Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Deutsches Lesebuch,

ENLARGED, IMPROVED BY THE ADDITION OF
EXPLANATORY NOTES, AND

Adapted to the Use of English Students.

BY

A. HEIMANN, PH. D.,

PROFESSOR OF THE GERMAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.

FIFTH EDITION.

LONDON:

D. NUTT, 270, STRAN D.

[blocks in formation]

We have remodelled "Ermeler's German Reading Book" (originally intended for French scholars), with the intention of rendering it a standard work for English schools. The best pieces of the original edition, their arrangement, and the whole ground-work have been left as they were; but those fragments which were extracted from inferior authors, and were comparatively less instructive or interesting, have been replaced by others of a superior kind, and by the best writers. Numerous additions have been made throughout the work, particularly in the poetical part, with the double view of enriching the compilation with a mass of valuable materials, such as would satisfy a pupil's desire for reading during the whole period of instruction; and at the same time of giving an idea (as far as such a small compass would allow) of the best authors in the German Literature, from the times of Gellert down to the present day. The book will not be found to contain a single piece which is not a good specimen of composition.

A. H.

January, 1843.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

THE encouragement shown to the first edition of this volume, gives us the assurance that our endeavours to compile a German Reading Book, worthy of being a standard work for English schools, have gained the approbation of those who are our fellow-labourers in diffusing the knowledge of German literature in this country. Doubtless we owe this encouragement chiefly to the care we took in collecting a number of pieces which, in the prose part, combine the three essential qualities of an elementary reading book: variety of matter, soundness of moral sentiment, and clearness of style; whilst those in the poetical part will be considered, if not the most characteristic and the most beautiful of our whole literature, at least, the best that could have been selected for young people.

In point of matter, we have made a few alterations in the second edition, in order to give more variety to the prose pieces; but its chief feature, and that which distinguishes it from the first, consists in the notes which we have constantly added, where such compounds or idiomatical expressions occur in the text as are omitted even in the best dictionaries, or when turns of phrases are used which differ from the general construction of sentences.

We hope by this addition to have rendered the compilation more useful, both to the pupil in his preparations for the lesson, and to those who study the German language without the assistance of a master.

London University School, Gower Street,

May, 1844.

A. H.

« AnteriorContinuar »