TENNYSON'S PRINCESS. Professor Katharine Lee Bates, Wellesley College. 40 cents. WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS, and WEBSTER'S FIRST BUNKER HILL ORATION. Professor Charles W. Kent, University of Virginia. _GATEWAY SERIES_ THE SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY PAPERS EDITED BY C. T. WINCHESTER, L.H.D. PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY [Illustration: Figure in ornate gateway] NEW YORK CINCINNATI CHICAGO AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. ENTERED AT STATIONERS' HALL, LONDON. SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. W. P. 2 PREFACE BY THE GENERAL EDITOR This series of books aims, first, to give the English texts required for entrance to college in a form which shall make them clear, interesting, and helpful to those who are beginning the study of literature; and, second, to supply the knowledge which the student needs to pass the entrance examination. For these two reasons it is called _The Gateway Series_. The poems, plays, essays, and stories in these small volumes are treated, first of all, as works of literature, which were written to be read and enjoyed, not to be parsed and scanned and pulled to pieces. A short life of the author is given, and a portrait, in order to help the student to know the real person who wrote the book. The introduction tells what it is about, and how it was written, and where the author got the idea, and what it means. The notes at the foot of the page are simply to give the sense of the hard words so that the student can read straight on without turning to a dictionary. The other notes, at the end of the book, explain difficulties and allusions and fine points. The editors are chosen because of their thorough training and special fitness to deal with the books committed to them, and because they agree with this idea of what a Gateway Series ought to be. They express, in each case, their own views of the books which they edit. Simplicity, thoroughness, shortness, and clearness,--these, we hope, will be the marks of the series. HENRY VAN DYKE. PREFACE The text of the _Coverley_ papers in this volume is that of G. Gregory Smith's edition of _The Spectator_. This edition has been chosen because it reproduces the original form of the papers after they had been corrected by Steele and Addison for the first Collected Edition of _The Spectator_, 1712-1715, and before they had been tampered with by later editors. In three or four instances, a few words have been omitted--the omission in every case being indicated, and spelling, punctuation, and capitalization have been modernized, as they must be for a school text. In other particulars it is believed the papers stand in this volume as they were left by their authors.