IN

INTRODUCTION

N a book of this size it is impossible to give specimens of every prose-writer of importance from the time of Caxton until the middle of the eighteenth century. Caxton began to translate the Recuyel of the Histories of Troy in 1469. Blake, with whom began the modern romantic movement, wrote his first notable poem almost exactly three hundred years later. During those three centuries, two, of our three great literary periods, passed through their course of promise, blossom, and decay. It would need several volumes of the size of this book to give representative passages from the writings of the prominent prose-writers of those three hundred years. All that one can do, in a single volume, is to bring together specimens, beautiful or interesting in themselves, from the works of some of those who have expressed the thought, and peculiar genius, of their countrymen. This book does not pretend to be exhaustive, or comprehensive. It has been the aim of its collector to include a number of passages of English prose, all of them of some special beauty or vividness, which, in their arrangement, will show the reader how English style has changed, from century to century. The specimens, the passages selected, do not appear to the best advantage, thus detached from their contexts. Most of the various stories and excerpts are complete in themselves, needing no preliminary or final passage to give them point or weight. But an anthology of prose should serve rather as a guide, or whet, to the reader, than as a serious work. At best, it can only interest the reader in certain writers, or certain kinds of writing. It is to be hoped that this book may stimulate some of its readers to study the works of the writers repre