PREFACE
A word by way of preface is requisite, if only to explain to the reader, who may take up this volume without recalling its place in a series, why there is no chapter on Spain in a history of European literature during the first half of the seventeenth century. The present writer undertook his task on the understanding that the Spanish literature of the epoch was covered by Mr Hannay's chapters in The Later Renaissance. It was explained there that the principle of overlapping, which must be admitted in any attempt to divide European literature into epochs, is specially applicable to the case of Spain; and the six chapters devoted to the literature of Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in that volume preclude the necessity of treatment in this.
The same principle has been applied, to a certain extent, in the chapters on Dutch literature, with which this volume opens. Some passing references there have been to the literature of the Low Countries in previous volumes, but it has been thought well
