Thackeray's Works
Format: Paperback
ISBN13: 9780217567985
Paperback|9780217567985
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Overview
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: STEELE. What do we look for in studying the history of a past age ? Is it to learn the political transactions and characters of the leading public men ? is it to make ourselves acquainted with the life and being of the time ? If we set out with the former grave purpose, where is the truth, and who believes that he has it entire ? What character of what great man is known to you ? You can but make guesses as to character more or less happy. In common life don't you often judge and misjudge a man's whole conduct, setting out from a wrong impression ? The tone of a voice, a word said in joke, or a trifle in behavior ? the cut of his hair or the tie of his neck-cloth may disfigure him in your eyes, or poison your good opinion; or at the end of years of intimacy it may be your closest friend says something, reveals something which had previously been a secret, which alters all your views about him, and shows that he has been acting on quite a different motive to that which you fancied you knew. And if it is so with those you know, how much more with those you don't know ? Say, for example, that I want to understand the character of the Duke of Marl- borough. I read Swift's history of the times in which he took a part; the shrewdest of observers and initiated, one would think, into the politics of the age ? he hints to me that Marlborough was a coward, and even of doubtful military capacity: he speaks of Waipole as a contemptible boor, and scarcely mentions, except to flout it, the great intrigue of the Queen's latter days, which was to have ended in bringing back the Pretender. Again, I read Marlborough's life by a copious archdeacon, who has the command of immense papers, of sonorous language, of what is called the best information; and I get little or no insight into this secret m...
| ISBN-13 | 9780217567985 |
|---|---|
| ISBN-10 | 0217567983 |
| Weight | 0.86 Pounds |
| Dimensions | 9.00 x 6.00 x 0.59 In |
| List Price | $21.79 |
| Format | Paperback |
|---|---|
| Pages | 262 pages |
| Publisher | |
| Published On | 2009-08-01 |
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