Foundation studies in literature

Front matter

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Preface

A NEW text-book in literature should have some reason to be in these days of making many books. The best possible reason that can be given for the preparation of a work of this kind, is that it furnishes to both teachers and students a method of study that necessarily leads to certain definite and much valued results, among which are the following : A better appreciation of artistic merit in poetry ; a knowledge of the relation of the mythology of Greece and Rome to the poetry of every European nation and language of modern times ; the power to use this " golden key " by means of which the treasuries of ancient learning and wisdom are unlocked.

This volume has been prepared for students who are old enough to understand that Literature, in the highest sense, is one of the Fine Arts, and that the reader can gain from the study of the great poets the same kind of culture that is obtained by close study of the masterpieces of painting and sculpture.

In the arrangement of the groups of poems for these studies, the idea of comparison is at once suggested vi PREFACE,

to the reader and a further comparison with the illustrations, which are all copies of celebrated works of art, will bring out the relative merits of these different modes of expressing thought.

Frequent reference is made to the original source of the author's thought, and in this way these studies prepare the student for reading Homer, the Greek dramatists, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Shakspeare, and Milton, with the pleasure and profit dependent upon easy apprehension of the thought of the author.

They also prepare him to understand the close relation that the works of these great writers of different eras, nations, and languages bear to one another.

The comparative method in literature holds to the idea that if several authors at widely different periods and in different languages have chosen the same or kindred subjects and have so treated them as to gain for these works a permanent place in literature, there must be some inherent beauty or spiritual truth in the subject itself which every reader may find by comparison of such works.

Comparison is a sort of ''search light" that reveals new beauties both of thought and of expression, and it is unquestionably the best means that can be employed for gaining analytical power and critical acumen.

The mythological stories upon which the poems are based have been compiled from various works on mythology ; among them the author takes pleasure in mentioning Bulfinch's ''The Age of Fable" and Edwards' "Hand-book of Mythology."

PREFACE. vii

The author desires to acknowledge her special obligations to Messrs. Harper and Brothers for permission to use two selections of which they control the copyright, and to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Co. for permission to use selections from the works of James Russell Lowell, H. W. Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Edmund C. Stedman, John G. Saxe, Mrs. Frances L. Mace, Miss M. L. Backus, and W. W. Young.

She also wishes to thank Miss Mary E. Burt, author of " Literary Landmarks for Young People," for the many valuable hints on the comparative method of teaching literature, contained in her inestimable little guide-book.

M. S. M.

State Normal College, Albany, N.Y., March, 1895.