It is best to study English literature one period, or, even in the case of the greatest, one author at a time.  In every case the student should see to it that he knows the text of his authors; a knowledge of what critics have said about our poets is a poor substitute for a knowledge of what they have said themselves.  Poetry ought to be read slowly and carefully, and the reader ought to pay his author the compliment of crediting him with ideas as important and, on occasion, as abstruse as any in a work of philosophy or abstract science.  When the meaning is mastered, the poem ought to be read a second time aloud to catch the magic of the language and the verse.  The reading of prose presents less difficulty, but there again the rule is, never allow yourself to be lulled by sound.  Reading is an intellectual and not an hypnotic exercise.

The following short bibliography is divided to correspond with the chapters in this book.  Prices and publishers are mentioned only when there is no more than one cheap edition of a book known to the author.  For the subject as a whole, Chamber’s Cyclopaedia of English Literature (3 vols., 10s. 6d. net each), which contains biographical and critical articles on all authors, arranged chronologically and furnished very copiously with specimen passages, may be consulted at any library.

* The books with an asterisk are suggested as those on which reading should be begun.  The reader can then proceed to the others and after them to the many authors—­great authors—­who are not included in this short list.

Chapter I.—­More’s _Utopia_; _Haklyut’s Voyages_ (Ed. J. Masefield, Everyman’s Library, 8 vols., 1s. net each).  North’s _Translation of Plutarch’s Lives_ (Temple Classics).

Chapter II.—­Surrey’s and Wyatt’s Poems (Aldine Edition.  G. Bells & Sons); Spenser’s Works, Sidney’s Poems.  A good idea of the atmosphere in which poetry was written is to be obtained from Scott’s _Kenilworth_.  It is full of inaccuracy in detail.

Chapter III.—­The dramatists in the Mermaid Series (T.  Fisher Unwin); _Everyman and other Plays_; ed. by A.W.  Pollard (Everyman’s Library).

Chapter IV.—­Bacon’s Essays; Sir Thomas Browne’s Works; Milton’s Works; Poems of John Donne (Muses Library, Routledge); Poems of Robert Herrick.

Chapter V.—­Poems of Dryden; Poems of Pope; Poems of Thomson; *_The Spectator_ (Routledge’s Universal Library or Everyman’s); Swift’s _Gulliver’s Travels_; Defoe’s Novels.

Chapter VI.—­Boswell’s _Life of Johnson_; Burke (in selections); Goldsmith’s Citizen of the World (Temple Classics); Burns’ Poetical Works; Poems of Blake (Clarendon Press).

Chapter VII.—­Wordsworth (Golden Treasury Series); Wordsworth’s Prelude (Temple Classics); Coleridge’s Poems; Keats’s Poems; Shelley’s Poems; Byron (Golden Treasury Series); Lamb, Essays of Elia; Hazlitt (volumes of Essays in World’s Classics Series).