Note 500 — Chapter IV · DRYDEN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

When the present writer began his revision of Scott’s Dryden in the year 1881 there were no separate editions of the Essay since the originals. There are now, of annotated issues of it, either by itself or with more or less of its author’s related work, no less than five known to me,—those of Mr Thomas Arnold (Oxford, 1886), Mr Strunk (New York, 1898), Mr Low (London, n. d.), Mr Nichol Smith (Glasgow, 1900), and Professor Ker’s. The study of English literature in schools and colleges has been much abused, very foolishly talked about by some of its advocates, and no doubt not always wisely directed. But it is at least something to be said for it that it has made such a masterpiece as this known to probably a hundred persons for every one who knew it twenty years ago.