Table V
Showing the Distribution of the Best Literature in Time and Space, With a Parallel Reference to Some of the World’s Great Events
[It was impossible to get the writers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries into the unit space. The former fills a space twice the unit width, and the latter, when it is complete, will require five units.]
Greece
B.C.
1000
Israel
David, The Psalms
900
800
Rome founded
Æsop
700
B.C.
600
India
Budha
Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon
Republic established at Rome
| The Golden Age of Grecian Literature | ||
| Pindar | Æschylus | Herodotus |
| Sophocles | Thucydides | |
| Pericles | Euripides | Xenophon |
| Aristophanes | ||
| Socrates | ||
500
Mahabharata
Ramayana
(Epics of India)
Darius, king of Persia
Greece
Battle of Marathon
Battle of Thermopylæ
Battle of Salamis
Cincinnatus at Rome
Ezra at Jerusalem
| Plato | ||
| Aristotle | ||
| Demosthenes |
400
Alexander
The Gauls burn Rome
300
Wars of Rome against Carthage
Hannibal in Italy
200
Greece becomes a Roman Province
Rome
The Gracchi, Marius, and Sylla
| Rome. Augustan Age, 31 b. c. to a. d. 14. | ||
| Reatinus | Ovid | |
| Sallust | Livy | |
| Cicero | Lucretius | |
| Virgil | ||
100
Rome
Julius Cæsar
Pompey
Civil War, Empire established
| Tacitus | ||
| Plutarch | Juvenal | |
| Pliny |
A.D.
Josephus
Jerusalem taken by Titus
Pompeii overwhelmed
Romans conquer Britain
| Epictetus | ||
| Marcus Aurelius |
100
Church Fathers
200
Aurelian conquers Zenobia
300
Under Constantine Christianity becomes the State religion
Roman Empire divided
400
Angles and Saxons drive out the Britons
Huns under Attila invade the Roman Empire
500
Christianity carried to England by Augustine
| English Literature | |||
| Cædmon | |||
600
Arabia
Mahomet
| Bæda | ||
| Cynewulfda |
700
France
Charlemagne founds the Empire of the West
Ælfred, 850-900
800
Danes overrun England
Ælfred’s glorious reign
900
Chivalry begins
Capetian kings in France
England
Saint Dunstan
Papal supremacy
1000
Persia
Firdusi’s Shah Nameh
Chivalry begins
Capetian kings in France
England
Canute the Great
1066. Norman Conquest
Peter the Hermit
First Crusade
Geoffrey of Monmouth
1100
Persia
Omar Khayyám
Germany
Nibelungenlied
Spain
Chronicle of the Cid
England
Plantagenets
Richard I.
France
Second and Third Crusades
Saint Bernard
| Layamon | ||
| Roger Bacon |
1200
Persia
Saadi
England
1215. Runnymede, Magna Charta
Edward I.
| Mandeville | ||
| Langland | ||
| Wycliffe | Chaucer | |
| Gower |
1300
Italy
Dante
Petrarch
Boccaccio
Persia
Hafiz
England
Chivalry at its height
The Black Prince
Gunpowder
France
Battles of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt
| Lydgate | ||
| Fortescue | ||
| Malory |
1400
Germany
Thomas à Kempis
Arabian Nights (probably)
Persia
Jami
England
Henry VIII. shook off the Pope
Movable Type
Discovery of America
Joan of Arc
Wars of the Roses
| More | Ascham | |
| Lyly | Sackville | |
| Sidney | ||
| Marlowe | Fox | |
| Spenser | Hooker |
1500
Italy
Ariosto
Tasso
Galileo
France
Montaigne
Copernicus
Kepler
The Armada
England
Henry VIII., Elizabeth
Germany
1515. Luther’s Reformation
France
Massacre of St. Bartholomew
| Jonson | Bacon | Herbert |
| Shakspeare | Newton | J.Taylor |
| Chapman | Hobbes | |
| Beaumont & Fletcher | Walton | |
| Milton | Locke | S. Butler |
| Bunyan | Pepys | |
| Dryden |
1600
Spain.
