Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844Various
History
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
But in the composition of a history, the spirit of party, however eager
it may be, cannot always guide the pen. The mere interest of the
narrative, the strangeness and peculiarity of circumstances, will claim
their share of the author's mind. The politician must sometimes be
absorbed in the chronicler; and so it happens with M. Louis Blanc. His
narrative often interests by its details; and if it has the partiality,
it has also the vivacious colouring, of a contemporary. It possesses,
also, a richness of anecdote--the fruit, probably, of his position as a
journalist; add to which, that M. Louis Blanc is not without a species
of off-hand, dashing eloquence. He can say daring things in a daring
manner, and give the pungency of epigram to his political paradoxes. He
has a full share of that rhetoric of journalism which is so well
calculated to make an impression on the careless reader, but which
requires that the reader should continue careless, in order to retain
the impression he has received. It results from all this, that while we
constantly distrust our guide, while we perpetually refuse the
appreciation he offers to us of men and events, we still read on with
interest a work which is, at least, relieved from the charge of
insipidity or dulness; and indeed, if we had not derived some
entertainment from its perusal, we should not have thought of bringing
it under the notice of our readers. To have engaged ourselves merely in
combating its errors and misrepresentations, would have been a dreary
and an endless task.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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