OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ON THE PLAN OF THE AUTHOR'S "COMPENDIUM OF ENGLISH LITERATURE," LITERATURE AND BELLES LETTRES. PROFESSOR CLEVELAND'S WORKS. A WHOLE LIBRARY IN FOUR VOLUMES. OF ENGLISH OF 19th CENT'Y COMPENDIUM LITERATURE. OF AMERICAN CLEVELAND'S COMPLETE MILTON, WITH VERBAL INDEX. One Hundred and Twenty Thousand of these Volumes have been sold, and they are the acknowledged Standard wherever this refining study is pursued. PROF. JAMES R. BOYD'S WORKS. EMBRACING COMPOSITION, LOGIC, LITERATURE, RHETORIC, CRITICISM, BIOGRAPHY;—POETRY, AND PROSE. BOYD'S COMPOSITION AND RHETORIC. Remarkable for the space and attention given to grammatical principles, to afford a substantial groundwork; also for the admirable treatment of synonyms, figurative language, and the sources of argument and illustration, with notable exercises for preparing the way to poetic composition. BOYD'S ELEMENTS OF LOGIC explains, first, the conditions and processes by which the mind receives ideas, and then unfolds the art of reasoning, with clear directions for the establishment and confirmation of sound judgment. A thoroughly practical treatise, being a systematic and philosophical condensation of all that is known of the subject. BOYD'S KAMES' CRITICISM. This standard work, as is well known, treats of the faculty of perception, and the result of its exercise upon the tastes and emotions. It may therefore be termed a Compendium of Aesthetics and Natural Morals; and its use in refining the mind and heart has made it a standard text-book. BOYD'S ANNOTATED ENGLISH CLASSICS. Milton's Paradise Lost. Young's Night Thoughts. Cowper's Task, Table Talk, &c. Thomson's Seasons. In six cheap volumes. The service done to literature, by Prof. Boyd's Annotations upon these standard writers, can with difficulty be estimated. Line by line their expressions and ideas are analyzed and discussed, until the best comprehension of the powerful use of language is obtained by the learner. L. 19TH C. Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1866, by CHARLES DEXTER CLEVELAND, In the Clerk's Office of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. PREFACE. THE present edition of this work is such a thorough remodelling of the former editions, the alterations of scheme are so fundamental and of detail so numerous, that it devolves upon me to state my reasons for changing, in these respects, a book with which the public had seemed satisfied for fourteen years, and of which there have been printed above twenty thousand copies. Such reasons are owing, mainly, to the progress and revolution of events, the changes in public opinion, and the shaping of literary history, since 1852,-the date of the publication of the first edition. First: At the period named, a system of human slavery existed in our land, not only absorbing a large part of its practical energies, and spreading like a miasma through our entire social and political life, but poisoning the very centres of the nation's moral life, and giving bent to all its sentimental expressions; for it seemed as if the newspaper press, the educational press, and the religious press, as well as hundreds of pulpits, had challenged each other in a shameless eagerness to deny or ignore the essential rights of man. The principles not only of republican freedom, but of vital Christianity, being thus threatened, my duty, in the preparation of my work, seemed to me very plain,—to do what I could, appropriately, in my humble way, to counteract 3 |