AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION. Having received from MESSRS. GINN & COMPANY, Publishers, of Boston, New York, and Chicago, payment for the copyright in America of my "Manual of English Prose Literature," I assign the publishing rights in that country to them. UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, W. MINTO. OF ENGLISH PROSE LITERATURE BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL DESIGNED MAINLY TO SHOW CHARACTERISTICS OF STYLE BY WILLIAM MINTO, M.A. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND LITERATURE IN THE Chas E. Burbank. AUTHORIZED AMERICAN EDITION BOSTON, U.S.A.: PUBLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. 1892. PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION. THE main design of this book is to assist in directing students of English composition to the merits and the defects of our principal writers of prose. It is not, however, merely a collection of received critical opinions. It may be of some value to the inquirer after general information, as well as to readers more advanced than those kept specially in view. It The characteristics of the work are briefly these. deals with prose alone, assigning books of fiction to the department of poetry; it endeavours to criticise upon a methodical plan, fully explained in an Introduction; it selects certain leading authors for full criticism and exemplification; and it gives unusual prominence to three select authors of recent date. Little need be said to justify taking up Prose by itself. In criticising Poetry we are met by very different considerations from those that occur in the other kinds of composition. What is more, many people not particularly interested in Poetry are anxious for practical purposes to have a good knowledge of Prose style; and when Prose and Poetry are discussed in the same volume, Prose is generally sacrificed to Poetry. In excluding Romance or Fiction from a Manual of |