Outlines of English and American Literature
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William J. Long >> Outlines of English and American Literature
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OUTLINES OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CHIEF WRITERS OF ENGLAND AND AMERICA,
TO THE BOOKS THEY WROTE,
AND TO THE TIMES IN WHICH THEY LIVED
BY
WILLIAM J. LONG
This is the wey to al good aventure.--CHAUCER
TO MY SISTER "MILLIE" IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF A LIFELONG SYMPATHY
[Illustration: WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
After the Chandos Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery, London, which
is attributed to Richard Burbage or John Taylor. In the catalogue of the
National Portrait Gallery the following description is given:
"The Chandos Shakespeare was the property of John Taylor,
the player, by whom or by Richard Burbage it was painted.
The picture was left by the former in his will to Sir
William Davenant. After his death it was bought by
Betterton, the actor, upon whose decease Mr. Keck of the
Temple purchased it for 40 guineas, from whom it was
inherited by Mr. Nicoll of Michenden House, Southgate,
Middlesex, whose only daughter married James, Marquess of
Caernarvon, afterwards Duke of Chandos, father to Ann
Eliza, Duchess of Buckingham."
The above is written on paper attached to the back of the canvas.
Its authenticity, however, has been doubted in some quarters.
Purchased at the Stowe Sale, September 1848, by the Earl of
Ellesmere, and presented by him to the nation, March 1856.
Dimensions: 22 in. by 16-3/4 in.
This reproduction of the portrait was made from a miniature copy on ivory
by Caroline King Phillips.]
PREFACE
The last thing we find in making a book is to know what to put
first.--Pascal
When an author has finished his history, after months or years of happy
work, there comes a dismal hour when he must explain its purpose and
apologize for its shortcomings.
The explanation in this case is very simple and goes back to a personal
experience. When the author first studied the history of our literature
there was put into his hands as a textbook a most dreary catalogue of dead
authors, dead masterpieces, dead criticisms, dead ages; and a boy who knew
chiefly that he was alive was supposed to become interested in this
literary sepulchre or else have it said that there was something hopeless
about him. Later he learned that the great writers of England and America
were concerned with life alone, as the most familiar, the most mysterious,
the most fascinating thing in the world, and that the only valuable or
interesting feature of any work of literature is its vitality.
To introduce these writers not as dead worthies but as companionable men
and women, and to present their living subject as a living thing, winsome
as a smile on a human face,--such was the author's purpose in writing this
book.
The apology is harder to frame, as anyone knows who has attempted to gather
the writers of a thousand years into a single volume that shall have the
three virtues of brevity, readableness and accuracy. That this record is
brief in view of the immensity of the subject is plainly apparent. That it
may prove pleasantly readable is a hope inspired chiefly by the fact that
it was a pleasure to write it, and that pleasure is contagious. As for
accuracy, every historian who fears God or regards man strives hard enough
for that virtue; but after all his striving, remembering the difficulty of
criticism and the perversity of names and dates that tend to error as the
sparks fly upward, he must still trust heaven and send forth his work with
something of Chaucer's feeling when he wrote:
O littel booke, thou art so unconning,
How darst thou put thy-self in prees for drede?
Which _may_ mean, to one who appreciates Chaucer's wisdom and humor,
that having written a little book in what seemed to him an unskilled or
"unconning" way, he hesitated to give it to the world for dread of the
"prees" or crowd of critics who, even in that early day, were wont to look
upon each new book as a camel that must be put through the needle's eye of
their tender mercies.
In the selection and arrangement of his material the author has aimed to
make a usable book that may appeal to pupils and teachers alike. Because
history and literature are closely related (one being the record of man's
deed, the other of his thought and feeling) there is a brief historical
introduction to every literary period. There is also a review of the
general literary tendencies of each age, of the fashions, humors and ideals
that influenced writers in forming their style or selecting their subject.
