Renaissance Classic Reprint PDF Download

Excerpt from The Century of the Renaissance For the keener enjoyment of life there is no pursuit so profitable and so easy as the familiar study of French history. It does not require that special education which enables the few to find consolation at times of trouble in the ancient classics, where Greek tragedy makes sublime the depths of human woe, or where the brighter scepticism of Horace dispels for a sunny hour the darkest clouds of dejection. Apart from such favoured amateurs of distraction there are very many cultivated English people who, in their desultory or regular reading, like to understand allusions, and who have a sense of missed enjoyment when a name of place or person conveys to them no distinct idea. To comprehend every allusion met with in general literature and to recognize every name would need, if not the whole sum of human knowledge, at least a portion so large that it would be more conveniently lodged in an encyclopaedia than in the memory of man or woman. But it is astonishing what an extensive and enlivening light is thrown on ordinary reading by a knowledge of the history of France. This has always been the experience of English readers in their perusal of fiction and of memoirs, of political and of philosophical works. It is more than ever apparent in the present war-time, when every morning brings a list of places in France where things have happened, which when details arc known, may for ever after be associated in many a British home with proud sorrow or pathetic rejoicing. The part of France which is now the scene of war is a relatively small tract of that country. 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."