Preface
_ A preface generally begins with a truism； and I may set out with the
admission that it is not always expedient to bring to light the
posthumous work of great writers. A man generally contrives to publish,
during his lifetime, quite as much as the public has time or
inclination to read； and his surviving friends are apt to show more
zeal than discretion in dragging forth from his closed desk such
undeveloped offspring of his mind as he himself had left to silence.
Literature has never been redundant with authors who sincerely
undervalue their own productions； and the sagacious critics who
maintain that what of his own an author condemns must be doubly
damnable, are, to say the least of it, as often likely to be right as
wrong.
Beyond these general remarks, however, it does not seem necessary to
adopt an apologetic attitude. There is nothing in the present volume
which any one possessed of brains and cultivation will not be thankful
to read. The appreciati

......
全部内容，请购买此书。