The Biggest Curiosities of Literature. Disraeli Isaac
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Название: The Biggest Curiosities of Literature
Автор: Disraeli Isaac
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Изобразительное искусство, фотография
isbn: 4064066379827
isbn:
In this notice of the career of my father, I have ventured to draw attention to three circumstances which I thought would be esteemed interesting; namely, predisposition, self-formation, and sympathy with his order. There is yet another which completes and crowns the character—constancy of purpose; and it is only in considering his course as a whole, that we see how harmonious and consistent have been that life and its labours, which, in a partial and brief view, might be supposed to have been somewhat desultory and fragmentary.
On his moral character I shall scarcely presume to dwell. The philosophic sweetness of his disposition, the serenity of his lot, and the elevating nature of his pursuits, combined to enable him to pass through life without an evil act, almost without an evil thought. As the world has always been fond of personal details respecting men who have been celebrated, I will mention that he was fair, with a Bourbon nose, and brown eyes of extraordinary beauty and lustre. He wore a small black velvet cap, but his white hair latterly touched his shoulders in curls almost as flowing as in his boyhood. His extremities were delicate and well-formed, and his leg, at his last hour, as shapely as in his youth, which showed the vigour of his frame. Latterly he had become corpulent. He did not excel in conversation, though in his domestic circle he was garrulous. Everything interested him; and blind, and eighty-two, he was still as susceptible as a child. One of his last acts was to compose some verses of gay gratitude to his daughter-in-law, who was his London correspondent, and to whose lively pen his last years were indebted for constantPg xxxvii amusement. He had by nature a singular volatility which never deserted him. His feelings, though always amiable, were not painfully deep, and amid joy or sorrow, the philosophic vein was ever evident. He more resembled Goldsmith than any man that I can compare him to: in his conversation, his apparent confusion of ideas ending with some felicitous phrase of genius, his naïveté, his simplicity not untouched with a dash of sarcasm affecting innocence—one was often reminded of the gifted and interesting friend of Burke and Johnson. There was, however, one trait in which my father did not resemble Goldsmith: he had no vanity. Indeed, one of his few infirmities was rather a deficiency of self-esteem.
On the whole, I hope—nay I believe—that taking all into consideration—the integrity and completeness of his existence, the fact that, for sixty years, he largely contributed to form the taste, charm the leisure, and direct the studious dispositions, of the great body of the public, and that his works have extensively and curiously illustrated the literary and political history of our country, it will be conceded, that in his life and labours, he repaid England for the protection and the hospitality which this country accorded to his father a century ago.
D.
Hughenden Manor,
Christmas, 1848.
TO
FRANCIS DOUCE, ESQ.
THESE VOLUMES OF SOME LITERARY RESEARCHES
ARE INSCRIBED;
AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF FRIENDSHIP
AND
A GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT
TO
A LOVER OF LITERATURE.
PREFACE.
Of a work which long has been placed on that shelf which Voltaire has discriminated as la Bibliothèque du Monde, it is never mistimed for the author to offer the many, who are familiar with its pages, a settled conception of its design.
The "Curiosities of Literature," commenced fifty years since, have been composed at various periods, and necessarily partake of those successive characters which mark the eras of the intellectual habits of the writer.
In my youth, the taste for modern literary history was only of recent date. The first elegant scholar who opened a richer vein in the mine of Modern Literature was Joseph Warton;—he had a fragmentary mind, and he was a rambler in discursive criticism. Dr. Johnson was a famished man for anecdotical literature, and sorely complained of the penury of our literary history.
Thomas Warton must have found, in the taste of his brother and the energy of Johnson, his happiest prototypes; but he had too frequently to wrestle with barren antiquarianism, and was lost to us at the gates of that paradise which had hardly opened on him. These were the true founders of that more elegant literature in which France had preceded us. These works created a more pleasing species of erudition:—the age of taste and genius had come; but the age of philosophical thinking was yet but in its dawn.
Among my earliest literary friends, two distinguished themselves by their anecdotical literature: James Petit Andrews, by his "Anecdotes, Ancient and Modern," and William Seward, by his "Anecdotes of Distinguished Persons." These volumes were favourably received, and to such a degree, that a wit of that day, and who is still a wit as well as a poet, considered that we were far gone in our "Anecdotage."
I was a guest at the banquet, but it seemed to me to consist wholly of confectionery. I conceived the idea of a collection of a different complexion. I was then seeking for instruction in modern literature; and our language afforded no collection of the res litterariæ. In the diversified volumes of the French Ana, I found, among the best, materials to work on. I improved my subjects with as much of our own literature as my limited studies afforded. The volume, without a name, was left to its own unprotected condition. I had not miscalculated the wants of others by my own.
This first volume had reminded the learned of much which it is grateful to remember, and those who were restricted by their classical studies, or lounged only in perishable novelties, were in modern literature but dry wells, for which I had opened clear waters from a fresh spring. The work had effected its design in stimulating the literary curiosity of those, who, with a taste for its tranquil pursuits, are impeded in their acquirement. Imitations were numerous. My reading became more various, and the second volume of "Curiosities of Literature" appeared, with a slight effort at more original investigation. The two brother volumes remained favourites during an interval of twenty years.
It was as late as 1817 that I sent forth the third volume; without a word of preface. I had no longer anxieties to conceal or promises to perform. The subjects chosen were novel, and investigated with more original composition. The motto prefixed to this third volume from the Marquis of Halifax is lost in the republications, but expresses the peculiar delight of all literary researches for those who love them: "The struggling for knowledge hath a pleasure in it like that of wrestling with a fine woman."
The notice which the third volume obtained, returned me to the dream of my youth. I considered that essay writing, from Addison to the successors СКАЧАТЬ