FRANCIS STORR, B.A. "CHIEF MASTER OF MODERN SUBJECTS IN MERCHANT TAYLORS' SCHOOL. RIVINGTONS N.B.-The numbers in brackets are those of the complete edition of the IT PREFACE. T is intended that the present Series of English Classics for Schools should contain at least as large a proportion of prose as of poetry. Nearly all our principal English poets have been annotated, more or less satisfactorily, though never before, we believe, in so cheap and at the same time so complete a form. But prose works, short enough to be read in a term or half-year, and with notes sufficiently elementary for boys of fourteen or fifteen, are still a desideratum. Nor is the choice of such works easy. It would, indeed, not be difficult to compose any number of volumes of extracts, but to such books there are several objections. In the first place, an author can be but very imperfectly known by selections; and further, the Editors have found by experience, that the pupil's interest is much less likely to flag in reading consecutive portions, and that one of the principal advantages of English teaching is lost by reading selections-the mental training acquired by following out a continuous argument, and the power of appreciating a work as a whole.1 1 Cp. BACON, Essay 50: "Distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things." |