PREFACE THE PRESENT VOLUME is the outcome of an attempt to place in the hands of pupil teachers and other young students a simple and interesting story of the great English writers. Some time ago, much ingenuity was exercised in making a selection of the best hundred books, and it was considered that for busy people such a number gave ample scope for reading. In somewhat similar fashion, we now make choice of about a hundred best English writers, and invite young students to confine themselves in the first instance to these. And as the hundred best books by their variety gave materials suited to varying moods and tastes, so our list of English writers is meant to give a picture of the progress of English literature from its first rude beginnings, through its times of alternate flourishing and languor, and to show its varying aims in poetry and philosophy and divinity. The selection of names for such a list can never be ideally perfect, and Butler and Thomson in poetry, and Hobbes and Hume in philosophy, are only some of the names which have been omitted with reluctance and misgiving. Still, it is hoped that no name has been included which could well have been spared, and that those which are given do really form an unbroken line of aim and achievement in the several provinces of English literature. In giving account of the lives of writers, special care has been taken, wherever it was possible, to trace the history of their youth, and of the influences which guided and moulded them; and in choosing illustrative extracts, preference has always been given to those which are either professedly or indirectly autobiographical in character. And as only the best writers have been chosen, so special attention has been directed only upon their most excellent work. To kindle admiration in the minds of young students is for them more immediately beneficial; the critical spirit will come later with fuller knowledge and riper judgment. The matter for this volume has been chiefly gained from a careful re-study of the lives and works of the great English writers, but valuable help has been sought and found in all kinds of places. Books of criticism, articles in magazines and reviews, and monographs of special writers, have all been laid under contribution, and it is hoped that a certain breadth and freshness have been thereby secured. In printing the illustrative extracts, the greatest care has been taken to follow the best editions, and to preserve the ancient spelling and punctuation. This seems in itself a small matter, but to the genuine student anything which brings him in closer touch with Chaucer or Shakspere or Bacon will be welcome. |