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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SKETCH Cjje 3Ufe of jFretjehcfe It is a subject of complaint, too well founded, that so little is known of the personal history of some of the most illustrious authors, and that while their genius and writings have shed lustre upon the land which gave them birth, and done honour to human nature, the gratitude of their countrymen in after ages has often been condemned to exert itself in fruitless efforts to rescue from oblivion the history of their lives. That this neglect should have happened in the infancy of letters cannot excite our wonder. The value of such information was not known till the means of securing it to posterity was irrecoverably lost. Of the incidents of Homer's life scarce any memorials now remain, except those trifling notices which are scattered throughout his own writings, and we are obliged to collect, or rather guess, at the age in which he lived, by a careful and laborious comparison of the names recorded, and the events alluded to, in his works, with what we know of the early history of Greece from other sources. But to come nearer to our own times, and to take examples from our own countrymen. How little is known to us of the father of English poetry, Chaucer and how meagre are the accounts transmitted to us even of Shakspeare himself; how insufficient to gratify that eager curiosity which we feel to be informed of the minute particulars of his personal history, and to be made acquainted with his domestic habits, his manners, shape, and features As we approach our own times, the deficiencies of personal biography become less, and the reproach, which we throw upon former ages for their negligence in this respect, has, in some instances, been converted into one of an opposite nature?that the lives of eminent men have been ransacked with too muc...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217017206 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217017207 |
| Weight | 0.26 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.17 In |
| List Price | $19.99 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 70 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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