The following chapters were originally delivered as public lectures at
Johns Hopkins University, in the winter and spring of 1881. Had Mr.
Lanier lived to prepare them for the press, he would probably have
recast them to some extent; but the present editor has not felt free
to make any changes from the original manuscript, beyond the omission
of a few local and occasional allusions, and the curtailment of
several long extracts from well-known writers.
Although each is complete in itself, this work and its foregoer, _The
Science of English Verse_, were intended to be parts of a
comprehensive philosophy of formal and substantial beauty in
literature, which, unhappily, the author did not live to develop.