Excerpt from Stanford Studies in Language and Literature, 1941: Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of Stanford University This is an aspect of the problem which historians of literature, for generations, have rather over-emphasized. Picturesqueness never was the chief element, either in Romantic poetry or in Romantic history. But, however superficial, it is not to be neglected. It affected art, politics, and most of all religion. If we had ritualism, Coronation pageants, a Hohenzollern Empire; if we have Gothic railway stations for London commuters, gloomy medieval cells for twentieth century students, medieval shrines for modernist preachers, it is because Dr. Syntax, after many others, started on his momentous tour in search of the picturesque. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.