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duty of a general critic of literature is to resist the attraction of personal favourites.

In every case I have attempted to set forward my own view of the literary character of each figure, founded on personal study. Hence, in a few cases, it may be discovered that the verdicts in this volume differ in some degree from those commonly held. A few names which are habitually found chronicled are here omitted, and still fewer, which are new to a general sketch, are included, I am conscious that certain writers receive here more prominence than has hitherto been given to them, while others receive less. But, on the whole, I have striven to be conservative in taste. Where my judgment has differed on important questions from that of preceding critics, I have been slow to suppose that I could be right and they wrong. But it was absolutely essential that such an outline of literary history, if it was to have any stimulating quality at all, should be pervaded by the results of a personal impression; and if any reader is offended at an opinion which appears to him heretical, let him acquit me, while he rejects it, of any intention to startle him with a paradox.

The pages have been somewhat copiously starred with dates, for which interruptions of comfort in reading I must offer an apology, I have the impression that dates, if reasonably treated, present a great assistance to the comparative student, and really should prevent, instead of causing, interruption. Moreover, almost the only contribution to actual fact which I could hope to offer in such a critical volume as this was a running bibliography, the accurate chronicling of the original dates and forms of

publication being one of the few departments of eighteenth century literature which have, except in certain provinces, been neglected. It is not very important, perhaps, but I may add that in almost every case of a well-known book I have made a point of referring to the actual first issue. Among my thousands of dates, though I have carefully revised them, some must be wrong. Any corrections of fact will be very gratefully received by myself or the publishers.

In the final chapter I have stated my theory with regard to the mode in which the philosophical, theological, and political writing of the period should be examined. But I may explain here that it has been my object, while giving a rough sketch of the tenets of each didactic specialist, to leave the discussion of those tenets to critics of the specialist's own profession, and to treat his publications mainly from the point of view of style.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRidge,

November 1888.

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CHAPTER I

POETRY AFTER THE RESTORATION

WHEN the romantic fervour of the age of Elizabeth had completely exhausted itself, towards the middle of the seventeenth century, the poetical field in England was again left fallow, as it had been left in the early part of the sixteenth century, at the decline of the mediæval period. The great poets had spoken in rapturous accents, with a noble and irregular music, and their followers, unable to repeat their sublimity, had exaggerated their irregularity into licence. This rapid decline from the Elizabethan elevation of style was hastened by the general subsidence, throughout Europe, of the fervour of the Renaissance. The form of English poetry was degraded, not merely by its own impetus, but by the nature of the literary changes then being made in France, in Spain, and in Italy. Imaginative literature was undergoing a complete transformation in all parts of Europe. At the moment of deepest decadence it had reached very much the same position which it had reached, at various moments, in the complete decline of mediævalism. In England, for instance, the relation of a writer like Phineas Fletcher to Spenser was almost exactly analogous to that of Hawes to Chaucer. But when it came to the question of revival, it was plain that renovation could not lie any longer on the side of what was fervid, spontaneous, and fantastic. In this direction there was nothing new to be attained, and the tendency had to be rather in the medieval than in the Renaissance

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