1. page
  2. Introduction [9]
  3. PART I: SOME ENGLISH CLASSICS
    1. Tom Jones [15]
    2. Wuthering Heights [25]
    3. Charles Lamb [32]
    4. James Boswell [35]
    5. William Hazlitt [38]
    6. Samuel Pepys [41]
    7. Walter Savage Landor [44]
    8. John Donne [51]
    9. Such a Book as The Beggar's Opera [58]
  1. PART II: SOME CONTEMPORARIES
    1. George Santayana [65]
    2. The Poems of Francis Brett-Young [76]
    3. The Poems of Iris Tree [81]
    4. The Poems of Aldous Huxley [88]
    5. The Poems of Robert Graves [97]
    6. J. D. Beresford [101]
    7. Night and Day [105]
    8. E. C. Booth [112]
    9. Ford Madox Hueffer [126]
    10. The Ballad of the White Horse [139]
    11. E. M. Forster [152]
    12. Sheila Kaye-Smith [157]

  1. PART III: BOOKS ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
    1. A History of Modern Colloquial English [171]
    2. The Romance of Words [179]
    3. The Romance of Names [182]
    4. The English Language [185]
  1. PART IV: CERTAIN FOREIGNERS
    1. Montaigne [191]
    2. Nekrassov [211]
    3. Pushkin [226]
    4. Lèrmontov [241]
    5. Gogol [258]
    6. Turgenev [263]
    7. Goncharov [270]
    8. Dostoievsky [274]
    9. Tolstoy [284]
    10. Tchekov [292]

[INTRODUCTION]

From reviews that I have read of earlier books of mine I have at last learnt wisdom. It seems that I must be explicit about my intentions in a preface in order to save the critics the trouble of reading the book through.

Now it must be remembered that literary critics are men of intelligence who have read everything and damned most things. Very few indeed are the books which they allow to be worth the trouble that must have been taken to write them.