ON

ENGLISH LITERATURE,

From Chaucer to Tennyson.

BY

HENRY REED.

PHILADELPHIA:

PARRY & MCMILLAN,

SUCCESSORS TO A. HART. LATE CAREY & HART.

1855.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by

WILLIAM B. REED,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

STEREOTYPED BY L. JOHNSON & CO.

PHILADELPHIA.

PRINTED BY T. K. & P. G. COLLINS.

LENOX

NEWYORK

ΤΟ

My Widowed Sister,

WHO, FOR THE SAKE OF THE LIVING, HAS NOBLY BORNE HER SORROW FOR THE DEAD.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTORY NOTICE.........

................Page xv

LECTURE I.-INTRODUCTORY.

PRINCIPLES OF LITERATURE.

Object, to assist and guide students-Necessity of systematic study

-Judicious criticism-True aims and principles of literature-

Choice of books-Its difficulties-Aim of this course of lectures

to remove them-All books not literature-Accurate definition

of literature-Its universality-Izaak Walton-Addison-

Charles Lamb-Lord Bacon-Clarendon-Arnold-Spenser and

Shakspeare-Southey and Wordsworth-Belles-lettres not li-

terature-Literature not an easy, patrician pleasure-Its danger

as to practical life-Its influence on character-De Quincey's

definition-Knowledge and power-Influence on female charac-

ter-True position of woman-Tennyson's Princess-Novel-

reading-Taste, an incorrect term-Henry Taylor-Cowper-

Miss Wordsworth-Coleridge's philosophy......................................

LECTURE II.

APPLICATION OF LITERARY PRINCIPLES.

Narrow and exclusive lines of reading to be avoided-Catholicity

of taste-Charles Lamb's idea of books-Ruskin-Habits of

reading comprehensive-Ancient Literature-Foreign Lan-

guages-Different eras of letters-English essay-writing—

Macaulay-Southey--Scott and Washington Irving-Archdea-

con Hare-Lord Bacon's Essays-Poetic taste-Influence of

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