PREFACE THE PRESENT VOLUME is the outcome of an attempt to place in the hands of pupil teachers and other young students a simple and interesting story of the great English writers. Some time ago, much ingenuity was exercised in making a selection of the best hundred books, and it was considered that for busy people such a number gave ample scope for reading. In somewhat similar fashion, we now make choice of about a hundred best English writers, and invite young students to confine themselves in the first instance to these. And as the hundred best books by their variety gave materials suited to varying moods and tastes, so our list of English writers is meant to give a picture of the progress of English literature from its first rude beginnings, through its times of alternate flourishing and languor, and to show its varying aims in poetry and philosophy and divinity. The selection of names for such a list can never be ideally perfect, and Butler and Thomson in poetry, and Hobbes and Hume in philosophy, are only some of the names which have been omitted with reluctance and misgiving. Still, it is hoped that no name has been |