The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 541, April 7, 1832Various
General
The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 541, April 7, 1832
Various
Popular literature -- Great Britain -- Periodicals
His literary tastes bear a certain resemblance to, and have a certain
analogy with, his gustatory--proving the truth of that intimate connexion
between the stomach and the head, upon which physiologists are so
delighted to dwell. In poetry the heresies and escapades of Lord Byron are
too much for him, although as a Peer and a gentleman he always speaks well
and deferentially of him. Shelley he can make nothing of, and therefore
says, which is the strict truth in one sense at least, that he has never
read him. He praises Campbell, Crabbe, and Rogers, and shakes his head at
Tom Moore; but Pope is his especial favourite; and if anything in verse
has his heart, it is the "Rape of the Lock." Peter Pindar he partly
dislikes, but Anstey, the "Bath Guide," is high in his estimation; and
with him "Gray's Odes" stand far above those of Collins'. Of the "Elegy in
a Country Church" he thinks, as he says, "like the rest of the world."
"Shenstone's Pastorals" he has read. Burns he praises, but in his heart
thinks him a "wonderful clown," and shrugs his shoulders at his extreme
popularity. He says as little about Shakespeare as he can, and has by
heart some half dozen lines of Milton, which is all he really knows of him.
In the drama he inclines to the "unities;" and of the English Theatre
"Sheridan's School for Scandal," and Otway's "Venice Preserved," or Rowe's
"Fair Penitent," are what he best likes in his heart. John Kemble is his
favourite actor--Kean he thinks somewhat vulgar. In prose he thinks Dr.
Johnson the greatest man that ever existed, and next to him he places
Addison and Burke. His historian is Hume; and for morals and metaphysics
he goes to Paley and Dr. Reid, or Dugald Stewart, and is well content. For
the satires of Swift he has no relish. They discompose his ideas; and he
of all things detests to have his head set a spinning like a tetotum,
either by a book or by anything else. Bishop Berkeley once did this for
him to such a tune, that he showed a visible uneasiness at the mention of
the book ever after. In Tristram Shandy, however, he has a sort of
suppressed delight, which he hardly likes to acknowledge, the magnet of
attraction being, though he knows it not, in the characters of Uncle Toby,
Corporal Trim, and the Widow Wadman. His religious reading is confined to
"Blair's Sermons," and the "Whole Duty of Man," in which he always keeps a
little slip of double gilt-edged paper as a marker, without reflecting
that it is a sort of proof that he has never got through either. His
Pocket Bible always lies upon his toilet table. He knows a little of
Mathematics in general, a little of Algebra, and a little of Fluxions,
which is principally to be discovered from his having Emmerson, Simpson,
and Bonnycastle's works in his library. In classical learning he confesses
to having "forgotten" a good deal of Greek; but sports a Latin phrase upon
occasion, and is something of a critic in languages. He prefers Virgil to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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