PREFACE. HIS little book is made up from the opening THIS series of a considerable range of "talks," with which during the past few years-I have undertaken to entertain, and (if it might be) instruct a bevy of friends; and the interest of a few outsiders who have come to the hearings has induced me to put the matter in type. I feel somewhat awkwardly in obtruding upon the public any such panoramic view of British writers, in these days of specialists when students devote half a lifetime to the analysis of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a single period. I have tried, however, to avoid bad mistakes and misleading ones, and shall reckon my commentary only so far forth good- as it may familiarize the average reader with the salient characteristics of the writers brought under notice, and shall put these writers into such a swathing of historic and geographic enwrapments as shall keep them better in mind. When I consider the large number of books recently issued on similar topics, and the scholarly acuteness, and the great range belonging to so many of them, I am not a little discomforted at thought of my bold scurry over so wide reach of ground. Indeed, I have the figure before me now as I hint an apology of an old-time country doctor who has ventured with his saddle-bags and spicy nostrums into competition with a half score of special practitioners-with their microscopy and their granules dosimetriques; but I think, consolingly, that possibly the old-time mediciner - if not able to cure, can at the least induce a pleasurable slumber. EDGEWOOD, 1889. |