The Background of English Literature [antikvár]

PREFACE All of the essays here brought together have been printed in separate brochures. The first was my opening lecture in the English classroom at Edinburgh University, I have dropped some paragraphs dealing vs^ith the work of my predecessor. Professor Saintsbury, as being of occasional and local interest. Professor Saintsbury needs no eulogy of mine. It was a piece of good fortune for me personally that at the time I returned to Scotland a comparatively young and very inexperienced professor, he also came thither, young as a professor but already mature in his knowledge of literature, classical and modern. The second address was written for the Edinburgh centre of the English Association in the year of Cervantes' centenary. It was read in London the following year, and printed by the English Association in 1921. Lord Byron : Arnold and Swinburne was delivered as the Warton Lecture at the British Academy in 1920. The Metaphysical Poets is an introduction to a selection from these poets, reprinted here with the kind permission of the Oxford University Press, Byron and English Society was the Byron Lecture given at Nottingham University College in 1922, Blake and Gray is the introduction to the Oxford University Press reproduction of the designs by Blake to Gray's poems, discovered at Hamilton Palace after they had disappeared for a hundred years. For permission to reprint this I am also indebted to the Oxford University Press, Classical and Romantic vi^as the Leslie Stephen Lecture at Cambridge University in 1923, and was VI1