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HISTORICAL FACTS.--The year before Chaucer died, Richard II. was starved
in his dungeon. Henry, the son of John of Gaunt, represented the
usurpation of Lancaster, and the realm was convulsed with the revolts of
rival aristocracy; and, although Prince Hal, or Henry V., warred with
entire success in France, and got the throne of that kingdom away from
Charles VI., (the Insane,) he died leaving to his infant son, Henry VI.,
an inheritance which could not be secured. The rival claimant of York,
Edward IV., had a strong party in the kingdom: then came the wars of the
Roses; the murders and treason of Richard III.; the sordid valor of Henry
VII.; the conjugal affection of Henry VIII.; the great religious
earthquake all over Europe, known as the Reformation; constituting all
together an epoch too stirring and unsettled to permit literature to
flourish; an epoch which gave birth to no great poet or mighty master, but
which contained only the seeds of things which were to germinate and
flourish in a kindlier age.


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