OF

J. H. SHORTHOUSE

EDITED BY HIS WIFE

London

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

All rights reserved

PREFATORY NOTE

WITH the exception of "The Midsummer Night's Dream" and "A Sunday Afternoon," the whole of the Early Essays and Stories contained in this volume were read from time to time at the social meetings of the Friends' Essay Society of Birmingham. At these meetings essays upon very various subjects were read aloud, and afterwards sent round to each member for perusal. In time these were collected and bound in volumes. It is from these manuscript volumes that Mr. Shothouse's early writings have been selected, in response to requests from readers of his published works. Speaking broadly, they were contributed to the Essay Meeting in the course of twenty years. The shorter ones would be written when the author was eighteen or twenty years of age; those more strictly literary and philosophical between the ages of twenty and forty. Mr. Shorthouse ceased to be a member of the

Essay Society soon after he began to concentrate his efforts upon John Inglesant.

In order to make the volume representative also of his later work, Mr. Shorthouse's contributions to various periodicals, and also his Essay on the Platonism of Wordsworth, read before the Wordsworth Society, have been included.

S. SHORTHOUSE.