ΤΗ PREFACE. HE purpose of this book is to give specimens of of English writers, nor to be a criticism of English literature, or a commentary on English history, or a guide-book to philology. I have, therefore, not felt obliged to include all those writers who are usually held to have been the best models of style by posterity, or the finest examples of the manner of their own centuries. Nor did I feel called upon to add a certain number of more obscure writers; either to create an impression of wide reading, or for any other of the less apparent reasons which have influenced several compilers of prose extracts, and too many critics of standard works. Since my object, then, was not to accumulate a list of names, but to give fair specimens of English prose as it has been written during the last five hundred years, I was not forced, by an array of names, to spoil and mutilate the several extracts. It was impossible, from the nature of the case, to give many unabridged extracts, for that could only be done with some of the Essayists; but I have tried, in every instance, to make each extract intelligible and interesting in itself. For this reason, I have observed no common uniformity of length, an attempt which has lessened the value and the pleasure of many books of selections; I preferred, rather, to aim at a common uniformity of completeness and interest. As my volume is not designed for an historical commentary, and as I have kept almost entirely to names that are well known, I have not ventured to doubt the knowledge, or to outrage the intelligence, of my readers; and so I have given no information about the authors quoted, except their date. If the less minute details of their lives are not already familiar, they cannot be satisfactorily conveyed in short notices; and still less, if their works are not known, can such notices give an adequate, or even an useful, criticism of their style and matter. In an enterprise like the Camelot Series, it seems desirable to have a single aim, and that aim quite simple. The aim is, usually, to give the text of some famous author in a correct, a convenient, and an accessible form; with a sufficient explanation of the author and his work to make them intelligible to every reader. Beyond this, the less irrelevant matter that is added the better; for the editor's industry, and the intelligence of the reader, can be so far more usefully occupied with the text. In this volume, the aim is not to exhibit any special author, but to show what English prose was like in the various centuries from which examples have been chosen; it would, therefore, have been aimless and superfluous to have entered upon any criticism of the individual writers. In one case only have I added a few facts, it is in the case of Robert Southwell, an interesting Jesuit who died in the reign of Queen Elizabeth; his life and writings, at any rate his prose writings, are perhaps not so generally known as the lives and writings of the other authors from whom I have selected. And as this volume is distinctly not a work upon philology, I have added no notes about the vocabulary, about the meaning of words. In the earlier writers, a few words may appear strange at first sight, but more from the ancient spelling than from anything else; and it surely would have been impertinent to have written notes about a thing so obvious as a variation in spelling. Besides, in these days of ours everyone who cares for literature should resist the ambitious and mischievous encroachments of philology upon the domain of letters. It is clear that philology is not literature, because many excellent writers have been quite innocent of that, and of all other science; while the most learned philologists, like most other men of science, usually write an execrable style. I have begun my selections with Sir John Maundevile; because to begin with Anglo-Saxon is pedantic; only a pedant, or a specialist, can fancy that Anglo-Saxon is English; to begin with Norman-French is also to mistake what English is; and to begin a volume of selections, as Mr. Saintsbury does, with the invention of printing, is ignoble: it is to confuse literature with a mere mechanical process, with the accidental manner of its reproduction. Such a confusion panders to our modern belief that trade is the standard of all things; and it supports Macaulay's vicious opinion that the English literature of the last three centuries is, by itself, more valuable than the literature produced by the whole world before the birth of Knox and Calvin. The extracts go down to Thackeray; partly because the limits of my space would not allow me to go much beyond his date; and partly because of the difficulties of copyright, and the invidiousness of choosing, in the case of more recent, or of living authors. I have no theory to offer to my readers, because it is far more profitable to study prose in concrete examples, than to hold vague and general theories about style, or about the development of prose. Perhaps prose has developed; it is not so certain that it has improved. Our spelling has changed a great deal; our vocabulary has altered considerably, and possibly not always for the better; but in other matters, even in the cast of the sentence itself, there has not been so much change as divers critics have tried to prove. One of the great uses of a book of selections is to remind us that, in all ages, the really great writers have differed very little from one another; all good prose has the same qualities of directness, plainness, and simplicity. And good prose can still be written whenever a writer condescends to think clearly, to stick to the point, and to express his ideas in the plainest, the simplest, the most direct and unpretentious way. The compiler of a book of selections can never hope to please all his readers, or to please many of them entirely; for he cannot even please himself. His readers will always complain that this author, or that passage, is not given; may I beg my readers to be indulgent with me in this matter, because I share their feelings, and sympathise with them. My thanks are due to Messrs. Frederick Warne & Co. for their free permission to use an extract from Napier's Peninsular War; and to Messrs. A. & C. Black for their permission to use the extract from De Quincey. In conclusion, I must thank Miss Beatrice Horne for the immense care which she has bestowed upon all the earlier texts; that they have been copied from the best editions, is entirely due to her devoted labours. It is only fair to Miss Horne to add that Mr. Walter Scott's proofreaders are wholly responsible for the final revisions of the printed text. NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD, |