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Updated: May 29, 2025
With a Prefaces by CHARLES DE MAZADE, and GASTON BOISSIER of the French Academy. The reputation of Alfred de Vigny has endured extraordinary vicissitudes in France.
As it is impossible to receive benefits without paying for them, you are bound to learn how to sleep gracefully, to preserve your dignity under the silk handkerchief that wraps your head, to be polite, to see that your slumber is light, not to cough too much, and to imitate those modern authors who write more prefaces than books.
Talking of Rochester's Poems, he said, he had given them to Mr. Steevens to castrate for the edition of the poets, to which he was to write Prefaces. Dr. JOHNSON. 'We have a good Death: there is not much Life . I asked whether Prior's Poems were to be printed entire: Johnson said they were.
He continued therefore his usual job-work for the booksellers, writing introductions, prefaces, and head and tail pieces for new works; revising, touching up, and modifying travels and voyages; making compilations of prose and poetry, and "building books," as he sportively termed it. These tasks required little labor or talent, but that taste and touch which are the magic of gifted minds.
If this surmise were correct, the destruction of St. Paul's library in the fires of 1561 and 1666 would explain why so little has been discovered about the manuscripts which Erasmus had for his Jerome. He himself, in his prefaces, gives little indication of them, beyond saying that they were very old and mutilated, and that some of them were written in Lombardic and Gothic characters.
Two other worthy friends of mine, who desire to have their names concealed, seeing me straitened in my time, took pity on me and gave me the life of Virgil, the two prefaces to the Pastorals and the Georgics and all the arguments in prose to the whole translation; which perhaps has caused a report that the two first poems are not mine.
The most amusing part of the story is, however, that the ball took place in my bed-room! A very pompous lady of my acquaintance always prefaces the slenderest anecdote with these words, "And it happened in this wise," so I think I shall avail myself of the tour de phrase.
He does admit that my German is good and sweet and that he could not improve it. Yet, anxious to dishonor it, he took my New Testament word for word as it was written, and removed my prefaces and glosses, replacing them with his own. Then he published my New Testament under his name!
This should have been a prefatory chapter, but for two reasons: First, that most novel readers, as my own conscience reminds me, are apt to be guilty of the sin of omission respecting that same matter of prefaces; Secondly, that it is a general custom with that class of students to begin with the last chapter of a work; so that, after all, these remarks, being introduced last in order, have still the best chance to be read in their proper place.
I always read prefaces, and Martelli proves there that his verses have the same effect in Italian as our Alexandrine verses have in French." "Exactly, that's what's so amusing. The worthy man is quite mistaken, and I only ask you to listen to what I have to say on the subject. Your masculine verse has only twelve poetic syllables, and the feminine thirteen.
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