5/2/05 PREFACE. In presenting the following volume to an indulgent public, the author hopes that he may not be misunderstood. He has assumed a title which may seem to savour of pretension. But although he calls this little pocket volume "The Young Man's Book of Elegant Prose," he would by no means be understood to enter into any engagement to present his reader with specimens of every writer of elegant prose in Britain and America. If he should give but a paragraph to each, such a collection would fill a volume ten times as large as this; but he has undertaken to furnish specimens of a large number of the classical writers of the language-not mere shreds and patches, but fair specimens of their powers of composition in their respective departments. Moreover, he has endeavoured to collect such pieces as should possess some completeness and value, in a moral and literary point of view, such as might be worth preserving, reading a third and fourth time, and fit to give something of its character to the reader's own style of composition. |