Copy 1, Volume 1

The doctor &c / [Robert Southey].

  • Robert Southey
Date:
1834-1847
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The doctor &c / [Robert Southey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    you do, and look to yourself. But if you be^resolved to meddle, be sure have a care of catching cold, and keep to a moderate diet; for there is danger and jeopardy in it besides. Dr. Eachard. —For those faults of barbarism, Doric dialect, extemporanean stile, tautologies, apish imitation, a rhapsody of rags gathered together from several dung-hills, excrements of authors, toyes and fopperies, confusedly tumbled out, without art, invention, judgement, wit, learning, harsh, raw, rude, phantasticall, ab¬ surd, insolent, indiscreet, ill-composed, indigested, vain, scur- rile, idle, dull, and dry :—I confess all; (’tis partly affected ;) thou canst not think worse of me than I do of myself. ’Tis not worth the reading ! I yield it. I desire thee not to lose time in perusing so vain a subject. I should be peradventure loth myself to read him or thee so writing ; ’tis not operce pre- tium. All I say is this, that I have precedents for it. Burton. A foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms, figures, shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, motions, revolutions ; these are begot in the ventricle of memory, nourished in the womb of pia mater, and delivered upon the mellowing of the occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and I am thankful for it. Love’s Labour’s Lost. If the world like it not, so much the worse for them. Cowper.
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