Critical Essays And Literary Fragments

1903 PUBLISHERS NOTE THE texts contained in the present volume are re- printed with very slight alterations from the English Garner issued in eight volumes 1877-1890, London, 8vo by Professor Arber, whose name is sufficient guarantee for the accurate collation of the texts with the rare originals, the old spelling being in most cases carefully modernised. The contents of the original Garner have been rearranged and now for the first time classified, under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe. Certain lacunae have been filled by the interpolation of fresh matter. The Introductions are wholly new and have been written specially for this issue. The references to volumes of the Garner other than the present volume are for the most part to the editio princeps, 8 vols. 1877-90. MAY 25 1956 Edinburgh Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE. CONTENTS PAGE I. Extract from Thomas Wilsons Art ofRhetoric, 1554 . i II. Sir Philip Sidneys Letter to his brother Robert, 1580 . . 5 III. Extract from Francis Meress Palladis Tamia, 1 598 . 10 IV. Drydens Dedicatory Epistle to the Rival Ladies, 1664. . 23 V. Sir Robert Howards Preface tofournew Plays, 1665 . . 30 VI. Drydens Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668 . . . . 37 VII. Extractfrom Thomas Ellwoods History ofHimself, describ- ing his relations with Milton, 1713 . . . . . 135 vm. Bishop Coplestons Advice to a Young Reviewer, 1807 . 149 ix. The Bickerstaffand Partridge Tracts, 1708 . . 167, 185 x. Gays Present State of Wit, 1711 . . . . . 201 XL TickelFs Life ofAddison, 1721 . . ... - 211 XII. Steeles Dedicatory Epistle to Congreve, 1722 . . .225 XIH. Extract from Chamberlaynes Angliae Notitia, 1669 . . 239 xiv. Eachards Grounds and Occasions ofthe Contempt of the Clergy and of Religion, 1670 241 XV. Bickerstaffs Miseries of the Domestic Chaplain, 1710 . 313 xvi. Franklins Poor Richard Improved, 1757 .... 321 INTRODUCTION THE miscellaneous pieces comprised in this volume are of interest and value, as illustrating the history of English literature and of an important side of English social life, namely, the character and status of the clergy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They have been arranged chronologically under the subjects with which they are respectively concerned. The first three the excerpt from Wilsons Art of Rhetoric, Sir Philip Sidneys Letter to his brother Robert, and the dissertation from Meress Palladis Tamia are, if minor, certainly char- acteristic examples of pre-Elizabethan and Elizabethan literary criticism. The next three the Dedicatory Epistle to the Rival Ladies, Howards Preface to Four New Plays, and the Essay of Dramatic Poesy not only introduce us to one of the most interesting critical controversies of the seventeenth century, but present us, in the last work, with an epoch-marking masterpiece, both in English criticism and in English prose composition. Bishop Coplestons brochure brings us to the early days of the Edinburgh Review, and to the dawn of the criticism with which we are, unhappily, only too familiar in our own time. From criticism we pass, in the extract from Ellwoods life of himself, to biography and social history, to the most vivid account we have of Milton as a personality and in private life. Next comes a series of pamphlets illustrating social and literary history in the reigns of Anne and George I., opening with the pamphlets bearing on Swifts inimitablePartridge hoax, now for the first time collected and re- printed, and preceding Gays Present State of Wit, which gives a lively account of the periodic literature current in 1711...