criticism, I will add that, in my opinion, the most meritorious act ever performed by Napoleon was to order one of them shot. Though I perceive that the last sentence is a trifle ambiguous, I purposely leave it so. The reader will note that some authors, who, in the encyclopedia of literature, should be treated at length, are scarcely mentioned, while others receive a relatively large amount of attention. This circumstance is due to the fact that my purpose is to stimulate the interest in beginners in literature rather than to convey information to experts. Thus there is a good deal about Pope and Macaulay and not much on the subject of Arnold and De Quincy. I am guided, in other words, in my choice of bait, not by my own taste, but by what I conceive to be the taste of the fish. It is my belief that, of all the chapters in the book, the reader will find most satisfaction in those on Milton, Bunyan and Dryden. This need occasion no surprise, for I did not write them myself. They are from the pen of Miss Helen M. Hard. DETROIT, JULY 14, 1917. EDWIN L. MILLER. XXXVII. LORD MACAULAY (1800-1859)... XXXVIII. LORD TENNYSON (1809-1892). XXXIX. ROBert Browning (1812-1889). XL. CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870).. ILLUSTRATIONS William Shakespeare (from the Droeshoet Engraving).. Frontispiece Medieval Scribe... The British Museum, London. Chart of Prehistoric Human Remains.. Facsimile of Eleventh Century Manuscript Containing Descriptions of the Wonders of the East.. Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.. Geoffrey Chaucer... The Canterbury Pilgrims. The Monk... . Paper-making in the Fifteenth Century. From the Metrical Romance of Richard Cœur de Lion (1528). The High Street, Oxford.. The Dining Hall at Christ Church College, Oxford.. Sir Philip Sidney.. Edmund Spenser. Reproduction of a Sketch of the Swan Theatre, London. Portia's Speech... PAGE 12 14 16 17 32 62 67 72 81 85 90 91 99 104 122 127 Facsimile of Title-page to the Fourth Edition of "Hamlet" in the Quarto Facsimile of the First Page of the First Edition of "Paradise Lost" 188 John Bunyan... 194 Facsimile of Title-page of First Edition of "The Pilgrim's Progress" Reproduction of an Old Broadside Representing a Scene in a Typical English Coffee-house of the Restoration Period. The "Sound-proof" Study in Carlyle's House upon Cheyne Row.. 414 Carlyle's Monument on the Embankment at the Bottom of Cheyne Row 416 Thomas Babington Macaulay 426 Lord Tennyson... 437 Robert Browning. Charles Dickens. William Makepeace Thackeray. John Ruskin. Robert Louis Stevenson Fanny Burney (Madame D'Arblay).. Maria Edgeworth.. Mary Russell Mitford. Mrs. Hemans... Charlotte Brontë.. Jane Austen.... Elizabeth Barrett Browning. George Eliot... Charles Robert Darwin. Matthew Arnold.. Herbert Spencer.... 446 455 465 475 486 496 498 499 500 501 505 517 525 536 541 543 546 548 563 567 574 |