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DRYDEN'S PALAMON AND ARCITE


Edited With Introduction And Notes By George E. Eliot, A.M.
English Master In The Morgan School


To

Henry A. Beers

Professor Of English Literature In Yale University

Who First Aroused My Interest In Dryden

And Directed My Study Of His Works

This Volume Is Respectfully Inscribed




PREFACE.

To edit an English classic for study in secondary schools is difficult.
The lack of anything like uniformity in the type of examination required
by the colleges and universities complicates treatment. Not only do two
distinct institutions differ in the scope and character of their
questions, but the same university varies its demands from year to year.
The only safe course to pursue is, therefore, a generally comprehensive
one. But here, again, we are hampered by limited space, and are forced
to content ourselves with a bare outline, which the individual
instructor can fill in as much or as little as he pleases.

The ignorance of most of our classical students in regard to the history
of English literature is appalling; and yet it is impossible properly to
study a given work of a given author without some knowledge of the
background against which that particular writer stands. I have,
therefore, sketched the politics, society, and literature of the age in
which Dryden lived, and during which he gave to the world his _Palamon
and Arcite_. In the critical comments of the introduction I have
contented myself with little more than hints. That particular line of
study, whether it concerns the poet's style, his verse forms, or the
possession of the divine instinct itself, can be much more
satisfactorily developed by the instructor