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The Essays of Elia, a Selection by W. Archer
The Essays of Elia a Selection by W Archer Author:Charles Lamb General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1909 Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million book... more »s for free. Excerpt: OXFORD IN THE VACATION Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this article -- as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cursory eye (which, while it reads, seems as though it read not), never fails to consult the quis sculpsit in the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to be a Vivarcs, or a Woollet -- methinks I hear you exclaim, Reader, Who is Elia ? Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some half- forgotten humours of some old clerks defunct, in an old house of business long since gone to decay, doubtless you have already set me down in your mind as one of the selfsame college a votary of the desk -- a notched and crept scrivener -- one that sucks his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, through a quill. Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess that it is my humour, my fancy -- in the forepart of the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires some relaxation -- (and none better than such as at first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved studies) -- to while away some good hours of my time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the first place . . . and then it sends you home with such increased appetite to your books . . . not to say that your outside sheets, and waste wrappers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, essays -- so that the very parings of a counting-house are, in some sort, the settings- up of an author. The enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning among the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks...« less