Rhymes on the Road, Fables, Etc.

Title

en_US Rhymes on the Road, Fables, Etc.

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US By Thomas Brown, the Younger

Creator

en_US Moore, Thomas

Date

2016-01-25T19:29:24Z

en_US Unknown

en_US 1823

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:29:24Z

Date Issued

en_US 1823

Abstract

en_US There are a number of anomalies about this book. The first is that the bookbinder put on the spine Moore's Works. I take it that this is a simple error. The date and place are correct on the spine: Paris, 1823. The second anomaly has to do with the fact that the last quarter of the pages in this book--after 135--are not printed upon. Six fables are presented on 97-135. They are heavily political, specifically anti-monarchical. Is that perhaps why the book was published in France rather than somewhere in the United Kingdom? I think they are conceits or even allegories more than fables. The first speaks of kings living in an ice palace on a frozen river; then there is a thaw, and the river melts, and they simply disappear. The second describes a country in which beauty is presumed to be present in gradations from the highest classes--the most beautiful, of course--down to the ugly lowest classes. Then a shipwreck brings this country for the first time a load of mirrors, and the fiction is over. The third expresses outrage that a healthy bullock like the people should be sacrificed to or for a blue-bottle fly like the king. The fourth is on the abominable marriage of church and state. The fable here involves a royal person meeting a monk and borrowing his cape (the monk hopes for a better one!) and running amok with inpunity in the name of religion. The fifth is a hyperbolic presentation of the need to whip the three-year old Lama of Tibet because he had revealed himself to be so outrageously bad a ruler. Kings trust to soldiers, the final fable says, but soldiers are like extinguishers that a lord used to keep down fires. Alas, the extinguishers themselves caught fire! Lively polemical poetry. Tge covers, endpapers, and page edges have lovely marbling on them. 4¼ x 7. The final anomaly is that this is one of very few books I have acquired for which I can find no information about when or where I found it.

Identifier

en_US 5219 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/80785

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Published by A. and W. Galignani at the French, English, Italian, German and Spanish Library, No. 18, Rue Vivienne.,

en_US Paris

Subject

en_US PR5054.R49 1823

en_US Thomas Brown

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole