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                        Idle Hours in a Library




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                 ┌───────────────────────────────────┐
                 │                                   │
                 │        By the same Author         │
                 │                                   │
                 │  _The Church and the Stage_       │
                 │                                   │
                 │  _Introduction to the Philosophy  │
                 │    of Herbert Spencer_            │
                 │                                   │
                 │  _Studies in Interpretation_      │
                 │                                   │
                 └───────────────────────────────────┘




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                        Idle Hours in a Library

                                   By

                          William Henry Hudson

          Professor of English Literature, Stanford University

                             [Illustration]

                             William Doxey

                        At the Sign of the Lark

                             San Francisco




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                            COPYRIGHT, 1897

                             WILLIAM DOXEY


                            THE DOXEY PRESS




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                                   TO

                                F. E. H.

                         IN REMEMBRANCE OF THE
                             DEAR OLD DAYS




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                                Preface


The title of this little volume was chosen because it seems to indicate
a characteristic possessed in common by the otherwise unrelated essays
here brought together. They may all be described in a general way as
holiday tasks—the results of many hours of quiet but rather aimless
browsing among books, and not of special investigations, undertaken with
a view to definite scholastic ends. They are, moreover, as will readily
be seen, completely unacademic in style and intention. Three of the
papers were originally put into shape as popular lectures. The remaining
one—that on the Restoration novelists—was written for a magazine which
appeals not to a special body of students, but to the more general
reading public. The title, hit upon after some little searching, will, I
believe, therefore be accepted as fairly descriptive, and will not, I
hope, be condemned as overfanciful.

A word or two of more detailed explanation may, perhaps, be permitted.
Of the essays on Pepys’s Diary and the “Scenes of Bohemian Life,” I
would simply say that they may be taken to testify to the unfailing
sources of unalloyed enjoyment I have found in these delightful books;
and I should be pleased to think that, while they may renew for some
readers the charm of old associations, they may perhaps send others here
and there for the first time to the works themselves—in which case I
shall be sure of the gratitude of some at least of those into whose
hands this little volume may chance to fall. I can scarcely say as much
as this for the study of Mrs. Behn and Mrs. Manley—for most readers will
be quite as well off if they leave the lucubrations of these two ladies
alone. But in these days we all read novels; and it has seemed to me,
therefore, that my brief account of some of the early experiments in
English fiction may not be altogether lacking in interest and
suggestiveness. Thus, after some hesitation, I decided to find a place
for the authors of “Oroonoko” and “