PRE-RAPHAELITE
AND OTHER POETS
lectures by
LAFCADIO HEARN
Selected and Edited with an Introduction
by
JOHN ERSKINE
Professor of English
Columbia University
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922
INTRODUCTION
This volume is issued in response to a demand from students ofliterature for the best lectures of Lafcadio Hearn in a more accessibleform than the library editions in which they first appeared. It seemedadvisable to bring together these chapters from "Interpretations ofLiterature," 1915, "Appreciations of Poetry," 1916, and "Life andLiterature," 1917, in order to provide under one cover—and let ushope, in spite of the cost of printing, at a lower price—a fairexample of Hearn's critical felicity in the field of modern poetry,where perhaps he was at his best. The choice of lectures has beengoverned largely by the manuscripts available; the studies of Rossetti,Swinburne, Browning, Morris, and Meredith are among the longest andclearest of the texts; the lecture on Robert Bridges is one of thosekindling analyses which Hearn gave only when he was most happy, andonly of the writers he loved; the brief notes on Rossetti's prose andon the "Shaving of Shagpat" were added as naturally complementingthe verse-writings of their respective authors; and the account ofBuchanan's ballad not only helps to round out a portrait of the modernmuse, but it also illustrates Hearn's keen recognition of a great notein minor poets, and his ability to make us feel the greatness.
Those who have not read the prefaces to the library editions ofHearn's lectures should be reminded that[Pg vi] he gave them before Japanesestudents at the University of Tokyo, in the years between 1896 and1902. He lectured without manuscript, and since he died before he hadthe opportunity of formulating in writing for Western readers hisjudgments of European literature, it is entirely to the devotion of hisstudents that we owe the present chapters. Out of consideration forhis audience, whose English was but recently acquired, Hearn lecturedslowly. Some dozen of his pupils were able, therefore, to write downpractically every word he said. After his death they presented themanuscripts to Mrs. Hearn, who put them in the hands of her husband'sfriend and literary executor, Mitchell McDonald, Pay Director U. S. N.,who in turn brought them to the present publishers.
In editing these lectures for the volumes in which they first appeared,I tried to make as few alterations as possible. Only those manuscriptshave been published which were fairly clear; all passages which wereso mangled as to call for a reconstruction of the text, I omitted, andif the omission seemed to affect in any essential way what remained,I rejected the whole lecture. No additions whatever were made tothe text; only the punctuation was made uniform, and the numerousquotations verified. Undaunted by many misprints and many oversightsof my own in the citations of the four thick volumes, I have once moreverified the quotations in this present book, and dare hope that fewerrors now survive.
Allowing, therefore, for such mistakes as are incident to proofreading,the reader will find here a close record of Hearn's daily instructionto his Japanese[Pg vii] class in English literature. The record is unique.I never read these chapters without marvelling at t