Then there is a biography of every important author, written not to offer
another subject for hero-worship but to present the man exactly as he was;
a review of his chief works, which is intended chiefly as a guide to the
best reading; and a critical estimate or appreciation of his writings based
partly upon first-hand impressions, partly upon the assumption that an
author must deal honestly with life as he finds it and that the business of
criticism is, as Emerson said, "not to legislate but to raise the dead."
This detailed study of the greater writers of a period is followed by an
examination of some of the minor writers and their memorable works.
Finally, each chapter concludes with a concise summary of the period under
consideration, a list of selections for reading and a bibliography of works
that will be found most useful in acquiring a larger knowledge of the
subject.
In its general plan this little volume is modeled on the author's more
advanced _English Literature_ and _American Literature_; but the
material, the viewpoint, the presentation of individual writers,--all the
details of the work are entirely new. Such a book is like a second journey
through ample and beautiful regions filled with historic associations, a
journey that one undertakes with new companions, with renewed pleasure and,
it is to be hoped, with increased wisdom. It is hardly necessary to add
that our subject has still its unvoiced charms, that it cannot be exhausted
or even adequately presented in any number of histories. For literature
deals with life; and life, with its endlessly surprising variety in unity,
has happily some suggestion of infinity.
WILLIAM J. LONG
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT
CONTENTS
ENGLISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE
What is Literature? The Tree and the Book. Books of Knowledge and Books of
Power. The Art of Literature. A Definition and Some Objections.
CHAPTER II. BEGINNINGS OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
Tributaries of Early Literature. The Anglo-Saxon or Old-English Period.
Specimens of the Language. The Epic of Beowulf. Anglo-Saxon Songs. Types of
Earliest Poetry. Christian Literature of the Anglo-Saxon Period. The
Northumbrian School. Bede. Cadmon. Cynewulf. The West-Saxon School. Alfred
the Great. _The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle._
The Anglo-Norman or Early Middle-English Period. Specimens of the Language.
The Norman Conquest. Typical Norman Literature. Geoffrey of Monmouth. First
Appearance of the Legends of Arthur. Types of Middle-English Literature.
Metrical Romances. Some Old Songs. Summary of the Period. Selections for
Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER III. THE AGE OF CHAUCER AND THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING
Specimens of the Language. History of the Period. Geoffrey Chaucer.
Contemporaries and Successors of Chaucer. Langland and his _Piers
Plowman_. Malory and his _Morte d' Arthur_. Caxton and the First
Printing Press. The King's English as the Language of England. Popular
Ballads. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER IV. THE ELIZABETHAN AGE
Historical Background. Literary Characteristics of the Period. Foreign
Influence. Outburst of Lyric Poetry. Lyrics of Love. Music and Poetry.
Edmund Spenser. The Rise of the Drama. The Religious Drama. Miracle Plays,
Moralities and Interludes. The Secular Drama. Pageants and Masques. Popular
Comedies. Classical and English Drama. Predecessors of Shakespeare.
Marlowe. Shakespeare. Elizabethan Dramatists after Shakespeare. Ben Jonson.
The Prose Writers. The Fashion of Euphuism. The Authorized Version of the
Scriptures. Francis Bacon. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.
CHAPTER V. THE PURITAN AGE AND THE RESTORATION
Historical Outline. Three Typical Writers. Milton. Bunyan. Dryden. Puritan
and Cavalier Poets. George Herbert. Butler's _Hudibras_. The Prose
Writers. Thomas Browne. Isaac Walton. Summary of the Period. Selections for
Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER VI. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE
History of the Period. Eighteenth-Century Classicism. The Meaning of
Classicism in Literature. Alexander Pope. Swift. Addison. Steele. Johnson.
Boswell. Burke. Historical Writing in the Eighteenth Century. Gibbon.
The Revival of Romantic Poetry. Collins and Gray. Goldsmith. Burns. Minor
Poets of Romanticism. Cowper. Macpherson and the Ossian Poems. Chatterton.
Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_. William Blake.
The Early English Novel. The Old Romance and the New Novel. Defoe.
Richardson. Fielding. Influence of the Early Novelists. Summary of the
Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER VII. THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY
Historical Outline. The French Revolution and English Literature.
