Transcriber's Notes: Some typographical and punctuation errors have beencorrected. A complete list as well as other notes follows the text.
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[1]
Select English Classics
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This is the first volume of a series of Select English Classics whichthe publishers have in course of preparation. The series will include anextensive variety of selections chosen from the different departments ofEnglish literature, and arranged and annotated for the use of classes inschools. It will embrace, among other things, representative specimensfrom all the best English writers, whether of poetry or of prose;selections from English dramatic literature, especially of theeighteenth and nineteenth centuries; choice extracts from the writingsof the great essayists; selections from famous English allegories; avolume of elegies and elegiacal poetry; studies of English prosefiction, with illustrative specimens, etc. Each volume will containcopious notes, critical, explanatory, and biographical, besides thenecessary vocabularies, glossaries, and indexes; and the series whencomplete will present a varied and comprehensive view of all that isbest in English literature. For supplementary reading, as well as forsystematic class instruction, the books will possess many peculiarlyvaluable as well as novel features; while their attractive appearance,combined with the sterling quality of their contents, will commend themfor general reading and make them desirable acquisitions for everylibrary.
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There is but one study more interesting than the history of literature,and that is the study of literature itself. That the former should oftenbe mistaken for the latter is scarcely to be wondered at when weconsider the intimate and almost indivisible relationship existingbetween them. Yet, in truth, they are as capable of separateconsideration as are music and the history of music.
Any careful investigation of the history of English poetry wouldnaturally begin at a point of time some six or seven hundred yearsearlier than that of Chaucer. From such investigation we should learnthat even as early as the ninth century—perhaps, indeed, theeighth—there were in Eng