With Tennyson I end my book, because my design was not to give you a history of our literature as it is now, so much as to show you how it grew to be what it is.  In the beginning of this book I took the Arthur story as a pattern or type of how a story grew, showing how it passed through many stages, in each stage gaining something of beauty and of breadth.  In the same way I have tried to show how from a rough foundation of minstrel tales and monkish legends the great palace of our literature has slowly risen to be a glorious house of song.  It is only an outline that I have given you.  There are some great names that demand our reverence, many that call for our love, for whom no room has been found in this book.  For our literature is so great a thing that no one book can compass it, no young brain comprehend it.  But if I have awakened in you a desire to know more of our literature, a desire to fill in and color for yourselves this outline picture, I shall be well repaid, and have succeeded in what I aimed at doing.  If I have helped you to see that Literature need be no dreary lesson I shall be more than repaid.

“They use me as a lesson-book at schools,” said Tennyson, “and they will call me ‘that horrible Tennyson.’” I should like to think that the time is coming when schoolgirls and schoolboys will say, “We have Tennyson for a school-book.  How nice.”  I should like to think that they will say this not only of Tennyson, but of many other of our great writers whose very names come as rest and refreshment to those of us who have learned to love them.

BOOK TO READ

Tennyson for the Young, Alfred Ainger.