LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS; AND S. WALKER,

(BOOKSELLER TO CHARTERHOUSE SCHOOL,)

CARTHUSIAN STREET, CHARTERHOUSE SQUARE.

1849.

LONDON:

BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEYRIARS.

ADVERTISEMENT.

IN making the following collection, the Compiler has endeavoured to keep in view two objects, not inconsistent, as he hopes, with each other: the one, to collect passages which might be somewhat better suited for translation into Latin and Greek prose than those found in the collections which, so far as he is aware, are now in use: the other, to exhibit, in some degree, and only so far as is consistent with the primary object, a specimen of English prose-writing from the sixteenth to the present century. He has thought the chronological order the best for this latter purpose, and on the whole, best suited to the wants of those who wish to direct the attention of pupils to particular styles. He has also preferred giving real English prose, to prose English adapted or translated for the express purpose of being rendered into Latin or Greek. He hopes that the choice of Authors and styles may be sufficiently various for this purpose. In conclusion, he ventures to offer to translators of these passages, or at least to the more advanced among them, counsel gathered from a great English writer in his

account of his own translation of Juvenal-Dryden: that they "go not so close as to "tread upon the heels of their Author, and hurt him by their too near approach. A noble Author would not be pursued too close by a translator. We lose his spirit when we think to take his body. The grosser part remains with us, but the soul is flown away in some noble expression, or some delicate turn of words or thought."

CHARTERHOUSE,

June 9th, 1849.

H. W. P.

INDEX OF AUTHORS.

Living Writers are distinguished by an Asterisk.