Excerpt from Half-Hours With the Best Foreign Authors, Vol. 1 There is no satisfactory reason, then, why those who speak English only should not enjoy the masterpieces of literature of the whole world, in versions which preserve all the value of the ideas, and which equal or closely ap proach their originals in beauty of rhetoric and grace of expression. It has been our purpose, in the work which we hereby introduce to our readers, to glean from the broad harvest-field of English translations of foreign liter ature a series of half-hour readings, selected from the writings of those who have won an acknowledged position among the world's best authors, and of those of secondary merit to whose writings some originality of style, interest of subject, or peculiarity of treatment has given a per manent abiding-place in the world of books. These selec tions properly divide into four sections: namely, the litera tures of Greece and Rome; those of the German and other Teutonic nations; that of France; and those of Spain and Italy. For the convenience of readers we have, therefore, arranged our work in four volumes, each embracing one of the above-named provinces, while a few selections from the literatures of minor importance, such as the Portuguese and the Russian, have been given in the fourth volume. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.