Robert Aris Willmott

Letters of Eminent Persons: Selected and Illustrated (Classic Reprint) Robert Aris Willmott

Publisher Marketing: Excerpt from Letters of Eminent Persons: Selected and Illustrated A history of letters would be a picture of the heart, under all its various aspects of hope and fear, generosity and envy, love and hatred, ambition and contentment. The picture would have many shadows, yet brightened and relieved by the gleams which the familiar confessions of friendship shed over the sternest physiognomy. We forget the intemperate zeal of Calvin in the gentler tones of his domestic intercourse. Cowper has left behind him the most interesting of autobiographies without the name; and a memoir of Petrarch might be composed from his poetry and his epistles. It is not from a single sketch, however, that our judgment should be formed; but only, since every letter is a portrait, more hastily or more elaborately designed, from a careful examination and comparison of many. The letters of Erasmus paint not the man alone, but the century; and the student of classical literature is ignorant of the mind of Scaliger and Casaubon, who has not seen it reflected in their correspondence. To trace the gradual progress of our language from its birth out of the Anglo-Saxon, through the numerous stages of its purification and embellishment by Chaucer, until its final completion in the golden age of Elizabethan literature, is the office of the historian. Nor is the task an easy or a satisfactory one. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.