Crown 8vo. 6s. The State of Literature at the Queen's Accession, and of those whose work was already done-Men who had made their name, especially John Gibson Lockhart, Walter Savage Landor, Leigh Hunt- Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill, and other Essayists and Critics-Macaulay and the other Historians and Biographers in the early part of the PREFACE It is always somewhat rash to attempt to determine the final place in literature of contemporary writers. There is nothing in which the generations make greater mistakes. back upon the past age the reader smiles if he Looking sometimes shudders to see Davenant or Congreve placed above Shakespeare, the age of Anne regarding as barbarous the age of Elizabeth, and in nearer days Southey placed on an equal rank with Byron or with Wordsworth. Posterity, we cannot doubt, will displace some of our greater and lesser lights in the same way; but we must accept the disabilities of contemporary judgment along with its advantages, and with the certainty that what is written here is for the reader of to-day, and not for that eventual judge whose verdict will ultimately prevail, let us say what we will. In a record of so large and widely spreading a literature as our own it is inevitable that some |