ls of classical learning could then wisely be taken
as a clew of guidance to be implicitly followed, whatever might be the
path through which it should lead. There is here no similar avoidance of
responsibility possible; for the schools have not established a custom,
and French literature is a living body, from which no important members
have ever yet been rent by the ravages of time.

The greater difficulty seen thus to inhere already in the nature itself
of the task proposed for accomplishment, was gravely increased by the
much more severe compression deemed to be in the present instance
desirable. The room placed at the author's disposal for a display of
French literature was less than half the room allowed him for the
display of either the Greek or the Latin.

The plan, therefore, of this volume, imposed the necessity of
establishing from the outset certain limits, to be very strictly
observed. First, it was resolved to restrict the attention bestowed upon
the national history, the national geography, and the national language,
of the French, to such brief occasional notices as, in the course of the
volume, it might seem necessary, for illustration of the particular
author, from time to time to make. The only introductory general matter
here to be found will accordingly consist of a rapid and summary review
of that literature, as a whole, which is the subject of the book. It was
next determined to limit the authors selected for representation to
those of the finished centuries. A third decision was to make the number
of authors small rather than large, choice rather than inclusive. The
principle at this point adopted, was to choose those authors only whose
merit, or whose fame, or whose influence, might be supposed
unquestionably such that their names and their works would certainly be
found surviving, though the language in which they wrote should, like
its parent Latin, have perished from the tongues of men. The proportion
of space severally allotted to the different authors was to be measured
partly according to their relative importance, and partly according to
their estimated relative capacity of interesting in translation the
average intelligent reader of to-day.

In one word, the single inspiring aim of the author has here been to
furnish enlightened readers, versed only in the English language, the
means of acquiring, through the medium of their vernacular, some
proportioned, trustworthy, and effective kno