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Original Leaves from Famous Books
Show more"Francis Bacon presents a paradox. He is celebrated by many as the earliest thinker to grasp the implication of the scientific method. Bacon nevertheless rejected the most celebrated scientific discoveries of his own time and opposed the Copernican system with particular severity. Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, remarked that Bacon wrote science more like a Lord Chancellor than a scientist. Bacon, however, persistently attacked scholasticism, for he wished to deliver the world from Aristotelianism, and did much with his persuasive writing to substitute for it the inductive method. The De Augmentis Scientiarum is an expansion of Bacon's earlier work, The Advancement of Learning, first published in 1605. It was part of a tremendous project, The Great Renewal, which was left far from complete. In the preface Bacon wrote, "I have propounded my opinion, naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgment by confutations." The New Atlantis,written in 1627 is a scientific Utopia; the central establishment was the so-called House of Solomon, the laboratory of co-operating scientists honored above all other men. In Wisdom of the Ancients, he tries to explain ancient fables by ingenious allegories. Bacon polished all his prose sentences until they reached a "shining beauty that was most poetic." His purpose was "teaching men to think more wisely" and his motto was, "discriminate". This work was printed by John Haviland. The title page was composed in Latin to conform with the text. Restrictions on book printing were so stringent at this time that the period has been called the darkest in the history of English printing". (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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Show more"Miguel de Cervantes, poet, novelist, and dramatist, was endowed with a rich imagination, keen wit, penetrating intellect and great knowledge of life and mankind. Poverty had forced him to enlist in war service against the Turks and African Corsairs. He has captured and enslaved for seven years before being ransomed. These experiences seemed to strengthen the natural faculties of Cervantes. In 1605, when the author was fifty-eight years of the age, the first part of Don Quixote, the work that immortalized his name, appeared. Havelock Ellis in his easy on Don Quixote writes, "It leads into an atmosphere in which the ideal and the real are at home. It blends together the gravest and gayest things in the world... It is a story that a child may enjoy a tragic comedy that only the wisest can understand... It has entered into the lives of the people of every civilized land; it has become part of our human civilization". Don Quixote, 'the most cosmopolitan, the most universal of books', has six-hundred and sixty-seven other personages in addition to the two famous characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Not one of them is a villain. It is a coincidence that a Shakespeare's King Lear appeared the same year as Cervantes' Don Quixote- and that both these authors died on the same day in 1615. This third Madrid edition, printed in 1608 by Juan de la Cuesta, is a known as the first "Academic" edition since the Madrid Academy considered it of great textual importance. Printing was at a ebb at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Margaret Stillwell, commenting on this facts, adds, "If Cervantes had been born when the Spanish states were in ascendency, who knows what stunning format some sixteenth century printer might have produced for Don Quixote!". (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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Show more"In sheer literary excellence, it is hardly conceivable that the bible of 1611 known as the King James Authorized Version will never be surpassed. The scholars and the linguists who worked for seven years on this version spared no pains to make it as perfect as they could. It was planned for the average man and woman. They did not disdain, as stated in the preface, "to bring back to the anvil that which we have hammered". The style is an evolution, "a revision of revisions" of the bible made during the sixteenth century in England. It rests largely on the simple and energetic diction of Tyndale's translation of the New Testament, first printed in Germany in the year 1525. The predominance of Saxon words is very remarkable. In the preface, drawn up by Dr. Miles Smith, later bishop of Gloucester, the authors disclaimed all originality and wrote, "We never thought from the beginning... to make of a bad one a good one... but to make a good one better or out of many good ones principal good one." Many great English authors give unstinted praise to this Bible. Macaulay says, "If everything else in our language should perish this book would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power". Tennyson says "The Bible ought to be read, were it only for the sake of the grand English in which it is written, an education in itself". However, it was slow to win its ultimate position of unquestionable supremacy. King James deserves little credit for this work which bears his name. Barker, the printer, advanced considerable money to the editors during the period of writing. The nickname, The "He" Bible, was given to the first printing because of the wording in Ruth III:15, "and he went into the city". The second issue printed "she"." (Ege, Otto F.) With the Apocrypha
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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Show more"It has been the privilege of few human beings to enjoy the breadth and variety of personal experiences of life that were the lot of England's first great poet, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340-1400). He was a page in the royal household, prisoner of war, foreign diplomat, collector of customs, member of Parliament and clerk of the King's works. His personal background and wide reading in Latin, French and Italian ("of bokes rede I ofte, as I you tolde") , is mirrored in his Canterbury Tales. According to Dryden, "The matter and the manner of these tales and of their telling are so suited to their different Education, Humor and Calling, that each would be improper in any other mouth". These tales represent almost every type of medieval literature: the pious tale, the saint's legend, the sermon, the metrical romance and the romantic epic. The Canterbury Tales is Chaucer's most famous and varied work. Troilus and Criseyde, the most finished work of Chaucer, is one of the finest narratives in the English language. The poem, while dealing with the unimportant event of the Trojan war, becomes a great psychological study of the dealing character, Troilus, son of King Priam, and of his love of his widow Criseyde. In mood, the work ranges from gay wit to tragic grief. Chaucer's Romaunt of the Roses is a masterful translation of the great French allegory of refined love. "Adam Islip printed in London from the year 1594 to 1603. His first edition of Chaucer?s work was issued in 1598. Many "reforms" and "improvements" were made in the second Islip edition, "Sentences and proverbs noted... obscure words prooued, the Latine and French not Englished by the Chaucer, translated". (Ege, Otto F.)
Original Leaves from Famous Books
Otto F. Ege Collection
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