Word: gibbon
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...Republic of Letters such literary greats as Henry Fielding, Johnson, Boswell, Gibbon and Byron appear freshly alluring. Author Kronenberger can take the measure of bent, spiteful Alexander Pope and awaken fresh interest in "the master of the scalpel and the poisoned dart [who] reclothed clichés of thought so vividly that they long ago became cliches of language." He can persuade the reader that gabby Letter Writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is worth another whirl: "She had very few friends, but time was one of them." And he can be shrewd about such old critically-untouchables as Robinson Crusoe...
Author Kronenberger has a nice way of seeing his subjects both as men and as writers, and, when the shoe fits (as in the case of Gibbon), as dullish people redeemed by works of genius. Quite clearly, Kronenberger's ideal is 18th century England, where style "was not just a matter of stance and stride, of paying a compliment or wearing a coat. It was something men commanded in the stress of business . . ." And in the stress of the business of criticism, Kronenberger commands an unmatched style. For he can balance a sentence as if it were a crown...
Virgil to Eliot. For a historian such as Gibbon (1737-94), says Lewis, it was only natural to see the chasm between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. "The partial loss of ancient learning and its recovery at the Renaissance were for him both unique events . . . But we have lived to see the second death of ancient learning. In our time something which was once the possession of all educated men has shrunk to being the technical accomplishment of a few specialists . . . "To Gibbon the literary change from Virgil to Beowulf . . . would have seemed greater than...
...Viking Paperbound Portables, offering generous and well-chosen selections from such writers as Mark Twain, Gibbon, Voltaire, D. H. Lawrence...
...Names. Wolfson also named candidates Nos. 4 and 5 to his proposed nine-man slate of Ward directors (the first three: Wolfson himself; Robert Black president of the White Motor Co. : William J. Hobbs, onetime Coca-Cola president). One was topflight Advertising Woman Bernice Fitz-Gibbon of New York, the famed sloganeer who originated Macy's "It's smart to be thrifty," and "Nobody, but nobody undersells Gimbels." The other: E. W. Endter, risen-from-the-ranks president of California Oil East Coast subsidiary of Standard Oil of California. Endter told reporters that he had resigned when forced...