his expository writing will gain vastly by his practice in a style abounding in the sense of fact. The editor believes that this volume of personal and impersonal narratives contains enough matter for models to fit the ordinary student's actual needs. Here are more than twenty pieces, ranging from primitive to modern, from naïve to sophisticated. None of them is fiction in the strict sense. The two apparent exceptions, that from The Journal of the Plague Year and that from Henry Esmond, are historical at least in their appeal to the reader's interest and in their bid for belief. The scheme of division (1) Legendary History, (2) History, (3) Intimate History—is meant as a grouping of models no less than as a literary classification. For practical purposes the second and third divisions will be found the better suited. Few freshmen can write acceptable stories; but all freshmen can learn to tell a plain tale plainly, perhaps interestingly; and many freshmen write capital bits of personal narration. The editor hopes his book may serve as an introduction to delightful ranges of literature which seldom lie within the scope of lower college courses because not available in a handbook. Why should novels and stories have everything their own way? Are not certain histories literature? are not saga and chivalric legend literature? above all, are not Bible-stories literature? Yes, but so too are certain autobiographies literature; and near neighbors to novels and stories at that. Indeed the study of such a book as this should lay the very best foundation to the later study of fiction and drama, for the pieces show, in this way or that, all, or nearly all, the qualities of narrative structure and style. Now nothing is so fundamental to the appreciation of novels and plays as the ability to realize experience (actual or supposed) as set forth in narrative order and scheme, and in a sound diction quick with vivid details; upon these play-writing and story-writing inevitably depend. And not only plot, but character even, will be the better understood by one who has a trained sense of narrative order and fact. His purpose being frankly rhetorical, the editor has added few notes or none. Here and there a necessary definition is given or a necessary fact supplied, mainly, however, in the little chapterprefaces. But no origins are traced and no allusions are explained. Any teacher, therefore, who finds that sort of exercise profitable to his class has a clear field. Surely there are enough encyclopedias and dictionaries, and more than enough annotated editions ready to hand. Nor would the editor embarrass the teacher with rhetorical apparatus-with plot schemes or with analyses of style, of sentence-forms, habitual phrases, diction. A student is less helped than hindered by them; a good teacher can supply his own devices, and the better the teacher the more he will resent being run into a mold. Rhetoric defeats expression when its applications are made too hard and fast. The editor has taken certain liberties. He has omitted authors' footnotes where these were irrelevant or obtrusive because too documentary or distracting. He has even omitted solid passages from the body of the text, sometimes for brevity, more often for clarity. Much from the text of the De Quincey passage, for example, some of it verbiage and nearly all of it digression, he has ruthlessly cut. But he believes he has done no wrong to this or any other author, that he has never sacrificed spirit to form. Acknowledgments for the favor of copyrighted books or of special editions are made in the proper places. It remains to thank my colleagues in the University of California-Messrs. Leonard Bacon, Frederick Blanchard, Harold Bruce, Herbert Cory, Sigurd Hustvedt, George MacMinn and George Smithson for assistance in making the selections—and my chief, Professor Charles Mills Gayley, for kindly criticisms and valuable suggestions. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA C. W. W. |