The Project Gutenberg EBook of Some Diversions of a Man of Letters, by
Edmund William Gosse

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Title: Some Diversions of a Man of Letters

Author: Edmund William Gosse

Release Date: June 22, 2006 [EBook #18649]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SOME DIVERSIONS
OF
A MAN OF LETTERS

BY
EDMUND GOSSE, C.B.

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1920

_First published October 1919_
_New Impressions November 1919; February 1920_

_OTHER WORKS BY MR. EDMUND GOSSE_

_Northern Studies_. 1879.

_Life of Gray_. 1882.

_Seventeenth-Century Studies_. 1883.

_Life of Congreve_. 1888.

_A History of Eighteenth-Century Literature_. 1889.

_Life of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S._ 1890.

_Gossip in a Library_. 1891.

_The Secret of Narcisse: A Romance_. 1892.

_Questions at Issue_. 1893.

_Critical Kit-Kats_. 1896.

_A Short History of Modern English Literature_. 1897.

_Life and Letters of John Donne_. 1899.

_Hypolympia_. 1901.

_Life of Jeremy Taylor_. 1904.

_French Profiles_. 1904.

_Life of Sir Thomas Browne_. 1905.

_Father and Son_. 1907.

_Life of Ibsen_. 1908.

_Two Visits to Denmark_. 1911.

_Collected Poems_. 1911.

_Portraits and Sketches_. 1912.

_Inter Arma_. 1916.

_Three French Moralists_. 1918.

TO

EVAN CHARTERIS

CONTENTS

PAGE

Preface: On Fluctuations of Taste 1

The Shepherd of the Ocean 13

The Songs of Shakespeare 29

Catharine Trotter, the Precursor of the Bluestockings 37

The Message of the Wartons 63

The Charm of Sterne 91

The Centenary of Edgar Allen Poe 101

The Author of "Pelham" 115

The Challenge of the Brontes 139

Disraeli's Novels