Selections From the Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift: With a Preface and Notes (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Lane-Poole, Stanley

9780483512580: Selections From the Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift: With a Preface and Notes (Classic Reprint)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0483512583 ISBN 13: 9780483512580

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

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Excerpt from Selections From the Prose Writings of Jonathan Swift: With a Preface and Notes

One disadvantage that Swift shares with his con temporary Defoe is his bulk. There is certainly something deterring to many tastes in a classic, let him he never so famous, who cannot be comfortably lodged in less than nineteen sizeable volumes. Scott's second edition, 1824, is still,in spite of its want of method and accuracy, the standard text of Swift, and it has recently been luxuriously and only too faithfully reprinted without any diminution of its size. Nineteen volumes, with never a novel among them, or at best an allegorical tale or two, and for subject first and last one gigantic pillory of the human species, may fairly be allowed to make a severe demand upon the jaded appetite of the modern reader. The true book lover knows how to appreciate long editions; I am not, however, thinking at present of book lovers, but of book readers, who need as careful preparation as ever Yonlis or Bodoni bestowed upon their folios, though the preparation must be of a different or even opposite nature. Nineteen honest brown backs are dear to a lover of books, but they scare a mere reader, whose weaker faith must be fortified by small doses, and whose unaccustomed organs can only digest food when it has been well minced.

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