The German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by F. Max Müller

To the Memory of

MY DAUGHTER MARY

THE TRANSLATOR OF SCHERER’S “HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE.”

Born 21 February 1862,

Died 3 September 1886.

TRUTHFUL, CONSCIENTIOUS, EARNEST, TENDER.

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PREFACE.

WHEN the Clarendon Press undertook to publish a translation of Professor W. Scherer’s History of German Literature, it was suggested that an Historical Reading-Book, containing extracts from the principal writers of prose and poetry treated in that History, would form a useful companion volume. My ‘German Classics from the Fourth to the Nineteenth Century,’ published in 1858, had long been out of print, and I had no time to undertake a new edition. Professor Scherer, whom I consulted on the subject, suggested Professor Franz Lichtenstein of Breslau as fully qualified to revise and rearrange my volume, so as to adapt it to the new purpose for which it was intended, namely, to supply the pièces justificatives for the new History of German Literature.