This volume, published in the year of the author's death, collects some of Lowell's most intellectually stimulating pieces. Included are studies of Walter Savage Landor, Milton's "Areopagitica," Shakespeare's "Richard III," modern languages, and the world's progress, among others. The editor also includes lectures given by Lowell in 1887 on the Old English Dramatists—"Marlowe," Webster," "Chapman," "Beaumont and Fletcher," and "Massinger and Ford."