To him was allotted the task of writing the "Descriptions of
Britain and England" from which the following chapters are drawn. He
gathered his facts from books, letters, maps, conversations, and, most
important of all, his own observation and experience; and he put them
loosely together into what he calls "this foul frizzled treatise."
Yet, with all his modesty, he claims to "have had an especial eye to
the truth of things"; and as a result we have in his pages the most
vivid and detailed picture in existence of the England into which
Shakespeare was born.
In 1876 Dr. Furnivall condensed Harrison's chapters for the New
Shakspere Society, and these have since been reprinted by Mr. Lothrop
Withington in the modern dress in which the most interesting of them
appear here. No apology is needed for thus selecting and rearranging,
since in their original form they were without unity, and formed part
of a vast compilation.
Harrison's merit does not lie in the rich interest of his matter
alone. He wrote a racy style with a strong individual as well as
Elizabethan flavor; and his personal comment upon the manners of his
time serves as a piquant sauce to the solid meat of his historical
information.
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