§27. English Philology. XXV. Scholars. Vol. 18. Later National Literature, Part III. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. 1907

The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
VOLUME XVIII. Later National Literature, Part III.

XXV. Scholars.

§ 27. English Philology.

English philology of the nineteenth century in America began with old-fashioned descriptive rhetoric and with increasingly scholarly lexicography; it passed through a middle stage in which it studied Old English and the history of the English language, and amassed solid materials for inferences about English usage; and it emerged at length into distinctly literary studies and editions of great authors or great literary types—Chaucer, Shakespeare, the ballad.