An English Garner

An English Garner - Critical
Essays & Literary Fragments

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Title: An English Garner Critical Essays & Literary Fragments
Author: Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
Release Date: December 18, 2003 [EBook #10489]
Language: English
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AN ENGLISH GARNER
CRITICAL ESSAYS AND LITERARY FRAGMENTS
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY J. CHURTON COLLINS
1903
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
The texts contained in the present volume are reprinted with very slight

alterations from the English Garner issued in eight volumes
(1877-1890, London, 8vo.) by Professor Arber, whose name is
sufficient guarantee for the accurate collation of the texts with the rare
originals, the old spelling being in most cases carefully modernised.
The contents of the original Garner have been rearranged and now for
the first time classified, under the general editorial supervision of Mr.
Thomas Seccombe. Certain lacunae have been filled by the
interpolation of fresh matter. The Introductions are wholly new and
have been written specially for this issue. The references to volumes of
the Garner (other than the present volume) are for the most part to the
editio princeps, 8 vols. 1877-90.

CONTENTS
I. Extract from Thomas Wilson's Art of Rhetoric, 1554 II. Sir Philip
Sidney's Letter to his brother Robert, 1580 III. Extract from Francis
Meres's Palladis Tamia, 1598 IV. Dryden's Dedicatory Epistle to the
Rival Ladies, 1664 V. Sir Robert Howard's Preface to four new Plays,
1665 VI. Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668 VII. Extract from
Thomas Ellwood's History of Himself, describing his relations with
Milton, 1713 VIII. Bishop Copleston's Advice to a Young Reviewer,
1807 IX. The Bickerstaff and Partridge Tracts, 1708 X. Gay's Present
State of Wit, 1711 XI. Tickell's Life of Addison, 1721 XII. Steele's
Dedicatory Epistle to Congreve, 1722 XIII. Extract from
Chamberlayne's Angliae Notitia, 1669 XIV. Eachard's Grounds and
Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and of Religion, 1670 XV.
Bickerstaff's Miseries of the Domestic Chaplain, 1710 XVI. Franklin's
Poor Richard Improved, 1757

INTRODUCTION
The miscellaneous pieces comprised in this volume are of interest and
value, as illustrating the history of English literature and of an
important side of English social life, namely, the character and status of
the clergy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They have
been arranged chronologically under the subjects with which they are
respectively concerned. The first three--the excerpt from Wilson's Art
of Rhetoric, Sir Philip Sidney's Letter to his brother Robert, and the

dissertation from Meres's _Palladis Tamia_--are, if minor, certainly
characteristic examples of pre-Elizabethan and Elizabethan literary
criticism. The next three--the Dedicatory Epistle to the Rival Ladies,
Howard's Preface to Four New Plays, and the _Essay of Dramatic
Poesy_--not only introduce us to one of the most interesting critical
controversies of the seventeenth century, but present us, in the last
work, with an epoch-marking masterpiece, both in English criticism
and in English prose composition. Bishop Copleston's brochure brings
us to the early days of the Edinburgh Review, and to the dawn of the
criticism with which we are, unhappily, only too familiar in our own
time. From criticism we pass, in the extract from Ellwood's life of
himself, to biography and social history, to the most vivid account we
have of Milton as a personality and in private life. Next comes a series
of pamphlets illustrating social and literary history in the reigns of
Anne and George I., opening with the pamphlets bearing on Swift's
inimitable Partridge hoax, now for the first time collected and reprinted,
and preceding Gay's Present State of Wit, which gives a lively account
of the periodic literature current in 1711. Next comes Tickell's valuable
memoir of his friend Addison, prefixed, as preface, to his edition of
Addison's works, published in 1721, with Steele's singularly interesting
strictures on the memoir, being the dedication of the second edition of
the Drummer to Congreve. The reprint of Eachard's Grounds and
Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy and Religion Enquired into,
with the preceding extract from Chamberlayne's Angliae Notitia and
the succeeding papers of Steele's in the Tatler and Guardian, throws
light on a question which is not only of great interest in itself, but
which has been brought into prominence through the controversies
excited by Macaulay's famous picture of the clergy of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Last comes what is by general consent
acknowledged