Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Fable for Critics
You have watched a child playing in those won drous years when belief is not bound to the eyes and the ears, and the vision divine is so clear and unmarred, that each baker of pies in the dirt is a bard? Give a knife and a Shingle, he fits out a ?eet, and, on that little mud-puddle over the street, his fancy, in purest good faith, will make sail round the globe with a puff of his breath for a gale, will visit, in barely ten min utes, all climes, and do the Columbus-feat hundreds of times. Or, suppose the young poet fresh stored with delights from that Bible of childhood, the Arabian Nights, he will turn to a crony and cry, Jack, let's play that I am a Genius! Jacky straightway makes Alad din's lamp out of a stone, and, for hours, they enjoy each his own supernatural powers. This is all very pretty and pleasant, but then suppose our two urchins have grown into men, and both have turned authors, - one says to his brother, Let 's play we 'te the American somethings or other, say Homer or Sophocles, Goethe or Scott (only let them be big enough, no matter what).
Come, you shall be Byron or Pope, which you choose I 'll be Coleridge, and both Shall write mutual reviews. So they both (as mere strangers) before many days send each other a cord of anonymous bays. Each, piling his epithets, smiles in his sleeve to see what his friend can be made to believe each, reading the other's unbiased review, thinks Here 's pretty high praise, but no more than my due. Well, we laugh at them both, and yet make no great fuss when the same farce is acted to ben efit us. Even I, who, if asked, scarce a month since, what Fudge meant, Should have answered, the dear Pub lio's critical judgment, begin to think sharp-witted Hor ace spoke sooth when he said, that the Public sometimes hit the truth.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
