Excerpt from The Harvard Classics: The Editor's Introduction; Reader's Guide; Index to the First Lines of Poems, Songs and Choruses, Hymns and Psalms; General Index; Chronological Index Classics is, therefore, one very different from that of the many collections in which the editor's aim has been to select the hundred or the fifty best books in the world; it is nothing less than the purpose to pre sent so ample and characteristic a record of the stream of the world's thought that the observant reader's mind Shall be enriched, refined, and fertilized by it. With such objects in view it was essential that the whole series Should be in the English language; and this limitation to English necessitated the free use of translations, in Spite of the fact that it is impossible to reproduce perfectly in a translation the style and flavor of the original. The reader of this collection must not imagine that he can find in an English trans lation of Homer, Dante, Cervantes, or Goethe, all the beauty and charm of the original. Nevertheless, trans lations can yield much genuine cultivation to the student who attends to the substance of the author's thought, although he knows all the time that he is missing some of the elegance and beauty of the original form. Since it is impossible to give in translation the rhythm and sweetness of poetry - and particularly of lyric poetry far the larger part of the poetry in The Harvard Clas sics will be found to be poetry which was written in English. 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.