Neville Cardus, on devising cultural self-improvement scheme, in Autobiography (1947): "'... one day I picked up a copy of Samuel Butler's Note Books and read the following: 'Never try to learn anything until the not knowing it has become a nuisance to you for some time ...' ' "
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Neville Cardus Print: Book
'I came home and read Hudibras and William Byrd ...'
Century: 1800-1849 Reader/Listener/Group: William Richard Grahame Print: Book
'I devoured poetry and nothing but poetry until I became insensible to poetry. Take an example; I happened upon some fat volumes of Campbell's "British Poets", the complete works of from four to eight poets in each volume which cost me 6d. apiece. They had shabby worn leather bindings, and the type was on the small side and closely set. But I ploughed through them, doggedly, as if reading for a bet, or an imposed task. One volume I remember contained the poetical works of Samuel Daniel, Browne, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Drummond (of Ha[w]thornden), John Donne, and some more minor ones. Another contained along with "also rans" Cowley, Milton and "Hudibras" Butler. And, I repeat, I ploughed through them with a stout heart, but little sense, and a dwindling understanding.'
Century: 1850-1899 Reader/Listener/Group: Thomas A. Jackson Print: Book
'And so I home to dinner, and thence abroad to Pauls churchyard and there looked upon the second part of "Hudibras", which I buy not but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cries so mightily up; though it hath not a good liking in me, though I had tried by twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty.'
Century: 1600-1699 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Pepys Print: Book
Letter to Collector MacVicar, May 30 1773 'I will no longer bewilder myself among figures, for I see you ready to compare me to Hudibras, "Who could not ope/ His mouth but out there flew a trope"?'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Anne Grant [nee MacVicar] Print: Book
'You shock me. Not by liking "The Way of all Flesh", but by liking "The Devil?s Garden" and "Fortitude" . . . . it is not excusable to lose your head about badness or mediocrity. About "The Devil?s Garden" there is nothing to be said, it simply does not exist. "Fortitude" is by a man who has written one real book ("Mr, Perrin & Mr. Traill") , but "Fortitude" is undoubtedly a failure.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
Monday 2 September 1929: 'I have just read a page or two out of Samuel Butler's notebooks to take the taste of Alice Meynell's life out of my mouth. One rather craves brilliance & cantankerousness. Yet I am interested; a little teased by the tight airless Meynell style; & then I think what they had that we had not -- some suavity & grace, certainly [comments further on Meynell's work, life and personality] [...] When one reads a life one often compares one's own life with it. And doing this I was aware of some sweetness & dignity in those lives compared with ours [...] Yet in fact their lives would be intolerable -- so insincere, so elaborate; so I think [goes on to comment further on Meynell family, and others' reminiscences of them]'.
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Virginia Woolf Print: Book
'I am extremely busy & my novel isn?t getting a fair chance. I solace myself with the "note books" of Samuel Butler.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Arnold Bennett Print: Book
[Pilkington having annoyed Swift by remembering one of his poems and reciting it to others, he decided to test her memory. She told him] 'I could repeat not only all his Works, but all [italics] Shakespear[end italics]'s, which I put to this Trial; I desir'd him to open any Part of it and read a Line, and I would engage to go on with the whole Speech; as we were in his Library, he directly made the Experiment: The Line he first gave me, he had purposely picked out for its singular Oddness:
[italics] Put rancours in the Vessel of my Peace [end italics] MacBeth
I readily went on with the whole Speech, and did so several times, that he try'd me with different Plays. The Dean then took down [italics] Hudibras [end italics], and order'd me to examine him in it, as he had done me in [italics] Shakespear [end itaics]; and, to my great Surprize, I found he remember'd every Line, from Beginning to End of it. I say, it surpriz'd me, because I had been misled by Mr [italics] Pope [end italics]'s Remark, That
[italics] Where beams of warm Imagination play
The Memory's soft Figures melt away [end italics] Essay on Criticism'.
