{"id":12681,"date":"2022-07-07T07:41:07","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T07:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/ru\/?post_type=product&p=12681"},"modified":"2022-07-07T07:42:32","modified_gmt":"2022-07-07T07:42:32","slug":"the-curious-world-of-isaac-disraeli","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/ru\/the-curious-world-of-isaac-disraeli\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curious World of Isaac D\u2019Israeli"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marvin Spevack introduces the\u00a0Curiosities of Literature<\/em>, the epic cornucopia of essays on all things literary by Isaac D’Israeli: a scholar, man of letters and father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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What may be most curious about Isaac D\u2019Israeli\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0Curiosities of Literature<\/em>\u00a0is the title itself. For D\u2019Israeli curiosity was a blend of the original denotation, \u201cinvestigation … characterized by special care,\u201d and that of his own day, \u201cinquisitive, desirous of information,\u201d as in his reference to the grammar in Johnson\u2019s\u00a0Dictionary<\/em> as being \u201ccuriously illustrated by the notes and researches of modern editors\u201d and his regarding his friend Francis Douce\u2019s library as being \u201ccurious\u201d. Suitably for D\u2019Israeli, the man of letters, literature meant even more than just \u201cliterature generally, the humanities\u201d; it meant knowledge in the widest sense, without formality and restriction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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A collection of essays,\u00a0Curiosities of Literature<\/em>\u00a0– as the full title of the first edition of 1791 makes explicit,\u00a0Consisting of Anecdotes, Characters, Sketches, and Observations, Literary, Critical, and Historical<\/em> – has been rightly called \u201cthat library in miniature\u201d. It is a library which evolved through a vigorously evolutionary process \u2013 a veritable sea change of selection, addition, omission, and revision \u2013 its fourteenth and last edition in 1849, a year after D\u2019Israeli\u2019s death, consisting of 276 essays (the version in the first three volumes of the six-volume standard edition of his works edited by his son Benjamin in 1881). That number may appear stable when measured against the 279 of the first edition, but it is by no means indicative of the flexibility of the process or the nature of the topics. Both are strikingly evident in the titles of some of the fifty essays from the \u201cLiterature and Criticism\u201d section of the first edition which were excluded from later editions: \u201cTartarian Libraries,\u201d \u201cThe Turks,\u201d \u201cThe Law and the Prophets,\u201d \u201cRepublic of Letters,\u201d \u201cEsdras,\u201d \u201cAristotle,\u201d \u201cGregory the Seventh,\u201d \u201cFair-Sex having no Souls,\u201d \u201cPhysicians write little on Professional Subjects,\u201d \u201cGuy Patin,\u201d \u201cAdam not the first Man,\u201d \u201cSaints carrying their Heads in their Hands,\u201d \u201cOn the Adjective Pretty.\u201d Among the twenty-seven \u201cHistorical Anecdotes\u201d which dropped by the wayside are \u201cMarriage Dispensations,\u201d \u201cEnglish Ladies,\u201d \u201cSpanish Monks,\u201d \u201cThe Virgin Mary,\u201d \u201cProtestants,\u201d \u201cCoffee,\u201d Transubstantiation,\u201d \u201cAmerica,\u201d \u201cEnchanted Tapestry,\u201d \u201cGreat and Little Turk,\u201d \u201cThe Body of Caesar.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In a preface dated March 1839 D\u2019Israeli described his ever-evolving work as a \u201cvoluminous miscellany, composed at various periods … a circuit of multifarious knowledge [which] could not be traced were we to measure and count each step by some clinical pedometer.\u201d It would, however, be a misjudgment to regard the miscellany as a jungle of whimsical impressions or fanciful thoughts. Rather, it is a man-made woodland landscaped, cultivated, and manicured by an urban if not urbane gentleman. D\u2019Israeli derived most of his knowledge from books \u2013 the first essay is on \u201cLibraries\u201d \u2013 for he himself was unabashedly bookish and bibliophilic. But in the range and variety of its topics D\u2019Israeli\u2019s curious world was not hermetically sealed off from the world outside the library, else it would never have had so widespread a popularity over so long a period.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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If\u00a0Curiosities of Literature<\/em>\u00a0did not directly reflect contemporary social, political, and literary matters, or rely on current gossip or scandal, it did in any case deal with them as recognizable features and phenomena of human existence in recurring clusters unrestricted by time or place. As might be expected, the most prominent is that of literary personalities, productions, and attendant concerns. Of the numerous authors who are subjects of individual essays, although they are drawn from Roman times to the eighteenth century, none are contemporaries of D\u2019Israeli and no particular genre is dominant. English authors receive their due share: Milton, Pope, Dr. Johnson, Ben Jonson, Shenstone, Prior, Spenser, Shakespeare, Butler, Richardson. But continental authors may receive even more individual attention. The French are well represented by Saint-Evremond, La Rochefoucault, Bayle, Scarron, Madeleine and Georges Scud\u00e9ry, Corneille, among others; the Italians by Vida, Ariosto, Tasso, Dante, Politian. In addition, there are essays dealing with Martial, Cervantes, Aristotle, Plato, and Cicero. As may be inferred from these names and others, D\u2019Israeli gives relatively much attention to what might be called marginal literary figures, many of whom are lesser known humanists, scholars, bibliophiles, bibliographers, antiquaries, men of letters, editors, or philosophers, such as Grotius, Magliabechi, Anthony \u00e0 Wood, Marolles, Annius of Viterbo, Bodley, Camden, Costar, Fabroni, Hearne, Leland, Naud\u00e9, Bentley, Lenglet du Fresnoy, George Steevens, and Oldys.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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