My thanks are due to the Oxford University Press, the Cambridge University Press, Geoffrey Cumberlege, Jackson Son & Company, and The Listener for permission to reprint essays in this volume.

"Antony and Cleopatra" was the fourth W. P. Ker Memorial Lecture delivered in the University of Glasgow in 1943; "Thomas Gray" was the subject of the Warton Lecture on English poetry delivered to the British Academy in 1945; and "Jane Austen" was the Leslie Stephen Lecture delivered in the University of Cambridge in 1935.