These matters belong most properly to the province of the schoolmaster. The editor's is a different purpose. It is not a text which he seeks to compile, but (forgive a layman's distinction) a _book_, a book to read, enjoy, and keep. To all who have found amusement and profit in the first series of Atlantic Classics, I think I can promise that here shall be found no lowering of the bars, but only the enlargement of interest which must come from such an influx of new company.
During pleasant hours spent in selecting this second series of essays typical of _The Atlantic_, I have more than once turned aside to re-read well-remembered pages of a similar character written an hundred years and more ago by men whose names, if not effulgent, still shine in clusters from the more condensed paragraphs of our literary histories. Comparisons are odious, and stir inordinate prejudice; so names shall not be mentioned here, but as I turn from those enshrined volumes to the less sententious essays of our day, I can truly say I feel no drop to earth from heaven. Here before me is a group of essays, quite as individual, if less self-conscious; quite as urbane, often in better taste; and quite (one reader thinks) as suggestive of company he should like to keep. Take for instance such a paper as Miss Mackenzie's 'Exile and Postman.' Bind it in levant, gild well ornament and title, and let it stand straight on your bookshelf for an hundred years. Then shall your great-grandson take it down and learn with respect that in his grandsire's day English still lived as English, and that the magic of words cannot die.
In republishing this collection, The Atlantic Press owes its warm thanks to every author represented, and desires to make acknowledgment to Houghton Mifflin Company for the inclusion of Mr. Merwin's inimitable 'Dogs and Men,' already reprinted in a volume of the author's own; to the Macmillan Company for permission granted to Miss Addams to allow her contemporary legend 'The Devil Baby' to be reprinted here. It should be added that Mr. Chapman's shining paper on 'The Greek Genius' will be found in more extended form in his volume of similar title, to which every instructed reader should turn.