Lights on the way, some tales within a tale, by J.H. Alexander, B.A.

by Alexander Hay Japp

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1878 ...artist might give us the squint of Wilkes, and the depressed nose and protuberant cheeks of Gibbon. It would require a much higher degree of skill to paint two such men as Mr. Canning and Sir Thomas Lawrence, so that nobody who had ever seen them could for a moment hesitate to assign each picture to its original. Here the mere caricaturist would be at fault. He would find in neither face any thing on which he could lay hold for the purpose of making a distinction; for the difference lay in delicate lineaments and shades, reserved for pencils of a rarer order. There is hardly one of Shakespeare's characters which deviates widely from the common standard, and which we should call eccentric if we met it in real life. The silly notion that every man has one ruling passion, and that this clue, once known, unravels all the mysteries of his conduct, finds no countenance in the plays of Shakespeare." Pickwick, Quilp, Ralph Nickleby, Skimpole, Jarndyce, and Mr. Dick, are all illustrations of the vice of this silly notion, and are specimens of a sort of caricature which is essentially false and artificial, if not in one point of view immoral, and ultimately debasing.--Ed. S "lam not sure," I said, "but the clubs which are now in vogue, and in which there is no trace of the true social club-feeling, say of Queen Anne's time, are detrimental to our literature and literary men." "Well, I suppose you are right," he said; "though I know but little of the real life of London club-houses. Only, scandal and small-talk may have their uses; they are mediums for testing men. Your true man will live apart from them and above them; your shrewd men will use them, and yet not degrade themselves. Shakespeare enjoyed the Mermaid, you know.&quot...

112 pages, Paperback

Published May 22, 2012

About the author

Alexander Hay Japp (1837–1905) was a Scottish author, journalist and publisher. Japp was versatile and prolific writer, writing under pseudonyms such as "H. A. Page", "A. F. Scot", "E. Conder Gray", and "A. N. Mount Rose" as well as in his own name. In his own name he issued in 1865 Three Great Teachers of our own Time: Carlyle, Tennyson, and Ruskin, which Ruskin found perceptive. He issued a selection of Thomas de Quincey's Posthumous Works (vol. i. 1891; vol. ii. 1893) and De Quincey Memorials: being Letters and other Records here first published (1891).

Japp tried many genres. Under a double pseudonym he issued in 1878 Lights on the Way (by "the late J. H. Alexander, B.A.", with explanatory note by "H. A. Page"), which was semi-autobiographical fiction.