New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1906
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1896,
By MACMILLAN AND CO.
Set up and electrotyped, January, 1896. Reprinted October,
1896; August, 1898; September, 1899; April, 1902; March, 1904;
November, 1906.
Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.
In the execution of the present task (which I took over about two yearsago from hands worthier than mine, but then more occupied) somedifficulties of necessity occurred which did not present themselves tomyself when I undertook the volume of Elizabethan Literature, or to myimmediate predecessor in grappling with the period between 1660 and1780.
The most obvious and serious of these was the question, "What should bedone with living authors?" Independently of certain perils of selectionand exclusion, of proportion and of freedom of speech, I believe it willbe recognised by every one who has ever attempted it, that to mixestimates of work which is done and of work which is unfinished is tothe last degree unsatisfactory. I therefore resolved to include noliving writer, except Mr. Ruskin, in this volume for the purpose ofdetailed criticism, though some may be now and then mentioned inpassing.
Even with this limitation the task remained a rather formidable one.Those who are least disposed to overvalue literary work in proportion asit approaches their own time will still acknowledge that the lasthundred and fifteen years are fuller furnished than either of theperiods of not very dissimilar length which have been already dealtwith. The proportion of names[Pg vi] of the first, or of a very high secondclass, is distinctly larger than in the eighteenth century; the bulk ofliterary production is infinitely greater than in the Elizabethan time.Further, save in regard to the earliest subsections of this period, Timehas not performed his office, beneficent to the reader but morebeneficent to the historian, of sifting and riddling out writers whom itis no longer necessary to consider, save in a spirit of adventurous oraffectionate antiquarianism. I must ask the reader to believe me when Isay that many who do not appear here at all, or who are dismissed in afew lines, have yet been the subjects of careful reading on my part. Ifsome exclusions (not due to mere oversight) appear arbitrary or unjust,I would urge that this is not a Dictionary of Authors, nor a Catalogueof Books, but a History of Literature; and that to mention everybody isas impossible as to say everything. As I have revised the sheets the oldquery has recurred to myself only too often, and sometimes in referenceto very favourite books and authors of my own. Where, it may be asked,is Kenelm Digby and the Broad Stone of Honour? Where Sir RichardBurton (as great a contrast to Digby as can well be imagined)? WhereLaurence Oliphant, who, but the other day, seemed to many clever men thecleverest man they knew? Where John Foster, who provided food for thethoughtful public two generations ago? Where Greville of the causticdiaries, and his editor (latest deceased) Mr. Reeve, and Crabb Robinson,and many others? Some of these and others are really neiges d'antan;some baffle the historian in miniature by being rebels to brief andexact characterisation; some, nay many, are simply crowded out