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Jonathan Swift Print: Book
E. M. Forster to Alice Clara Forster, 9 April 1905:
'Elizabeth [employer] has lent me Erewhon which I am enjoying.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edward Morgan Forster Print: Book
'Sydney [Larkin's father] gave him free run of his library and his appetite for books grew enormously. "Thanks to my father", he wrote later: "our house contained not only the principal works of most main English writers in some form or other (admittedly there were exceptions, like Dickens), but also nearly-complete collections of authors my father favoured - Hardy, Bennett, Wilde, Butler and Shaw, and later on Lawrence, Huxley and Katherine Mansfield".'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Sydney Larkin Print: Book
'[Johnson said] "Hudibras" affords a strong proof how much hold political principles had then upon the minds of men. There is in "Hudibras" a great deal of bullion which will always last. But to be sure the brightest strokes of his wit owed their force to the impression of the characters which was upon men's minds at the time; to their knowing them at table and in the street; in short, being familiar with them; and above all, to his satire being directed against those whom a little while before they had hated and feared.'
Century: 1700-1799 Reader/Listener/Group: Samuel Johnson Print: Book
'Meeting held at 68 Northcourt Avenue
20th III 1935
Howard R. Smith in the chair
1. Minutes of last Meeting were read & approved
[...]
4. The Program of anonymous readings was then proceeded with[;] members reading in the
order in which they sat round the room. An interval of about 2 minutes at the end of each
piece was allowed for cogitation at the end of which the reader anounced the authors name &
the work from which he had read. Identification proved unexpectedly dificult[.] No one reading
was identified by everyone & the highest scorer only guessed eight authors & 4 & ˝ works
Reader Author Work
E. B. Castle Plato Phaedo
M. S. W. Pollard R. Browning Pictures in Florence
E. Goadby Saml. Butler Notes
M. E. Robson Flecker Hassan
R. H. Robson Belloc Eyewitness
E. C. Stevens M. Arnold Self dependance
E. D. Brain B. Shaw Pre. to Back to Methuselah
M. Castle T. Carlyle Sartor Resartus
A. Rawlings R. Browning Pheidippides
J. Rawlings G. Eliot Middlemarch
E. B. Smith Lewis Carroll Phantasmagoria
F. E. Reynolds Tennyson Locksley Hall
S. A. Reynolds E. B. Browning Lady Geraldine’s Courtship
H. R. Smith Chas. Kingsley Westward Ho
F. E. Pollard Shelley Prometheus Unbound'
Unknown
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Edith Goadby
'It was from [my father, a policeman] that I acquired the habit, which I have never been able to shake off, of reading in bed; and one of my most vivid recollections is of my father lying up in bed, upholstered in pillows, the eternal pipe in his mouth, absorbed in a book, and I, a young boy, lying gravely beside him, pretending to be deep in—of all the literary meats for a child's stomach!—Hudibras.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Desmond Malone Print: Book
'The mess was ... the only place where, that
bitter winter, one could read in comfort ... One
Sunday afternoon I took down with me a book I had
just bought—Butler's Erewhon
Revisited—and was soon absorbed in it.
The mess was, as I had anticipated, nearly empty,
but presently Captain Slater, the [former] Eton
master ... came in and, passing behind my chair,
observed the title of my book. "O God! O
Montreal!" he cried, "that I should find someone
reading Sam Butler in the British Army!" He was
genuinely amused and interested, and though we
were too disparate in age and temperament ever to
become close friends, a sympathetic bond did
henceforth exist between us ... But that ... was a
lesson. So long as we remained in England I
confined my mess reading to the Tatler and
the Bystander and other periodicals of the
kind which were the only literary recreations of
the majority of His Majesty's officers. When we
reached the Front, the situation changed, in this
as in many other respects.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: Herbert Edward Read Print: Book
'I have just finished that wonderful book—"The Way
of All Flesh". It is a wonderful book.'
Century: 1900-1945 Reader/Listener/Group: William Henry Hudson Print: Book
