A World of Wonders

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

(Difference between revisions)

Revision as of 19:57, 11 August 2020

Nota if any mo'lest mind shall (haply) take offence at some of his (Henri Estiene's) broad speechen, or shall thin ce thai they might haue bin better spared.· I shall desire hiin to consider that it is not so easie a matter to find modest words to expresse immodest things : as himself e sait h Chap, 34. § 2. (quoted on my title page) that he hath but laid forth the Hues of Popish Prelates, as Suetonius is said to haue written the Hues of the Emperours, Eadem libértate qua ipsi vixerunt : and that there is no reason that some should commit their villany with impunity ; and that no man may speake against it with modesty : or that writers should be counted baudy Bales (that is, knaues) for publishing it, they honest men who practise it. As for those wit' foundred and letter-stricken students, 1 mean those cloudy spirits that are so wedded to the Muses, that they become enemies to the Graces, and can relish no discourse except it be full fraught and farced with Ob. and Sol. Videtur quod sic : probatur quod non, &c. Let them (a Gods name) enioy their Dunses and Dorbels, their Banes and Bambres, their Royards and blind bayards : so they measure vs not by their owne meat wand (making their minds the modell for all men) but giue vs leaue to vse our liberty, and to imitate the practise of prudent Physitians, who apply the medicine to the malady, with particular respect of the patients temper ,· not giuing the same potion to a queasie and a Steele stomach. For euery plummet is not for euery sound, nor euery line for euery leuel. All meats are not for euery mans mouth : nor all liquors for euery mans liking. The ignorant multitude and profound Clarks are not to be perswaded with the same arguments. For popular perswanon the learned prise not : and deepe demonstration the simple pierce not. They must also remember what Saint Augustine saith, Vtile est plures libros a pluribus fieri, diuerso stylo, non diuersa fide, etiam de quæstionibus ijsdem, vt ad plurimos res ipsa perueniat, ad alios sic, ad alios autem sic. (De Trink, lib. ï. cap. 3). That is, It is good that many bookes should be written by many men, & that of the same argument, in a different style, but not of a different faith : that so the same truth may be conueyed to many : to some after this manner, to some after that.

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop

Featured:

Rhombicuboctahedron by Leonardo da Vinci

A World of Wonders, The Epistle to the Reader.

Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "A World of Wonders" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Retrieved from "http://artandpopularculture.com/A_World_of_Wonders"

A World of Wonders

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Revision as of 19:57, 11 August 2020

