CONTENTS. IV. Edward Young. By MARJORIE BOWEN, F.R.S.L. V. Celtic Nature Poetry. By ALFRED PERCEVAL . 21 41 57 107 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OF GEORGIA INTRODUCTION. BY LAURENCE BINYON, F.R.S.L. 6 As is customary with the Transactions' of our Society, the collected papers of the year exhibit an engaging variety both of subject and treatment. We have three essays on individual authors, each excessively different from the others - on Charles De Coster, the protagonist of modern Belgian literature, on Edward Young of the Night Thoughts,' on Jane Austen; an essay on Celtic poetry; an essay on "Great Rides in Literature"; and an essay on "The Religious Background." 6 It is this last, Mr. Robert Lynd's essay, which claims our attention first; for it is concerned, not with appreciation of past achievements, but with something touching us more nearly the present and the future of literature. It asks questions, it disturbs complacency, it provokes thought. Mr. Lynd begins by assaulting as a profound illusion the belief that there is a progress in the arts. How widely this belief is held to-day I do not know; I should not have thought that it enjoyed much currency among those who contemplated facts. But the wish is father to the thought. We live in an age when science, with its dazzling and incredibly swift advances, dominates and permeates our minds to an extent of which we are hardly conscious. We are hypnotized by the word "evolution evolution"; and it seems so reasonable that 49-5 |