A BOOK FOR A CORNER; OR Selections in Prose and Verse FROM AUTHORS THE BEST SUITED TO THAT MODE OF ENJOYMENT: WITH COMMENTS ON EACH, AND A GENERAL INTRODUCTION, BY LEIGH HUNT. ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHTY WOOD ENGRAVINGS, FROM DESIGNS BY F. W. HULME AND J. FRANKLIN. VOL. I. LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, 186 STRAND. MDCCCXLIX. PREFACE. A N ample account of the nature of this work will be found in the Introduction; but to give a brief and more general idea of the entertainment which it is proposed to set before the purchaser, it may be as well to state in this place, that the book, for the most part, is a collection of passages from such authors as retain, if not the highest, yet the most friendly and as it were domestic hold upon us during life, and sympathize with us through all portions of it. Hence the first extract is a Letter addressed to an Infant, the last the Elegy in the Churchyard, and the intermediate ones have something of an analogous reference to the successive stages of existence. It is therefore intended to be read by intelligent persons of all times of life, the youthful associations in it being such as the oldest readers love to call to mind, and the oldest such as all would gladly meet with in their decline. It has no politics in it, no polemics, nothing to offend the delicatest mind. The innocentest boy and the most cautious |