Introduction - Page 2

for me, therefore, to take the more delicate and
entangled task; and deal with the great Victorians, not only by dates
and names, but rather by schools and streams of thought. It is a task
for which I feel myself wholly incompetent; but as that applies to every
other literary enterprise I ever went in for, the sensation is not
wholly novel: indeed, it is rather reassuring than otherwise to realise
that I am now doing something that nobody could do properly. The chief
peril of the process, however, will be an inevitable tendency to make
the spiritual landscape too large for the figures. I must ask for
indulgence if such criticism traces too far back into politics or ethics
the roots of which great books were the blossoms; makes Utilitarianism
more important than _Liberty_ or talks more of the Oxford Movement than
of _The Christian Year_. I can only answer in the very temper of the
age of which I write: for I also was born a Victorian; and sympathise
not a little with the serious Victorian spirit. I can only answer, I
shall not make religion more important than it was to Keble, or politics
more sacred than they were to Mill.