resulting haziness in the student's mind. The list of assignments and
questions at the end is intended, of course, to be freely treated. I hope
that the list of available inexpensive editions of the chief authors may
suggest a practical method of providing the material, especially for
colleges which can provide enough copies for class use. Poets, of course,
may be satisfactorily read in volumes of, selections; but to me, at least,
a book of brief extracts from twenty or a hundred prose authors is an
absurdity. Perhaps I may venture to add that personally I find it advisable
to pass hastily over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and so gain
as much time as possible for the nineteenth.

R. H. F.

_August, 1916._




CONTENTS



PRELIMINARY. HOW TO STUDY AND JUDGE LITERATURE

A TABULAR VIEW OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

REFERENCE BOOKS

I. PERIOD I. THE BRITONS AND THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
TO A.D. 1066