T WOULD BE an unusual scholar indeed who could comment substantively on all of the papers which make up the "Explorations in Literary History" symposium in the present number of this journal. Their range is remarkably wide, and they deal with specific issues of method and procedure which only those who are themselves concerned to deal historically with literary materials could expect fully to appreciate. Were I to be asked where within the fields represented by these articles I locate my own expertise, I should have to say, "Nowhere," perhaps an unfortunate reply from one who is supposed to comment on the issue as a whole. The invitation to comment, however, was not based upon the assumption that I am qualified to deal with the details of the scholarly controversies to which the specific papers are addressed, but rather because my "interest in history," as the editor put it, may result in my being able "to define, explain, expand upon, or indeed initiate issues pertinent to the subject of the symposium." I have spent some years thinking about history as a way of knowing, but those reflections have not tended to take into account the special issues of literary history. It might even appear that certain characteristics of literary history cannot be squared with some of the things that I have come to say about history, though I do not think this proves to be the case. In any event, what I have done in response to the invitation to comment on the papers contained in this issue is to use the occasion to reconsider some matters in light of the special characteristics which seem to distinguish literary history from the sort of history which results in the reconstruction-or, as I prefer to call it, constitution '-of historical events.