Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám Fitzgerald 1859 195 Apologia pro Vita Sua Newman 1864 197 Essays in Criticism Arnold 1865 199 Snow-Bound Whittier 1866 201 * * * * * Except where noted, all facsimiles of title-pages are of the size of those in the original editions. [Illustration] INTRODUCTION A BOOK is judged by its peers. In the presence of the greater works of authors there is no room for personal criticism; they constitute in themselves the perpetual mind of the race, and dispense with any private view. The eye rests on these hundred titles of books famous in English literature, as it reads a physical map by peak, river and coast, and sees in miniature the intellectual conformation of a nation. A different selection would only mean another point of view; some minor features might be replaced by others of similar subordination; but the mass of imagination and learning, the mind-achievement of the English race, is as unchangeable as a mountain landscape. Perspective thrusts its unconscious judgment upon the organs of sight, also; if Gower is thin with distance and the clump of the Elizabethans shows crowded with low spurs, the eye is not therefore deceived by the large pettiness of the foreground with its more numerous and distinct details. The mass governs. Darwin appeals to Milton; Shelley is judged by Pope, and Hawthorne by Congreve.