that I have aimed at fitness, not for recitations proper, but simply for exercises; that teacher and pupils may commune together with the beauty and wisdom and eloquence of the authors, without having their thoughts too much diverted and drawn away to irrelevant points. I have been specially desirous not to encumber pupils with excessive or superfluous help; deeming that the right way is, to bring the minds of the student and the author fairly together, to put the former in direct and free communication with the latter, a process that may easily be defeated by thrusting too much of explanation and comment between them;-and then to leave the proper results to come in their own way and time, knowing that the more silent they are in coming, the surer they are to come, and the better when they come. In such studies, the great thing is, to get the pupils really to understand and relish what is before them, to taste its sweetness, to inhale its spirit, to catch its virtue: this done, the main end of the study is secured; this left undone, that end is missed, and the work is to be set down as a failure, whatever incidental benefits may accrue from the process. And here may be fitly applied to the study of poetry what Coleridge says in reference to his own poetical composition: "Poetry has been to me its own 'exceeding great reward': it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude; and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."

In the sketches of the several authors' lives, I have endeavoured, with my best care and judgment, and with as much fulness as the space would allow, to sort out and draw together such particulars of personal history and of native idiom as would best serve to impress their characteristic traits, and to illustrate the correspondences between the man and his works. In such swift biographical fummaries, it is very difficult to avoid a most unattractive dryness of style; and I dare not hope that these specimens stand clear of that fault.

It may be well to add, that I am far from ignoring or disparaging various other English poets, especially Spenser and Milton, in reference to the purpose for which this volume is designed. But those great authors, or large portions of them, are now and long have been widely in use as text-books, and are to be had in suitable form, and set forth with a much better editorial preparation than 1 could give them. Moreover, Spenser was of the same age as Shakespeare, and Milton of the age next succeeding; and, as I was making large use of Shakespeare, as a second to him I preferred to have, for my own classes, a poet who lived nearer our own time, and who represents a very different stage in the course of English thought and style.