Wordsworth. Coleridge. Southey. The Revolutionary Poets. Byron and Shelley.
Keats. The Minor Poets. Campbell, Moore, Keble, Hood, Felicia Hemans, Leigh
Hunt and Thomas Beddoes. The Fiction Writers. Walter Scott. Jane Austen.
The Critics and Essayists. Charles Lamb. De Quincey. Summary of the Period.
Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER VIII. THE VICTORIAN AGE
Historical Outline. The Victorian Poets. Tennyson. Browning. Elizabeth
Barrett Browning. Matthew Arnold. The Pre-Raphaelites. Rossetti. Morris.
Swinburne. Minor Poets and Songs in Many Keys.
The Greater Victorian Novelists. Dickens. Thackeray. George Eliot. Other
Writers of Notable Novels. The Bronte Sisters. Mrs. Gaskell. Charles Reade.
Anthony Trollope. Blackmore. Kingsley. Later Victorian Novelists. Meredith.
Hardy. Stevenson.
Victorian Essayists and Historians. Typical Writers. Macaulay. Carlyle.
Ruskin. Variety of Victorian Literature. Summary of the Period. Selections
for Reading. Bibliography.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
AMERICAN LITERATURE
CHAPTER I. THE PIONEERS AND NATION-BUILDERS
Unique Quality of Early American Literature. Two Views of the Pioneers. The
Colonial Period. Annalists and Historians. Bradford and Byrd. Puritan and
Cavalier Influences. Colonial Poetry. Wiggles-worth. Anne Bradstreet.
Godfrey. Nature and Human Nature in Colonial Records. The Indian in
Literature. Religious Writers. Cotton Mather and Edwards.
The Revolutionary Period. Party Literature. Benjamin Franklin.
Revolutionary Poetry. The Hartford Wits. Trumbull's _M'Fingal_.
Freneau. Orators and Statesmen of the Revolution. Citizen Literature. James
Otis and Patrick Henry. Hamilton and Jefferson. Miscellaneous Writers.
Thomas Paine. Crevecoeur. Woolman. Beginning of American Fiction. Charles
Brockden Brown. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.
CHAPTER II. LITERATURE OF THE NEW NATION
Historical Background. Literary Environment. The National Spirit in Prose
and Verse. The Knickerbocker School. Halleck, Drake, Willis and Paulding.
Southern Writers. Simms, Kennedy, Wilde and Wirt. Various New England
Writers. First Literature of the West. Major Writers of the Period. Irving.
Bryant. Cooper. Poe. Summary of the Period. Selections for Reading.
Bibliography.
CHAPTER III. THE PERIOD OF CONFLICT
Political History. Social and Intellectual Changes. Brook Farm and Other
Reform Societies. The Transcendental Movement. Literary Characteristics of
the Period. The Elder Poets. Longfellow. Whittier. Lowell. Holmes, Lanier.
Whitman. The Greater Prose Writers. Emerson. Hawthorne. Some Minor Poets.
Timrod, Hayne, Ryan, Stoddard and Bayard Taylor. Secondary Writers of
Fiction. Mrs. Stowe, Dana, Herman Melville, Cooke, Eggleston and Winthrop.
Juvenile Literature. Louisa M. Alcott. Trowbridge. Miscellaneous Prose.
Thoreau. The Historians. Motley, Prescott and Parkman. Summary of the
Period. Selections for Reading. Bibliography.
CHAPTER IV. THE ALL-AMERICA PERIOD
The New Spirit of Nationality. Contemporary History. The Short Story and
its Development. Bret Harte. The Local-Color Story and Some Typical
Writers. The Novel since 1876. Realism in Recent Fiction. Howells. Mark
Twain. Various Types of Realism. Dialect Stories. Joel Chandler Harris.
Recent Romances. Historical Novels. Poetry since 1876. Stedman and Aldrich.
