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A Tale for a Chimney Corner; And Other Essays From the "indicator" 1819-1821
A Tale for a Chimney Corner And Other Essays From the indicator 18191821 Author:Leigh Hunt General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1875 Original Publisher: J. C. Hotten 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 se... more »lect from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: ESSAYS BY LEIGH HUNT. SOCIAL GENEALOGY. IT is a curious and pleasant thing to consider, that a link of personal acquaintance can be traced up from the authors of our own times to those of Shakspeare, and to Shak- speare himself. Ovid, in recording with fondness his intimacy with Propertius and Horace, regrets that he had only seen Virgil (Trist., Book IV. v. 51). But still he thinks the sight of him worth remembering. And Pope, when a child, prevailed on some friends to take him to a coffee-house which Dryden frequented, merely to look at him ; which he did, to his great satisfaction. Now, such of us as have shaken hands with a living poet, might be able, perhaps, to reckon up a series of connecting shakes to the very hand that wrote of Hamlet, and of Falstaff, and of Desdemonn. With some living poets, it is certain. There is Thomas Moore, for instance, who knew Sheridan. Sheridan knew Johnson, who was the friend of Savage, who knew Steele, who knew Pope. Pope was intimate with Congreve, and Congreve with Dryden. JPryden is said to have visited Milton. Milton is said to have known Davenant; and to have been saved by himfrom the revenge of the restored court, in return for having saved Davenant from the revenge of the Commonwealth. But if the link between Dryden and Milton, and Milton and Davenant, is somewhat apocryphal, or rather dependent on tradition (for Richardson, the painter, tells us the latter from Pope, who had it from Betterton the actor, one of Davenant's company), it may be carried at once from Dryden to Davenant, with whom he was unquestionably intimate...« less