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5690

JOHNSON & H89
GOLDSMITH 1922
& THEIR POETRY C

BY

WILLIAM HENRY HUDSON
Staff Lecturer in Literature to the University
Extension Board of the University of London
Author of "An Introduction to the Study of
Literature" etc. Editor of "The Elizabethan
Shakespeare" etc.

LONDON: GEORGE G.
HARRAP & CO. LTD.
2 & 3 PORTSMOUTH STREET
KINGSWAY W.C. MCMXVIII

18-111400

GENERAL PREFACE

A

GLANCE through the pages of this little book will suffice to disclose the general plan of the series of which it forms a part. Only a few words of explanation, therefore, will be necessary.

The point of departure is the undeniable fact that with the vast majority of young students of literature a living interest in the work of any poet can best be aroused, and an intelligent appreciation of it secured, when it is immediately associated with the character and career of the poet himself. The cases are indeed few and far between in which much fresh light will not be thrown upon a poem by some knowledge of the personality of the writer, while it will often be found that the most direct-perhaps even the only-way to the heart of its meaning lies through a consideration of the circumstances in which it had its birth. The purely æsthetic critic may possibly object that a poem should be regarded simply as a self-contained and detached piece of art, having no personal affiliations or bearings. Of the validity of this as an abstract principle nothing need now be said. The fact remains that, in the earlier stages of study at any rate, poetry is most valued and loved when it is made to seem most human and vital; and the human and vital interest of poetry can be most surely brought home to the reader by the biographical method of interpretation.