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[Illustration: Bodleian Library, Oxford.

London, Frederick Warne & C^o.]


AMENITIES OF LITERATURE,

Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature.

by

ISAAC DISRAELI.

A New Edition,

Edited by His Son,

THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.







[Illustration]

London:
Frederick Warne and Co.,
Bedford Street, Strand.

London:
Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Printers, Whitefriars.




PREFACE.


A history of our vernacular literature has occupied my studies for many
years. It was my design not to furnish an arid narrative of books or of
authors, but following the steps of the human mind through the wide
track of Time, to trace from their beginnings the rise, the progress,
and the decline of public opinions, and to illustrate, as the objects
presented themselves, the great incidents in our national annals.

In the progress of these researches many topics presented themselves,
some of which, from their novelty and curiosity, courted investigation.
Literary history, in this enlarged circuit, becomes not merely a
philological history of critical erudition, but ascends into a
philosophy of books