The Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianae (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Comedy of the Noctes Ambrosianae Attributed. The truth is that the charge against Wil son rests on a misconception. Christopher North was egotistical, but Christopher North was a creation of the imagination. He represented to the world the invim cible Tory champion, before whose crutch the whole breed of Radicals and Whiglings and Cockneys fied as mists before the sun. It was impossible to endow this gouty Apollo with the frailties of mortal combat ants. Haughty scorn, immaculate wisdom, unassailable virtue, were the characteristics of the potent tyrant. We have as little right to say that Wilson was an egotist because Christopher North was egotistical (though, no doubt, in his old age, he could have looked the part admirably), as to say that Milton was immoral because he drew the devil. Men (whiggish and prig gish) may continue to resent, indeed, as indelicate and unbecoming, the licence of his fancy and the airy ex travagance of his rhetoric; but a juster and more catholic criticism confesses that in the wide realms of literature there is room for the grotesque gambols of Puck, for Ariel's moonlight flittings, for the imagina tive riot of Wilson and Heine and Jean Paul. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.