Later Critiques (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Later Critiques Newman said that a gentleman never speaks of him self yet Leslie Stephen affirmed autobiography to be the most fascinating form of literature. Louis Racine complained that La Fontaine put nothing Of his own into his conversation, but Dr. Johnson once rebuked Boswell for making a personal matter of everything. Lytton Strachey, writing of Hume, says that no one was ever freer from the personal and particular, or practised with greater success the divine art of impartiality and he calls this art ... Read More

Excerpt from Later Critiques Newman said that a gentleman never speaks of him self yet Leslie Stephen affirmed autobiography to be the most fascinating form of literature. Louis Racine complained that La Fontaine put nothing Of his own into his conversation, but Dr. Johnson once rebuked Boswell for making a personal matter of everything. Lytton Strachey, writing of Hume, says that no one was ever freer from the personal and particular, or practised with greater success the divine art of impartiality and he calls this art the antithesis of the bestial On the other hand, it is sometimes said that history, in modern scientific hands, has lost its savour; and laments are heard for the pro-athenian fervour of Grote or the anti-christian irony of Gibbon. Dryden censured the opinions of Lucretius on the mortality of the soul as absurd, and concluded that he was too eager to instruct - in short, so much an atheist that he forgot sometimes to be a poet. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at ... 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. Read Less