Views

Personal tools

Search

Metas

Navigation

-{{Template}}
+{| class="toccolours" style="float: left; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 2em; font-size: 85%; background:#c6dbf7; color:black; width:30em; max-width: 40%;" cellspacing="5"
+| style="text-align: left;" |
-===Epigraphs===
-Voulant doncqucs (je vostre humble esclave) accroistre vos passetemps dadvantage, vous
-offre de présent un aultre livre de mesme billon, sinon qu'il est peu plus équitable et digne de
-foi que n'estoit l'aultre. Car ne croyez (si ne voulez errer à vostre escient) que j'en parle
-comme les Juifs de la loi. Je ne sub né en telle planète, et ne m'advint onques de mentir ou
-assurer chose qui ne fust véritable. J'en parle comme un gaillard onocrotale, voire, dis-je,
-crotenotaire dçs martyrs amans, et croquenotaire de amours : j'en parle comme sainct Jean de
-l'Apocalypse, quod vidimus testamur,
-Rabelais.  [[Pantagruel]], Prologue.
->■■«<
-Après le plaisir de posséder des livres, il n'y en a guère de plus doux que celui d'en parler, et
-de communiquer au public ces innocentes richesses de la pensée qu'on acquiert dans la culture
-des lettres.
-[[Charles Nodier]]. [[Mélanges tirés d'une petite bibliothéque]] Préface.
-There is not perhaps any man so good a judge of the difficulty of writing a book, as an
-actual author. He soon discovers how many qualifications are necessary, how much science
-is required, and which are the points of most' difficult access. He soon finds out his own
-deficiencies ; and, as regards his powers, that some difficulties may be insurmountable. That
-essay, which sometimes originates in study and amusement, gets insensibly into growth, and
-is perpetuated. For, having been undertaken in the spirit of an inquirer, it is frequently carried
-on in the capacity of a student. This student, however, soon assumes the master, and pro-
-nounces his decisions on critical subjects, as authoritatively as if all learning and languages
-were at his finders ends. ....
-vi.                                                  EPIGRAPHS.
-No man's industry is mis-spent, if he merely clear the obstruction from any path ; and the
-very attempt to shew what \s right, frequently exposes that which is wrong; so that the
-immediate blunders of one person rectify those of another ; and he ever must deserve well of
-society who attempts improvement.....
-Bibliography is a dry occupation,—a caput mortuum,—it is a borrowed production, which
-brings very little grist to the mill ; and so difficult and tedious is the object, of laying before our
-eyes alt the real or reported copies or editions of the works enumerated, that almost every line
-of our reports may be suspected of falsehood. How are we to collect, how to produce, how to
-examine, the originals ? Many books are so scarce, so sequestered in private hands, or in the
-mansions of the great, that even thî keen eyes of lucriferous booksellers cannot find them.
-And if they cannot, who the deuce can ?
-[[James Atkinson]], [[Medical Bibliography]], preface
- every man of our Saxon race endowed with full health and strength, there is committed,
-as if it were the price he pays for these blessings, the custody of a restless demon, for which he
-is doomed to find ceaseless excitement, either in honest work, or some less profitable or more
-mischievous occupation. Countless have been the projects devised by the wit of man to open
-up for this fiend fields of exertion great enough for the absorption of its tireless energies, and
-none of them is  hopeful than the great world of books, if the demon is docile enough to
-be coaxed into it. Then will its erratic restlessness be sobered by the immensity of the sphere
-of exertion, and the consciousness that, however vehemently and however long it may struggle,
-the resources set before it will not be exhausted when the life to which it is attached shall have
-faded away ; and hence, instead of dreading the languor of inaction, it will have to summon
-all its resources of promptness and activity to get ovar any considerable portion of the ground
-within the short space allotted to the life of man.
-[[John Hill Burton]]. [[The Book-Hunter]], p. 106.
-I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too
-low. I can read anything which I call a book. There are things in that shape which I cannot
-allow for such.
-In this catalogue of books which are  books—biblia a-biblia—I reckon Court Calendars,
-Directories, Pocket Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on the back, Scientific
-EPIGRAPHS.                                                         VU.
-Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at Large : the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beattie,
-Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes which " no gentleman's library should be
-without :" the Histories of Flavius Josephus (that learned Jew), and Paley's Moral Philo-
-sophy. With these exceptions, I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a taste so
-Catholic, so unexcluding.
-[[Charles Lamb]] [[Last Essays of Elia]].
-Vous voyez que, pour être, comme vous aussi, un Amoureux du Livre (et j'ai fait mes
-preuves depuis cinquante ans), je ne suis ni exclusif, ni intolérant, et que je ne contrains pas
-les gens à n'aimer que certains livres, à ne lire que les bons ; je ne les invite pas même à
-détruire, à brûler les mauvais, car, en ma qualité d' Amoureux du Livre, en général, j'ai des
-préférences et des répugnances ; j'ai des passions et des illusions, ainsi que tous les amoureux,
-mais je pense que les plus mauvais livres ont leur raison d'être et leur utilité relative, comme
-les poisons parmi les végétaux, comme les bêtes féroces parmi les animaux, comme les
-démons parmi les puissances du monde invisible. Il est vrai qu'à mon âge l'amoureux se
-métamorphose en philosophe.
-[[Paul Lacroix]]. ''[[Les amoureux du livre]]'', Préface.
-Omnes ! Omnes ! let others ignore what they may ;
-I make the poem of evil also—I commemorate that part also ;
-I am myself just as much evil as good, and my nation is—And I say
