An Account of the Life and Writings of John Home (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1822 Excerpt: ... ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE OF MR JOHN HOME. The biography of literary men is generally little more than a chronological account of their works, with a few private anecdotes, which, except being connected with, and, as it were, ennobled by their works, it could not be an object to record. But with that connection in their favour, the else unvalued circumstances of their lives acquire an interest with the reader proportionate to that which the writings of the author have excited; and we are anxious to know every little occurrence which befel him who was giving, at the period when these occurrences took place, the product of his mind to the public. We are anxious to know how the world treated the man who was labouring for its instruction or amusement, as well as the effect Read at the Royal Society, on Monday, 22d June 1812. A which his private circumstances had on his literary productions, or the complexion, as one may term it, which those productions borrowed from the incidents of his life. The above considerations afford an apology for the narratives of the comparatively unimportant occupations which the world peruses with so much attention and interest; they help that personification of an author which the reader of his work so naturally indulges; and if they sometimes put that reader right in his estimate of the influence of genius or feeling upon conduct, they serve at the same time as a moral lesson on the subject, and mark, as it were, one of the unexpected shores or islands, sometimes it may be rocks or quicksands, on the chart of life. The subject of the Memoir which I now take the liberty of laying before the Society, is somewhat more entitled to notice than the common biography of mere literary men, from the peculiar circumstances in which the person of ...