Desultory thoughts in London Author:Charles Lloyd Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Extracts from the Introduction to the Retrospective Review. The design of this Review of past Literature had its origin in the decisively modern direction of the... more » reading of the present day—it is an attempt to recal the public from an exclusive attention to new books, by making the merits of old ones the subject of critical discussion. The interesting form and manner of the present Reviews it is intended to preserve, though frorr tlie nature of the work, and from our unfeigned horror of either political or personal invective, we shall neither pamper the depraved appetites of listless readers, by piquant abuse—nor'amuse one part of the public, by holding up another to scorn and mocker)'—at any rate, we shall not be driven to a resource of this description through a paucity of interesting matter which we may legitimately present to our readers. While the present Reviews are confined to the Books of the day, we have the liberty of ranging over the whole extent of modern literature. The literature of our own country, the most rich, varied, and comprehensive of any in the world, and replete with more interest to the English reader than any other, will have peculiar claims on our attention—and to it" will the pages of the " Retrospective" be zealously devoted; not howeveri to that portion of it whose sole recommendation is its antiquity, although w shall avail ourselves of such bibliograplucal information as will in any mannei illustrate the history of art, or the grand, though slow and silent march of mind. We shall not pay exclusive homage to the mighty in intellect—to those of heavenly mould, who, like the giants of old, are the offspring of the gods and the daughters of men—far from it—many others less imposing, whether in philosophy, poetry, or general literature, from whjch a...« less