This book has been prepared for publication as No. 4000, a "Memorial
Volume," of the "Tauchnitz Edition." Perhaps it may be well to explain
to American readers what the "Tauchnitz Edition" is and what a "Memorial
Volume" is in this collection. The "Collection of British Authors," or,
as it is more popularly known on the European Continent, the "Tauchnitz
Edition," was instituted in 1841, at Leipsic, by one of the most
distinguished of German publishers, the late Baron Bernhard Tauchnitz,
whose son is now at the head of the house. The father records that he
was "incited to the undertaking by the high opinion and enthusiastic
fondness which I have ever entertained for English literature: a
literature springing from the selfsame root as the literature of
Germany, and cultivated in the beginning by the same Saxon race.... As a
German-Saxon it gave me particular pleasure to promote the literary
interest of my Anglo-Saxon cousins, by rendering English literature as
universally known as possible beyond the limits of the British Empire."
In another place, Baron Tauchnitz describes "the mission" of his
Collection to be the "spreading and strengthening the love for English
literature outside of England and her Colonies."
