ESSAYS BY DIVERS HANDS BEING THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF LITERATURE NEW SERIES VOL. VII EDITED BY MARGARET L. WOODS. UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD, OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. MDCCCCXXVII. 109778 S, & B. 2-8-28 7/5 ($1.83) B31r 28 Introduction. By MARGARET L. WOODS, F.R.S.L.. I. The Reminiscences of a Chancellor and his Wife. By Sir HENRY IMBERT-TERRY, Bt., F.R.S.L. 1 39 INTRODUCTION. BY MARGARET L. WOODS, F.R.S.L. THE contents of this volume, although originally given as addresses, are, in fact, essays. It may not have been generally noticed that the essay is threatened with extinction. Anyone who takes the trouble to compare a magazine or review of to-day with its predecessor of twenty years back, will see that the space allotted to each several article has noticeably shrunk. That is, the essay, in which there is space for ideas to be developed or a certain amount of solid information to be imparted, is giving way to something resembling a special article in a newspaper, which, however learned the writer, only permits of a scampering passage over the surface of his subject. "But, in the present day," an editor will say, people cannot keep their attention fixed on any subject long enough to wish to read more than eight or nine consecutive pages." If this is true, what a terrible condition of mental decrepitude does it reveal! But it can only be true of the class-a large one indeed—which sixty years ago did not read at all. Sixty years hence the great eighth-part educated reading public here and in the United States may once more have ceased to exist. It will read only for commercial purposes, and supply the place of the newspaper and the book by the News, a Topical Talk and a Variety Entertainment on the Wireless. |