We all know that authors did not write and that there was no public to enjoy the same kind of poetry in Pope’s day as in Spenser’s, or in Scott’s day as in Pope’s On Spenser’s day there was boundless enthusiasm for the Fiery Queens; in Pope’s, for the Essay on Man; in Scott’s, for The Lady of the Lake. Now the great central purpose of a history of literature-the purpose to which everything else in it secondary and subordinate-is to give a clear account of the whole transformation of literature from period to period, and so far as possible to mark out the causes which have combined to produce it.