The New Spirit in Poetry. Joaquin Miller. Dialect Poems. The Poetry of
Common Life. Carleton and Riley. Other Typical Poets. Miscellaneous Prose.
The Nature Writers. History and Biography. John Fiske. Literary History and
Reminiscence. Bibliography.
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
William Shakespeare
Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain
Cadmon Cross at Whitby Abbey
Domesday Book
The Norman Stair, Canterbury Cathedral
Chaucer
Pilgrims setting out from the "Tabard"
A Street in Caerleon on Usk
The Almonry, Westminster
Michael Drayton
Edmund Spenser
Raleigh's Birthplace, Budleigh Salterton
The Library, Stratford Grammar School, attended by Shakespeare
Anne Hathaway's Cottage
The Main Room, Anne Hathaway's Cottage
Cawdor Castle, Scotland, associated with Macbeth
Francis Beaumont
John Fletcher
Ben Jonson
Sir Philip Sidney
Francis Bacon
John Milton
Cottage at Chalfont St. Giles, Buckinghamshire
Ludlow Castle
John Bunyan
Bunyan Meetinghouse, Southwark
John Dryden
George Herbert
Sir Thomas Browne
Isaac Walton
Old Fishing House, on River Dove, used by Walton
Alexander Pope
Twickenham Parish Church, where Pope was buried
Jonathan Swift
Trinity College, Dublin
Joseph Addison
Magdalen College, Oxford
Sir Richard Steele
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Dr. Johnson's House (Bolt Court, Fleet St.)
James Boswell
Edmund Burke
Edward Gibbon
Thomas Gray
Stoke Poges Churchyard, showing Part of the Church and Gray's Tomb
Oliver Goldsmith
"The Cheshire Cheese," London, showing Dr. Johnson's Favorite Seat
Canonbury Tower (London)
Robert Burns
"Ellisland," the Burns Farm, Dumfries
The Village of Tarbolton, near which Burns Lived
Auld Alloway Kirk
Burns's Mausoleum
William Cowper
Daniel Defoe
Cupola House
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth's Desk in Hawkshead School
St. Oswald's Church, Grasmere
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey, Somersetshire
Robert Southey
Greta Hall, in the Lake Region
Lord Byron
Newstead Abbey and Byron Oak
The Castle of Chillon
Percy Bysshe Shelley
John Keats
Leigh Hunt
Walter Scott
Abbotsford
The Great Window, Melrose Abbey
Scott's Tomb in Dryburgh Abbey
Mrs. Hannah More
Charles Lamb
East India House, London
Mary Lamb
The Lamb Building, Inner Temple, London
Thomas De Quincey
Dove Cottage, Grasmere
Tennyson's Birthplace, Somersby Rectory, Lincolnshire
Alfred Tennyson
Summerhouse at Farringford
Robert Browning
Mrs. Browning's Tomb, at Florence
The Palazzo Rezzonico, Browning's Home in Venice
Piazza of San Lorenzo, Florence
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Matthew Arnold
The Manor House of William Morris
William Morris
Charles Dickens
Gadshill Place, near Rochester
Dickens's Birthplace, Landport, Portsea
Yard of Reindeer Inn, Danbury
The Gatehouse at Rochester, near Dickens's Home
William Makepeace Thackeray
Charterhouse School
George Eliot
Griff House, George Eliot's Early Home in Warwickshire
Charlotte Bronte
Mrs. Elizabeth Gaskell
Richard Doddridge Blackmore
Robert Louis Stevenson
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Carlyle
Carlyle's House, Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
Arch Home, Ecclefechan
John Ruskin
Entrance to "Westover," Home of William Byrd
Plymouth in 1662. Bradford's House on Right
William Byrd
New Amsterdam (New York) in 1663
Cotton Mather
Jonathan Edwards
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin's Shop
Philip Freneau
Thomas Jefferson
Alexander Hamilton
Monticello, the Home of Jefferson in Virginia
Charles Brockden Brown
William Gilmore Simms
John Pendleton Kennedy
Washington Irving
"Sunnyside," Home of Irving
Rip Van Winkle
Old Dutch Church, Sleepy Hollow
William Cullen Bryant
Bryant's Home, at Cummington
James Fenimore Cooper
Otsego Hall, Home of Cooper
Cooper's Cave
Edgar Allan Poe
West Range, University of Virginia
The Building of the _Southern Literary Messenger_
"The Man" (Abraham Lincoln)
Birthplace of Longfellow at Falmouth (now Portland) Maine
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Taproom, Wayside Inn, Sudbury
Longfellow's Library in Craigie House, Cambridge
