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S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Preface

I HAVE now the satisfaction of presenting to the public the third of the series of Dictionaries of English Literature originally projected about a quarter of a century since. In these works I have had the great advantage of profiting by the labours of my predecessors in the same fertile fields. The Dictionaries of Johnson, Webster, and Worcester, and the excellent compilation of Henry Southgate entitled “Many Thoughts of Many Minds,” First Series, have furnished me with many quotations; but the most valuable portions of the present volume have been derived from the “Tatlers” and “Spectators” of Addison and Steele, “The Rambler” of Dr. Johnson, the works of Sir Thomas Browne, Edmund Burke, Robert Hall, and Montaigne, and the vigorous, brilliant, and thoughtful “Essays” of Lord Macaulay. I would especially recommend to the attention of the intelligent reader the subjects, Authors, Authorship, Bible, Books, Christ, Christianity, Conscience, Conversation, Criticism, Death, Drama, Education, England, Freedom, Friendship, God, Government. History, Indexes, Insanity, Judges, Law, Lawyers, Life, Literature, Love, Man, Manners, Matrimony, Memory, Oratory, Party, Patriotism, Philosophy, Poetry, Politics, Preaching, Reading, Religion, Sin, States, Studies, Style, Talking, Translation, Truth, Virtue, War, Wisdom, Wit, Words, and Youth. To no student who has devoted the best years of his life to anxious and assiduous labour are “success and miscarriage empty sounds;” and no author—Dr. Johnson to the contrary notwithstanding—“dismisses” the result of such labour “with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise;” but I can truly affirm that I aim rather to instruct than to amuse my readers, and that I greatly prefer the hope of usefulness to the certainty of fame.
S. AUSTIN ALLIBONE.
1816, Spruce Street, Philadelphia, April 17, 1875.