How ever, we have, to go much farther even than this. I have said that literature as a whole grows and changes from generation to generation. This means that, as each age has its own particular lines of interest and its own particular way of thinking and feeling about things, so the literature, which it produces, is governed by certain prevailing tastes; that these taste last for a time only; and that the tastes of one age are sure to differ, and are often found to differ enormously, from those of every other. Near as we are to the great Victorian era-which was simply the ear of our fathers-there, is much in its literature, which now seems as foreign to us as its fashions in dress. 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. Among these causes, as l have already suggested, we have to reckon the influence of individual men; for a great writer will often create a new tastes, and make a fresh departure in the literature of his time. Yet, while full weight must be given to personal initiative and example, we must be careful not to emphasize their importance to the exclusion of all other considerations. Even the greatest genius is necessarily mounded by the culture, ideals, and mental and moral tendencies of the world in to which he is born, and the character of what he produces is therefore to a large extent determined by these.; of a man of powerful personality stamps his impress upon his age, as l have said, he also takes the impress of his age, and the success of his work, entirely original as it may seem to be, is often due to the way in which it meets or anticipates the general taste of the public to which he appeals. In this sense we have to regard every writer as a ‘product’ of his time, and so regarding hi, we have to inquire into the nature of the influences which shaped his thought, directed his taste, sand helped to give a distinctive character to his work. Such inquiry, it is evident, will often lead us rather far field. Sometimes the influences in question are purely literary’, that is, they belong to the sphere of books and sphere of books and scholarship. Thus, for example, one of the principal forces behind the English literature of the Elizabethan era was the immense enthusiasm for the Greek and Latin classics which had come with what we call the Renaissance; our writers and readers alike, were under the powerful spell of Italian literature during the that of German literature a hundred years later; while, to give one more illustration, the re-awakening from about 1750 onward, of popular interest in the long-neglected art and literature of the middle ages inspired that ‘mediaeval revival’ which presently culminated in Coleridge and Scott. In such cases we see how literature influences introduce new currents of taste, which carry even the most independent writers along with them. But often the influences, which most profoundly affect literatures, are not life, politics, and society. Whatever brings fresh interests and ideas into the life of an age, whatever tends to modify its ways of thought and feeling and to change its attitude towards men and things, must of necessity enter as a vital factor into the making of its literature. We must think of a book as though it were written outside the conditions of time and space. We must never think of a book as though it were written outside the conditions of time and space. We must think of it as the work of the man who, living in a certain age, was affected, according to the mature of his own personality, by the atmosphere and the movements of that age. The Reformation, Puritanism, the France Revolution, the enormous progress of science during the nineteenth century: it is enough to mention these to show the intimate connection between the history of literature and general history.