PREFACE.
The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography in presenting
it
Literature can
the
and
full
promment
uow complete
we would
say a tew words
to the Public.
to History, in its larger sense, Biography is the
Next
action
is
oflfer
to
most valuable and interesting record which
drama
If the one presents us with the great
mankind.
of
humanity
in its entire
development, the other furnishes us with the innumerable and subordinate dramas of It is often only in the lives of individuals that
actors on the world's stage.
we
all
discover
the secret springs and hidden causes of those mighty events which advance or retard the progress of
man— which
influence his destiny
do not deem any apology necessary
The
the present moment.
and midtiplies
discoveries
for the appearance of a
Crimea and
India,
deficient
still
agitating
clearly.
work
English biographical
energies of an age,
The wars
it.
illustrious the next.
we have stepped
pendent treatment of every memoir,
mode
more
at
makes
it
fruitful
new
in
Europe and Asia,
especially
have produced great men as suddenly as the exigencies that required them,
While we have availed ourselves of all
the
new
it
Great political influences have, within
makmg their authors notable.
and names unheard of one year were became prematurely
to read
from
light emitted
Sciences and arts are moving with an accelerated pace, and
its actors.
and inventions are daily
Whatever stimulates the
a recent period, passed over the world, and are in the
and thus the rays of
subjects for Biography are ever increasing, but at no period has that increase
been more rapid or important than now. in events
upon the page of History, and enable us
individual Biography converge
We
and revolutionize the world
in to
remove
Our most
recent biographical works thus
tlie defect.
accessible sources of information,
Facts and dates are the
common
we have secured
property of
the inde-
all chroniclers,
while
of dealing with subjects, and the light in which they are presented, will ever be affected by
the minds of original thinkers.
The delicate
limits of the
Work have
and arduous duty of
necessitated the exclusion of
selection,
individual has been our guide preference to celebrities of our
names of minor importance.
both as regards the dead and the
living, the
In the
importance of the
though we have ^here the claims were otherwise equal, given the
own
nation. J. F.
W.