Contents

Page

xi

Preface

General Introduction - The English Essay and

English Prose Style :

I. Historical Review

II. Style, or the Artistic Element in Prose

III. The Possibilities of Prose

xvii

XXV

.

xxxii

3

5

6

8

II

23

26.

26

II. SWIFT: the Greatest English Satirist

A Tale of a Tub.

The Bookseller's Dedication to the Right

Honourable John Lord Somers

The Epistle Dedicatory to His Royal

Highness Prince Posterity.

Preface

The Three Brothers and their Coats

[Sect. II]

31

.

38

39

Pac

5

III. ADDISON : First of the Humorists

Sir Roger De Coverley in the Country

Sir Roger at Home.

Sir Roger and Will Wimble .

Sir Roger at Church

The Man of the Town

The Fan Exercise

5

5

6

6

IV. LAMB: Greatest of the Humorists

Letter to Coleridge

A Dissertation upon Roast Pig

Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist

Poor Relations

7

8

8

9

IO

II

II

I 2

I 2

V. DE QUINCEY : Inventor of Modern “Im-

passioned Prose"

The English Mail Coach

Sect. I— The Glory of Motion

Going down with Victory

Sect. II — The Vision of Sudden Death 13

Sect. III - Dream-Fugue : Founded

on the preceding Theme of Sudden

Death .

15

Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow

(Suspiria de Profundis).

16

VI. CARLYLE: the Latter-Day Prophet

Characteristics

17.

18

23

VII. EMERSON : the Lecturer

Self-Reliance

24

PAGE

VIII. MACAULAY : the Rhetorician

The Puritans (Essay on Milton)

Boswell's “Life of Johnson "

The Perfect Historian (Essay on His-

tory).

277

278

284

321

329

.

333

IX. RUSKIN : the Impassioned Critic .

Sea-Painting (Modern Painters, Vol. I.)

The Virtues of Architecture (Stones of

Venice, Vol. II.). .

The Crown of Wild Olive (Introduction

or Preface).

.

347

360

X. MATTHEW ARNOLD: the Intellectual Critic 379

Sweetness and Light (Culture and Anarchy) 382