Excerpt from Sketches of Art, Literature, and Character I'r seems a foolish thing to send into the world a book requiring a preface of apologies; and yet more absurd to presume that any deprecation on the part of the author could possibly win indol gence for what should be in itself worthless. For this reason, and with a very deep feeling of the kindness I have already experienced from the public, I should now abandon these little volumes to their destiny without one word of preface or re mark, but that a certain portion of their contents seems to require a little explanation. 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.