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A poet is not pleased, because he is not rich; and the rich are discontented because the poets will not admit them of their number. BOSWELL. Boswell, it should seem, had followed Swift's advice: 'Read all the prefaces of Dryden, For these our critics much confide in; Though merely writ at first for filling, To raise the volume's price a shilling. Swift's Works, ed. 1803, xi. 293.
It aggravates me to have to begin in the middle. I tell Serena, it's just like reading a book when the first volume's lost.
I turn'd Stone-stiff; and to the ground, fell like a corse. But the same probability applies in the case of the lovers. The reading of such books was equally the taste of their own times; and nothing is more likely than the volume's having been found in the room where they perished. The Pagans could not be rebels to a law they never heard of, any more than Dante could be a rebel to Luther.
And this same Boccaccio was the point of attack which formed the climax in the great contest of the Roxburghe roup, as the Duke's fellow-countrymen called it. I am not aware that any of the English bibliographers have alluded to any special cause for this volume's extreme rarity.
The most entertaining prefaces in our language are those of Dryden; and though it is ill-naturedly said, by Swift, that they were merely formed To raise the volume's price a shilling, yet these were the earliest commencements of English criticism, and the first attempt to restrain the capriciousness of readers, and to form a national taste.
Then what joy to see delight dance in his brave young eyes upon that volume's emergence from some innocent concealment a gift from his father! Thus far, John did not know his a-b-c's. But education is older than alphabets, and for three years now he had been his father's constant, almost confidential companion.
Moreover Jonson, while desiring that Shakespeare might "shine forth" again and cheer the drooping stage, added, "Which since thy flight from hence hath mourned like Night, And despairs day, but for thy volume's light," that is the Folio of 1623. Ben did not weave the amazing tissue of involved and contradictory falsities attributed to him by Baconians.
This chapter may fitly close with a straw of startling literary contrast, that seems to me alone almost enough to bring American literature under the rubric of this volume's title.
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