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The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith (3); Letters From a Citizen of the World to His Friends in the East
The Miscellaneous Works of Oliver Goldsmith Letters From a Citizen of the World to His Friends in the East - 3 Author:Oliver Goldsmith Volume: 3 General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1825 Original Publisher: A. and W. Galignani and Jules Didot Subjects: English literature 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... more » you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: LETTER XXX. From the Same. By my last advices from Moscow, I find the caravan has not yet departed for China : I still continue to write, expecting that you may receive a large number of my letters at once. In them you will find rather a minute detail of English peculiarities, than a general picture of their manners or dispositions. Happy it were for mankind if all travellers would thus, instead of characterizing a people in general terms, lead us into a detail of those minute circumstances which first influenced their opinion. The genius of a country should be investigated with a kind of experimental inquiry : by this means, we should have more precise and just notions of foreign nations, and detect travellers themselves when they happened to form wrong conclusions. My friend and I repeated our visit to the club of authors; where, upon our entrance, we found the members all assembled, and engaged in a loud debate. The poet, in shabby finery, holding a manuscript in his hand, was earnestly endeavouring to persuade the company to hear him read the first book of an heroic poem, which he had composed the day before. But against this all the members very warmly objected. They knew no reason why any member of the club should be indulged with a particular hearing, when many of them had published whole volumes which had never been looked in. They insisted, that the law should be observed where reading in company was expressly noticed. It was in vain that the poet pleaded the peculiar merit of his piece; he spoke...« less