Arnold (Matthew). Prose Selections. (Gates.) (In preparation.) PRICE $80 F *I 50 I 75 Baldwin's Specimens of Prose Description. 1+149 pp. 16m0.. Browning: Selectioas. (Mason ). Burke: Selections. (Perry.) xxvi+298 pp. 16mo.. Clark's Practical Rhetoric. With Abundant Exercises. 395 PP. Briefer Practical 2hetoric. 307 pp. 12mo. Art of Reading Aloud. 159 PP. 16mo... Coleridge's Prose Extracts. (Beers.) 146 pp. 16mo. a 32༢༧༠g _88 8 8uཀླཤྩ *1 25 ба 12mo. 1 00 De Quincey's English Mail Coach and Joan of Arc. (Hart.) xxvi+138 pp. 16mo. 16mo. Ford's The Broken Heart. (Scollard.) xri 132 pp. Johnson's Lives of Milton, Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Gray. 12mo. Lamont's Specimens of Exposition. xxx + 180 pp. 16mo. Lyly's Endymion. (Baker.) cxcvi+109 pp. 16mo Philip Sydney to Pater. 256 pp. 12mo Modern Political Orations. InEngland 1838-88. (Wagner.) 344 PP. 12mo. Introduction to American Literature. Shaw's English Composition by Practice. 203 PP. 12mo.... 35 59 59 1 00 I 25 50 50 MA Smith's Synonyms Discriminated. 781 pp. 12mo. In two vols. (Library Ed.).. Tennyson's Princess. (Sherman.). 361 pp. 12mo 1 75 Prices net. Postage 8 per cent additional, excepting on retail books, marked*. HENRY HOLT & CO., 29 W. 23d Street, New York, PREFACE. THESE Selections from Arnold are meant to go with the Selections from Newman already included in English Readings. Newman and Arnold were both Oxford men; both were devoted believers in the academic ideal; both discussed and dealt practically with educational problems, and yet both touched life in many other ways and are remembered as men of letters or leaders of thought, rather than as mere academicians. Although Arnold never imposed himself on his generation as did Newman, never ruled the imaginations of large masses of men, or was so prevailing and picturesque a figure as Newman, yet no less than Newman he represents one distinct phase of nineteenthcentury academic culture; from 1855 to 1870 he was probably the man of letters whom the younger generation at Oxford most nearly accepted as their natural spokesman. The Selections aim to present, in the briefest possible compass, what is most characteristic in Arnold's criticism of literature and life, His conception of the critic was as the guardian of culture, as called upon to pass judgment on the various expressions of life, and especially upon books in their relation to life, and to determine their influence on the temper and ideals of the public. He is to be an adept in life, a diviner of the essentials that underlie the multiform play of human energy; he must know life intimately; and being concerned that life shall have its best quality, he will strive for this perfection not only through what he says about books, but also through direct comment on those modes of livingthose ideals-which his analysis and imagination detect as ruling his contemporaries. In obedience to this conception of the critic, Arnold had much to say not only on poetry and belles lettres, but on politics, religion, theology, and the general social conditions of his time. The Selections include one or more of his characteristic comments on each of these topics. It should also be noted that many of the Selections are complete essays or lectures, not mere extracts. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time is an entire essay; On Translating Homer is the entire first lecture on this subject; Oxford and Philistinism and Culture and Anarchy are entire prefaces or introductions; Compulsory Education and "Life a Dream" are entire Letters; Literature and Science and Emerson are entire Discourses-two of the three that Arnold gave repeatedly in America. His Discourses in America stood specially high in Arnold's favor; shortly before his death he spoke of the book as that "by which, of all his prose-writings, he should most wish to be remembered." The Selections are believed also to present Arnold's style adequately throughout its whole range. In some respects his style, despite possible faults of manner that will later be considered, is the best model avail |