The World’s Classics
CCVI
ENGLISH
CRITICAL ESSAYS
NINETEENTH CENTURY
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: AMEN HOUSE, E.C. 4
EDINBURGH GLASGOW LEIPZIG
COPENHAGEN NEW YORK TORONTO
MELBOURNE CAPETOWN BOMBAY
CALCUTTA MADRAS SHANGHAI
HUMPHREY MILFORD
PUBLISHER TO THE
UNIVERSITY
ENGLISH
CRITICAL ESSAYS
NINETEENTH CENTURY
SELECTED AND EDITED BY
EDMUND D. JONES
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
The present selection of English Critical Essays (Nineteenth Century) was first published in ‘The World’s Classics’ in 1916 and reprinted in 1919, 1920, 1921, 1924 and 1928.
PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OXFORD
BY JOHN JOHNSON PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY
PREFACE
The essays here brought together are meant to illustrate English literary criticism during the nineteenth century. A companion volume representative of Renaissance and Neo-classic criticism will, it is hoped, be issued at a future date. Meanwhile this volume may well go forth alone. For the nineteenth century forms an epoch in English literature whose beginnings are more clearly defined than those of most literary epochs. The publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798, and of Wordsworth’s Preface to the second edition in 1800, show the Romantic Movement grown conscious and deliberate, with results that have coloured the whole stream of English poetry and criticism ever since.