Book Description

Excerpt from Courage in Politics, and Other Essays, 1885-1896 'We need books of this tart cathartic virtue, ' said Emerson, of Plutarch, and it is because some of us believe this requirement to be eminently fulfilled in Coventry Patmore's prose that this further selection from it has been made. Every reader will confess its tart flavour: its cathartic virtue depends upon his own good will: he must minister to himself if he can reject the temptation to throw the physic to the dogs. Patmore's criticism, literary, artistic, and political, was based upon considered principles, and it is in his statement of these, more than in his application of them, that the virtue of his criticism consists. He deprecated the merely subjective appreciation of books, and it is to mark the fact that the many essays on other writers included here are not of that order that a small group of political articles is placed in the forefront; for in these it is the statement of principles only that can win any acceptance: the illustrations are from the vanished part of thirty-five years ago. 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.