Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 edition. Excerpt: ... fortunate in thy ending, which should have been mild, conciliatory, swan-like.--Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise up, but they must be mine in private: --already I have fooled the reader to the top of his bent;--else could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who existed in trying the question, and bought litigations?--and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib a pen--with what deliberation would he wet a wafer --But it is time to close--night's wheels are rattling fast over me--it is proper to have done with this solemn mockery. Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all this while--peradventure the very names, which I have summoned up before thee, are fantastic--insubstantial--like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps of Greece: --Be satisfied that something answering to them has had a being. Their importance is from the past. OXFORD IN THE VACATION CASTING a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article--as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not, ) never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivares, or a Woollet--methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia? Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half-forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business, long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind as one of the self-same college--a votary of the desk--a notched and cropt scrivener--one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that