George G. Loane

I often muse on the subject of angry, violent children and blame the producers of movies, TV and writings on those very subjects; thus poisoning the next batch of developing brains. Editor Loane's selections here indicate that it has ever been thus: humans are a vicious aberration of Mother Nature's natural selection process, they kill for the glamour of it and extol the fighting process. I guess there's no hope for us.
It wasn't until I got to the poems of Cowper and Goldsmith that writers of the time chose other subjects to write about. Of the skills of the poets, I continue to be unimpressed. My own schooling was apparently deficient. I still believe that if there's a story to tell, tell it without all the flowers and non-sequiturs. For me raw truth is more powerful.… (meer)

For such an incisive thinker on things pertaining to science, Francis Bacon must have turned to the side of his brain that gave to convoluted thought on philosophy. In the twentieth century he might reasonably have been diagnosed as an idiot. Abraham Cowley was a little less convoluted. I appreciated Richard Steele's treatment of his subject matter. Joseph Addison: brilliant; someone an avid reader of The Spectator in the early 1700s would have looked for with great expectations. As for Samuel Johnson, another convoluted thinker; The Rambler seems an appropriate place to publish this essay. Oliver Goldsmith/ Ho, hum. Charles Lamb was a mixed bag; some good, one indifferent and one brilliant. I think William Hazlitt had a good idea but mucked it up by doing too much with it. Thomas De Quincey ended up being a waste of time and I didn't finish it. Leigh Hunt's musings on cold mornings was most entertaining and I'm going to read it again. Next, R. L. Stevenson told of his favourite thing, adventure stories and plays of his time. He named a lot of the authors and playwrights who enthralled him. I admit to also loving youth adventure stories, but my list of writers and heroes is different, probably because it is slightly more recent but, it does include him. Augustine Birrell's choice of subject matter, book buying, somewhat mirrored my own feeling on the matter - it's fun. The next writer selected for the book, Edmund Gosse, wonders what all the worry about the woman's place in the world of the males of the species is about. I liked most of his presentation but was surprised that nowhere does he note that women are our mothers and sisters. G. K. Chesterton's essay in defense of nonsense was fun to read and ponder on. E. V. Lucas' comments on a funeral were what we might call: very human. The last essay presented was by W. B. Yeats dealt with one of life's oddball characters, some of whom are still out there. A section carrying the editor's notes to each essay is included to elucidate each essay should one wish to read them again and the final section includes short biographies, which I always appreciate. A great little book.… (meer)