condense those truths into a form that makes them available is not only
to invest them with new powers and an enlarged range of usefulness, but
is also not necessarily to interfere with any of those essential
qualities that make up the exquisite literary flavor of a fine original.

The selections in THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS have been collected, and
are alphabetically arranged, in ten different divisions,--namely,
Fiction, Lives and Letters, History, Religion, Philosophy, Economics,
Science, Poetry and Drama, Travel and Adventure and Miscellaneous
Literature.

An important additional feature of the work is _the brief, yet highly
critical biographical and bibliographical note_ which accompanies every
author and every selection throughout the twenty volumes. To this must
be also added the not less important _Introductories_, and other
explanations written by experts, which often accompany the selections in
the text--cardinal examples of which will be found in particular in the
section of Religion of this work, in the articles dealing with such
subjects as the Book of the Dead, Brahmanism, Confucianism, the Koran,
Talmud, etc.

With respect to the selections themselves, it may be added that, even
where they are derived from foreign originals, they have often been
prepared from those originals rather than from any existing translations
of them, as in the fine translation of Catullus by Professor Wight Duff,
or the condensations from Euripides, Corneille, Kant, Tacitus, and very
many more. In other cases, again, the selections have been _specially
prepared for_ THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS _by their authors_ or their
agents, such as the two selections by Major Martin Hume in History, by
Dr. Bramwell and Sir Francis Galton in Science, by Mr. Robert Hichens in