A MANUAL EMBRACING THE GREAT EPOCHS OF ENGLISH LITERA- TO THE DEATH OF WALTER SCOTT, 1832. BY ABBY SAGE RICHARDSON. In literature we have present and prepared to form us, the best which has CHICAGO: JANSEN, McCLURG & COMPANY. PREFACE. AS THE title of my book suggests, this is a history of English Literature, told in familiar style. Its first and overruling purpose is to create a desire on the part of those who read it, to know the best works of our best authors. I do not believe in anything said or written about English Literature which shall serve as a substitute for literature itself, or that does not lead directly to the reading of the best books. For my own part, I would rather know thoroughly half a dozen English classics, than all the works on literature ever written. Although for several years I have been talking to classes, principally of young women, on the subjects this book includes, this is in no way a report of those talks, but has a unity and sequence which is not quite possible in detached lectures. I have endeavored to show the growth of literature from its beginning down to the end of the first third of this century. From that time the great names that appear are the names of living men, whose place in the archives of literature is not yet assigned. It is time only which tries the value of an author and sets him among his peers. In a small volume like this, where I have made the attempt to combine brevity with a certain amount of detail about the author spoken of, together with an extract from his works, it has been impossible to mention every great name in the annals of English Literature. What I have tried to do has been to touch on the most salient points in the growth of literature; to mention all names of those who have had any marked influence upon it; to show briefly the cause of this influence; and, where it was possible, to quote sufficient from the author to excite a desire to know more of him. To carry out this plan in small space, required that much should be left unsaid which I should like to say, and that many names should be omitted which are worth more than a mere mention; it also required that I should keep strictly within the limits of pure literature,-poetry, essays, fiction-and leave the historians, the divines, the scientists, out of my plan of work, except where they were so associated with elegant literature that their writings enter its lists. As this is in no wise a cyclopedia of literature, I have not given biographical sketches of these writers, and have purposely omitted all facts about them except those facts of character or life which bear upon their work, sometimes adding incidents which would give interest or vividness to the story. I have always felt it unjust to literature to associate too closely the external life of an author with his productions, and I have tried to avoid that injustice. Handbooks of literature, especially those used in schools, have been too much like grave-yards, where a series of stones recorded the life, death, and principal events relating to an author, ending with a few lines from his work as a sort of epitaph. I think this method has made the study of literature uninteresting. Thus, if my treatment concerning the facts about a writer is desultory, and leaves unsaid what the cyclopedias say, I submit it to criticism as part of my method. I am aware that the style I have used will be regarded as sometimes too familiar for the subject. But I hope my book may be read largely by young people; I hope it may be read aloud in classes devoted to the study of literature, and I have thus used a colloquial tone, hoping by means of it more easily to gain the interest and the ear of the reader. Lastly, I have used the words our literature, our English authors, all through the book, with intention. Writing as I do for American readers, for the young people of our country, I have endeavored to impress on them a pride in the works written in their language; I want them to feel that they have as much share and as much pride in the glorious names of Shakspeare and Milton as if their grandfathers had not crossed the ocean to settle in Massachusetts and Virginia. English Literature up to the year 1800 is as much our literature as it is that of any girl or boy born in London or in Yorkshire. Let us lay hold of and claim this grand inheriA. S. R. tance. |