Excerpt from State Normal Magazine, Vol. 20: January, 1916 In his Preface to Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson ascribes to the poet's poet equally with the myriad minded Shakespeare the distinction of having first discovered to what degree of smoothness and harmony the English language could be softened. He it was who brought into the English verse the soft music and sensuous beauty of the Italian romance. The God-gifted organ-voice of England has spoken of him in his, Areopagitica as our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This 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.