Writers and Readers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1892. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... LECTURE I. T AM often amused by the confident air with -*. wnich not only chance readers, but even students of literature appoint, as it were, the books which are to be the delight of posterity. Posterity, it has been well said, is the author's friend. The writer who cannot catch the ear of his own public pleases himself with the thought that his voice will be prolonged by the echoes of time, and will sound the more loudly the farther it has to travel. Southey, who with all his great merits as an ardent and thorough student, is scarcely known to the present generation but by one or two ballads and one biography, was supported through the neglect which his works encountered by the confident belief that posterity would do him justice. He talks in one place "of exposing the real character and history of the Romish Church, systematically and irrefragably, which (he says) I can and will do, in books which will be read now and hereafter; which must make a part hereafter of every historical library, and which will live and act when I am gone." Speaking of the need under which he had always lived of gaining his livelihood by the pen, he says: "Under more favourable circumstances I might have accomplished more and better things. But when the grave-digger has put me to bed and covered me up, it will not be long before it will be perceived and acknowledged that there are few who have done so much." Of his poem of " Madoc" he writes: "Unquestionably the poem will stand and flourish. . . . William Taylor has said it is the best English poem that has left the press since the 'Paradise Lost'; indeed this is not exaggerated praise, for unfortunately there is no competition." His . "History of Brazil," he prophecies, "will ages hence be found am...