CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE A SCHEDULE OF THE ENGLISH LITERATURE DISCUSSED IN THIS A TABLE OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CONTEMPORARY LITER- 5 PREFACE. THE following work on English literature has been prepared for the purpose of serving three practical ends: I. As a School Manual. II. As a Guide to the General Reader. III. As a Book of Reference.. I. As a School Manual.-That the present is a favorable time for the production of such a Manual scarcely admits of a doubt, the last decade of years having formed an epoch in the study of literature and in the methods of instruction. During this period English literature has been assuming a more prominent place in the curricula of schools and colleges, and great success has been made in devising improved methods of instruction. From these educational centres the more enterprising teachers all over the country have caught the spirit of improvement, and are calling for a better method of instruction than has hitherto prevailed in this department of study. To explain the general plan of the work as a text-book, the following points may be specified: (a.) This Manual aims to present, in a manner at once simple, attractive, and philosophical, a general survey of the historical development of English literature by dividing it into ten ages, with their respective characteristics—an arrangement exhibiting the successive stages of its growth, and those vital principles which underlie, determine, and explain them. (b.) Its mode of arrangement is designed to facilitate not only the logical comprehension of English literature as a unit, but also that right and left study of its component ages which is requisite to the understanding of their representative writers. Any study of the early nineteenthcentury English literature which ignores Goethe and the philosophical movement in Germany is shallow and superficial; so would be the study of the eighteenth-century writers without considering the position of France as literary dictator, or of the Elizabethan literature without considering the supremacy of Italian influence. Every great author is the spokesman of his age. He is not a factor; he is a product produced by the joint action of the general spirit of his age, and the particular mood of his nation upon his personality. The historical and literary past illustrates these facts. Thus Wordsworth and the other poetic renovators of the early part of the present century in English literature were manifestations of that general revolutionary spirit which then prevailed over the European mind, and of the particular literary form which that spirit assumed on coming into contact with British temperament. Thus Dryden was little more than a slave to that false Classical taste which, emanating from France, held supremacy over Europe in his generation, and which, unsuited to the English constitution, dwarfed and corrupted it. Thus the divine Milton was the very personification of Puritanism-a British offshoot of the Protestant Reformation. Thus in the verses of the Victorian poet, Alfred Tennyson, may be traced the influence of the scientific spirit of the present age which has extended from Germany over all civilized nations. So it has been throughout. The landmarks of English literature have been to a certain extent moulded and modelled by two forces-one European, the other English; and therefore can be justly and fairly appreciated only by carefully considering the intellectual and social condition of their respective ages, both foreign and national. Accordingly the prominent characteristics of the contemporary literatures of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and of the United States of America, as well as of Great Britain, together with marginal notes of important facts of history, art, philosophy, and science, of inventions, discoveries, and miscellaneous events attending the progress of civilization, are given under each age, and finally ocular summaries of these ages are afforded by the accompanying charts, intended as helps to the student in reconstructing the world as it appeared to and affected the great English writers of the past. (c.) The Manual has been prepared in the spirit of the modern method of instruction, dealing conspicuously only with those authors who have exerted most potent influence over English thought and language. Thus the general survey of each age is designed as a preliminary and surbordinate matter of consideration to the study of its representative writers who are subjected to special and full treatment. (d) The studies of these most famous writers in English literature are arranged in a manner to elicit the attention, arouse the interest, and train the imaginative and critical powers of the student. In order "to supply as much as possible the want of present, personal, direct, and sensible observation which we can no longer practise," and which is the "only means of knowing men,” details are given in each case respecting the author's personal appearance, habits, homes, friends, and character; while the free use of extracts from their letters and journals, the collections of comments, mots, etc., referring to them, are intended to serve as further assistance to the student in reconstructing through his imagination these men of other days, and in feeling towards them a close and intimate relationship. Every student should recognize as readily the portraits of John Milton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Walter Scott, and the other luminaries of English literature, and entertain as vivid and distinct an idea of them as living authors, toiling and impassioned, fortified in their preju dices and peculiarities, with their customs, manners, and habits, as of the foremost writer of his own age and nation. |