course, deny that the greatest diligence should be exercised in the verbal drill which is part of all effective study of literature. But while this exercise proceeds (and there is no fear that it will be relaxed), there is no reason why the weightier matters should be neglected. The pupil should be attracted to the study by specimens which are of some special interest or beauty, and, in the specimens, he should be taught to appreciate not merely the construction and the derivation of a word, or the syntax of a phrase, but its aptness, its "inevitableness," its truth. Above all things, and particularly in poetry, there is a danger of a pupil fancying that he has grasped the sense of a certain collocation of English words, simply because each word is familiar in itself. If he were suddenly stopped with a demand to explain exactly what definite picture the words presented to his mind, he would most frequently find that he had formed no picture at all, or only a blurred sort of impression at best; and this sad experience would often occur to the very boy or girl who secures all the marks for knowledge of the verbal facts and the Latin or Anglo-Saxon "roots." The preceding paragraph has been written to explain certain features of the present work. In the notes two sentences quoted by Professor Huxley have been kept in mind. The one is from Freeman, "The difference between good and bad teaching mainly consists in this, whether the words are really clothed with a meaning or not." The other is like unto it, from William Harvey, "Those who, reading the words of authors, do not form sensible images of the things referred to, obtain no true ideas." For this reason (particularly in Shelley) it has seemed better to aid the pupil to the best of my lights wherever there was a danger of misconception or nonconception, than to walk in commentatorial prudence and "the dark passage shun." The biographies have been made short on principle. There is no adequate reason for burdening a young mind with a series of dates and domestic or other particulars irrelevant to the understanding of a writer's works and his place in literature. On a similar principle, names of authors of quotations introduced into the lives have sometimes been omitted, for the sake of avoiding a possible confusion of names not pertinent to the subject-matter; such quotations are merely indicated by inverted commas. The aim in etymologies has been, as far as possible, in connecting a word with classic or modern tongues, to illustrate the evolution and relation of languages, and to aid a clear sense of the meaning of the word. Words simply altered in form from the so-called "AngloSaxon" have not been referred to that earlier form, unless there has been confused derivation, or unless there is other special reason for such reference. In these latter cases, the letters A.S. (Anglo-Saxon) are used, as being the more generally accepted formula for the archaic form of our language. I have to thank Professor Tucker, Litt. D., the professor of Classical Philology in the Melbourne University, for kind assistance of a general nature, and for many suggestions and corrections. It is to his inculcation that I owe, in a large measure, that conception of an annotator's and editor's function which I have propounded above. |