Criticism excluded.] Classics, and which occupies, in regard to the older and therefore more tempting documents of modern literature, a position of activity midway between that exercised towards the sacred writings and that exercised towards Greek and Roman authors, no word will, except by some accidental necessity, be found in these pages. The rules and canons of this Criticism are different from, and in most cases antagonistic to, those of Criticism proper: its objects are entirely distinct; and in particular it, for the most part if not wholly, neglects the laws of Logic. Now Criticism proper, which is but in part a limitation, in part an extension, of Rhetoric, never parts company with Rhetoric’s elder sister. In other words, the Criticism or modified Rhetoric, of which this book attempts to give a history, is pretty much the same thing as the reasoned exercise of Literary Taste—the [Sidenote: _Class retained._] attempt, by examination of literature, to find out what it is that makes literature pleasant, and therefore good—the discovery, classification, and as far as possible tracing to their sources, of the qualities of poetry and prose, of style and metre, the classification of literary kinds, the examination and “proving,” as arms are proved, of literary means and weapons, not neglecting the observation of literary fashions and the like. It will follow from this that the History must pursue the humble _a posteriori_ method. Except on the rarest [Sidenote: _Method._] occasions, when it may be safe to generalise, it will confine itself wholly to the particular and the actual. We shall not busy ourselves with what men ought to have admired, what they ought to have written, what they ought to have thought, but with what they did think, write, admire. To some, no doubt, this will give an appearance of plodding, if not of pusillanimity; but there may be others who will recognise in it, not so much a great refusal, as an honest attempt to provide some sound and useful knowledge which does not exist in any accessible form,—to raise, by whatsoever humble drudgery, vantage-points from which more aspiring persons than the writer may take Pisgah-sights, if they please, without fear of their support collapsing under them in the manner of a tub.