E. DE SÉLINCOURT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM UNIV. OF OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1915 PREFACE THE four lectures which comprise this volume were delivered during the winter before a familiar audience. They make no pretension to scholarship, and were not written with a view to publication. But in the present crisis the humblest citizen is anxious to contribute, as best he can, to the service of his country; and the student of English literature can perhaps do no better than help to set in circulation those ideas and emotions which have stirred our greatest poets in periods of national stress, and made them the mouthpiece of the finest spirit of their times. What they wrote, each for his own age, has lost little of its value; for much as we need to-day all the physical and material strength that we can command, we need still more ideas and inspiration; and our patriotism will be both wiser and more devoted if we learn to draw upon the immense spiritual resources of our poetry, which are not the least glorious nor the least precious part of our heritage as Englishmen. It is in the hope that these lectures, despite their obvious limitations, may awaken a few readers to a fuller sense of that heritage and all that it implies, that I have decided to publish them. To my audiences in the University and City of Birmingham, who for the past six years have listened to me with courteous and sympathetic attention, they are gratefully dedicated, BIRMINGHAM UNIVERSITY, March 1915. E. DE SÉLINCOURT. 328439 |