xvi INTRODUCTION. 



involves the necessity of much carping and cavilling, fair 

 enough in literary warfare, but hardly worthy of a first-class 

 literary judge. We must hope that this will not be Mr. 

 Lowell s last word on Carlyle, whose errors in the point under 

 discussion Time has made so patent that they no longer need 

 Mr. Lowell s pillory, but of whose deserts he might find much 

 more to say. 



There remain Mr. Lowell s essays on the classical poets of 

 England, of whom Chaucer, Dryden, and Pope find place in 

 this volume. They all illustrate the favourable position occu 

 pied by competent American critics, sufficiently remote from 

 English traditional opinion for complete independence, and yet 

 not estranged from their subjects by differences of language or 

 of manners. The bard of the fourteenth century is manifestly 

 as near to the modern American as to the modern Englishman. 

 One great qualification of Mr. Lowell s for the treatment of 

 Chaucer, which an equally intelligent judge might easily have 

 missed, is his extensive knowledge of the Italian and French 

 literature of Chaucer s age. Dante is equally familiar to him, 

 and is the subject of another essay not included in this collec 

 tion. The critique on Dryden is perhaps the writer s master 

 piece, thoroughly sound and appreciative, and teeming with 

 terse and luminous observations. Pope, less of a favourite 

 with the writer than Dryden, deserved a fuller treatment than 

 he has received. The space given to the &quot;Rape of the Lock&quot; is 

 somewhat disproportionate, though not excessive if the general 

 scale had been more ample. It is startling to be told that 

 Pope s fame as a poet is principally founded upon the &quot;Essay on 

 Man,&quot; though the poem undoubtedly ranks among his chief 

 works, and Mr. Lowell s strictures upon it strike us as.) rather 

 hypercritical. But Pope s literary character as a whole could 

 not be better summed up than in the concluding sentence : 

 &quot; Measured by any high standard of imagination, he will be 

 found wanting ; tried by any test of wit, he is unrivalled.&quot; 



