More than ever we shall have to let styles and kinds "speak by their foremen"-- in fact to some extent to let them speak for themselves with very little detailed notice even of these foremen.

But we shall still endeavour to keep the general threads in hand and to exhibit their direction, their crossing, and their other phenomena, as clearly as possible to the reader.

For only so can we complete the picture of the course of fiction throughout English literature--with the sole exclusion of living writers, whose work can never be satisfactorily treated in such a book as this--first, because they are living and, secondly, because it is not done..