Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Keren Vergon, Beth Trapaga and PG
Distributed Proofreaders
1903
The texts contained in the present volume are reprinted with very slightalterations from the English Garner issued in eight volumes (1877-1890,London, 8vo.) by Professor Arber, whose name is sufficient guarantee forthe accurate collation of the texts with the rare originals, the oldspelling being in most cases carefully modernised. The contents of theoriginal Garner have been rearranged and now for the first timeclassified, under the general editorial supervision of Mr. ThomasSeccombe. Certain lacunae have been filled by the interpolation of freshmatter. The Introductions are wholly new and have been written speciallyfor this issue. The references to volumes of the Garner (other than thepresent volume) are for the most part to the editio princeps, 8 vols.1877-90.
I. Extract from Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, 1554
II. Sir Philip Sidney's Letter to his brother Robert, 1580
III. Extract from Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia, 1598
IV. Dryden's Dedicatory Epistle to the Rival Ladies, 1664
V. Sir Robert Howard's Preface to four new Plays, 1665
VI. Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668
VII. Extract from Thomas Ellwood's History of Himself, describing
his relations with Milton, 1713
VIII. Bishop Copleston's Advice to a Young Reviewer, 1807
IX. The Bickerstaff and Partridge Tracts, 1708
X. Gay's Present State of Wit, 1711
XI. Tickell's Life of Addison, 1721
XII. Steele's Dedicatory Epistle to Congreve, 1722
XIII. Extract from Chamberlayne's Angliae Notitia, 1669
XIV. Eachard's Grounds and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy
and of Religion, 1670
XV. Bickerstaff's Miseries of the Domestic Chaplain, 1710
XVI. Franklin's Poor Richard Improved, 1757
The miscellaneous pieces comprised in this volume are of interest andvalue, as illustrating the history of English literature and of animportant side of English social life, namely, the character and statusof the clergy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Theyhave been arranged chronologically under the subjects with which they arerespectively concerned. The first three—the excerpt from Wilson's Art ofRhetoric, Sir Philip Sidney's Letter to his brother Robert, and thedissertation from Meres's Palladis Tamia—are, if minor, certainlycharacteristic examples of pre-Elizabethan and Elizabethan literarycriticism. The next three—the Dedicatory Epistle to the Rival Ladies,Howard's Preface to Four New Plays, and the Essay of DramaticPoesy—not only introduce us to one of the most interesting criticalcontroversies of the seventeenth century, but present us, in the lastwork, with an epoch-marking masterpiece, both in English criticism and inEnglish prose composition. Bishop Copleston's brochure brings us to theearly days of the Edinburgh Review, and to the dawn of the criticismwith which we are, unhappily, only too familiar in our own time. Fromcriticism we pass, in the extract from Ellwood's life of himself, tobiography and social history, to t