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When they meet in the third of the "Noctes" and have taken their places at the table, North proposes: "A bumper! The King! God bless him!" and three times three are given. Then Tickler proposes: "A bumper! The Kirk of Scotland!" and the rounds of cheers are repeated. These indispensable ceremonies being over, the Blackwood council proceeds to discuss men and things over nectar and ambrosia.
He therefore promptly produced mere dialogue without the slightest play for it to support. Getting Married is no more a play than Cicero's dialogue De Amicitiâ, and not half so much a play as Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianæ. But though it is not a play, it was played, and played successfully. Everyone who went into the theatre felt that he was only eavesdropping at an accidental conversation.
The arch-philosopher Aristotle, whom Averroes regards as the law of Nature, bought a few books of Speusippus straightway after his death for 72,000 sesterces. Plato, before him in time, but after him in learning, bought the book of Philolaus the Pythagorean, from which he is said to have taken the Timaeus, for 10,000 denaries, as Aulus Gellius relates in the Noctes Atticae.
If such doubting souls could, however, be present at one of these noctes ambrosianæ, they would acknowledge that the Latin temperament can throw a grace and child-like abandon around an act that would cause an Englishman or an American to appear supremely ridiculous. One’s taste and sense of fitness are never shocked.
See also, Izaak Walton, Compleat Angler. Oppianus, De Venatione, Piscatione et Aucupio. Zouch, Life of Iz. Walton. Salmon Fisheries. Parliamentary Reports. Annual. "Blackwood's Magazine, an important landmark in English angling literature." See Noctes AmbrosianA|. H. W. Beecher, N. Y. Independent, 1853.
The indefatigable character of Lord Brougham, the only survivor of this group, cannot yet be sketched in a paragraph. To Sydney Smith we shall presently return. The second group of young men was formed fifteen years later. They were the antagonists of the Edinburgh reviewers, the authors of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," the main support of "Blackwood's Magazine," almost from its beginning.
Blackwood's was edited by John Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, who, under the pen-name of "Christopher North," contributed to his magazine a series of brilliant imaginary dialogues between famous characters of the day, entitled Noctes Ambrosianæ, because they were supposed to take place at Ambrose's tavern in Edinburgh.
The twenty books of the Noctes Atticae were the compilation of many years; but the title was chosen from the fact of the work having been begun during a winter spent by the author at Athens, when about thirty years of age.
To be bitten of either mania is bad enough; when one is possessed at the same time of a passion both for the Noctes and for the Reliques hopeless indeed is his malady! Dr.
He is a leading character, partly idealised, partly caricatured, in Wilson's Noctes Ambrosianæ. Biographer, s. of John H., a country gentleman of Durham, ed. at Durham Grammar School, and Univ. Coll., Oxf., where he made the acquaintance of Shelley, whose lifelong friend and biographer he became.
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