as beautiful and soft as young, 264.
body with so old head,39.

Young disease, 270.

Fancy's rays, 385.

fellows will be young, 354.

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,

STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

MESSRS. GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS believe that there is in England a very large public demand for good books. They believe it to be large enough to justify the production of a uniform series of very cheap volumes, advancing, in course of time, towards the realization of a UNIVERSAL LIBRARY that shall contain all the best and most significant books in the world, of all times outside the time of Copyright, and of all countries, so far as such books can be found written in or rendered into English. The Publishers wish to produce the best books at the cheapest rate-that is to say, in bound and well-printed volumes of 320 pages for a Shilling. The Editor to whom they have looked for aid in working out their purpose shares their faith in the demand for easiest access to all forms of the world's thought, and all forms of opinion that have helped to shape the lives of men. He agrees therefore to be responsible for the selection of books published in this way, and he will issue each of them with a short Introduction, giving some account of its writer and some indication of its place in literature.

In the sequence of these volumes, as first published, there will be only the order in disorder that aims at variety. As they multiply upon the shelves, they will admit of any classification that most pleases their possessor. There will be in them the best Plays and Poems, the best works of Fiction, the best books of Travel, Histories, Biographies-all that is most characteristic in the speculations of philosophy and of political economy, the books of most mark in the world that seek to define or purify man's sense of his relation towards God. They may be arranged in sequence of time, from Confucius to Coleridge, or grouped into nations, with Homer to head the Greeks, Dante the Italians, Shakespeare the English, and so forth. The series of books is one that should outlive its present Editor, if English readers are really agreed that, for as far as lies within the compass of

their own language, it is good to have in a Home Library as cheap, neat and compact as the modern art of publishing can make it, all the best books of the world.

The first six books of the UNIVERSAL LIBRARY will be taken from writers of five nations-England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain The series will begin cheerfully with Sheridan's Plays, because they are sure of an easy welcome from all readers. France will be represented, not by direct translation, but by a volume of the plays of English writers, Dryden, Wycherley, Fielding, plays such as "Colley Cibber's Nonjuror," that have been founded upon plays of Molière. Literature of Spain will be represented by Southey's version of the "Chronicles of the Cid"; of Germany, by Goethe's "Faust"; of Italy, by Machiavelli's "Prince." A volume of Rabelais will be also within the number of the first half-dozen books. As the series advances, it is meant gradually to include a full representation of the English Drama, from the "Miracle Plays" downward; the most significant books upon the theory of Government and on Political Economy, such as Hobbes's "Leviathan," Locke's "Essays of Civil Government," the chief writings of Jeremy Bentham, and other books that are more quoted than read. There will be Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity." There will be books also of the Puritans whom it opposed. In Poetry and Fiction, many writers who now live chiefly as names will come back into fellowship, and the old coinages of wit again be current. Sometimes the work of different writers will be placed within one volume in significant juxtaposition. Thus, produced at the same time, and dealing in very different ways with the same thought of the time, Johnson's "Rasselas" will be associated with Voltaire's "Candide."

The text of the volumes published in the UNIVERSAL LIBRARY will be carefully printed from the copies indicated by the Editor, and it will be printed without annotation. Whatever explanation may be given will be found in the Introduction to each book. The length of each Introduction will depend upon the matter to be introduced; the average length will be about four pages. In some volumes, however, the text will require editing. Old writers will be printed as we print Shakespeare for common use, without suffering the swift passage of thought from mind to mind to be retarded by those obsolete forms of spelling which are no part of the thought of man, except when he is studying words as their historian. In literature words are but symbols, incomplete at best, of the stirrings of a life within life, compared to

which the air itself is in its movement gross and palpable. As far, therefore, as sense and rhythm allow, old spelling will, throughout this Library, be modernised. Also, it is the Editor's intention to respect that change in the convention of society which excludes now from our common acquaintance certain plainnesses of thought and speech once honestly meant and honestly allowed. By a little care in this respect, much of the best literature can, with slight injury to its best features, be rescued from neglect. The use and beauty of old monuments are, surely, separable from their dust and dirt.

No writer has ever felt of his own book that it attained his highest aim, but that has not been reason for regretting that it had an aim. The UNIVERSAL LIBRARY will fall short of its mark, but it will not be the worse for having such a purpose as is here described. Considering, aiso, what a staff of writers it will have, and that in each book the Editor restricts his own talk to four pages, its volumes cannot easily be dull.

HENRY MORLEY.

ORDER OF PUBLICATION.

1. SHERIDAN'S PLAYS.

May, 1883.

June, 1883.

2. PLAYS FROM MOLIÈRE. By DRYDEN, WYCHERLEY,

FIELDING, and Others.

3. GOETHE'S FAUST.

4. CHRONICLES OF THE CID.

July, 1883.

August, 1883.

5. RABELAIS' GARGANTUA, AND THE Heroic deeds OF PANTAGRUEL.

6. THE PRINCE, BY MACHIAVELLI.

7. BACON'S ESSAYS.

September, 1883.

October, 1883.

November, 1883.

8. DE FOE'S JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE. December, 1883. 9. LOCKE ON TOLERATION AND ON CIVIL GOVERN. MENT; WITH SIR ROBERT FILMER'S ARCHA,"

10. BUTLER'S ANALOGY OF RELIGION.

II. DRYDEN'S VIRGIL.

"PATRIJanuary, 1884. February, 1884.

March, 1884.

April, 1884.

12. SIR WALTER SCOTT'S DEMONOLOGY AND

WITCHCRAFT.