EDITOR'S NOTE

IN giving his consent to the reprinting of the present volume, Mr. Stopford Brooke has preferred that the lectures should still retain their original form, and not be in any way altered or modified. This decision will without doubt gratify all those who first learnt to know the book in previous editions, and who would as certainly resent any change in it, seeing that a specific part of its charm consists in its use of the wisdom and knowledge of criticism, applied with the discursive art of the lecturer, and with a spontaneity which any after-thought might spoil. There is no need now to point out how much of that criticism and how many of its lucid terms and sympathetic distinctions have entered into the very currency of our time. The account it gives of the evolution in the English poets of a new idea of Nature is of a part with its author's abiding faith and philosophy expressed in divers ways and books, and both in prose and verse. A nobler appreciation of Wordsworth is not to be found anywhere, not even in Coleridge, than we have in the lectures here devoted to him. At the heart of it lies the thought which may be found concentrated in one of its

author's own poems

"Impose your moods on Nature, and the moods
Alone return to you. Her joyful ways

Where great and solitary Beauty broods,

And makes the world-are hidden from your gaze.

But love her for herself, unfold your breast

To hear her music, and receive her fire

You shall have joy, and beauty, and the rest
Of self-forgetfulness and dead desire."

There is the whole law of the Nature-worshipper expressed in eight lines; and in true accordance with its principle, these spiritual portraits treat of the essential

religion of the inspired men they describe-" theology
in the rough," as it is expressively termed in the open-
ing lecture.

E. R.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Freedom in the Church of England, 1871; Theology in the

English Poets: Cowper, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Burns, 1874:

Primer of English Literature, 1876, and several later editions;

Milton: An account of his Life and Works, 1879; Riquet of the

Tuft, a Love Drama, 1880; Spirit of the Christian Life, 1881;

Notes on the Liber Studiorum, 1882, and later editions; Future

Probation (Nisbet's Theological Library), 1886; Inaugural Address,

Shelley Society, 1886; Poems, 1888; Dove Cottage, Wordsworth's

Home from 1800-8, 1890; Reasons for Secession from the Church

of England, 1891; Christian Hymns, 1891, 1893; History of Early

English Literature-English Poetry from its Beginnings to the

Accession of King Alfred, 1892; The Development of Theology as

Illustrated in English Poetry from 1780-1830, 1893; The Need and

Use of getting Irish Literature into the English Tongue: An Address,

1893; Jesus and Modern Thought, Discourses, etc., 1894; Tennyson,

his Art in relation to Modern Life, 1894, 1900; The Ship of the

Soul, and other Papers (Small Books on Great Subjects), 1898; The

Gospel of Joy, 1898; English Literature from the Beginnings to

the Norman Conquest, 1898; A Treasury of Irish Poetry in the

English Tongue (with T. W. Rolleston), 1900; Religion in Literature

and Religion in Life, 1900; King Alfred, as Educator of his People

and Man of Letters, etc., 1901; English Literature. . . with Chap-

ters of English Literature, 1832-92, and on American Literature,

by G. R. Carpenter, 1901; The Poetry of Browning, 1902, 1905;

On Ten Plays of Shakespeare, 1905; The Life Superlative, 1906;

Christianity and Social Problems, 1906; Studies in Poetry, 1907;

The Sea-charm of Venice, 1907; Four Poets: A Study of Clough,

Arnold, Rossetti, and Morris, with Introduction on the Course of

Poetry from 1822-52, 1908.

Further works were several volumes of Sermons, Introductions to

Shelley's Epipsychidion (Shelley Society), 1887, to Poems Dedicated
to National Independence, 1897; to With the Wild Geese, verses
by E. Lawless, 1902; and to Treasury of English Literature, by
K. Warren, 1906. The author was also Editor of Life and Letters
of F. W. Robertson, 1865, and later editions; Lectures, Addresses,
and other Literary Remains of F. W. Robertson, 1876; of Poems
from Shelley, 1880; Golden Book of Coleridge, 1895, in Everyman's
Library, 1906; and Selections from Wordsworth, 1907.