A third trait of high distinction in English literature, of which this list is a reminder, and one not unconnected with its continuity and receptivity, is its copiousness. This is not a matter of mere number, of voluminousness; there is an abundance of kinds. In the literature of knowledge, what branch is unfruitful, and in the literature of power, what fountainhead is unstruck by the rod? Only the Italian genius in its prime shows such supreme equality in diversity. How many human interests are exemplified, and how many amply illustrated, exhibiting in a true sense and not by hyperbole myriad-minded man! In the English genius there seems something correspondent to this marvellous efficacy of faculty and expression; it has largeness of power. The trait most commonly thought of in connection with Aristotle as an individual--"master of those who know"--and in connection with mediæval schoolmen as a class, is not less characteristic of the English, though it appears less. The voracity of Chaucer for all literary knowledge, which makes him encyclopædic of a period, is matched at the end of these centuries by Newman, whose capaciousness of intellect was inclusive of all he cared to know. Bacon, in saying, "I take all knowledge to be my province," did not so much make a personal boast as utter a national motto. The great example is, of course, Shakespeare, on whose universality later genius has exhausted metaphor; but for everything that he knew in little, English can show a large literature, and exceeds his comprehensiveness. The fact is best illustrated by adverting to what this list spares. English is rich in translations, and in this sort of exchange the balance of trade is always in favor of the importer. Homer alone is included here,--to except the Bible, which has been so inbred in England as to have become an English book to an eye that clings to the truth through all appearances; but how rich in great national books is a literature that can omit so noble a work, though translated, and one so historic in English, as North's Plutarch! In the literature of knowledge, Greek could hardly have passed over Euclid; but Newton's Principia is here not required. Sir Thomas More is one of the noblest English names, and his Utopia is a memorable book; but it drops from the list. Nor is it names and books only that disappear; but, as these last instances suggest, kinds of literature go out with them. Platonism falls into silence with the pure tones of Vaughan, in whom light seems almost audible; and the mystic Italian fervor of the passional spirit fades with Crashaw. The books of politeness, though descended from Castiglione, depart with Chesterfield, perhaps from some pettiness that had turned courtesy into etiquette; and parody retires with Buckingham. Latin literature was almost rewritten in English during the eighteenth century; but the traces of it here are few. Of inadequate representation, how slight is burlesque in Butler, and the presence of Chevy Chase hardly compensates for the absence of the war-ballad in Drayton and Campbell. So it is with a hundred instances. In another way of illustration, it is to be borne in mind that each author appears by only one title; and while it may be true that commonly each finer spirit stores up his immortality in some one book that is a more perfect vessel of time, yet fecundity is rightly reckoned as a sign of greatness and measure of it in the most, and the production of many books makes a name bulk larger. Mass counts, when in addition to quality; and the greatest have been plentiful writers. No praise can make Gray seem more than a remnant of genius, and no qualification of the verdict can deprive Dryden and Jonson of largeness. It belongs to genius to tire not in creation, thereby imitating the excess of nature flowing from unhusbanded sources. Yet among these hundred books, as in scientific classification, one example must stand for all, except when some folio, like an ark, comes to the rescue of a Beaumont and Fletcher. This is cutting the diamond with itself. But within these limits, narrowing circle within circle, what a universe of man remains! Culture after culture, epoch by epoch, are laid bare as in geologic strata,--mediæval tale and history, humanistic form, the Shakespearian age, Puritan, Cavalier, man scientific, reforming, reborn into a new natural, political, artistic world, man modern; and in every layer of imagination and learning lies, whole and entire, a buried English age. It is by virtue of its copiousness that English literature is so representative, both of man's individual spirit in its restless forms of apprehension and embodiment, and of its historic formulation in English progress as national power.