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design has been to present within a brief compass specimens of the prose literature in general circulation among us during the last three centuries. To accomplish this design it was manifestly necessary that the illustrative extracts should be selected from a wide circle of authors, and accordingly writers of every class have been laid under contribution : divines, historians, critics, moralists, travellers, novelists, politicians, and philosophers, writers who prepared carefully for the press, and writers whose manuscripts were not intended for the public eye. Strictly scientific subjects have of course been excluded, and nothing indelicate has been inserted. But with these exceptions, every department of prose composition will, it is believed, be found represented in the following pages. No political or religious prejudices have been allowed to interfere with the selection of the authors. Churchmen high and low, Dissenters of various denominations, and politicians of all parties, have been inserted, and are permitted to give expression in their own words to their peculiar opinions. A glance at the table of contents will show that extracts have been made from the works of nearly a hundred of our chief prose writers, embracing many of the most famous passages in our language.

That nothing may be wanting to render the present work a complete introduction to English prose literature, a historical sketch has been prefixed to each of the four periods under which the extracts have been ranged, giving a plain and concise view of the progress of our literature from the earliest

times to the present day. The Editor has also supplied biographical notices of the authors from whose works selections have been made; and as these have been compiled from the best authorities, and are accompanied with a brief critical estimate of the merits of the writers' works, it is expected that they will prove highly serviceable to the reader. Passages which, from their obscurity or any other cause, might be uninteresting or repulsive, have been avoided; but where any difficulty occurs in the extracts that have been inserted, it has been explained in a note. Most readers look upon numerous and learned notes as a mere incumbrance, and the Editor has accordingly made his notes as few and brief as would consist with the accomplishment of the object he had in view. With the same design of removing every obstacle that might impede the reader's progress, the uncouth and irregular orthography of our older authors, so precious in the eyes of the literary antiquarian, has been reduced to a modern standard. Obsolete words, however, and peculiar inflections, which mark the epochs in the history of the gradual refinement of our language, have been carefully retained, the reader being referred for an explanation of them to the illustrative notes which accompany the passage where they occur.

The advantages which may be derived from the perusal of a series of literary extracts, chronologically arranged, are too obvious to need to be enforced at length. Thus only can we trace with accuracy the gradual progress of opinion, and the rise, development, and fluctuations of great principles among us. It is

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interesting and highly instructive, for example, to mark the contrast between the crude, social views of Sir Thomas More, as stated in the extracts given from his "Utopia," and the philosophical teachings of modern political science, as expounded in the selections from Gibbon, Adam Smith, and Whately. The period when the sermons of Latimer were those best suited to the exigencies of the age, and the period when Chalmers was the great pulpit-orator of the day, are separated by other intervals besides that of time; and how varied and significant are the lessons which the comparison unavoidably suggests. If it were necessary to adduce any proof of the advantages which the general diffusion of education and the universal circulation of literature have conferred upon the sent generation, nothing could more conspicuously display our superiority than a comparison between the idle, ignorant gossip of our earliest traveller, Mandeville, and the careful research and universal accomplishments of Layard. Of all prose writings, the works of travellers aim most at immediate popularity, and are the surest index of the mental cultivation of the era which produces them; and without unduly exaggerating the progress which the general mind of the country has made, it will at all events be admitted, that the time has long gone by when any traveller could so far presume upon the unlimited credulity of his readers as to assure them (as Mandeville has done), that "if a man cast iron into the Dead Sea it will float on the surface; but if men cast a feather therein it will sink to the bottom."

It would indeed argue unpardonable ignorance to

maintain, in a volume which contains extracts from the writings of Bacon, and Taylor, and Hall, that the progress of knowledge has enlarged the capacity of the human mind. Genius is the same in all ages; and writers in the rudest times, as well as those of a more polished and enlightened era, have reached those limits beyond which the faculties of the human soul seem unable to penetrate. It is, however, equally undeniable, that in such a work as the present we may trace the gradual elevation of the general mind of the community as knowledge is more generally diffused; a result which, while it enables us to look back on the past with pleasure and gratitude, warrants us to look forward to the future with hope.

One source of regret has occasionally mingled with the compilation of the present work. The limits. within which, for obvious reasons, it has been confined, rendered it necessary not only to omit many authors worthy to find a place in any extensive collection of English literature, but, even in the works from which selections have been made, to pass over many passages of the highest merit. Such as it is, however, the Editor hopes it will be found an acceptable boon to the generality of readers; and he confidently believes that those who are best acquainted with our literature will be the most willing to receive with indulgence any attempt to diffuse more generally a relish for a pursuit which has been to them an unfailing source of pleasure and instruction.

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