The Spectator, Volume 1: Eighteenth-Century Periodical EssaysSteele, Richard, Sir
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The Spectator, Volume 1: Eighteenth-Century Periodical Essays
Steele, Richard, Sir
English essays -- 18th century -- Periodicals
But the manner of a Lady's Employing her self usefully in Reading shall
be the Subject of another Paper, in which I design to recommend such
particular Books as may be proper for the Improvement of the Sex. And as
this is a Subject of a very nice Nature, I shall desire my
Correspondents to give me their Thoughts upon it.
C.
[Footnote 1: very delightful]
[Footnote 2: John Ogilby, or Ogilvy, who died in 1676, aged 76, was
originally a dancing-master, then Deputy Master of the Revels in Dublin;
then, after the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion, a student of Latin and
Greek in Cambridge. Finally, he settled down as a cosmographer. He
produced translations of both Virgil and Homer into English verse. His
'Virgil', published in 1649, was handsomely printed and the first which
gave the entire works in English, nearly half a century before Dryden's
which appeared in 1697.
The translation of 'Juvenal' and 'Persius' by Dryden, with help of his
two sons, and of Congreve, Creech, Tate, and others, was first published
in 1693. Dryden translated Satires 1, 3, 6, 10, and 16 of Juvenal, and
the whole of Persius. His Essay on Satire was prefixed.
'Cassandra' and 'Cleopatra' were romances from the French of Gautier de
Costes, Seigneur de la Calprenède, who died in 1663. He published
'Cassandra' in 10 volumes in 1642, 'Cleopatra' in 12 volumes in 1656,
besides other romances. The custom was to publish these romances a
volume at a time. A pretty and rich widow smitten with the 'Cleopatra'
while it was appearing, married La Calprenède upon condition that he
finished it, and his promise to do so was formally inserted in the
marriage contract. The English translations of these French Romances
were always in folio. 'Cassandra', translated by Sir Charles Cotterell,
was published in 1652; 'Cleopatra' in 1668, translated by Robert
Loveday. 'Astraea' was a pastoral Romance of the days of Henri IV. by
Honoré D'Urfe, which had been translated by John Pyper in 1620, and was
again translated by a Person 'of Quality' in 1657. It was of the same
school as Sir Philip Sydney's 'Arcadia', first published after his death
by his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, in 1590, and from her, for
whom, indeed, it had been written, called the Countess of Pembroke's
Arcadia.
Sir Isaac Newton was living in the 'Spectator's' time. He died in 1727,
aged 85. John Locke had died in 1704. His 'Essay on the Human
Understanding' was first published in 1690. Sir William Temple had died
in 1699, aged 71.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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