Gossip in a Library

by Edmund Gosse

There is surely no modern book so unsullied as this is by the modern spirit, none in which the desire to teach a lesson, to refer knowingly to topics of the day, or worst of all, to be incontinently funny, interferes less with the tender magic of Oriental fancy, or with the childlike, earnest faith in what is utterly outside the limits of experience. It belongs to that infancy of the world, when the happy guileless human being still holds that somewhere there is a flower to be plucked, a lamp to be rubbed, or a form of words to be spoken which will reverse the humdrum laws of Nature, call up unwilling spirits bound to incredible services, and change all this brown life of ours to scarlet and azure and mother-of-pearl. Little by little, even our children are losing this happy gift of believing the incredible, and that class of writing which seems to require less effort than any other, and to be a mere spinning of gold thread out of the poet's inner consciousness, is less and less at command, and when executed gives less and less satisfaction. The gnomes of Pope, the fays and "trilbys" of Nodier, even the fairy-world of Doyle, are breathed upon by a race that has grown up habituated to science. But even for such a race it must be long before the sumptuous glow and rich triumphant humour of The Shaving of Shagpat have lost all their attraction.

INDEX

ABBEY, Edwin A.
Abuses stript and whipt
Akenside, Mark
d'Alembert
Alfoxden, Wordsworth at
All for Love, Dryden's
Almahide, Mlle. de Scudéry's
Amasia, John Hopkins'
Amazon Queen, Weston's
Amboyna, Dryden's
Amory's Life of John Buncle, Thomas
Anthony, Earl of Orrery's Mr.
Arcadia, Sidney's
Ardelia (Lady Winchilsea)'s Poems
Arnauld, Antoine
Arnold, Matthew
Artamenes, La Calprenède's
Astrée, D'Urfé's
d'Aurevilly, Barbey
Austen, Jane
Autobiography of Leigh Hunt
Avison, Charles

BACON, Lord
Baldwin, William
Ballad of the Book Hunter, Lang's
Balzac, Honoré de
Bancroft's Sertorius
Banks, Sir Joseph
Barnacle Goose Tree, The
Barrington, Hon. Daines
Bayle
Beaumont, Peter Bell and Sir George
Behn, Mrs. Aphra
Bell, Professor Thomas,
Benjamin the Waggoner
Blener Hasset, Thomas
Boccaccio
Boethius
Boileau, Nicolas,
Boisrobert, François
Boitard, Louis
Bossuet, Jacques
Boswell, James
Bouilhet, Louis
Boxiana, Egan's
Boyle's Parthenissa
Bradshaw, Library of Henry
Britannia, Brooke's Discovery of Errors in,
Britannia, Camden's
British Princes, Howard's
Brooke, Christopher
Brooke, Ralph
Browne, Sir Thomas
Browne, William
Browning, Robert
Brummell, Beau
Brunfelcius, Otto
Buncle, Amory's Life of John
Burger's Lenore
Burke, Edmund
Barney, Dr.
Burney, Fanny
Burton, Sir Richard
Byron

CALLIMACHUS
Calprenède, La
Cambridge described by Camden
Camden's Britannia
Campbell, J. Dykes
Campion, Thomas
Carew, Thomas
Carlisle's Fortune Hunters
Carnival, Porter's
Cassandra, La Calprenède's
Cats
Caylus, Count
Chandler, Dr.
Chapelain
Charles I.
Cherwell Water-Lily, Faber's The
Church, Dean
Cibber, Theophilus
Citizen of the World, Goldsmith's
Clélie, La Calprenède's
Cleomina, Eliza Haywood's Secret History of
Cleopatra, La Calprenède's
Cleveland, Duchess of
Coleridge, S.T.
Collins, William
Congreve, William
Constant Couple, Farquhar's
Corcoran, Peter, i.e. J. H. Reynolds
Corneille, Pierre
Corneille, Thomas
Cornwall, Barry
Cory, William, see Johnson, William
Couches de L'Académie, Furetière's
Coventry, Rev. Francis
Coventry, Henry
Coypel, Drawings by
Croker, J.W.
Cromwell, Oliver
Crowne, John
"Crusions"
Cyrus, Le Grand

DARLINGTON, Earl of
David, Smart's Song to
Davies of Hereford, John
Death's Duel
De Boissat
Defoe, Daniel
Dennis, John
De Quincey, Thomas
Deshoulières, Mme.
Desmarais, Regnier
De Tabley, Lord
Dialogues, La Mothe le Vayer
Diary of a Lover of Literature, Green's
Dictionary, The Romance of a
Dioscorides of Anazarba,
D'Israeli, Isaac
D'Israeli's Coningsby
Dobson, Mr. Austin
Dodonaeus, Rembertus
Donne, Dr. John
Dryden, John
Dryden, Funeral of
Dunciad, Pope's
Dupuy, Mlle.
D'Urfé's Astrée
"Dwale" (nightshade)

EGANS'S Boxiana, Pierce Egoist, Meredith's The Elegy in Country Churchyard, Gray's England's Trust, F.W. Faber's England's Trust, Lord John Manners' England's Worthies, Winstanley's English Ballads, Lord John Manners' English Poets, Winstanley's Lives of Enquiry Concerning Virtue, Shaftesbury's Epistolary Poems of Charles Hopkins Epsom Wells, Shadwell's Excursion, Wordsworth's

FABER, Frederick William
Fall of Princes, Lydgate's
Fancy, The, J.H. Reynolds'
Farmer, Dr.
Farquhar, George
Fatal Friendship, Trotter's
Feast of the Poets, The
Ferdinand Count Fathom, Smollett's
Ferrers, George
Field, Barron
Fielding, Henry
Finch, Heneage (Earl of Winchilsea)
Finch, Poems of Anne (Lady Winchilsea)
FitzGerald, Edward
Fortune Hunters, Carlisle's The
Française, Histoire de l'Académie
Francion, Sorel's
Fuchsius, Leonard
Furetière, Antoine

GARDEN of Florence, Reynolds'
Gardiner, Lord Chancellor Stephen
Garrick, David
Garth, Dr.
Gentleman's Magazine, The
Gerard, John
Gibbon, Edward
Gibbons, Dr. (Physician)
Gifford, William
Gladstone, W.E.
Goldsmith, Oliver
Gombreville
Goose Tree, The
Grafton, Isabella, Duchess of
Gray, Thomas
Green, Thomas
Green's Diary of a Lover of Literature
Grierson, Professor
Grundtvig, Bishop
Gulliver's Travels, Swift

HANMER, Sir Thomas
Harrington's Oceana
Harvey, Rev. R.
Haslewood
Hawkesworth, John
Haywood, Eliza
Hazlitt, William
Heliodorus
Heraclitus
Herbal, Gerard's
——, Henry Lyte's translation of Dodonaeus'
——, Dr. Priest's translation of Dodonaeus'
Herrick, Robert
Hesketh (Yorkshire botanist)
Hesperides, Herrick's
Hill, Aaron
Hill, Dr. John
Hilliad, Smart's The
Histoire de l'Académie Française (The Hague Edn.)
Historic Fancies, Lord Strangford's
Hoare, William
Holland, Philémon
Hop Garden, Smart's The
Hopkins, Charles
Hopkins, Ezekiel, Bishop of Derry
Hopkins, John
Hove, F.H. Van (Engraver)
Howard, Hon. Edward
Humorous Lovers, Duke of Newcastle's
Hunt, Leigh
Hurd, Dr., Bishop of Worcester
Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon