75 cents). This work, together with Erskine's _The Elizabethan Lyric_ and Reed's _English Lyrical Poetry from its Origins to the Present Time_, will serve for a more exhaustive study of this fascinating subject.
From your reading, select from each class the lyric that pleases you most, and give reasons for your choice. Which lyric seems the most spontaneous? the most artistic? the most inspired? the most modern? the most quaint? the most and the least instinct with feeling?
Edmund Spenser.--The _Faerie Queene_, Book I., Canto I., should be read. Maynard's _English Classic Series_, No. 27 (12 cents) contains the first two cantos and the _Prothalamion_. Kitchin's edition of Book I. (Clarendon Press. 60 cents) is an excellent volume. The Globe edition furnishes a good complete text of Spenser's work. Ample selections are given in Bronson, II., Ward, I., and briefer ones in Manly, I., and _Century_.
The Best Volumes of Selections.--The least expensive volume to cover nearly the entire field with brief selections is Vol. II. of _The Oxford Treasury of English Literature_, entitled _Growth of the Drama_ (Clarendon Press, 412 pp., 90 cents). Pollard's _English Miracle Plays, Moralities, and Interludes_ (Clarendon Press, 250 pp., $1.90) is the best single volume of selections from this branch of the drama. _Everyman and Other Miracle Plays_ (Everyman's Library, 35 cents) is a good inexpensive volume. Manly's' _Specimens of the Pre-Shakespearean Drama_ (three volumes, $1.25 each) covers this field more fully. Morley's _English Plays_ (published as Vol. III. of Cassell's _Library of English Literature_, at eleven and one half shillings) contains good selections from nearly all the plays mentioned below, except those by Shakespeare and Jonson. Williams's _Specimens of the Elizabethan Drama, from Lyly to Shirley_, 1580-1642 (Clarendon Press, 576 pp., $1.90) is excellent for a comprehensive survey of the field covered. Lamb's _Specimens of English Poets Who Lived about the Time of Shakespeare_ (Bohn's Library, 552 pp.) contains a large number of good selections.