United States or Indonesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In the Arcadia there is a certain charm, but it belongs to the inset verse to the almost Spenserian visionariness of parts to the gracious lulling atmosphere of the whole. If it had been published in three volumes, one cannot imagine the most enthusiastic novel-reader knocking up a friend late at night for volume two or volume three.
Life averages up fairly, as any novel-reader will admit, and there has been much of delight even luxury and idleness between the carnage hours of battle. Is it not so? Ask that boyish-hearted old scamp whom you have seen scuttling away from the circulating library with M. St.
Their intimacy with me would of course prevent any person from speaking to them on the subject in an insulting manner; for it is not usual here, whatever your unknown informant may do, for a gentleman who does not wish to be kicked downstairs to reply to a man who mentions another as his particular friend, "Do you mean the blackguard or the novel-reader?"
There was no such penetrating and pervading element of doubt and curiosity and charity, about the rightfulness and beauty of conduct, such as one meets on every hand to-day. The novel-reader of the past, therefore, like the novel-reader of the more provincial parts of England to-day, judged a novel by the convictions that had been built up in him by his training and his priest or his pastor.
Do you think, for instance, that my friend, Lady Priscilla Graves who is a great novel-reader indeed, but holds all female writers unfeminine deserters to the standard of Man could ever come out with, 'Pray, sir, have you had time to look at MY Novel? She would rather die first.
If I could do this, then I thought I might succeed in impregnating the mind of the novel-reader with a feeling that honesty is the best policy; that truth prevails while falsehood fails; that a girl will be loved as she is pure; and sweet, and unselfish; that a man will be honoured as he is true, and honest, and brave of heart; that things meanly done are ugly and odious, and things nobly done beautiful and gracious.
But fate was kind to her: some interesting biographies and brilliant essays at different periods have revived and championed her fame: and her books at least Jane Eyre almost as a whole and parts of the others will always be simply interesting to the novel-reader, and interesting in a more indirect fashion to the critic.
There is a simple plan for setting matters right, and giving all parties their due, which is here submitted to the novel-reader. Ivanhoe's history MUST have had a continuation; and it is this which ensues.
And every habitual novel-reader will answer that question he has asked himself, after a sigh. A sigh that will echo from the tropic deserted island of Juan Fernandez to that utmost ice-bound point of Siberia where by chance or destiny the seven nails in the sole of a certain mysterious person's shoe, in the month of October, 1831, formed a cross thus: *
He did not see to the bottom of this description of the Deacon. With a lawyer's instinct, he kept his doubts to himself and tried his witness with a new question. "Did you talk about books at all with the old man?" "To be sure I did. Would you believe it, that aged saint is a great novel-reader. So he tells me.
Word Of The Day