Excerpt from English Literature: A Historical Sketch of English Literature, From the Earliest TimesThe revival OF letters is a most appropriate phrase to designate the impulse which learning received after its long neglect during the dark ages. Ancient learning, however great were its achievements, and however confident it may have been of eternal duration, died as other things mortal die, and was buried, together with almost everything, great and small, which it had accomplished. The world can never estimate what it has lost by the destruction of the works of ancient genius. I The comparatively little which has been preserved of them is sufficient to convince us that we cannot too much admire the. Men and the ages which produced them, nor can we too deeply lament the brutality of those barbarians, and the fanaticism of those early Christians, who were alike eager to annihilate everything which the exquisite civilisation of the ancients had achieved.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.