PREFACE.
This work needs no apology.
Its value to the English-speaking world is two-fold. It preserves for all time, in the form of a printed book, what might have been scattered in the sheets of ephemeral publications. It is so designed that these isolated monuments of prose and verse can be studied, absorbed, and, if necessary, copied by the young aspirant to literary honours.
Nothing is Good save the Useful, and it would have been sheer vanity to have published so small a selection, whatever its merit, unless it could be made to do Something, to achieve a Result in this strenuous modern world. It will not be the fault of the book, but of the reader, if no creative impulse follows its perusal, and the student will have but himself to blame if, with such standards before him, and so lucid and thorough an analysis of modern Literature and of its well-springs, he does not attain the goal to which the author would lead him.
The book will be found conveniently divided into sections representing the principal divisions of modern literary activity; each section will contain an introductory essay, which will form a practical guide to the subject with which it deals, and each will be adorned with one or more examples of the finished article, which, if the instructions be carefully followed, should soon be turned out without difficulty by any earnest and industrious scholar of average ability.
If the Work can raise the income of but one poor journalist, or produce earnings, no matter how insignificant, for but one of that great army which is now compelled to pay for the insertion of its compositions in the newspapers and magazines, the labour and organizing ability devoted to it will not have been in vain.