Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 125, March 20, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.Various
History
Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 125, March 20, 1852: A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc.
Various
Questions and answers -- Periodicals
_Dean Swift on Herbert's Travels._--In a copy, now in my library, of
Herbert's _Travels in Africa, Asia, &c._, folio, 1634, there is a very
characteristic note in the autograph of Dean Swift, to whom the book
formerly belonged. Thinking that it may not be uninteresting to some of
the readers of "N. & Q.," I send a copy of it:
"If this book were stript of its impertinence, conceitedness, and
tedious digressions, it would be almost worth reading, and would
then be two-thirds smaller than it is.
"1720. J. SWIFT."
"The author published a new edition in his older days, with many
additions, upon the whole more insufferable than this. He lived
several years after the Restoration, and some friends of mine knew
him in Ireland. He seems to have been a coxcomb both ævi vitio et
sui."
W. SNEYD.
Denton.
_Joe Miller._--The remains of this patriarch of puns and jokes, hitherto
peaceably resting in the burial-ground in Portugal Street, will now be
disturbed to make way for the new buildings of King's College Hospital.
Surely "Old Joe" ought not to be carted away, and _shot_ as rubbish.
Some plain memorial of him might soon be raised, if an appeal were made
to the public; and if every one whose conscience told him he had ever
been indebted to Miller, would subscribe only a penny to the memorial
fund, the requisite sum would soon be collected.
JAYDEE.
_Hints to Book-buyers._--Inquirers buy books on subjects which they
have, at the time, no particular intention of closely investigating:
when such intention afterwards arises, they begin to collect more
extensively. But it often happens, I suspect, that it does not come into
their heads to examine what they have already got, as to which their
memory is not good, because their acquisitions were not made under any
strong purpose of using them. The warning which suggests itself is as
follows: Always remember to examine the old library as if it were that
of a stranger, when you begin any new subject, and before you buy any
new books.
Here is another warning, not wholly unconnected with the former: Never
judge of a book, that is, of all which comes between the two boards, by
the title-page, which may be only the _first_ title-page, in spite of
the lettering at the back. Persons who bind their books will not always
be bound themselves, either by law of congruity or convenience. I once
hunted shop and stall for a speech delivered in parliament a century
ago, not knowing that I had long possessed it bound up at the end of a
Latin summary of Leibnitzian philosophy. At the risk of posthumously
revealing my real name, I will add that I wrote on the fly-leaf that I
was not the blockhead who bound the book.
M.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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