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According to an enlightened science of education, it is difficult to see the utility of a text-book, though critical, that is wholly abstracted from the literature itself. Its criticisms, its general observations, are meaningless and powerless without illustrative specimens to verify them. They produce no answering thoughts, no questioning, and thus no valuable activity. The student is expected blindly to yield himself to the direction of another. He forms no independent judgment, is excited to no disputation, is stimulated to no profitable or pleasurable exercise. But instruction is only instruction as it enables us to teach ourselves, and leaves on the mind serviceable images and contemplations. If truth is not expansive, if it is not recast and used to interpret nature and guide the life, wherein is its value? The materials of discipline and culture are furnished, not by statements about literature, but by the literature itself. To refine the taste, to sharpen thought, to inspire feeling, the student must be brought closely and consciously into contact with personality,- that is, with the writer's productions. Not only are extracts to be presented, but when practicable and expedient, entire artistic products. These are to be interpreted; and in them, as in a mirror, the student should be taught to recognize the genius that constructed them, -his style, his character, the manners, opinions, and civilization of the period.

matter.

Particular care has been taken to insure an interest in the personal life of an author; for all the rules that have ever been prescribed for controlling the attention find their principal value in this, that they induce or require an interest in the subjectHence the value of reported sayings, private journals, correspondence, striking events, gossipy incidents,-the scenery and personages that belong to the period, and which have the effect to charm the mind into a sympathetic attitude toward the author's work. 'As the enveloping English ivy lends a

living charm and attractiveness to many a ruined castle and abbey, which would prove uninviting to the tourist standing in its naked deformity, so a reasonable amplitude of treatment often throws a wonderful fascination over old names and dates, otherwise uninteresting.'

It would seem obvious that a history of English Literature should note in a catholic and liberal spirit the practical lessons suggested by its theme. If it warms not the feelings into noble earnestness, elevates not the mind's ideals, nor supplies healthful truths by which to live and to die, it is lamentably defective; and the fault is not in the subject, but in the historian. When Dr. Arnold was planning his history, he said: "My highest ambition . . . is to make my history the very reverse of Gibbon in this respect, that whereas the whole spirit of his work, from its low morality, is hostile to religion without speaking directly against it, so my greatest desire would be, in my history, by its high morals and its general tone, to be of use to the cause, without actually bringing it forward.' Without twisting a story into a sermon, I have humbly endeavored to present it as the artist describes nature,-with a light falling upon it from the region of the highest and truest. As to the benefits of this study per se, they cannot be overestimated. He can hardly hope for eminence as a writer, who has not enriched his mind and perfected his style by familiarity with the literary masters and masterpieces; while to have fed on high thoughts and to have companioned with those

'Whose soul the holy forms

Of young imagination hath kept pure,'

are, beyond all teaching, the virtue-making powers.

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Every thinker, the most original, owes his originality to the originality of all. Very little of me,' said Goethe, 'would be left; if I could but say what I owe to my predecessors and contemporaries.' Omnipotence creates, man combines. He can be originative, strictly, only in development, in the form of his

funded thought, in the fusion of his collected materials, as the sculptor in the conception of his statue, or the architect in the design of his edifice. My scope and purposes being such as indicated, I have drawn freely from all the fountains around me,- have wished to absorb all the light anywhere radiating. To the many who have helped me, it is a pleasure to record my obligations in the manner which seems most accordant with the objects and uses to be subserved,—either explicitly in the text, or collectively in the List of Authorities. To some sources, however, I am preeminently indebted,-to the literary histories of Anderson, Bascom, and Taine; to the critical essays of Macaulay, Hazlitt, and Whipple; to the philosophical treatises of Lecky, Buckle, Lewes, and Uberweg. I wish, also, to render acknowledgments to personal friends,- to Rev. J. L. Grover for free access to the Columbus Library; to General Joseph Geiger, and his accomplished assistant, Miss Mary Harbaugh, for the liberal privileges of the Ohio State Library; to Professor Alston Ellis, Ph.D., for valuable suggestions; to Rev. Daniel F. Smith, and Mr. James Bishop Bell, of Chicago, the scholarly readers, for their critical and unstinted revision of the proof-sheets; to Rev. F. W. Gunsaulus, and A. E. Clevenger, A.M., for large and important aid in the preparation of a copious index.

In conclusion, my supreme anxiety has been to produce not a brilliant but a useful book, and the results are therefore hopefully commended to a conscientious and catholic criticism, a criticism that shall take high ground,-that shall aim to promote the common weal,- that shall not look through a microscope when it should look through a telescope, that shall illuminate excellences as well as indicate errors, that shall contemplate the whole before it adjudicates on the parts,— that shall be perceptive, sympathetic, and suggestive.

Columbus, Ohio, July 4, 1882.

THE AUTHOR.

LIST OF AUTHORITIES.

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Lectures on Oratory and Rhetoric.
Queen's English.

.Poetry of the East.

Norse Mythology.

Old English Period.

Hand-Book of English Literature. ..English Constitution.

..Myths of the Middle Ages.

........

Philosophy of English Literature.

.Essays in Biography and Criticism.
.Lessons from My Masters.
.Chaucer's England.

.History of Civilization in England.
History of his own Time.

Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century.
Heroes and Hero-Worship.

....Oliver Cromwell.

...English of the Fourteenth Century.
. Cyclopædia of English Literature.
.Complete Works.

Christianity and Greek Philosophy.
Riches of Chaucer.

Relics of Literature.

History of English Dramatic Poetry.
Conscience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Mythology of the Aryan Nations.
..History of English Literature.
Elements of Rhetoric.

Amenities of Literature.
Curiosities of Literature.

History of Protestant Theology.
Shakespeare and His Times.

Intellectual Development of Europe.

English Antiquities.

Early English Metrical Romances. .English Traits.

. Representative Men.

Chapters on Language.

.Language and Languages.

Witness of History to Christ.

History of Provençal Poetry.

Yesterdays with Authors.

.Myths and Myth-makers.

Grammar of the English Language.

History of Norman Conquest.

Old English History.

History of England.

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.Short Studies on Great Subjects.

The English Reformation.

Ancient Britons.

Modern Literature and Literary Men.
Dramatic Mirror.

..Gleanings of Past Years.

Juventus Mundi.

. Out of the Past.

Social History of Great Britain.
Good English.

A Short History of the English People.
History of Civilization in Europe.

History of the English Revolution.

Discussions on Philosophy and Literature.
Constitutional History of England.

..Errope during the Middle Ages.
Literature of Europe.

History of Ancient and Modern Philosophy.

Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth.

Early Literature of Great Britain.

History of Journalism in the United States.
.History of England.

Selections from English Poets.

History of Rationalism.

Essays, Theological and Literary.

Oliver Goldsmith.

Legends of the Monastic Orders.

Lives of Eminent English Poets.
Introduction to Ethics.

Christianity and Humanity.

Popular History of England.

Arts of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
History of Materialism.

Science of English Verse.

English Language.

.England in the Eighteenth Century.

..History of European Morals.

Rationalism in Europe.

View of Deistical Writers.

Biographical History of Philosophy.

History of English Translations of the Bible.

Illustrations of British History.

Poets and Poetry of Europe.

Among My Books.

My Study Windows.
Origin of Civilization.
Last of the Barons.
Essays.

History of England.

Progress of Ethical Philosophy.

.Origin and History of the English Language

History of England.

.Essays, Philosophical and Theological.

.Literary Style.

Christianity and Positivism.

Intuitions of the Mind.

System of Logic.

.History of Chivalry.

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