Excerpt from A History of English Literature The proportions of this book have been carefully con sidered. A full half of the space has been given to the last two centuries, and much more to the nineteenth cen tury than to the eighteenth. These and other apportion ments of space have been made, not on absolute grounds, but with the design of throwing into prominence what is most important for a student to learn upon his first ap proach to the subject. The chief figures in each era have been set in relief, and the minor figures have been grouped about them, in an endeavor thus to suggest their relative significance. A full working bibliography, including texts, biography, and criticism, has been added, in the hope that it may be of assistance not only in the current work of the classroom, but also as a guide for later study. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.