TRANSLATION EDITED BY J. SPEDDING

PREFACE TO THE NOVUM ORGANUM FRANCIS BACON

PREFACE TO THE FIRST FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE'S
PLAYS HEMINGE AND CONDELL

PREFACE TO THE PHILOSOPHIAE NATURALIS PRINCIPIA
MATHEMATICA SIR ISAAC NEWTON
TRANSLATED BY ANDREW MOTTE

PREFACE TO FABLES, ANCIENT AND MODERN
JOHN DRYDEN

PREFACE TO JOSEPH ANDREWS HENRY FIELDING
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH DICTIONARY SAMUEL JOHNSON
PREFACE TO SHAKESPEARE SAMUEL JOHNSON
INTRODUCTION TO THE PROPYLAeEN J.W. VON GOETHE

PREFACES TO VARIOUS VOLUMES OF POEMS
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
APPENDIX TO LYRICAL BALLADS WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
ESSAY SUPPLEMENTARY TO PREFACE WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

PREFACE TO CROMWELL VICTOR HUGO
PREFACE TO LEAVES OF GRASS WALT WHITMAN
INTRODUCTION TO THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
H.A. TAINE

_INTRODUCTORY NOTE_

_No part of a book is so intimate as the Preface. Here, after the long
labor of the work is over, the author descends from his platform, and
speaks with his reader as man to man, disclosing his hopes and fears,
seeking sympathy for his difficulties, offering defence or defiance,
according to his temper, against the criticisms which he anticipates.
It thus happens that a personality which has been veiled by a formal
method throughout many chapters, is suddenly seen face to face in the
Preface; and this alone, if there were no other reason, would justify
a volume of Prefaces.

But there are other reasons why a Preface may be presented apart from
its parent work, and may, indeed, be expected sometimes to survive
it. The Prologues and Epilogues of Caxton were chiefly prefixed to
translations which have long been superseded; but the comments of this
frank and enthusiastic pioneer of the art of printing in England
not only tell us of his personal tastes, but are in a high degree
illuminative of the literary habits and standards of western Europe
in the fifteenth century. Again, modern research has long ago put
Raleigh's "History of the World" out of date; but his eloquent Preface
still gives us a rare picture of the attitude of an intelligent
Elizabethan, of the generation which coloni