Book Description

Excerpt from The Mountain All literature seems but the record of blunders, more or less flagrant and pitiable, of the thought trying to get the fatal word. How, then, shall a preface tell the main design of a book, essay, or discourse, when most books, essays, and discourses fail to tell it themselves, or succeed but lamely? A preface is often a simple Oyez! To the world, admonishing all persons that there is something for sale in the shape of intellectual merchandise, of which it affects to be a more or less perfect invoice. More generally the preface appears a forlorn and scraggy creation, in the form of a supplication to the reader to have faith and go on, to screw up his courage to wade through the coming revelation, it may be of chaos and night, of heaviness and sleep; with a solemn assurance that his threshing shall not be of straw alone, but that the winnowing thereof will give some grains of wheat. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.