CHAPTER I OUR PERSONAL RELATIONS In the loving "Memory" which his brother Roswell contributed to the "Sabine Edition" of Eugene Field's "Little Book of Western Verse," he says: "Comradeship was the indispensable factor in my brother's life. It was strong in his youth: it grew to be an imperative necessity in later life. In the theory that it is sometimes good to be alone he had little or no faith." From the time of Eugene's coming to Chicago... more...

CHAPTER I PEDIGREE "Sir John Maundeville, Kt.," was his prototype, and Father Prout was his patron saint. The one introduced him to the study of British balladry, the other led him to the classic groves of Horace. "I am a Yankee by pedigree and education," wrote Eugene Field to Alice Morse Earle, the author of "The Sabbath in Puritan New England," and other books of the same flavor, "but I was born in that ineffably uninteresting city, St.... more...

PREFACE by G.N. Clark, Provost of Oriel College, Oxford Rather more than twenty years ago, on a spring morning of alternate cloud and sunshine, I acted as guide to Johan Huizinga, the author of this book, when he was on a visit to Oxford. As it was not his first stay in the city, and he knew the principal buildings already, we looked at some of the less famous. Even with a man who was well known all over the world as a writer, I expected that... more...

CHAPTER I JOHNSON AS A NATIONAL INSTITUTION The name of Samuel Johnson is, of course, not the greatest in English prose, but even to-day, when he has been dead more than a century and a quarter, it is still the most familiar. We live in an age of newspapers. Where all can read, the newspaper press, taken as a whole, will be a fairly accurate reflection of what is in the mind of a people. Nothing will be mentioned frequently in newspapers which... more...

JOSEPH DE MAISTRE. Owing to causes which lie tolerably near the surface, the remarkable Catholic reaction which took place in France at the beginning of the present century, has never received in England the attention that it deserves; not only for its striking interest as an episode in the history of European thought, but also for its peculiarly forcible and complete presentation of those ideas with which what is called the modern spirit is... more...

THE LIFE OF GEORGE ELIOT. The illustrious woman who is the subject of these volumes makes a remark to her publisher which is at least as relevant now as it was then. Can nothing be done, she asks, by dispassionate criticism towards the reform of our national habits in the matter of literary biography? 'Is it anything short of odious that as soon as a man is dead his desk should be raked, and every insignificant memorandum which he never meant... more...

I here present you, courteous reader, with the record of a remarkable period in my life: according to my application of it, I trust that it will prove not merely an interesting record, but in a considerable degree useful and instructive.  In that hope it is that I have drawn it up; and that must be my apology for breaking through that delicate and honourable reserve which, for the most part, restrains us from the public exposure of our own... more...

The researches of Sir Harris Nicolas, Dr. Furnivall, Mr. Selby and others have provided us with a considerable mass of detailed information regarding the life and career of Geoffrey Chaucer. Since the publication of Nicolas's biography of the poet prefixed to the Aldine edition of Chaucer's works in 1845, the old traditional biography of conjecture and inference, based often on mere probability or the contents of works erroneously ascribed to... more...

CHAPTER 1. CHAUCER'S TIMES. The biography of Geoffrey Chaucer is no longer a mixture of unsifted facts, and of more or less hazardous conjectures. Many and wide as are the gaps in our knowledge concerning the course of his outer life, and doubtful as many important passages of it remain—in vexatious contrast with the certainty of other relatively insignificant data—we have at least become aware of the foundations on which alone a... more...

PRELIMINARY: MRS. GASKELL In the whole of English biographical literature there is no book that can compare in widespread interest with the Life of Charlotte Brontë by Mrs. Gaskell.  It has held a position of singular popularity for forty years; and while biography after biography has come and gone, it still commands a place side by side with Boswell’s Johnson and Lockhart’s Scott.  As far as mere readers are... more...