Excerpt from Hamilton Literary Monthly, Vol. 29: October, 1894 He is singularly obscure in his references to Christianity; in fact it is a matter for discussion whether he became at all familiar with the new faith. At any rate either thro ignorance or indifference he avoids anything more than a distant illusion to it. However, he often advanced senti ments of Christian tendency, and for this reason has been termed an unconscious preacher of Christianity. Plutarch acknowledged a Supreme Being but believed in the exist ence of dependent deities of lesser importance which he called daemons. His belief in the immortality of the soul was firm. There is a fervid reverence for the past in this writers' works. He loves to picture the heroic and enduring. The Christian belief did not enlist his sympathy possibly because of its novelty and vagueness. It was at variance with all preceding speculative philosophy. The heroes of the classics, not the martyrs of the new religion, are the basis of anecdote and example. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

This collection of essays reassesses the importance of verse as a medium in the long eighteenth century, and as an invitation for readers to explore many of the less familiar figures dealt with, alongside the received names of the standard criticism of the period.

Richard Salmon provides an original account of the formation of the literary profession during the late Romantic and early Victorian periods. Focusing on the representation of authors in narrative and iconographic texts, including novels, biographies, sketches and portrait galleries, Salmon traces the emergence of authorship as a new form of professional identity from the 1820s to the 1850s. Many first-generation Victorian writers, including Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, Martineau and Barrett-Browning, contributed to contemporary debates on the 'Dignity of Literature', professional heroism, and the cultural visibility of the 'man of letters'. This study combines a broad mapping of the early Victorian literary field with detailed readings of major texts. The book argues that the key model of professional development within this period is embodied in the narrative form of literary apprenticeship, which inspired such celebrated works as David Copperfield and Aurora Leigh, and that its formative process is the 'disenchantment of the author'.