Since then she has written a number of novels, the most recent of which (1918), The Tree of Heaven, bids fair to repeat the success of The Divine Fire. Miss Sinclair has published one notable volume in criticism, The Three Brontës; and an interesting Journal of Impressions in Belgium (1915).

SPENCER, HERBERT (1820-1903), was one of the foremost scientific writers of the Victorian period. He wrote on economics, biology, ethics, psychology, and sociology; but his chief value is not so much in the substance of his writings as in the clearness of his method and his style. Without being "popular" in the way a lyceum lecturer on science is popular, Spencer succeeded in making intelligible to unscientific people many fundamental scientific facts and principles. His Autobiography is very interesting and well written.

STEPHEN, SIR LESLIE (1832-1904), was critic and biographer, editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. Though his studies and writings cover many centuries, he is at his best in treating writers after 1700; especially, those of the eighteenth century. Besides the general direction of the Dictionary and the contribution of about thirty articles to it, his most important work is in Hours in a Library, Studies of a Biographer, and History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century.

SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES (1837-1909), was a great critic, and the last of the greater Victorian poets. As critic he had marked power of appreciation; but he was too vigorous in his praise or condemnation to convince most readers. He is especially noted for the variety and skill of his metres; and he wrote a number of dramas and some non-dramatic narratives. Of the dramas, Atalanta in Calydon has had the greatest success, of the narratives, Tristram of Lyonnesse, an Arthurian story, holds first place. The best of his lyrics deal with the sea.

WARD, MRS. HUMPHRY (1851- ), is a novelist, niece of Matthew Arnold. She came into prominence in 1888 with the publication of Robert Elsmere, a novel dealing with the change of an English minister from orthodoxy to liberalism, and discussing at great length the "higher criticism" of the Bible. In recent years she has dealt with social questions, notably in The

Marriage of William Ashe, Fenwick's Career, and The Testing of Diana Mallory.

WATSON, WILLIAM (1858- ), is a poet who some critics think should be at present England's laureate. In general it may be said that his work is too intellectual and too highly finished to attain wide recognition. He gained considerable notoriety in 1909 by The Woman with a Serpent's Tongue, believed to have been aimed at the wife of a distinguished English statesman.

WELLS, HERBERT GEORGE (1866- ), may be said to have shared for some years the spotlight on the literary stage with Shaw. At the beginning of his career he wrote stories with a scientific turn, which caused him to be compared with Jules Verne. Later he wrote novels dealing with various social problems, such as Tono-Bungay, a satire on successful quackery; and Marriage. Since the war began he has written two novels of the moment, Mr. Britling Sees It Through and The Soul of a Bishop, which picture the development of the British people in the stress of the conflict. The first of these war novels had a phenomenal success; Mr. Wells has also written essays of which the most important is perhaps God, the Invisible King, an extended effort to frame a religion for a thinking man of the twentieth century.

YEATS, WILLIAM BUTLER (1865- ), is the most notable figure in the so-called "Celtic Renaissance," or Irish rebirth in literature. His most striking quality is shown in a realistic treatment of the world of unreality; and it is in this that he resembles somewhat the writers (mostly nameless) of Ireland's great age of literature about the seventh to the twelfth century. Of all his lyric and dramatic works the best-known is probably The Land of Heart's Desire, an exquisite fairy play.

SELECTED LIST OF BIOGRAPHICAL AND

CRITICAL WORKS

In view of the thousands of valuable works on English literature, the following can be only suggestive. In compiling it the writer has had in mind usefulness for high school students and teachers, though many standard works must be included which would be in place in any library. Works listed as wholes in footnotes are omitted here: e.g., on ballads, page 36; on Shakspere, page 79; others on pages 91, 119, 120, etc.

1. General Works.

Cambridge History of English Literature, 14 vols. (Putnams.) Separate chapters by leading specialists of the world. Invaluable, but of by no means equal merit throughout.

GARNETT AND GOSSE, Illustrated History of English Literature, 4 vols. (Macmillan.) Chiefly noteworthy, as its title indicates, for its illustrations, though the matter represents the mature work of two eminent English scholars and men of letters.

SAINTSBURY, Short History of English Literature. (Longmans.) Probably the best one-volume work on the subject, but quite unsuited to classroom use.

TAINE, History of English Literature. (Holt.) Interesting as the estimate of a cultured Frenchman.

