Publisher's Synopsis
In more modern times, with the sole exception of William Hazlitt, our country has produced no very successful writer of aphorisms. Colton's Lacon; or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think, went through several editions soon after its first publication in 1820; it is described by Mr. John Morley-and not unfairly-as being "so vapid, so wordy, so futile as to have a place among those books which dispense with parody"; it is "an awful example to anyone who is tempted to try his hand at an aphorism." Mr. Morley is hardly less severe in speaking of the "Thoughts" in Theophrastus Such: "the most insufferable of all deadly-lively prosing in our sublunary world." However this may be, assuredly other works of the author of Adam Bede will be found to furnish many examples of admirable apothegms.
