PREFACE

It has been my purpose in preparing this edition of Macaulay's Essays on Milton and Addison to make the little book as complete as possible in itself. All teachers who have had experience of the present conditions in our secondary schools know that it is quite useless to expect the average schoolboy to do anything like independent investigation. He has many other interests in and outside of his hours of study which conflict with such work in English; his time is strictly limited, for he is required to prepare a certain lesson by a certain hour; and the works of reference at his command are few and unreliable. It is, therefore, idle by way of explaining Macaulay's allusion to the courteous Knight and Balisarda to refer the student to the forty-fifth canto of Orlando Furioso. It is almost certain that he could not lay hands on Ariosto's poem if he wished to, and it is even more likely that he would not wish to if he could.

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"Take at hazard

But Macaulay's style is rich in such allusions. any three pages of the Essays' or 'History,' says Thackeray, "and glimmering below the stream of the narrative, as it were, you, an average reader, see one, two, three, a halfscore of allusions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry with which you are acquainted. Your neighbor who has his reading and his little store of literature stowed away in his mind shall detect more points, allusions, happy touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, the honest, humble, previous toil of this great scholar." Indeed, it is in this allusiveness, this suggestiveness, that much of Macaulay's charm consists.

Now since this is the case, the editor who is preparing one of Macaulay's essays for the average schoolboy is shut up to one of two courses. He may either pass over the greater part of the allusions in silence, or he may give such comment as shall explain their bearing on the text, their relation to the subject that