more or less interdependent parts of a whole, each receives the amplest justice by being made in its turn the central subject of thought. The mind in its work thus becomes more animated and energetic, because its ideas are kindred, all converging to a definite because to a single impression. By such an arrangement, moreover, the logical powers are trained, and the student unconsciously acquires a habit of bringing, in writing or speaking, his thoughts out of chaos into order.

Further, a great man, his career, his example, his ideas, can take no strong and permanent hold of the heart and mind, until these have become an integral part of our established associations of thoughts, feelings, and desires. But this can only be accomplished by time. The attention must be detained till the subject becomes real, as the face of a friend; fixed, as the sun and stars: then the energies of apprehension, of judgment, of sympathy, are aroused; and images, principles, truths, sentiments, though the words be forgotten, become fadeless acquisitions, assimilated into the very substance of the student's living self. Hence, as the end of liberal education is the cultivation of the student through the awakened exercise of his faculties, the authors studied should be relatively few and representative. Time is wasted and the powers are dissipated by attempting too much. Preëminent authors are creative and pictorial, reflecting, with singular fidelity, the peculiarities of their age; and by limiting the discussion to such, the student acquires the most in learning the least.

Regarding language as an apparatus for the conveyance of thought, and mindful that whatever force is absorbed by the machine is deducted from the result, I have carefully excluded polemical and conjectural matter from the body of the work, have seldom diverted attention by introduction of foot-notes, and have employed dates but sparingly. Biography,' says Lowell, 'from day to day holds dates cheaper and facts dearer,'

-not all facts, indeed, but the essential ones, those of psychological purport, which underlie the life and make the individual man. To the same end — economy of mental energy—the early poets, including Chaucer, are presented in a more or less modernized form, with an occasional retention of the antique dialect for its illustrative uses.

Neither the artist nor his art, as before stated, can be understood and estimated independently of his times. No enlarged or profound conception of intellectual culture is possible without completeness of view,- without a well-defined notion of the other elements of society, and of those products designed to convince of truth or to arouse to action, as well as of those whose prime object is to address the imagination or to please the taste. Consequently, each of the periods, into which the work is divided according to what seemed their predominant characteristics, is introduced by a sketch of the features which distinguish it, and of the forces which go to shape it, including POLITICS, the state of SOCIETY, RELIGION, POETRY, the DRAMA, the NOVEL, the PERIODICAL, HISTORY, THEOLOGY, ETHICS, SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY. No one who aspires now to literary power can afford to be ignorant of the scientific phase of modern thought. The educational value of philosophy is peculiarly apparent in its effects on the culture and discipline of the mind,― to quicken it, to teach it precision, to lead it to inquire into the causes and relations of things, to awaken it to a vigorous and varied exertion. Not less salutary in this point of view, and far more so in another, are theology and ethics. Moral culture and religious growth cannot be excluded from any just conception of education. Broadly stated, it is of vast moment to the student to reflect upon the motives and springs of human action, to face the unexplained mystery of thought, to ask himself, What is right, and what wrong; what am I, and whither going; what my history, and my destiny?

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.

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 subjectmatter. Hence 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.

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 preëminently 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.