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

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Dr Memes [pseud?] : [Life of William Cowper]

'I have omitted, of late, to set down the titles of - for want of a better name I must call them - books, that I have been reading these past months; chiefly because they are of such utter offal that there is no use in remembering so much as their names. Madame Pichler's "Siege of Vienna" ...; a life of Walter Scott, by one Allen, advocate, ... In truth the book is very presumptuous and very stupid; yet it is far excelled in both these respects by another I am reading now, a life of Cowper, by Dr Memes (bookseller's hack literator of that name). Not that the writer is without genius; for he has succeeded in making a book as repulsive as it is possible for a book giving anything like a narrative of Cowper's life to be.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: John Mitchel      Print: Book

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