Hours In A Library (4 Volumes) (BCL1-PR English Literature)

Stephen, Sir Leslie

ISBN 10: 0781270200 / ISBN 13: 9780781270205

Published by Reprint Services Corp, 1904

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 9780781270205-2-2

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Hours In A Library (4 Volumes) (BCL1-PR English Literature)
• Publisher: Reprint Services Corp
• Publication Date: 1904
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0781270200
• ISBN 13: 9780781270205
• Condition: Very good

About this title

Synopsis

Volume: 4 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1904 Original Publisher: Putnam Subjects: English literature Literary Criticism / General Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Country Books A Love of the country is taken, I know not why, to indicate the presence of all the cardinal virtues. It is one of those outlying qualities which are not exactly meritorious, but which, for that very reason, are the more provocative of a pleasing self- complacency. People pride themselves upon it as upon early rising, or upon answering letters by return of post. We recognise the virtuous hero of a novel as soon as we are told that the cat instinctively creeps to his knee, and that the little child clutches his hand to stay his tottering steps. To say that we love the country is to make an indirect claim to a similar excellence. We assert a taste for sweet and innocent pleasures, and an indifference to the feverish excitements of artificial society. I, too, love the country -- if such a statement can be received after such an exordium; but I confess -- to be duly modest -- that I love it best in books. In real life I have remarked that it is frequently damp and rheumatic, and most hated by those who know it best. Not long ago, Iheard a worthy oratoi at a country school-treat declare to his small audience that honesty, sobriety, and industry, in their station in life, might possibly enable them to become cabdrivers in London. The precise form of the reward was suggested, I fancy, by some edifying history of an ideal cabman; but the speaker clearly knew the road to his hearers' hearts. Perhaps the realisation of this high destiny mi...

Book Description

This three-volume set brings together a diverse selection of articles by the literary critic Sir Leslie Stephen (1832-1904). The Second Series, first published in 1876, includes commentaries on the works of Sir Thomas Browne, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Disraeli and Horace Walpole, and the poetry of George Crabbe.