Chapman. With Illustrative Passages.
NONESUCH PRESS.; ELLIS (Havelock).
"As the centuries go by ... we turn to him for delight"
One of 625 of a total of 700 numbered copies. 8vo., original Curwen patterned paper boards with printed paper label on the upper panel; preserved in original brown paper boards chemise with printed paper label on the spine, and original grey paper boards slipcase, uncut. Bloomsbury, The Nonesuch Press. 1934
Slipcase lightly soiled and worn along the top edge, chemise spine faded and worn at the head and foot, endpapers unevenly browned. The work comprises Havelock Ellis's essay on Chapman pages 1-83 and J.I.M. Stewart's selection of illustrative passages on pages 85-147. Ellis concludes his essay: "Chapman's personality remains interesting for us even when we grow tired of his work; he was sometimes a great poet, he was always a great Englishman of 'absolute and full soul'. As the centuries go by, we realise, as we look back, that it is only in our more strenuous moments - in youth or at periods of spiritual revolution - that we turn to him for delight; but at these moments we always find in him the 'excitation to heroical life', the contagious enthusiasm of all those things which, in his own phrase, heighten man's transition into God. To read Chapman is to experience the strong invigoration of a stiff breeze in mid-South Atlantic: you can scarcely keep your feet - but the exhilaration of it!"
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