John Greenleaf Whittier
Oak Knoll, Whittier's Home, Danvers, Massachusetts
Street in Old Marblehead
James Russell Lowell
Lowell's House, Cambridge, in Winter
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Old Colonial Doorway
Sidney Lanier
The Village of McGaheysville, Virginia
Whitman's Birthplace, West Hills, Long Island
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson's Home, Concord
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Old Customhouse, Boston
"The House of the Seven Gables," Salem (built in 1669)
Hawthorne's Birthplace, Salem, Massachusetts
Henry Timrod
Paul Hamilton Hayne
Harriet Beecher Stowe
John Esten Cooke
Louisa M Alcott
Henry D Thoreau
Francis Parkman
Bret Harte
George W. Cable
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
William Dean Howells
Mark Twain
Joel Chandler Harris
Edmund Clarence Stedman
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Joaquin Miller
John Fiske
Edward Everett Hale
OUTLINES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION: AN ESSAY OF LITERATURE
(_Not a Lesson, but an Invitation_)
I sleep, yet I love to be wakened, and love to see
The fresh young faces bending over me;
And the faces of them that are old, I love them too,
For these, as well, in the days of their youth I knew.
"Song of the Well"
WHAT IS LITERATURE? In an old English book, written before Columbus dreamed
of a westward journey to find the East, is the story of a traveler who set
out to search the world for wisdom. Through Palestine and India he passed,
traveling by sea or land through many seasons, till he came to a wonderful
island where he saw a man plowing in the fields. And the wonder was, that
the man was calling familiar words to his oxen, "such wordes as men speken
to bestes in his owne lond." Startled by the sound of his mother tongue he
turned back on his course "in gret mervayle, for he knewe not how it myghte
be." But if he had passed on a little, says the old record, "he would have
founden his contree and his owne knouleche."
Facing a new study of literature our impulse is to search in strange places
for a definition; but though we compass a world of books, we must return at
last, like the worthy man of _Mandeville's Travels_, to our own
knowledge. Since childhood we have been familiar with this noble subject of
literature. We have entered into the heritage of the ancient Greeks, who
thought that Homer was a good teacher for the nursery; we have made
acquaintance with Psalm and Prophecy and Parable, with the knightly tales
of Malory, with the fairy stories of Grimm or Andersen, with the poetry of
Shakespeare, with the novels of Scott or Dickens,--in short, with some of
the best books that the world has ever produced. We know, therefore, what
literature is, and that it is an excellent thing which ministers to the joy
of living; but when we are asked to define the subject, we are in the
position of St. Augustine, who said of time, "If you ask me what time is, I
know not; but if you ask me not, then I know." For literature is like
happiness, or love, or life itself, in that it can be understood or
appreciated but can never be exactly described. It has certain describable
qualities, however, and the best place to discover these is our own
bookcase.
[Sidenote: THE TREE AND THE BOOK]
Here on a shelf are a Dictionary, a History of America, a text on
Chemistry, which we read or study for information; on a higher shelf are
_As You Like It_, _Hiawatha_, _Lorna Doone_, _The Oregon
Trail_, and other works to which we go for pleasure when the day's work
is done. In one sense all these and all other books are literature; for the
root meaning of the word is "letters," and a letter means a character
inscribed or rubbed upon a prepared surface. A series of letters
intelligently arranged forms a book, and for the root meaning of "book" you
must go to a tree; because the Latin word for book, _liber_, means the
inner layer of bark that covers a tree bole, and "book" or "boc" is the old
English name for the beech, on whose silvery surface our ancestors carved
their first runic letters.
