They are writing not for a dim and uncertain future but for us, and on our recognition and welcome they depend, sometimes for their livelihood, always for the courage which carries them on to fresh endeavour.
Literature is an ever-living and continuous thing, and we do it less than its due service if we are so occupied reading Shakespeare and Milton and Scott that we have no time to read Mr.Yeats, Mr.Shaw or Mr.
Wells.

Students of literature must remember that classics are being manufactured daily under their eyes, and that on their sympathy and comprehension depends whether an author receives the success he merits when he is alive to enjoy it.
The purpose of this chapter, then, is to draw a rough picture of some of the lines or schools of contemporary writing--of the writing mainly, though not altogether, of living authors.

It is intended to indicate some characteristics of the general trend or drift of literary effort as a whole.

The most remarkable feature of the age, as far as writing is concerned, is without doubt its inattention to poetry.

Tennyson was a popular author; his books sold in thousands; his lines passed into that common conversational currency of unconscious quotation which is the surest testimony to the permeation of a poet's influence.