Download Free The Letters Of Horace Walpole 1743 1750 Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online The Letters Of Horace Walpole 1743 1750 and write the review.

Reproduction of the original: The Letters of Horace Walpole by Horace Walpole
You were both so entertained with the old stories I told you one evening lately, of what I recollected to have seen and heard from my childhood of the courts of King George the First, and of his son the Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Second, and of the latter's princess, since Queen Caroline; and you expressed such wishes that I would commit those passages (for they are scarce worthy of the title even of anecdotes) to writing, that, having no greater pleasure than to please you both, nor any more important or laudable occupation, I will begin to satisfy the repetition of your curiosity. But observe, I promise no more than to begin; for I not only cannot answer that I shall have patience to continue, but my memory is still so fresh, or rather so retentive of trifles which first made impression on it, that it is very possible my life (turned of seventy-one) may be exhausted before my stock of remembrances; especially as I am sensible of the garrulity of old age, and of its eagerness of relating whatever it recollects, whether of moment or not. Thus, while I fancy I am complying with you, I may only be indulging myself, and consequently may wander into many digressions for which you will not care a straw, and which may intercept the completion of my design. Patience, therefore young ladies; and if you coin an old gentleman into narratives, you must expect a good deal of alloy. I engage for no method, no regularity, no polish. My narrative will probably resemble siege-pieces, which are struck of any promiscuous metals; and, though they bear the impress of some sovereign's name, only serve to quiet the garrison for the moment, and afterwards are merely hoarded by collectors and virtuosos, who think their series not complete, unless they have even the coins of base metal of every reign. As I date from my nonage, I must have laid up no state secrets. Most of the facts I am going to tell you though new to you and to most of the present age, were known perhaps at the time to my nurse and my tutors. Thus, my stories will have nothing to do with history. Luckily, there have appeared within these three months two publications, that will serve as precedents for whatever I am going to say: I mean Les Fragments of the Correspondence of the Duchess of Orleans, and those of the M`emoires of the Duc de St. Simon. Nothing more d`ecousu than both: they tell you what they please; or rather, what their editors have pleased to let them tell. In one respect I shall be less satisfactory. They knew and were well acquainted, or thought they were, with their personages. I did not at ten years old, penetrate characters; and as George 1. died at the period where my reminiscence begins, and was rather a good sort of man than a shining king; and as the Duchess of Kendal was no genius, I heard very little of either when he and her power were no more. In fact, the reign of George 1. was little more than the proem to the history of England Under the House of Brunswick. That family was established here by surmounting a rebellion; to which settlement perhaps the phrensy of the South Sea scheme contributed, by diverting the national attention from the game of faction to the delirium of stockjobbing; and even faction was split into fractions by the quarrel between the king and the heir apparent-another interlude, which authorizes me to call the reign of George 1. a proem to the history of the reigning House of Brunswick, so successively agitated by parallel feuds.
In Myth, Ritual and the Oral Jack Goody, one of the world's most distinguished anthropologists, returns to the related themes of myth, orality and literacy, subjects that have long been a touchstone in anthropological thinking. Combining classic papers with recent unpublished work, this volume brings together some of the most important essays written on these themes in the past half century, representative of a lifetime of critical engagement and research. In characteristically clear and accessible style, Jack Goody addresses fundamental conceptual schemes underpinning modern anthropology, providing potent critiques of current theoretical trends. Drawing upon his highly influential work on the LoDagaa myth of the Bagre, Goody challenges structuralist and functionalist interpretations of oral 'literature', stressing the issues of variation, imagination and creativity, and the problems of methodology and analysis. These insightful, and at times provocative, essays will stimulate fresh debate and prove invaluable to students and teachers of social anthropology.