"Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every
variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to
me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go
amiss and the world frown upon me, it would he a taste for reading....
Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly
fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a
most perverse selection of Books. You place him in contact with the best
society in every period of history,--with the wisest, the wittiest, the
tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned
humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all
ages. The world has been created for him."--SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. _Address
on the opening of the Eton Library_, 1833.


LECTURES ON DRAMATIC ART AND LITERATURE

BY
AUGUST WILHELM SCHLEGEL.




CONTENTS.


Preface of the Translator.

Author's Preface.

Memoir of the Life of Augustus William Schlegel.