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With the men he is wise on a point of horseflesh or the quality of the brandy; with the matrons he is courtly, gallant, anecdotic: the young women appear to idolize him, and lean their pretty elbows on his desk half the day, for he is their protector, chevalier, entertainer, bonbon-holder, adviser and elder brother, all in one. Such is the landlord, as that rare expert is understood in the South.
History indeed resolved itself into a series of more or less sanguinary events arbitrarily grouped under the names of persons who had to be identified with the assistance of numbers. Neither of the development of national life, nor of the clash of nations, did he really know anything that was not inessential and anecdotic.
For it should concern ghosts, dreams, omens, coincidences, good-and-bad luck, warnings, and true vaticinations: no childish collection, however, of unsupported trumpery, but authenticated cases staidly evidenced, and circumstantially detailed; no Mother Goose-cap's tales, no Dick the Ploughman's dreams, no stories from the 'Terrific Register, nor fancies of hysterical females in Adult asylums; even Merlin witch-finders, and Taliesins should be excluded: and, in lieu of all such common-places, I should propose an anecdotic treatise in the manner scientifical.
Think what a study they were at Potsdam in 1753, while still in the chaotic state; fished out, more or less at random, as Menzel could lay hold of them, or be directed to them; the enigma clearing itself only by intense inspection, and capability of seeing in the dark! It appears, if you are curious on the anecdotic part,
Presently the brother married, and the sister ceased to live with him. Wentworth's visits to Oxford gradually ceased to give him pleasure. He found his friend's wife middle-class, self-absorbed, and artificial, the friend himself donnish, cut and dried, and liable to anecdotic seizures of increasing frequency. The intimacy dwindled and was now moribund.
Incidentally, in quite the permissible way, he made known that he was a connoisseur of art; he spoke of his travels on the track of this or that old master, of being consulted by directors of great Galleries, by wealthy amateurs. He was gracefully anecdotic; he allowed one to perceive a fine enthusiasm. And Piers listened quite as attentively as Mrs.
She had not the historic sense, though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself the apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a condition of her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera.
Alluding to some circumstances in the voyage of St Paul, he says he has 'no desire to cook the facts. He talks of a supposition being 'checkmated. And in going along the coast of Spain, he mentions that he took care to have 'a passing squint at Cape St Vincent. Many similar oddities break out in the course of the narrative; not that we care much about them one way or other; it is only to be regretted that the author has by this looseness of expression, and his loquacious dragging in of passages from Scripture on all occasions, also by his inveterate love of anecdotic illustration, done what he could to keep down a really clever book to an inferior standard of taste.
The anecdotic life of Herschel, however, is now closed. The great astronomer will not quit his observatory any more, except to go and submit the sublime results of his laborious vigils to the Royal Society of London. These results are contained in his memoirs; they constitute one of the principal riches of the celebrated collection known under the title of Philosophical Transactions.
Thus I have known two young men great friends; each swore by the other's father; the father of each swore by the other lad; and yet each pair of parent and child were perpetually by the ears. This is typical: it reads like the germ of some kindly comedy. The old appear in conversation in two characters: the critically silent and the garrulous anecdotic.
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