Some of these papers appeared originally in the _Times Literary
Supplement_ and the _Dial_. I have to thank the Editors for allowing me
to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written for various
newspapers, while others appear now for the first time.
_CONTENTS_
The Common Reader
The Pastons and Chaucer
On Not Knowing Greek
The Elizabethan Lumber Room
Notes on an Elizabethan Play
Montaigne
The Duchess of Newcastle
Rambling Round Evelyn
Defoe
Addison
The Lives of the Obscure
I. The Taylors and the Edgeworths
II. Laetitia Pilkington
III. Miss Ormerod
Jane Austen
Modern Fiction
“Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights”
George Eliot
The Russian Point of View
Outlines—
I. Miss Mitford
II. Dr. Bentley
III. Lady Dorothy Nevill
IV. Archbishop Thomson
The Patron and the Crocus
The Modern Essay
Joseph Conrad
How It Strikes a Contemporary