the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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Jacques Fracois Paul Alphonse, Abbe de Sade : Memoires pour la vie de Francois Petrarch

'I have spent a stupid day reading the Abbe de Sade's Memoirs of Petrarch. What a feeble whipster was this Petrarch with all his talents! To go dangling about, for the space of twenty years, puffing and sighing after a little coquette, whose charms lay briefly in the fervour of his imagination, and the art she had to keep him wavering between hope and despondency - at once ridiculous and deplorable - that he might write sonnets in her praise!'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas Carlyle      Print: Book

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