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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
and ravishing hgatura : something , at which De Seuil ,
« Sigh'd * and look'd , apd sigh'd again . "
aii 4 Owned that there was nothing between it and an angel ' s wing . Meantime , nothing comes amiss to us hut dirt , or tatters , or cold , plain ,
calf , ichool binding , a thing which we hate for its insipidity and formality , and its manifest attempt to do the business as cheaply and usefully as possible , With no regard to the liberality and picturesqueness befitting the cultivators of the generous infant mind .
Keep from our sight all Select as e Profanis , and Enfields ' Speakers , bound in this Manner ; and especially all Ovids , and all Excerpta from the Greek . We would as lief
see Ovid come to life as a quaker , or Theocritus serving in a st&tioner * s shop . ( See the horrid , impossible dreams , which such incoherences excite !) Arithmetical books are not so bad ; and it does very
Well for the Gauger ' s Vade Mecum , or tall thin copies of Logarithms ; but for anything poetical , or of a handsome universality like the grass or the skies , we would as soon see a flower whitewashed , or
an arbour fit for $ n $ ngel changed into a pew . Bt ) t to come to the bdojc before tis , See what an advantage tti& poor reader of modern times possesses over the royal collector of those ages , who doubtless got his manuscript
Untitled Article
W Grollier himself * should have— ;
of Heliodorus ' s romance at a cost and trouble proportionate to ' the splendout he bestowed on its binding . An argosie " brought it him from Greece or Italy , at a price rated by some Jew of Malta : or else his
father got it with battle and murder out of some Greek ransom of a Turk ; Whereas we bought our copy at a bookstall in Little Chelsea for
tenpence ! To be sure it is not in the original language ; nor did we ever read it in that language ; neither is the translation , for the most part , a good one ; and it is execrably
printed . It is " done / ' half by a i € person of quality / 1 and half by Nahum Tate , the psalm-versifier ; who got a fit of momentary inspiration , when he wrote a bit of Absalom and
Achitophel under the eye of Dry den . There are symptoms of its being translated frotn aji Italian version ; and perhaps the good bits come out of &p older English one , of which
Warton speaks . But we Jiave not time to settle points Of this nature . We have stipulated with the reader for permission to take up any book , or part of a book , as it comes
to our hands , and talk of it With him o ^ -hand , rather according to the enjoyment it has given tig , than to the knowledge we have of its history * And information on
Untitled Article
286 Retrospective Review
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 1, 1837, page 286, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1836/page/61/
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