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FOREWORD

IN the winter term of the year 1902 the Rev. Stopford

Brooke delivered at University College, London, a series of lectures on the rise of Naturalism in English Poetry, which met with high appreciation from large and distinguished audiences. They are here printed from the careful MS. which Mr. Brooke always prepared for his public addresses, with the slight verbal alterations necessitated by the change from the form of the lecture to that of the essay. These lectures are represented by the first seven chapters of the present volume. The remaining essays are also printed from the MSS. of lectures, not connected with the above-mentioned course but harmonizing with it and completing it so fitly that the volume in which they are included may be said to present a coherent study of a particular epoch of English poetry-an epoch to which Mr. Brooke brought a special sympathy and a special knowledge, which had a deep and still unexhausted influence on English literature and English sentiment.

Two of these essays, "Shelley's Interpretation of Christianity" and "Byron's Cain," have been printed since Mr. Brooke's death in the Hibbert Journal, and thanks are due to Dr. L. P. Jacks for permitting their inclusion here. The rest are now published for the first time.