The Essay on "Smollett" was in the _Anglo-Saxon_,
which has ceased to appear; and the shorter papers, such as "The
Confessions of Saint Augustine," in a periodical styled _Wit and Wisdom_.
For "The Poems of William Morris" the author has to thank the Editor of
_Longman's Magazine_; for "The Boy," and "Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels," the
Proprietors of _The Cornhill Magazine_; for "Enchanted Cigarettes," and
possibly for "The Supernatural in Fiction," the Proprietors of _The
Idler_. The portrait, after Sir William Richmond, R.A., was done about
the time when most of the Essays were written--and that was not
yesterday.
CHAPTER I: ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS
I
In an age of reminiscences, is there room for the confessions of a
veteran, who remembers a great deal about books and very little about
people? I have often wondered that a _Biographia Literaria_ has so
seldom been attempted--a biography or autobiography of a man in his
relations with other minds. Coleridge, to be sure, gave this name to a
work of his, but he wandered from his apparent purpose into a world of
alien disquisitions. The following pages are frankly bookish, and to the
bookish only do they appeal. The habit of reading has been praised as a
virtue, and has been denounced as a vice. In no case, if we except the
perpetual study of newspapers (which cannot fairly be called reading), is
the vice, or the virtue, common.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25