Reproduced by permission of the Medici Society, Ltd., from the Medici ADMISSION OF SIR TRISTRAM TO THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE ROUND Table. 262 Palace of Westminster. Photo: Rischgitz Collection. CHAUCER AT THE COURT OF EDWARD III, BY FORD MADOX BROWN. 263 Tate Gallery, London. Photo: Rischgitz Collection. "THE DREAM OF SIR LAUNCELOT," BY SIR E. BURNE-JONES . 266 From the painting by Titian in the National Gallery, London. Photo: "SANCHO PANZA in the Apartment of the DUCHESS," BY C. R. LESLIE, R.A. 279 Tate Gallery, London. Photo: W. A. Mansell & Co. "DON QUIXOTE AND MARITORNES AT THE INN," BY ROLAND WHEEL By permission of the Corporation of Oldham. Photo: Eyre & Spottis- "SPENSER READING THE 'FAERIE QUEEN' TO SIR WALTER Raleigh," BY JOHN CLARETON Photo: Rischgitz Collection. SIR THOMAS MORE. After Holbein. Photo: Rischgitz Collection. EDMUND SPENSER Photo: Rischgitz Collection. FACING 287 287 287 A INTRODUCTION GREAT artist once said that for him at the heart of the religious idea was a sense of continuity, that, in deed, this sense amounted to religion. I was standing with him at the time looking over an English landscape, and on the hill-side opposite to us was an old track which generations ago had been used by ponies to carry up the daily supply of bread to the little village on the hill-top. The years have changed all that. Modern methods of transport have superseded the ponies, but the track on the hill-side can still be seen, a reminder of the unbroken continuity of life through the centuries. And one felt the force of the artist's words. It is just as when, perhaps, you are walking about London and thinking of Shakespeare's London your mind seems to be in some city not only of three hundred years ago but a thousand miles away, and then suddenly you realise that his London was this London and there has been no violent change but only a gradual shifting and growth and redistribution. And again in the thought is the very root of the religious idea. And that is the answer to anyone who may question the use of such a thing as the history of literature, as apart from the direct study of literature itself. This present OUTLINE has two functions. First, it is to give the reader something like a representative summary of the work itself that has been accomplished by the great creative minds of the world in letters. But, also, it aims at placing that work in historical perspective, showing that from the beginning until now, from the nameless poets of the earliest scriptures down to |