Excerpt from The Lives of the British Sculptors, and Those Who Have Worked in England From the Earliest Days to Sir Francis Chantrey<br><br>The works dealing with sculpture which are to be found in most large libraries are nearly all chiefly concerned with the achievements of the ancient Greeks or Romans, and it is, I venture to think, time that even so small an attempt as this should be made to tell people something about the lives and labours of those who may, for the most part, be regarded as British sculptors. In London alone we have on all sides a remarkable aggregation of such remains, eitherin our Abbey, Cathedral, and churches, or in our public open Spaces, and it cannot but add to the interest one has in looking at these monuments to know something about the lives of the men who were responsible for them, and who worked, often with such conspicuous success and undaunted courage, to add to the artistic embellishment of the country where they were born, or in which they elected to live. Many of these men are unknown by name to the majority of people many have left little or nothing tangible behind them; but there are even then sufiicient to make an almost unbroken chain of artistic endeavour. The great Torrigiano and Hubert Le Scrur have indeed a wider claim to recognition than that which they gained in this country, but Nicholas Stone, Caius Gabriel Cibber, Grinling Gibbon, Francis Bird, Rysbrack and Roubiliac, preface Wilton and Banks, Nollekens and Bacon, all forged links.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>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.