HE TEMPLE READER T A Reading Book in Litera- ture for School and Home EDITED BY E. E. SPEIGHT B.A. (LOND.) WITH AN INTRO- THIRD EDITION REVISED ENLARGED LONDON HORACE MARSHALL AND SON TEMPLE HOUSE, TEMPLE AVENUE Preface IN this new Edition of the TEMPLE READER it has been found necessary to make changes in selection, arrangement and illustration. Under the first head, while a dozen pieces have been removed as unsuitable, fifty new ones have been added, and this has only been possible by largely increasing the size of the book. Not the least important of these additions are the extracts from As You Like It and King Lear, and the group of Songs from Shakespeare, inclusions which range in line with the main purpose of the book, namely, the indication of a far wider field of literature than is recognised in most of our Educational Schemes. Other additions are the extracts from Herodotus (at the suggestion of Mr. A. T. Quiller Couch), St. Paul, Froissart, Chapman, Gray, De Quincey, Landor, Wordsworth, Milton, Jeremy Taylor, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sidney, and George Meredith, for which last I have to thank the author for permission graciously accorded. Contributions from The Arabian Nights, The Prose Edda, the books of Ezekiel, Job, and Micah, and a set of Northern Ballads, complete the list. With regard to the arrangement of the pieces selected, care has been taken to ensure a certain. sequence of thought, or at any rate of feeling, and, similarly, abrupt changes of mood and violent contrast have been as much as possible avoided. In this matter I have the honour of acknowledging my indebtedness to Professor C. H. Herford, who was one of the first to extend a welcome to the TEMPLE READER, and whose advice has led to an entire rearrangement of the contents of the book. V The question of illustrating such a book has been solved in a manner which has the possibility of being doubly advantageous. It will be noticed that most of the pictures in the TEMPLE READER, like many of the extracts, have an independent unity, and further, that more than half of the originals are within easy reach of our children. And as the pieces of prose and verse which make up the book are intended to show the way to much that is unknown to the child who has no adviser, so I venture to hope that these reproductions of pictures may induce not a few to visit the treasures in our National Galleries at Vauxhall and Trafalgar Square, and in the Gallery of Drawings at the British Museum. My obligations are indeed numerous, and I would express my gratitude to the many kindly critics, public and private, of the TEMPLE READER. Professor Dowden's Introduction lays me under a permanent debt, and to Professor York Powell is due much of the change in this new edition. He has generously overhauled the book, filling up and excising when desirable, and constantly suggesting improvement. To Professors Wright and Napier, Dr. Henry Sweet, and Mr. A. E. Zimmern, I tender thanks for assistance and advice, and I am now permitted to mention the names of Mr. C. Talbut Onions, M.A., and Mr. Arthur I. Mayhew, of New College, Oxford, as the authors of the translations bearing their initials. To Mr. George Allen I am indebted for the use of passages from Ruskin, and Mr. D. Anderson, of Rome and Florence, has courteously given me permission to reproduce from his unique photographs. TEMPLE HOUSE, E.C. E. E. S. |