Reading Experience Database
1450-1945

Basic Search

Advanced Search

Record 21167

Reading Experience:

Evidence:
'I mentioned Sir John Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland", and his discoveries to the prejudice of Lord Russel and Algernon Sydney. Johnson. " Why, Sir, every body who had just notions of government thought them rascals before. It is well that all mankind now see them to be rascals." Boswell. "But, Sir, may not those discoveries be true without their being rascals?" Johnson. "Consider, Sir, would any of them have been willing to have had it known that they intrigued with France? Depend upon it, Sir, he who does what he is afraid should be known has something rotten about him. This Dalrymple seems to be an honest fellow; for he tells equally what makes against both sides. But nothing can be poorer than his mode of writing, it is the mere bouncing of a school boy: Great He! but greater She! and such stuff." I could not agree with him in this criticism; for though Sir John Dalrymple's style is not regularly formed in any respect, and one cannot help smiling sometimes at his affected grandiloquence, there is in his writing a pointed vivacity, and much of a gentlemanly spirit.'
Century: 1700-1799
Date: Until: 3 Apr 1773
Country: n/a
Time: n/a
Place: n/a
   
Type of Experience (Reader):
silent aloud unknown
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown
Type of Experience (Listener):
solitary in company unknown
single serial unknown

Reader/Listener/Reading Group:

Reader:James Boswell
Age Adult (18-100+)
Gender Male
Date of Birth 29 Oct 1740
Socio-economic group: Professional / academic / merchant / farmer
Occupation: writer and lawyer
Religion: n/a
Country of origin: Scotland
Country of experience: n/a
Listeners present if any:
(e.g. family, servants, friends, workmates)
n/a
Additional comments: n/a

 

Text Being Read:

Author: John Dalrymple
Title: Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland
Genre: History
Form of Text: Print: Book
Publication details: n/a
Provenance: unknown

 

Source Information:

Record ID: 21167  
Source - Print  
  Author: James Boswell
  Editor: R.W. Chapman
  Title: Life of Johnson
  Place of Publication: Oxford
  Date of Publication: 1980
  Vol: n/a
  Page: 508
  Additional comments: n/a

Citation: James Boswell, R.W. Chapman (ed.), Life of Johnson (Oxford, 1980), p. 508, http://can-red-lec.library.dal.ca/Arts/reading/recorddetails2.php?id=21167, accessed: 29 March 2024

Additional comments:

Originally published 1791.

 

 

Reading Experience Database version 2.0.  Page updated: 27th Apr 2016  3:15pm (GMT)