This brief handbook is intended simply for every-day use, when
reference to larger works of the kind may not be convenient.
Experience has proved that the small book which can be readily
taken up is consulted far more frequently than the ponderous
volume that requires great muscular exertion to lift.
In the world of letters as in the world of society
conventionality plays no unimportant part, as every student of
literature knows. That there is such a thing as "conventional
immortality" every biographical dictionary yields abundant
evidence. Even so small a work as this must necessarily contain
many names that have achieved this conventional immortality
through the accident of circumstance. Some literary fames are
among the legacies left by preceding centuries to the present
one to account for and explain. And when all is said, "the
iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy and dealeth
with the memory of men without distinction to merit of
perpetuity."
OSCAR FAY ADAMS.
ERIE, PA., _October 28, 1883_.