polemical articles which might possibly have been included with advantage. It is hoped,

however, that by means of excerpt and footnote no pamphlet of the first importance has been altogether neglected; and the editors of the various volumes explain in their introductions the reason and the limit of their selections. Concerning the value of the Pamphlet and the expediency of its recension, Dr Johnson himself will be found discoursing with pregnancy and wit in Mr Ernest Rhys's collection of Literary Pamphlets, and his strenuous sentences are more than sufficient argument in favour of the present enterprise. For, indeed, Reform is the child of Controversy, and the most effectual arrows in the quiver of Controversy are those of a country's Press. Before the day of the clamouring newspaper, the Pamphlet was the leader of popular taste, so that in a study of these fugitive pieces we may see the features of an Age, as in a glass, may mark its expression, and understand its tendency. As some such footnote to history the following papers have been collected. How far they may prove of value it rests with others to decide.

A. W.

INTRODUCTION

PAMPHLETS have this in common with newspapers, that they are written without much thought of posterity; and thus the vast majority of them, having raised their clatter of a day, pass quickly into oblivion, only to be read with weariness and difficulty by the curious in after years. Allusions that are lost beyond recovery, jests that grin upon us without meaning, triumphant arguments based upon moth-eaten premisses, and acid personalities that now injure none but their authors, these are but poor reading to the most devoted of historians. Yet, were there no others but these, they would still be of rich value to us; for in the weakest of them, the past becomes alive again and makes us its contemporaries. But, fortunately, there is a small minority of pamphlets, which were written in that larger spirit which is always modern, and can afford to defy antiquity.

The pamphlets in this collection cannot indeed all claim to belong to this latter class;

for they have been chosen for their historical significance, and history has not always been most deeply affected by that which posterity cares most to remember. Still, the greater men had their say and were listened to; it has therefore been possible to draw mainly from them, and to choose the larger part of this collection from writers who, both for literary beauty, and because they avoided the transitory nothings which lesser men fix upon, are worthy of our veneration to-day. If I had set only a literary end in view, it would have been easy to have included other pamphlets from these writers, and from others of like make, barring out altogether the yelping, snarling pack of lesser men. But it has been my aim, in so far as the limits of the book permitted, to flash the mirror along the stages of modern history, giving that vivid reflection of religion in its various manifestations which the pamphlet so readily affords. Such an impression cannot, I venture to think, fail to be of value in the present condition of religious controversy, nor to encourage the growth of that historic sense which has proved so useful a solvent of many bitter disputations.

Pamphlets are older than printing; they are, according to Oldys, 'the eldest offspring of