Page images
PDF
EPUB

from the manuscript may be considered as preferable to the original itself; for where information on the same subject lies scattered and unconnected, and sometimes repeated, its completeness will be apt to escape from those who cannot take in the dependent parts at one view. It was to obtain this purpose that the present copy was carefully arranged by the late Mr. MALONE, who has also added some notes, and preserved others of SPENCE. Mr. MALONE is indeed the true Editor of this Work ; it is well known that his taste for literary anecdotes was keen, and his skill in literary history excelled that of any man of letters of his day.

The great value of the present collection must always rest on its authenticity; every particular is sanctioned by the name of the speaker; and from

that simplicity of taste and minute correctness which mark the character of the writer, we may confidently infer, that as he never embellishes, he scrupulously delivers the identical language of the speaker.

It is rarely that men of some eminence themselves have shown that true sensibility for genius, as to write down what can only confer fame on another; although our own literature is distinguished above that of every other, by a monument of this nature which may excite our admiration as much as our gratitude. Authentic works, similar to SPENCE'S ANECDOTES, are precious, not only to the historian of literature, but of the human mind; the conversations of the eminent person will always be found to reflect not only his own character, but an image of the

times. Can we read Luther's "Familiar Discourses," without discovering the simplicity and ardour of the age, in that Monk who, while emancipating Germany from the Papacy, was himself so often frightened by a number of delusions, that one day he ventured to fling his ink-stand at the Devil? Selden, the age of erudition, of turbulent changes and of unsettled opinions, communicate a weight of thought, a depth of research, and an acuteness of disputation, which we cannot read too often in his "Table-Talk.”

In

SPENCE lived in an age when Taste first appeared among us, and Literature first began to diffuse itself among the nation. By his habits a man of letters ; by his skill a classical and elegant critic; and by the sweetness of his manners and perpetual curiosity, SPENCE

was well adapted to promote, as well
as to record the many conversations he
has preserved for posterity. Pope was
"the god of his idolatry," for Pope
was the creator of an epoch in our
literature. This period was a transition
from one age to another.
to another. The immor-
tal writer had to open an age of taste
and correctness, and to develope the
arts of composition; he had to teach
us to learn to think; he had to escape
from our native but undisciplined in-
vention, and to restrain our prurient
imagination in conception and expres-
sion; and to polish a diction colloquially
feeble or unskilfully perplexed. Litera-
ture assumed a new form; the triumphs
and the factions of literature arose with
the interests they excited in the public
feelings, but the progress of his own
works was an object, not only of his

Pokie

egotism, but of the curiosity of other men, and the delight of the retentive fondness of Spence.

Some indulgence may however be claimed for one portion of SPENCE'S ANECDOTES; in the literary class the reader will find many with which he is not unacquainted; but if they appear to him as twice-told, he must recollect that SPENCE was the first teller.

The reader shall no longer be detained in this passage of a Preface; he has now only to open the door, and he will find Pope in a very conversible humour, by his parlour fire-side.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »