Book Description:
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CURSORY OBSERVATIONS, THE PRESENT EDITOR, THE INVENTION OF THE ART OF PRINTING. In the meagre Life of Thomson prefixed by Murdoch to his Edition of this Poet's Works, it is unnoticed that Thomson was an Editor of the Areopagitica. A fact we may conclude from their silence to have been equally unknown to the Earl of Buchan, and to his Other Biographers; who appear to have been also ignorant, that the Translation into English of ' the Commentaries of the Emperor ' Marcus Antoninus, by James Thomson, ' Gent.' 8vo. 1747, was by the hand of the Poet; as my Informant was told by Mr Floyer Sydenham. In 1738, a translation of Cromwell's Manifesto against the Spaniards, which was drawnup in Latin by Milton, and first printed in 1655, was published by Millar, who was Thomsons Publisher. To this Pamphlet, his Britannia was appended. As I conjecture, he rendered this State Paper into English, and republished this poetical invective with a hope to assist, like Glover, in exciting a national clamour for a Spanish War: then a leading object of the Parliamentary Party in opposition with whom he had associated himself. Thomsons reprint of this Speech for the Liberty of unlicensed Printing came out not long after the Act had passed requiring all dramatic Writings to be licensed by the Chamberlain of the King's Household, prior to their representation in a Theatre : without any doubt it was this Statute which suggested the propriety of this republication at that juncture. The importance of the subject will always stamp a value on this spirited Preface, while, as an original composition in prose by the Poet of the Seasons it is matter for literary curiosity. Is it not singular that Thomson should no where have touched on the Art of Printingin the expanded poem which he entitled L...
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