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characteristics thus vaguely summed up really pervade the whole of our literature. Justly viewed, indeed, the method pursued in this volume is not so much the opposite as the complement of M. Taine's. His endeavour was to point out what our writers had in common; mine has been to point out what each has by distinction. I might advance, as a justification of my attempt, that a thorough study of the individual is indispensable to that higher study which has for its object the determination of the characteristics of the

And besides, the most interesting study for mankind will always be the individual man.

It may be objected to my method that it does not systematically follow successive periods in the career of the individual, the opening of new veins, the development of new powers, the subjection to new influences. That is a method by itself, with its own value and its own dangers. It is the method suitable to monographs, or to history on a larger scale than is here attempted. I must say that it seems to me to have been of late somewhat overdone. It has been pursued without due respect to the individuality of the individual. Men's lives have been divided into clear-cut periods, and those periods characterised as if it were a law of nature that the individual became at sudden and definite epochs a wholly new creature. All division into periods, unless cautiously carried out, tends to obscure the fact that every animated being retains its individual characteristics from birth to maturity, from maturity to decay. The child is father to the man: a young cabbage does not become an old fig-tree. To trace the gradual growth of powers and qualities, extended

range of effort, increased mastery of materials, is a most interesting task. This I have incidentally endeavoured to do. But I conceive that it is of prior interest to know what characteristics are of the essence of a man's being, and are manifested in all his outcomes; and therefore my chief aim in each case has been to seize those characteristics, and to make my interpretation of them as plain and unmistakable as lay in my power.

A smaller point in which I am especially open to hostile criticism, is the modernised spelling of the texts of Chaucer and his contemporaries and immediate successors. I have done this after much consideration, resolving to attempt it more by way of experiment and for the purpose of eliciting opinion, than from any settled conviction that it is the only proper course. I am not insensible to the charm of the archaic spelling; and I know that to some minds modernisation of spelling is as obnoxious as the performance of Othello in a dress-coat. My object is to help my readers to forget such small points as orthographical differences between them and those poets of an elder time, and to get nearer to the living spirit of them. The tendency of all archaisms, as I shall point out more fully in the case of Chaucer, is to impart into the text a sentiment of old age and childishness, very delightful in itself, but not so favourable to truth of criticism.

W. MINTO.

August 1, 1874.

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