Hardy.—­Hardy’s most enjoyable novel is Far from the Madding Crowd.  The Return of the Native is one of his strongest works.

What are some of the most striking differences between him and Meredith?  Which one is naturally the better story-teller?  Where are the scenes of most of Hardy’s novels laid?  What is his theory of life?

Arnold.—­Read Dover Beach, Memorial Verses, Stanzas in Memory of the Author of “Obermann” and Sohrab and Rustum (Page’s British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Bronson, IV., Manly, I.).

Is Arnold the poet of fancy or of reflection?  How does his poetry show one phase of nineteenth-century thought?

Arnold’s Essays, Literary and Critical are published in Everyman’s Library.  The best volume of selections from the prose writings of Arnold is the one edited by Lewis E. Gates (348 pages, 75 cents).  Good selections are given in Craik, V., Manly, I. (Sweetness and light), Century (The Study of Poetry).  Arnold’s Introduction to Ward, I., is well worth reading.

What quality specially marks Arnold’s criticism?  Compare him as a critic with Coleridge, Macaulay, Carlyle, and Thackeray.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of a style like Arnold’s?

Pater.—­Read the essay, Leonardo da Vinci (Dickinson and Roe’s Nineteenth Century Prose, pp. 338-368), from Pater’s “golden book,” The Renaissance:  Studies in Art and Literature.  E.E.  Hale’s Selections from Walter Pater (268 pages, 75 cents) gives representative selections.  Manly, II., and Century give the essay on Style.

What are the chief characteristics of Pater’s style?  Compare it with Macaulay’s, Newman’s, Ruskin’s, and Matthew Arnold’s.  Has Pater a message?  Does he show the spirit of the time?

The Brownings.—­From Elizabeth Barrett Browning, read Cowper’s Grave, the Cry of the Children, and from her Sonnets from the Portuguese, Nos.  I., III., VI., X., XVIII., XX., XXVI., XXVIII., XLI., XLIII.

Mrs. Browning’s verse comes from the heart and should be felt rather than criticized.  Fresh interest may, however, by given to a study of her Sonnets from the Portuguese, by comparing them with any other series of love sonnets, excepting Shakespeare’s.

Robert Browning’s shorter poems are best for the beginner, who should read Rabbi Ben Ezra, Abt Vogler, Home Thoughts from Abroad, Prospice, Saul, The Pied Piper of Hamelin. Baker’s Browning’s Shorter Poems (Macmillan’s Pocket Classics) contains a very good collection of his shorter poems.  Representative selections from Browning’s poems are given in Page’s British Poets of the Nineteenth Century, Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, Bronson, IV., Manly, I., and Century.

Browning’s masterpiece, The Ring and the Book (Oxford Edition, Oxford University Press) would be apt to repel beginners.  This should be studied only after a previous acquaintance with his shorter poems.