PREFACE.

How to teach literature is too large a question to be answered in a preface. But there is a preliminary question, of narrower scope, which the author would like to urge upon every teacher for careful consideration. It is this: What shall be selected for teaching from among the things that commonly pass for literature, and what proportionate emphasis shall be laid on them? How much history, for instance, shall be included, and how much biography? Which writers shall be chosen and which omitted? How much attention shall be given to individuals and how much to general movements; how much stress laid on intellectual analysis and how much on emotional or æsthetic appreciation?

The author's answer is generally, though not always, to be found in the method of this book. If more of historical background than there is space for here seem desirable it can easily be filled in from standard histories. But so long as the study is literature, history must be kept duly subordinate. There is no need to make history supply the gaps in the literature itself where the latter is meagre. A similar caution is applicable to biography. The modern tendency to make much of this element is on the whole commendable. But the fact that biography is interesting and easily taught should not tempt one to exaggerate its importance; biography, like history, is not literature. It is pertinent only so far as a writer's life is directly related to, or serves to illuminate, his written works. It is not equally needed in all cases. In the study of a subjective, emotional writer like Ruskin, a life-history is essential. In the study of a dramatist like Shakespeare, it can be almost wholly dispensed with. A satirist or a sentimentalist requires to be