B41.fu COPYRIGHT, 1894, 1898, BY FLOOD & VINCENT. Norwood Press: PREFACE. IN so brief a history of so rich a literature, the problem is how to get room enough to give, not an adequate impression—that is impossible-but any impression at all of the subject. To do this I have crowded out everything but belles-lettres. Books in philosophy, history, science, etc., however important in the history of English thought, receive the merest incidental mention, or even no mention at all. Again, I have omitted the literature of the Anglo-Saxon period, which is written in a language nearly as hard for a modern Englishman to read as German is, or Dutch. Cædmon and Cynewulf are no more a part of English literature than Vergil and Horace are of Italian. I have also left out the vernacular literature of the Scotch before the time of Burns. Up to the date of the union Scotland was a separate kingdom, and its literature had a development independent of the English, though parallel with it. In dividing the history into periods, I have followed, with some modifications, the divisions made by Mr. Stopford Brooke in his excellent little "Primer of English Literature." A short reading course is appended to each chapter. The brief selections in the appendix are, of course, not designed to give full-length illustrations of the authors chosen, but only a taste of their quality. HENRY A. BEERS. |