The following is a bibliography in brief of the chief works drawn upon for the selection:
Caxton, Morte D'Arthur, 1485; Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, 1532; Bacon,
Essays, 1740; Thos. Dekker, Gull's Horn Book, 1608; Jeremy Taylor,
Holy Dying, 1651; Thos. Fuller, Holy and Profane States, 1642; Cowley,
Prose Works, Several Discourses, 1668; The Guardian, 1729; The
Examiner, 1710; The Tatler, 1709; Wm. Cobbett, Rural Rides, 1830;
Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, 1762; Addison and Steele, The
Spectator, 1711; The Rambler, 1750-52; The Adventurer, 1753; Lamb,
Essays of Elia, 1823, 1833; Hazlitt, Comic Writers, 1819; Table Talk,
1821-22; The New Monthly Magazine, 1826-27; Coleridge, Literaria
Biographia, 1817; Wordsworth, Prose Works, 1876; John Brown, Rab and
his Friends, 1858; Thackeray, Roundabout Papers, 1863; Carlyle,
Edinburgh Review, 1831; Dickens, The Uncommercial Traveller, 1857;
Shelley, Essays, 1840; Leigh Hunt, The Indicator, 1820; Mary Russell
Mitford, Our Village, 1827-32; De Quincey, Collected Works, 1853-60;
R.L. Stevenson, Memories and Portraits, 1887; Edmund Gosse (The
Realm), 1895; Austin Dobson, Eighteenth Century Vignettes, 1892; Alice
Meynell, Colour of Life, 1896; G.K. Chesterton, The Defendant, 1901;
E.V. Lucas, Fireside and Sunshine, 1906, Character and Comedy, 1907;
Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta (second series), 1887; W.B. Yeats,
Celtic Twilight, 1893; Edward Thomas, The South Country, 1909; Hilaire
Belloc, First and Last, 1911.
CONTENTS
PAGE
Introduction vii
1. A Printer's Prologue
Wm. Caxton, Morte D'Arthur 1
2. Dame Prudence on Riches
Geoffrey Chaucer, Tale of Melibeus 4
3. Of Painting the Face
T.T., New Essays, 1614 8
4. Hamlet's Advice to the Players
Shakespeare, Hamlet 10
5. Of Adversity
Francis Bacon, Essays 11