BRITISH LIBRARY, 



COMPRISING 



THE CLASSIC AUTHORS OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



Price of each Volume, elegantly printed in Foolscap 8vo. 

 THREE SHILLINGS. 



THE present age is distinguished for literary enterprise, directed to the 

 laudable object of bringing knowledge within the reach of all classes of the 

 community. But a capital error in principle has been suffered to pervade 

 endeavours otherwise so praiseworthy : novelty of information, rather than 

 excellence, has been studied. While new books have been multiplied, the 

 time-honoured and tried authors of our national literature have fallen into 

 neglect. By the progress of discovery, even the best works may be super- 

 seded; but the departments of learning thus rapidly advancing are few, 

 while, in all the other provinces of mind, the Standard Classics, which have 

 already borne the test of time, are certainly safer guides than volumes 

 hurriedly prepared to meet the demands of a periodical issue. Hence com- 

 pilations, often most crudely digested, and generally by inferior, or 

 unknown, and consequently irresponsible, writers, have with little advantage 

 been forced upon the precious hours of the young, and upon the limited 

 means of the industrious, to the exclusion of the original and purer sources 

 of intelligence. 



Mankind will evidently be improved by promoting their acquaintance 

 with the most perfect models, not by encouraging converse with mediocrity j 

 while a good book, already the property of the public, can certainly be 

 republished at less expense than a bad one, where the writing is to be pur- 

 chased. These positions are self-evident ; and we appeal to the personal 

 experience of every man who has attended with any degree of care to the 

 culture of his own mind, for proof of the fact, that his substantial, and 

 really valuable, knowledge the knowledge on which subsequent acquirement 

 must be based, and by which the worth of all future attainment is appreciated 

 has been derived from the great classics of the language. It ought also to 

 be observed, that many new publications, which of late years have come forth 

 under professions of cheapness, though probably sold at a barely remunerating 

 price to the proprietors, have been far from cheap to the public. A volume 

 of Johnson or Hume, of Locke or Milton, may be elegantly brought out 

 for less money than an equal quantity of scribbling, whose sole recommenda- 

 tion is novelty. 



It is manifest, then, that the only effective mode by which useful knowledge 

 can be cheaply, and therefore generally, diffused, is to open up easy access 

 to the established Classics of British Literature. The intellectual and moral 

 improvement of all ranks is thus secured upon models whose excellence is 

 sanctioned by learning and taste, whose reputation is fixed on the sure 

 ground of intrinsic worth, and whose utility has been proved by the 

 experience of ages. Apart from these weighty considerations the most 

 important, however, which can engage the attention of any people a 

 correct and uniform, not to speak of an accessible, edition of the national 

 writers is yet wanting in the literature of our country. This deficiency 

 is the more marked when our supineness is contrasted with the diligence 



