This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ... correct poet, "delight. Since great names have accounted otherwise for this particular, I wish this solution, though to mc probable, may not prove a mistake. Addison a great author. Swift looked on wit as the jus divinum to dominion and sway in the world, and considered as usurpation all power that was lodged in ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 Excerpt: ... correct poet, "delight. Since great names have accounted otherwise for this particular, I wish this solution, though to mc probable, may not prove a mistake. Addison a great author. Swift looked on wit as the jus divinum to dominion and sway in the world, and considered as usurpation all power that was lodged in persons of less sparkling understandings. This inclined him to tyranny in wit. Pope was somewhat of his opinion, but was for softening tyranny into lawful monarchy; yet were there some acts of severity in his reign. Addison's crown was elective: he reigned by the public voice: --Volentes Per populos dat jura viamque affectat Olympo. Virg. But as good books are the medicine of the mind, if we should dethrone these authors and consider them not in their royal, but their medicinal capacity, might it not then be said--that Addison prescribed a wholesome and pleasant regimen which was universally relished and did much good;--that Pope preferred a purgative of satire which, though wholesome, was too painful in its operation--and that Swift insisted on a large dose of ipecacuanha, which, though readily swallowed from the fame of the physician, yet, if the patient had any delicacy of taste, he threw up the remedy instead of the disease? Addison wrote little in verse, much in sweet, elegant, Virgilian prose; so let me call it, since Longinus calls Herodotus most Homeric, and Thucydides is said to have formed his style on Pindar. Addison's compositions are built with the finest materials, in the taste of the ancients, and (to speak his own language) on truly classic ground; and though they are the delight of the present age, yet am I persuaded that they will receive more justice from posterity. I never read him but I am struck with such a disheartening i...
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