I ADD here some suggestions to teachers who may wish
to use this book in the classroom. In connection with
each chapter I have indicated the more important dis-
cussions of the special topic. There is also some addi-
tional illustrative material, and I have indicated a few
hints for classroom exercises, following methods which
have proved helpful in my own experience as a teacher.

I have tried to keep in mind the needs of two kinds of
college courses in poetry. One of them is the general in.
troductory course, which usually begins with the lyric
rather than with the epic or the drama, and which uti-
lizes some such collection as the Golden Treasury or the
Oxford Book of English Verse. Any such collection of
standard verse, or any of the anthologies of recent po-
etry, like those selected by Miss Jessie B. Rittenhouse
or Mr. W. S. Braithwaite, should be constantly in use in
the classroom as furnishing concrete illustration of the
principles discussed in books like mine.

The other kind of course which I have had in mind is
the one dealing with the works of a single poet. Spen-
ser, Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, are
among the poets most frequently chosen for this sort of
study. I have found it an advantage to carry on the
discussion of the general principles of poetic imagination
and expression in connection with the close textual study
of the complete work of any one poet. It is hoped that
this book may prove helpful for such a purpose.

This chapter aims to present, in as simple a form as
possible, some of the fundamental questions in æsthetic

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