This volume consists of lectures delivered during my tenure of the Chair
of Poetry at Oxford and not included in _Shakespearean Tragedy_. Most of
them have been enlarged, and all have been revised. As they were given
at intervals, and the majority before the publication of that book, they
contained repetitions which I have not found it possible wholly to
remove. Readers of a lecture published by the University of Manchester
on _English Poetry and German Philosophy in the Age of Wordsworth_ will
pardon also the restatement of some ideas expressed in it.
The several lectures are dated, as I have been unable to take account of
most of the literature on their subjects published since they were
delivered.
They are arranged in the order that seems best to me, but it is of
importance only in the case of the four which deal with the poets of
Wordsworth's time.
I am indebted to the Delegates of the University Press, and to the
proprietors and editors of the _Hibbert Journal_ and the _Albany_,
_Fortnightly_, and _Quarterly Reviews_, respectively, for permission to
republish the first, third, fifth, eighth, and ninth lectures. A like
acknowledgment is due for leave to use some sentences of an article on
Keats contributed to _Chambers's Cyclopaedia of English Literature_
(1903).
In the revision of the proof-sheets I owed much help to a sister who has
shared many of my Oxford friendships.