Cervantes
Calderon
Germany
Kepler
France
Descartes
Corneille
Racine
Molière
La Fontain
1620. Plymouth Rock and the “Mayflower”
1649 Cromwell
1660 Restoration
1688 Revolution
William and Mary
France.
Louis XIV.
| Addison | Cowper | Otis |
| Steele | Burns | Jay |
| Pope | Rogers | Adams |
| Defoe | Hume | Hamilton |
| Swift | Edwards | Madison |
| Berkeley | A. Smith | Jefferson |
| J. Butler | Bentham | Pitt |
| Moore | Gibbon | Burke |
| Thomson | Johnson | Fox |
| Young | Boswell | Erskine |
| Gray | Malthus | P. Henry. |
| Goldsmith | Mackintosh | |
| Sterne | Paine |
1700
France
Montesquieu
Le Sage
Rousseau
Voltaire
Germany
Munchausen
Lessing
1776. American Revolution
1789-94. French Revolution
England
Marlborough
| Scott | Herschel | DeQuincey |
| Byron | Whewell | Whately |
| Bryant | Ricardo | Jeffrey |
| Drake | Carey | Brougham |
| Wordsworth | Faraday | S. Smith |
| Keats | Lyell | C. North |
| Shelley | Agassiz | N. Webster |
| Payne | Whitney | H. H. White |
| Keble | A. Gray | D. Webster |
| Halleck | Hallam | Sparks |
| Key | Prescott | Story |
| Macaulay | Lewes | Gould |
| Hood | Milman | Cooper |
| Poe | Buckle | Disraeli |
| Read | Merivale | Dickens |
| Tennyson | Hildreth | Thackeray |
| Browning | Freeman | Bronté |
| Lowell | Draper | Hawthorne |
| Longfellow | Froude | Irving |
| Carleton | Walpole | Hughes |
| Ingelow | Lecky | Kingsley |
| Whittier | Parkman | Eliot |
| Mill | Bancroft | Collins |
| Spencer | Whipple | Macdonald |
| Ruskin | Twain | Hunt |
| Arnold | Jerrold | Wallace |
| Curtis | Choate | Clarke |
| Holmes | Lincoln | Landor |
| Mansel | Phillips | Tourgée |
| Carlyle | Everett | Holland |
| Emerson | Sumner | Howells |
| Darwin | Garfield | Mrs. Whitney |
| Huxley | Gladstone | Miss Alcott |
| Dana | A. D. White | Bellamy |
| Tyndall | Beecher | Gronlund |
| Lubbock | P. Brooks | Gilman |
| Proctor | Lamb | Holley |
| Davy | Hazlitt | Dodge |
| Proctor | Lamb | Jewett |
| Davy | Hazlitt | Burroughs |
| Bright | Rives | Stowe |
| Fiske | Aldrich | Hearn |
| Curtin | Warner | Burnett |
| Hale | Curtis | |
| Edwards | Higginson |
1800
Germany
Schiller
Goethe
Kant
Fichte
Hegel
Schelling
Niebuhr
Schlosser
Heine
Haeckel
Helmholtz
Grimm
Froebel
France
La Place
Guizot
De Tocqueville
Comte
Hugo
Dumas
Balzac
Renan
Taine
Russia
Pushkin
Lermontoff
Bashkirtseff
Tolstoi
Denmark
Andersen
Poland
Sienkiewicz
1807. Fulton’s Steamboat
Wellington
1815. Waterloo
1815. White wives sold in England
1830. Passenger railway
1833. Matches
1844. Telegraph
1845. Mexican War
1860. Rebellion
1863. Emancipation
1870. Franco-German War
1874. The Telephone
Emancipation of serfs in Russia
1900