BY ANNIE BARNETT.

GOLDEN NUMBERS: a Book of Verse for Boys Crown 8vo, cloth, Is. 4d.

and Girls.

Also a SCHOOL PRIZE EDITION, bound in rexine, with gilt top, 2s. 6d.

DRIFTING THISTLEDOWN: a Story. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. net.

BY LUCY DALE.

THE PRINCIPLES OF ENGLISH CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.. Crown 8vo, 6s.

LANDMARKS OF BRITISH HISTORY. With 8 Coloured Plates and 72 other Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 2s. 6d.

STORIES FROM EUROPEAN HISTORY. With 8 Maps, 4 Coloured Plates by H. J. Ford, and 31 other Illustrations. Crown 8vo, is. 3d.

LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.,

LONDON, NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA.

OF

MODERN ENGLISH PROSE

(1741 TO 1892)

BY

ANNIE BARNETT

AND

LUCY DALE

LATE SCHOLAR OF SOMERVILLE COLLEGE, OXFORD

LONGMANS,

GREEN AND CO.

39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON

NEW YORK, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA

FROM one point of view this book needs no apology. The noble mines of English poetry have been worked for their richest metal by many hands, and the fine treasuries of English verse which have been produced and so widely read, at least since Charles Lamb edited for Messrs. Longmans his selections from the English dramatists in 1808, have done more for the cultivation of English people than can well be measured. But the wealth of English prose has been comparatively neglected; although for subtlety and grace and majesty our greatest prose is as memorable, alike in the widest and most restricted sense of the word, as our greatest poetry; while for social and historical interest it is perhaps even more valuable.

Selection is inevitable, particularly in the case of prose. Not every great English author can be read with delight and profit throughout. Time has brought down with it much indifferent flotsam as well as many great galleons; and the piety of editors and publishers, aided by the indiscriminate protection of printing, has preserved for us a good deal of material which few besides the "professed" student can find leisure to read.

In

This Anthology, with the similar collection from earlier writers which is to follow it, is designed to take the middle place between the small Treasuries that one can put in one's pocket for companionship on a journey and the larger series which are available for more severe and special studies. so wide a field it is not to be expected that every one would take the same path; and to any but the compilers the choice here made must at times seem arbitrary. They have however endeavoured to include most of the writers of great

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mark, and to choose from their works passages of substantial length that are characteristic and complete, some being preferred for their beauty or impressiveness of diction, and others for their interest as distinctive of the writer's style and method. Notes have been added only where a word of explanation seemed absolutely necessary to make the meaning clear.

It is not to be supposed that these volumes presume to offer themselves as a satisfactory substitute for wide reading; rather, for those who, like the young people in schools and colleges, can at some later time read more widely, they are to serve as a convenient stage and introduction. Indeed, the best justification for this, as for other anthologies, may be borrowed from Sir Philip Sidney: "he doth, as if your journey should lye through a fair vineyard, at the first give you a cluster of Grapes; that, full of that taste, you may long to passe further."

It has not of course been possible to draw as freely upon the works of the last forty years as upon prose of an earlier date, but in many cases permission to use copyright matter has been courteously granted. Hearty thanks are due to the representatives of the late Mr. H. D. Traill, and to Messrs. Chapman and Hall, Ltd., for the extract from The New Lucian; to Mrs. Bagehot, for the extracts from Literary Studies and Biographical Studies, by the late Walter Bagehot; to Mrs. Tyndall, for the extract from Hours of Exercise in the Alps; to Balliol College and the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, for the extract from Jowett's Introduction to Plato's Republic; to Balliol College and Mr. John Murray, for the extracts from Jowett's letters; and to Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co., for the extract from Leslie Stephen's Hours in a Library. Thanks are due also to Messrs. Constable & Co., and Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, for permission to use the extracts from George Meredith's works; and to Messrs. Chatto & Windus, for the extracts from Stevenson's Merry Men and Across the Plains.

It has seemed best to restrict the collection to the works of authors no longer living; while the limits of space have unfortunately compelled the exclusion of writers belonging to the great English-speaking peoples outside these islands.