So also when we turn the "leaves" of a book, our mind goes back over a long
trail: through rattling printing-shop, and peaceful monk's cell, and gloomy
cave with walls covered with picture writing, till the trail ends beside a
shadowy forest, where primitive man takes a smooth leaf and inscribes his
thought upon it by means of a pointed stick. A tree is the Adam of all
books, and everything that the hand of man has written upon the tree or its
products or its substitutes is literature. But that is too broad a
definition; we must limit it by excluding what does not here concern us.
[Sidenote: BOOKS OF KNOWLEDGE AND OF POWER]
Our first exclusion is of that immense class of writings--books of science,
history, philosophy, and the rest--to which we go for information. These
aim to preserve or to systematize the discoveries of men; they appeal
chiefly to the intellect and they are known as the literature of knowledge.
There remains another large class of writings, sometimes called the
literature of power, consisting of poems, plays, essays, stories of every
kind, to which we go treasure-hunting for happiness or counsel, for noble
thoughts or fine feelings, for rest of body or exercise of spirit,--for
almost everything, in fine, except information. As Chaucer said, long ago,
such writings are:
For pleasaunce high, and for noon other end.
They aim to give us pleasure; they appeal chiefly to our imagination and
our emotions; they awaken in us a feeling of sympathy or admiration for
whatever is beautiful in nature or society or the soul of man.
[Sidenote: THE ART OF LITERATURE]
The author who would attempt books of such high purpose must be careful of
both the matter and the manner of his writing, must give one thought to
what he shall say and another thought to how he shall say it. He selects
the best or most melodious words, the finest figures, and aims to make his
story or poem beautiful in itself, as a painter strives to reflect a face
or a landscape in a beautiful way. Any photographer can in a few minutes
reproduce a human face, but only an artist can by care and labor bring
forth a beautiful portrait. So any historian can write the facts of the
Battle of Gettysburg; but only a Lincoln can in noble words reveal the
beauty and immortal meaning of that mighty conflict.
To all such written works, which quicken our sense of the beautiful, and
which are as a Jacob's ladder on which we mount for higher views of nature
or humanity, we confidently give the name "literature," meaning the art of
literature in distinction from the mere craft of writing.
[Sidenote: THE PASSING AND THE PERMANENT]
Such a definition, though it cuts out the greater part of human records, is
still too broad for our purpose, and again we must limit it by a process of
exclusion. For to study almost any period of English letters is to discover
that it produced hundreds of books which served the purpose of literature,
if only for a season, by affording pleasure to readers. No sooner were they
written than Time began to winnow them over and over, giving them to all
the winds of opinion, one generation after another, till the hosts of
ephemeral works were swept aside, and only a remnant was left in the hands
of the winnower. To this remnant, books of abiding interest, on which the
years have no effect save to mellow or flavor them, we give the name of
great or enduring literature; and with these chiefly we deal in our present
study.
[Sidenote: THE QUALITY OF GREATNESS]
To the inevitable question, What are the marks of great literature? no
positive answer can be returned. As a tree is judged by its fruits, so is
literature judged not by theory but by the effect which it produces on
human life; and the judgment is first personal, then general. If a book has
power to awaken in you a lively sense of pleasure or a profound emotion of
sympathy; if it quickens your love of beauty or truth or goodness; if it
moves you to generous thought or noble action, then that book is, for you
and for the time, a great book. If after ten or fifty years it still has
power to quicken you, then for you at least it is a great book forever. And
if it affects many other men and women as it affects you, and if it lives
with power from one generation to another, gladdening the children as it
gladdened the fathers, then surely it is great literature, without further
qualification or need of definition. From this viewpoint the greatest poem
in the world--greatest in that it abides in most human hearts as a loved
and honored guest--is not a mighty _Iliad_ or _Paradise Lost_ or
_Divine Comedy_; it is a familiar little poem of a dozen lines,
beginning "The Lord is my Shepherd."
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