Excerpt from Practical Hints for Young Writers, Readers, and Book Buyers IT is impossible to teach the art of writing. One can only make suggestions, Show the learner how to avoid difficulties. The pupil really teaches himself to write, and rules are at best merely sign-posts along the road he must travel. In a word, a person learns to write by writing. But if no one can take a journey for another, one who has been over the ground oneself and knows it more or less intimately can point out the best routes, the best inns, the best steamships and railways. Some thing like this has been attempted in the first part of Practical Hints. In the second part may be found a few suggestions about books and reading. Repeated Observation has taught me that students who approach for the first time the subject of English Literature are bewildered by the crowd of names and dates. Lists of the most important writers and works, while they do not wholly meet this difficulty, may be, at any rate, suggestive, and I am sure cannot lead any one far astray. 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.