Word: books
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Dates: during 1873-1873
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THIS is, in compact form, a record of investigation and discovery, which shows how large and active is the army of workers in the interest of science. So comprehensive a work could not be entirely free from error, but it is almost so. As a book of reference it is invaluable, and can be by no means uninteresting to the general reader...
...been said before, or to wander off into anecdotes and instances, very interesting in themselves, but not good as arguments. We would gladly forgive a few more errors, or arguments which would provoke opposition, for the sake of greater originality. It is but fair to say that the book is worth reading, if only for the information which it furnishes upon many subjects which almost all Americans are interested in, though their knowledge of them may be somewhat confused, such as the peculiar characteristics of the Oxford and Cambridge universities, the advantages and disadvantages of the different professions in England...
...only to break out when the strength of his reputation renders him superior to the reviewers. But Kenelm Chillingly shows neither of these faults. It has all the vigor and novelty of a first attempt, and all the gracefulness and ease which only come after the writing of many books. In its hero Bulwer seems to be thoroughly at home, taking as much delight in him as any reader will do, and through him giving expression to the choicest bits of learning and wisdom which he had himself acquired throughout his long, busy, and thoughtful life. There is a picture...
...runs into egotism, self-conceit, and a "learned ignorance," which Socrates was the first to expose. It is of the first that Kenelm Chillingly is a type. It is the second that he takes pains to deride. We have no room to speak of the other characters of the book, - of Lilly, for whose death no one can lament, for by such a woman the hero would have been influenced in the direction of his weakness rather than in that of his strength; of Mivers, and his Londoner, so like in principle to a periodical nearer home. The incidents with...
...novels merely to get at the plot, to find out how the hero fell into this scrape, and how he was helped out of that, and by what device the heroine is enabled to survive the agony she suffers or the crime she commits, - to all such persons the book will prove a tedious one; but those who enjoy philosophizing of the pleasantest and lightest sort, illumined at every step by some thought as striking and original as true, will find all this and much more, in Kenelm Chillingly...