As the work I am at present engaged upon is the most extensive, as well as the most interesting to myself, of any that I have yet undertaken, I shall begin this book by a short retrospectory glance at the events which have led to my undertaking it. In the summer of ’45 I went to the British Museum to read Sir James Mackintosh’s _History of England_, having heard that it was of a philosophical nature, with a view to select some subject connected with the history of this country, of a general and comprehensive nature. I was already wavering in my mind between two that struck me; one was “The First Naval Victory,” and the other “The Origin of our Native Tongue.” The former subject had first engaged my attention; but the sight of Maclise’s cartoon of _Chivalry_, and the wish to handle more luxuriant and attractive materials, afterwards changed the current of my thoughts. In this mood, glancing over the pages of the above-named history, I fell upon a passage to this effect as near as I can remember: “And it is scarcely to be wondered at that English about this period should have become the judicial language of the country, ennobled as it had recently been by the genius of Geoffrey Chaucer.” This at once fixed me; I immediately saw a vision of Chaucer reading his poems to knights and ladies fair, to the king and court, amid air and sunshine. When I arrived at Rome, from the library of the English Academy I procured the works and life of our first poet, and fortunately I found that the facts known respecting him perfectly admitted of the idea I had already conceived of the subject,--to wit, Chaucer reading his poems to Edward III. and his court, bringing-in other noted characters, such as the Black Prince etc. I immediately set to work; and, after many alterations and great labour, I brought the composition to its present state. At first I had intended calling it “The Seeds of the English Language,” and putting Wiclif on one side (as a wing) and some one else on the other; but I could find no one to suit. Gower was too poor a character; and John of Gaunt, for the harmony of ideas, would not suit--it being inappropriate to put the patron on one wing, and his protégés one in the centre and the other on the other side-compartment. I then changed my idea to that of “The Seeds and Fruits of the English Language”; but I soon found that in doing so, after having given a place to our greatest poets, there would be none left for the prose-writers: and, little liking the trouble of cutting and contriving for them, I determined on leaving them out and calling the work the “Seeds and Fruits of English Poetry.”