-there is in fact no evil j
-(Or if there is, I say it is just as important to you, to the land,
-or to me, as anything else.)
-[[Walt Whitman]]. [[Leaves of Grass]]
-.....î=3^»î«^'---------------------------------
-For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain-a potencie of life in them to be as
-active as that soule was whose progeny they are ; nay they do preserve as in a violi the purest
-efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them......
-VUL                                                EPIGRAPHS.
-For books are as meats and viands are, some of good, some of evill substance ; and yet God
-in that unapocryphall vision, said without exception, Rise Peter, kill and eat, leaving the choice
-to each mans discretion. Wholesome meats to a vitiated stomack differ little or nothing from
-unwholesome ; and best books to a naughty mind are not unappliable to occasions of evill. Bad
-meats will scarce breed good nourishment in the healthiest concoction ; but herein the difference
-is of bad books, that they to a discreet and judicious Reader serve in many respects to discover,
-to confute, to forewarn, and to illustrate......
-Since therefore the knowledge and survay of vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting
-of human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirmation of truth, how can we more
-safely, and with lesse danger scout into the regions of sin and falsity then by reading all manner
-of tractats, and hearing all manner of reason ? And this is the benefit which may be had of
-books promiscuously read.
-[[Milton]].        [[Areopagitica]].
-L'Amour, la Galanterie & même le Libertinage ont de tous temps fait un article si considér-
-able dans la vie de la plupart des hommes, & surtout des gens du monde, que l'on ne connôi-
-troit qu'imparfaitement les mœurs d'une nation, si l'on négîigeoit un objet si important.
-[[Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire du dix-huitième siècle]], Avertissement.
-Il y a des gens qui, si on leur donnait à disséquer un cadavre, ne verraient qu'une chose,
-c'est qu'il est nu. Ces esprits sont tellement sales qu'ils en sont bêtes, ou sont tellement bêtes
-qu'ils en sont sales. D'un livre, si mauvais qu'il soit (quelqu'un l'a dit, je crois que c*est tout
-le monde), on peut tirer quelque chose de bon.
-Je suppose une chose immonde, un corps en putréfaction : l'homme de science ne reculera
-pas d'horreur ; la science est belle, car elle est utile. Je mets cette îmmondioe au creuset de
-l'analyse et de l'observation, et j'en sépare les principes différents. Faisons de la chimie intel-
-lectuelle j cherchons comment ces principes de purs sont devenus corrompus ; et cherchons
-comment on pourra les ramener à leur premier état. Les éléments que nous analysons sont
-remplis d'un venin corrosif pour les faibles cerveaux j cherchons à neutraliser ces mauvaises
-influences. On empêche bien la décomposition des cadavres, ne peut-on empêcher la
-décomposition des intelligences ? Si les faibles savaient, si nous savions tous qu'un vice a
-mauvais goût et fait du mal, avec quel bonheur nous le fuirions I II suffit de voir certaines
-ignominies telles qu'elles sont pour les avoir en haine.
-[[Adèle Esquiros]] [[Les Marchands d'amour]], p. 189,
-EPIGRAPHS,                                                           IX.
 Nota if any mo'lest mind shall (haply) take offence at some of his (Henri Estiene's) broad
 speechen, or shall thin ce thai they might haue bin better spared.· I shall desire hiin to consider
 different style, but not of a different faith : that so the same truth may be conueyed to many :
 to some after this manner, to some after that.
+|}
+{{Template}}
 [[A World of Wonders]], The Epistle to the Reader.
-----------------Φ-----------------
-Nous n'essayerons pas de préciser, après d'autres plumes éloquentes, ce que c'est qu'un
-livre ; mais ce que nous pensons devoir dire, c'est ce qu'un livre n'est pas.
-Un livre ne pourra jamais entrer en concurrence avec ce soi-disant but utilitaire, que lui
-imposent des auteurs incorruptibles. Un livre ne sera jamais, du moins nous le croyons, une
-ventouse qu'on puisse appliquer aux sociétés malades pour les guérir. Ce n'est point non plus
-une boîte à pilules avec laquelle on peut administrer aux hommes îa morale par petite dose?,
-excepté pour ces étranges philanthropes qui rêvent actuellement de transformer l'art en un
-emplâtre pour les plaies humaines.
-b
-X.                                                   EPIGRAPHS.
-Non, un livre n'est point conçu dans l'officine d'unepharmacie. Le cabinet ou la mansarde
-dans lesquels il vient au monde ne sont hantés que par des visions délicates qui assiègent le
-penseur. L'artiste inconnu ou le riche lettré qui l'enfantent en polissent la forme avec le même
-amour. Souvent c'est un pan de draperie moulée qui suffit à éveiller dans l'esprit l'image des
-beautés secrètes qu'elle a dû couvrir, et chaque philistin de flétrir cette aspiration vers la per-
-fection plastique, de convoitise brutale. Autant vaudrait faire le procès de Phidias parce qu'il
-a touché au marbre, ou celui de Péricles parce qu'il a disposé pour lui des fonds de la répub-
-lique,—la vraie, celle-là.
-Mme. [[Marie Quivogne]]. ^{¿tOÍrt ' tt ', Introduction.
-......; for that which chiefly makes Bawdry in so ill Repute, is because it has been
-always believ'd an Incentive to such Desires, as Divines tell us, shou'd rather be curb'd than
-encourag'd, and apt to bring Thoughts into peoples Heads, which ought not, and perhaps
-otherwise never wou'd come there ; now if barefac'd Bawdry has this particular property, that
-it does not hint these forbidden Thoughts, nor stir those unlawful Desires, but on the contrary
-flattens and stifles 'em, 'tis much more innocent, and consequently fitter to be us'd, or at least
-to be pardon'd, than any other.
-[[Robert Wolseley]]. Prefaceto WãXttttíxtitta.
-But obscene Words too grosse to move Desire,
-Like heaps of Fuel do but choak the Fire.
-That Author's Name has underserved Praise,
-Who pal'd the Appetite he meant to raise.
-Rochester.
 {{GFDL}}