Acknowledgements and Short Titles

Unless otherwise indicated, I quote from the following editions:

Jane Austen, Letters , ed. R. W. Chapman, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1952), cited as Letters .

———, Novels , ed. R. W. Chapman (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1923), cited by titles of individual novels.

John Dryden, Works , ed. E. N. Hooker et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1956-), cited as Works .

Alexander Pope, Correspondence , ed. George Sherburn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), cited as Correspondence .

———, Poems , Twickenham Edition, ed. John Butt et al. (London: Methuen, 1939-69), cited as Poems .

Jonathan Swift, Correspondence , ed. Harold Williams (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963-65), cited as Correspondence .

———, Drapier's Letters , ed. Herbert Davis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1935), cited as Drapier .

———, Poems , ed. Harold Williams, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), cited as Poems .

———, Prose Works , ed. Herbert Davis et al. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1939-68), cited as Prose Works .

In quoted passages I have freely altered the use of capitals, italics, and punctuation; and I indicate ellipses only within a quotation.

The chapter on Jane Austen appeared in a shortened form in the New York Review of Books .

I am deeply grateful to the Department of English of the University of California at Berkeley for inviting me to deliver the Beckman Lectures for 1978, on which these essays are based.