This volume—which will, fortune permitting, be followed by a second dealing with the matter from the Renaissance to the death of eighteenth-century Classicism, and by a third on Modern Criticism—is an attempt to supply for others, on the basis of these years of reading, the Atlas of which the writer himself so sorely felt the need. He may have put elephants for towns, he may have neglected important rivers and mountains, like a general from the point of view of a newspaper correspondent, or a newspaper correspondent from the point of view of a general; but he has done what he could. The book, the plan of which was accepted by my publishers some five or six years ago, before I was appointed to the Chair which I have the honour to hold, has been delayed in its composition, partly by work previously undertaken, partly by professional duties. But it has probably not been injured by the necessity of reading, for these duties, some four or five times over again, the _Poetics_ and the _Rhetoric_, the _Institutes_ and the Περὶ Ὕψους,, the _De Vulgari Eloquio_ and the _Discoveries_, the _Essay of Dramatic Poesy_ and the _Preface to Lyrical Ballads_. I do not know whether some apology may be expected from a man whom readers, if they know him at all, are likely to know only as a student of modern literature, for the presumption of making his own translations from Greek and Latin. But when one has learnt these languages for twelve or fifteen years, taught them for eight more, and read them for nearly another five-and-twenty, it seems rather pusillanimous to take cover behind “cribs.” I have aimed throughout rather at closeness than at elegance. An apology of another kind may be offered for the biographical and lexicographical details which, at the cost of some trouble, have been incorporated in the Index. Everybody has not a classical dictionary at hand, and probably few people have a full rhetorical lexicon. Yet it was inevitable, in a book of this kind, that a large number of persons, books, and words should be introduced, as to the date, the contents, the meaning of which or of whom, the ordinary reader might require some enlightenment. Information of the sort would have made the text indigestible and have overballasted the notes; so I have put it in the Index, where those who do not want it need not seek it, and where those who seek will, I hope, find.