Excerpt from Monday-Chats N selecting from the many volumes of the Cause I ries da Lundi the essays required for the present work, the translator has experienced no little difficulty. The difficulty, as every reader of sainte-beuve will readi ly suppose, has not been the dearth of material, but the embarrassment of riches. The final decision has been influenced by two considerations, - a desire to choose themes of intrinsic and permanent interest, and a desire to give a due variety. That the translator has done justice to the original in this attempt to reproduce in English some of the masterpieces of modern French criticism, he is very far from flattering himself. If the best translation, even of a third or fourth rate author is inevitably but the seamy side of the cloth, then he may well despair Who has undertaken to convey in Eng lish the curiosa felicitas, the subtle graces, and the deli cate refinements of sainte-beuve's style. Adequately to do so would imply a genius hardly inferior to that of sainte-beuve himself. 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.