Opening the text

A century of English essays : $b An anthology ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the writers of our own time

General

A century of English essays : $b An anthology ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the writers of our own time

English essays; English literature

one of its striking privileges--"lord of one's-self, uncumber'd with a
name." Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of
public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting
personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the creature
of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe only by a
dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the
evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt,
to be known by no other title than _the Gentleman in the parlour_! One
may take one's choice of all characters in this romantic state of
uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely
respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and
disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be
objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more
those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world: an inn
restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I
have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I
have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some
metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the
proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at
other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St.
Neot's, (I think it was) where I first met with Gribelin's engravings
of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on
the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of
Westall's drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I
had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had
ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the boat between me and the
twilight--at other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a
peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night
to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater,
after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got
through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the tenth
of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the
inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The
letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as
he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de
Vaud, which I had brought with me as a _bon bouche_ to crown the
evening with. It was my birth-day, and I had for the first time come
from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The
road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing
a certain point, you come all at once upon the valley, which opens
like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on
either side, with "green upland swells that echo to the bleat of
flocks" below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the
midst of them. The valley at this time "glittered green with sunny

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

General

A century of English essays : $b An anthology ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the writers of our own time

English essays; English literature

one of its striking privileges--"lord of one's-self, uncumber'd with a
name." Oh! it is great to shake off the trammels of the world and of
public opinion--to lose our importunate, tormenting, everlasting
personal identity in the elements of nature, and become the creature
of the moment, clear of all ties--to hold to the universe only by a
dish of sweet-breads, and to owe nothing but the score of the
evening--and no longer seeking for applause and meeting with contempt,
to be known by no other title than _the Gentleman in the parlour_! One
may take one's choice of all characters in this romantic state of
uncertainty as to one's real pretensions, and become indefinitely
respectable and negatively right-worshipful. We baffle prejudice and
disappoint conjecture; and from being so to others, begin to be
objects of curiosity and wonder even to ourselves. We are no more
those hackneyed commonplaces that we appear in the world: an inn
restores us to the level of nature, and quits scores with society! I
have certainly spent some enviable hours at inns--sometimes when I
have been left entirely to myself, and have tried to solve some
metaphysical problem, as once at Witham-common, where I found out the
proof that likeness is not a case of the association of ideas--at
other times, when there have been pictures in the room, as at St.
Neot's, (I think it was) where I first met with Gribelin's engravings
of the Cartoons, into which I entered at once, and at a little inn on
the borders of Wales, where there happened to be hanging some of
Westall's drawings, which I compared triumphantly (for a theory that I
had, not for the admired artist) with the figure of a girl who had
ferried me over the Severn, standing up in the boat between me and the
twilight--at other times I might mention luxuriating in books, with a
peculiar interest in this way, as I remember sitting up half the night
to read Paul and Virginia, which I picked up at an inn at Bridgewater,
after being drenched in the rain all day; and at the same place I got
through two volumes of Madame D'Arblay's Camilla. It was on the tenth
of April, 1798, that I sat down to a volume of the New Eloise, at the
inn at Llangollen, over a bottle of sherry and a cold chicken. The
letter I chose was that in which St. Preux describes his feelings as
he first caught a glimpse from the heights of the Jura of the Pays de
Vaud, which I had brought with me as a _bon bouche_ to crown the
evening with. It was my birth-day, and I had for the first time come
from a place in the neighbourhood to visit this delightful spot. The
road to Llangollen turns off between Chirk and Wrexham; and on passing
a certain point, you come all at once upon the valley, which opens
like an amphitheatre, broad, barren hills rising in majestic state on
either side, with "green upland swells that echo to the bleat of
flocks" below, and the river Dee babbling over its stony bed in the
midst of them. The valley at this time "glittered green with sunny

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

A century of English essays : $b An anthology ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the writers of our own time

A century of English essays : $b An anthology ranging from Caxton to R. L. Stevenson & the writers of our own time

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