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 _Gu