Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries

London: John Murray. Very Good with no dust jacket. 1864. Hardcover. No signatures. Leather spines faded with moderate rubbing. Small green adhesive star sticker on front endpaper of each volume. ; Seventh edition. Four volume set, complete. Volume One: xxxii, 480 pages + portrait frontispiece. Volume Two: xi, [1], 464 pages. Volume Three: (iii)-xii, 464 pages. Volume Four: viii, 424 pages. All volumes late 19th century full calf bindings. Spine with four raised bands, two red leather lettering pieces, gilt and blind decoration. Gilt and blind decoration to borders of boards. Gilt decoration to edges of boards. Blind dentelles. Marbled endpapers and page edges. Page dimensions: 173 x 117mm. Henry Hallam (1777-1859) was an English barrister and historian. "The 'Introduction to the Literature of Europe' continues a topic broached in the 'View of the Middle Ages'. In the first chapter Hallam sketches the state of literature in Europe down to the end of the 14th century: the extinction of ancient learning which followed the fall of the Roman empire and the rise of Christianity; the preservation of the Latin language in the services of the church; and the revival of letters after the 7th century. For the first century and a half of his period he is mainly occupied with a review of classical learning, taking short decennial periods and noticing works which they produced. For the period 1520–1550 there are separate chapters on ancient literature, theology, science, speculative philosophy and jurisprudence, the literature of taste and other miscellaneous literature; and the subdivisions of subjects is carried further in later periods. Thus poetry, the drama and polite literature form the subjects of separate chapters. An author may be mentioned in many chapters: William Shakespeare, Hugo Grotius, Francis Bacon and Thomas Hobbes appear in half a dozen different places. The plan excluded biographical history. It is an account of the books which would make a complete library of the period, arranged according to date of publication and subject." - Wikipedia entry on Henry Hallam, accessed March 2016. .