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Moral & Political Dialogues: With Letters on Chivalry & Romance
Moral Political Dialogues With Letters on Chivalry Romance Author:Richard Hurd 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: LETTERS CHIVALRY ROMANCE: Serving to iUuflratc fame Pafiages in the T H i R D Dialogue Guarda, che malfato, O gioveml vaghezza non ti meni Al maga... more »zine de le ciancie. ab faggit Fuggì quell incantalo alloggiamento. Auivi babitan le maghe, che incantando Fan traveder, e traudir ciafcuno. Tasso, CONTENTS of the Letters. Letter i.CJ"HE SubjeH propofed. n. Origin of Chivalry. in. Cbarakleriftics of, accounted for. iv. Heroic and Gothic manners, com- pared. v. their differences, noted. vi. Gothic manners more poetical, than the Heroic. vn. their effett on Spenser, Mil- Ton, Shakespear. vni. Faery Queen criticized—the me- thod of that poem explained and jufttfied. ix. Tasso's Gier. Lib. confidered— hijlory of the Italian poetry. x. Faery way of writing—vin- dicated. xi. Gothic poetry, whence fallen into difrepute. xii. Steps of its decline, traced. LETTERS CHIVALRY R .0 M A N C E. L E T T E R I. rTPH.E ages, we call barbarous, pre- -- fent us with many a fubject of curious fpeculation. What, for inftance, is more remarkable than the Gothic Chivalry ? or than the fpirit of RoMance, which took its rife from that fingular inftitution ? Nothing in human nature, my dear friend, is without its reafons. The modes and fafhions of different times may ap- Vol. III. O pear, pear, at firft fight, fantaftic and unaccountable. But they, who look nearly into them, difcover fome latent caufe of their production. " Nature once known, no prodigies remain," as fings our philofophical bard; but to come at this knowledge, is the difficulty. Sometimes a clofe attention to the workings of the human mind is fufficient to lead'tis to it: fometimes more than that, the diligent obfervation of what pafies. without us, is neceflary. . This laf...« less