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range of effort, increased mastery of materials, is a most interesting task. This I have incidentally endeavoured to do. But I conceive that it is of prior interest to know what characteristics are of the essence of a man's being, and are manifested in all his outcomes; and therefore my chief aim in each case has been to seize those characteristics, and to make my interpretation of them as plain and unmistakable as lay in my power.

A smaller point in which I am especially open to hostile criticism, is the modernised spelling of the texts of Chaucer and his contemporaries and immediate successors. I have done this after much consideration, resolving to attempt it more by way of experiment and for the purpose of eliciting opinion, than from any settled conviction that it is the only proper course. I am not insensible to the charm of the archaic spelling; and I know that to some minds modernisation of spelling is as obnoxious as the performance of Othello in a dress-coat. My object is to help my readers to forget such small points as orthographical differences between them and those poets of an elder time, and to get nearer to the living spirit of them. The tendency of all archaisms, as I shall point out more fully in the case of Chaucer, is to impart into the text a sentiment of old age and childishness, very delightful in itself, but not so favourable to truth of criticism.

W. MINTO.

August 1, 1874.

of the nation be comprehended without Voltaire, Molière, Rousseau, and other great names beside. Neither is Germany herself without Goethe and Schiller: nor Spain recognisable deprived of that noble figure of Cervantes, in whom lives the very genius of the nation. This great band it is our design to give such an account of as may bring them within the acquaintance of the English reader, whose zeal may not carry him the length of the often thankless study of translations, and whose readings in a foreign language are not easy enough to be pleasant. We are aware that there are difficulties in our way in this attempt which did not lie in the path of the former Series, since in the section of the world for which we write there are many more readers of French and German than of Greek and Latin : but, on the other hand, there is no educated class supremely devoted to the study of Continental Classics, as is the case in respect to the Ancient; and even the greatest authority in the learned matter of a Greek text might be puzzled by Jean Paul Richter, or lose himself in the mysteries of Dante's 'Paradiso.' The audience to which we aspire is, therefore, at once wider and narrower than that to which the great treasures of Hellenic and Roman literature are unfamiliar; and our effort will be to present the great Italian, the great Frenchman, the famous German, to the reader so as to make it plain to him what and how they wrote, something of how they lived, and more or less of their position and influence upon the literature of their country.

Now published, price 2s. 6d. each.

DANTE. By the Editor.

VOLTAIRE. By Major-General Hamley, C.B.

The following are in preparation :

PASCAL. By Principal Tulloch.
GOETHE. By A. Hayward, Esq.,
Q.C.

CERVANTES. By the Editor.

PETRARCH. By H. Reeve, C.B
MONTAIGNE. By the Rev. W.
Lucas Collins, M. A.

RABELAIS. By Walter Besant, M. A.

WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, EDINBURGH AND LONDON,

CHARACTERISTICS

OF

ENGLISH POETS

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