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AND THEIR STYLES:

BEING A CRITICAL SKETCH OF THE HISTORY OF

BRITISH PROSE FICTION.

BY DAVID MASSON, M.A.

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON;
AUTHOR OF "THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN MILTON," ETC.

Cambridge:

MACMILLAN AND CO.

AND 23, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON.

1859.

[The Right of Translation is Reserved.]

R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.

PREFATORY NOTE.

THE substance of the following pages was delivered, in the form of Lectures, to the members of the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh in the months of March and April, 1858. Passages necessarily omitted in the delivery are here restored; a few passages spoken from notes are expanded from recollection; and there are also some additions, especially towards the end. By these changes the Discourses are made to exceed by much the ordinary limits of Lectures. I have, however, retained the name of "Lectures" by way of title,-partly because nearly all the matter, as it stands, was actually prepared to be spoken; and partly because the name may serve to account for anything in the manner of treatment or in the style that might not be considered so fitting in other forms of composition. With respect to one of the Lectures-the third-it might even be obliging if the reader were to remember specially that it was prepared for an Edinburgh audience.

UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON,

June, 1859.

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