One should work backwards, and not forwards, in
this study. The practice of beginning with Anglo-Saxon writers, and
studying down to nineteenth-century authors, is to be utterly condemned.
How can I hope to like or even comprehend an English version of Caedmon,
or, later, Chaucer, if I cannot yet see the beauty of Whittier? The
history and philosophy of English literature are indeed important,
but they are entirely subordinate to the works themselves.
English literature was not hatched full-fledged; its feathers have
been growing for centuries; it did not even fly high till Elizabeth's
reign; and it has not been prolific till within a century or two. We
want to see what the bird looks like full grown, before we can
understand about the embryo in the egg.
In the first place, I should get familiar with some very concise manual,
so that I might refer to it for guidance; but my most earnest work
should be with certain epochs in literature, and with special
representative authors, around whom I could group other dependent
writers, or such as did not so nearly represent the period I was
studying.
If you are studying epochwise, why not read choice selections from
the prose of the nineteenth century,--some of its masterpieces? Get
a general notion of the earlier parts of the century by consulting
some manual on the subject, such as Spalding's "English Literature,"
chapters XIII.
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