These are the great ages of the world.

They could be counted, perhaps, on one hand.

The age of Pericles in Athens; the less defined age, when Europe passed, spiritually and artistically, from what we call the Dark, to what we call the Middle Ages; the Renaissance; the period of the French Revolution.

Two of them, so far as English literature is concerned, fall within the compass of this book, and it is with one of them--the Renaissance--that it begins.
It is as difficult to find a comprehensive formula for what the Renaissance meant as to tie it down to a date.

The year 1453 A.D., when the Eastern Empire--the last relic of the continuous spirit of Rome--fell before the Turks, used to be given as the date, and perhaps the word "Renaissance" itself--"a new birth"-- is as much as can be accomplished shortly by way of definition.