RYLAND, Chronological Outlines of English Literature. (Macmillan.) Gives names and dates of authors and writings, both by years and alphabetically by authors.

Dictionary of National Biography, 70 vols., with two supplements and others to follow. (Macmillan.) Contains sketches of all Englishmen (exclusive of the living) who have a place in the memory of their countrymen.

GREEN, Short History of the English People. (Macmillan.) See page 377.

GARDINER, Student's History of England. (Longmans.)

ANDREWS, History of England. (Allyn and Bacon.) These last two are among the best single-volume historical books.

2. Series.

Handbooks of English Literature, ed. Hales. (Macmillan.) Each volume is complete in itself, and forms a good introduction to the period with which it deals. SNELL, The Age of Alfred (664–1154); SNELL, The Age of Transition (1400–1580), 2 vols.; SECCOMBE AND ALLEN, The Age of Shakespeare (1579–1631), 2 vols.; MASTERMAN, The Age of Milton (1632–1660); GARNETT, The Age of Dryden (1660– 1700); DENNIS, The Age of Pope (1700–1744); SECCOMBE, The Age of Johnson (1748-1798); HERFORD, The Age of Wordsworth (1798– 1832); WALKER, The Age of Tennyson (1830–1870).

Periods of European Literature, ed. Saintsbury. (Scribners.) KER, The Dark Ages; SAINTSBURY, The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory; SNELL, The Fourteenth Century; SMITH, G. GREGORY, The Transition Period; SAINTSBURY, The Earlier Renaissance; HANNAY, The Later Renaissance; GRIERSON, The First Half of the Seventeenth Century; ELTON, The Augustan Ages; MILLAR, The Mid-Eighteenth Century; VAUGHAN, The Romantic Revolt; OMOND, The Romantic Triumph; SAINTSBURY, The Later Nineteenth Century.

Types of Literature, ed. Neilson. (Houghton.) THORNDIKE, Tragedy; CHANDLER, The Literature of Roguery; GEROULD, Saints' Lives; SCHELLING, The English Lyric; GUMMERE, The Popular Ballad.

English Men of Letters. (Macmillan.) Short biographies by wellknown scholars and critics. Included are the following writers treated in this book: Addison, Arnold, Austen, Bacon, Browne, Browning, Bunyan, Burke, Burns, Byron, Carlyle, Chaucer, Coleridge, Cowper, Defoe, DeQuincey, Dickens, Dryden, George Eliot, Fielding, Fitzgerald, Goldsmith, Gray, Hazlitt, Johnson, Keats, Lamb, Landor, Macaulay, Milton, Moore, Morris, Pater, Pope, Richardson, Rossetti, Ruskin, Scott, Shakespeare, Shelley, Sheridan, Sidney, Southey, Spenser, Sterne, Swift, Taylor, Tennyson, Thackeray, Thomson, Wordsworth.

Great Writers. (Walter Scott.) A series similar to the preceding with excellent bibliographies. Includes Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Browning, Bunyan, Burns, Byron, Carlyle, Coleridge, Darwin,

Dickens, George Eliot, Goldsmith, Johnson, Keats, Milton, Rossetti, Scott, Shelley, Sheridan, Smollett, Thackeray.

Literary Lives, ed. Robertson Nicoll. (Scribners.) Includes Arnold, Charlotte Brontë, Bunyan, Mrs. Gaskell, Hazlitt, Newman. 3. Collections.

WARD, The English Poets, 4 vols. (Macmillan.) Selections from the great poets and from a large number of minor poets from Chaucer to the present time. Contains also some excellent introductory essays.

CRAIK, English Prose, 5 vols. (Macmillan.) On same plan as the preceding, and aims to do for prose what Ward does for poetry. Among one-volume collections of value, but not well adapted to use in secondary schools, may be mentioned the following: MANLY, English Prose and Poetry (Ginn); NEWCOMER-ANDREWS, Twelve Centuries of English Poetry and Prose (Scott, Foresman and Co.); PANCOAST, English Prose and Verse (Holt); CUNLIFFE, PYRE, AND YOUNG, Century Readings in English Literature (Century Co.); SNYDER AND MARTIN, Book of English Literature (Macmillan).

All books in groups 1 and 2 contain bibliographies. The fullest, which include the titles of practically all works of importance on English literature, as well as complete lists of the authors' works, are to be found in the Cambridge History and the Dictionary of National Biography.