{"product_id":"charles-knight-half-hours-with-the-best-authors-with-short-biographical-and-critical-notices-volume-4-9780543913449","title":"Half-hours with the Best Authors: With Short Biographical and Critical Notices. Volume 4","description":"This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a * scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1853. Excerpt: ... POSTSCRIPT. 'Half-hours With The Best Authors' appeared in the course of periodical publication, without a Preface. The Editor feels it necessary, in completing the Series, to record the purpose with which he undertook it, and to add a few remarks on the mode in which he has endeavored to work out his intentions. In the announcement of ' Half-hours' the Editor said, \"'Elegant Extracts' have opened to many an eminent man the gates of our literature. Judiciously chosen, they may effect more good than they have effected. We turn to the six bulky volumes so entitled, which were the delight of our boyhood, and we find a collection, not of the imperishable treasures of our great writers, but for the most part of the tenth-rate authors of the 18th century. Not a fragment of a poem of the 16th and 17th centuries, with the exception of a few scraps from Shakspere, Milton, and Dryden, is to be found in the thousand pages of 'Extracts in Poetry from the most approved Authors.' It is the same with the prose writers. Two unpretending volumes, 'Select Beauties of Ancient English Poetry, ' by Henry Headley, A.B., were published about the same time as the ' Elegant Extracts in Poetry, ' with this motto, most appropriate to the age--' The Monument of Banished Minds.' The 'approved authors' were Parnell, and Mason, and Anne Yearsley, and Mallett, and Merrick, and Pitt: 'the banished minds' were Spenser, and W. Brown, and Carew, and Daniel, and Drummond, and Drayton, and Fletcher, and Quarlcs, and Wither. The great writers of our own day have sent us back to the great writers of our golden age. For this reason alone a new collection is required, which should represent our present literary tastes, both in what is Ancient and what is Modern. But there is another reason which h...","brand":"Adamant Media Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53696882180438,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0925\/5829\/5382\/files\/product_image_9780543913449_1_80c17238-2298-447f-b6e8-f9939d440fb7.jpg?v=1781754092","url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/charles-knight-half-hours-with-the-best-authors-with-short-biographical-and-critical-notices-volume-4-9780543913449","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}