Fiction, etc. From this, and still more from the list of authors itself,
it will be found, we hope, that besides a completely modern aim, a
distinctly proper proportion of modern literature has found a place in
the work, and that the best of French, German, Scandinavian, Russian,
and other authors take rank in it with American and English, as do the
best of the ancients with the best among the moderns.

As the aim of THE WORLD'S GREATEST BOOKS has been directed first of all
towards those forms of literature which were in the most need of
condensation to make them readily available, it will not be expected
that the Poetry section of the work will contain the shorter kind of
poems. Moreover, even if the shortness of such poems and their general
accessibility in present-day anthologies did not render their inclusion
here a work of supererogation, it was felt that their place could be far
better filled in a work like the present by the world's best _dramatic_
literature,--as has been done. This does not apply, however, to
translations from the shorter poems of ancient classical literature,
which, however short they may be, cannot be said to be already generally
available for everyday reading.

Throughout, the claims of literature proper, or of fine writing, have
been intimately considered in conjunction with the claims of pure
learning, or of information, with the result, it is hoped, that to the
authority of the world's best thinkers is added the picturesqueness of
their fine writing. Plato, Spencer, Newton; Darwin, Haeckel, Virchow;
Æschylus, Shelley, Ibsen; Burton, Mandeville, Loti; or Brandes, Matthew
Arnold, and Demosthenes--from old and from modern times they yield up
their pearls.

The notion of finality, or of an utter inclusiveness, for such a work as